Rune Seeker

Hiral stepped out of the portal—and onto a solid floor—then spread out to the side of Nivian and Seena while activating Foundational Split. Left and Right peeled off of him, and he heard Wule and Seeyela follow out of the dungeon.

Much like when they’d gone in, they were in some kind of underground tunnel, glowing roots extending along the floors and the wall ahead of them. Unlike when they’d gone in, the collapsed tunnel was behind them, and they weren’t standing on a Disc of Passage.

“Didn’t fall into a bottomless pit,” Yanily said. “Good start.”

“This definitely isn’t where we went in,” Hiral said. “No disc and no dungeon interface.”

“Do you think it got us any closer to the D-Rank zone we were aiming for?” Nivian asked.

“Even if it didn’t, we’ve only got one direction we can take,” Seena said, pointing ahead. “Let’s get moving.”

Nivian started as soon as Seena tapped him on the shoulder, and the party moved at a steady pace.

“Floor is even,” Hiral said, examining the tunnel. “Walls look like worked stone too. Same runes from the city… Speaking of which, did anybody catch the name of the city we were just in?”

A few of the Growers around him shared glances, but they all shook their heads until every eye settled on Yanily—who was nodding.

“We all do,” Yanily said.

“Oh, please don’t say the…” Seena started.

“The Buried City,” Yanily finished, and Seena facepalmed.

“He said it,” she said with a shake of her head. “Of course he said it.”

“That was the dungeon name, Yan,” Seeyela said.

“And who says it wasn’t also the city’s name?” Yanily asked back, straight-faced.

“I don’t think they… I mean, they wouldn’t… Why would they call it the buried city?” Seeyela asked.

“I dunno,” Yanily said with a shrug. “It wasn’t buried when we were in there, but they obviously weren’t very good at naming things.”

“He has a point,” Wule said. “They definitely weren’t good at naming things.”

“Do you… do you think we actually helped them name parts of the PIM and achievements?” Seena asked.

“I don’t,” Hiral said immediately. “I think that was just how the dungeon interpreted what we said. I admit, it was a bit more interactive than Dr. Benza’s image usually is, but we didn’t travel into the past. We were just inside a dungeon.”

“Are you sure?” Seena asked.

Hiral opened his mouth, paused, and then changed what he was automatically going to say. “I’m not, no. It couldn’t be, though, right?”

“I’d personally like to think we were instrumental to the creation of the PIM system, and that we can look forward to more creative names like the Lady of the Web,” Wule said. “We might even get a footnote, if we can find Dr. Benza’s report.”

“Only Hiral gets the footnote, apparently,” Seena said. “Dr. Benza liked him.”

“I bet that report could tell us so much more than Dr. Benza usually does,” Hiral half-growled. “Left, Right, did either of you find anything interesting when you went exploring?”

“After the battle with the Infested, it seems the dungeon completely emptied itself of the city’s previous inhabitants,” Left explained. “No people. No monsters. Nothing. Just empty buildings. Even the bodies of the monsters we’d defeated had vanished.”

“I was able to get really far, though,” Right added in. “All the way to the falling rain in the center of the city.”

“Was that safe?” Wule asked.

“I didn’t go until the timer was almost up, just in case,” Right explained. “Nothing worth talking about there, though. The collapsed ceiling had completely destroyed everything underneath. Besides that, I found what would be a pretty typical city core. Markets, shops, that kind of thing. I don’t know if the dungeons have any kind of limits, but it was all really detailed. I even ate an apple, and let me tell you, it was good.”

“Left, how about you?” Hiral asked. “Did you stop for a snack too?”

“I didn’t go any further than the Ghost-Web Spider area,” Left said. “I figured since Dr. Benza’s laboratory was there, there might be something else of interest.”

“And, was there?” Hiral prompted.

“Maybe,” Left said. “I came across a large crystal in the same building where we found Dr. Benza, and there were two things about it that caught my interest. The first was that it looked very similar to the type of crystal used in your greatsword.”

“You think I could’ve used it to repair my sword?” Hiral asked.

“Tough to say. It was a very large crystal, but you might have been able to use your Mold Crystal ability.”

“Guess we’ll never know, now,” Hiral said with a shake of his head. “And the second thing?”

“There was a monkey inside the crystal,” Left said. “A full-grown Bladed Frenzy Monkey, though I couldn’t View it. Still, I’m sure that’s what I saw. It looked like it was asleep.”

“How did a monkey get inside the crystal?” Wule asked. “Was it alive?”

“I don’t have an answer to either of those questions,” Left said.

“You sure it was a monkey?” Nivian asked from the front of the group without turning. “Didn’t you and Right both say all the other monsters were gone?”

“We did,” Left said. “So, I guess that means there were three strange things. It was definitely a monkey in the crystal.”

“I wonder what it was doing in there,” Hiral mumbled, but he couldn’t come up with a good answer to his question, so he filed it away for later. “Good work, both of you. Knowing more about the limits of the dungeons will help us for the next one we tackle.”

“Three more to get access to the next Asylum,” Seena reminded them. “And, if they’re anything like this wild dungeon was, they’re just going to get tougher and tougher. We’re lucky we have the extra firepower of Left and Right, but these new abilities we just got should help out too. We can’t practice much with them while moving, but I do want to talk about them. Here’s what I’m thinking about how we can use them…” Her proposals became the main focus while the group walked.

Time passed oddly in the seemingly unending tunnel, so long and unchanging Hiral actually unsummoned Left and Right again so they could rest. Minutes turned to hours, but it was impossible to tell how many of those passed until, finally, something about the air changed.

The group had exhaustively discussed plans for using Seeyela’s new abilities, among other things, and had dropped into a tired silence after that. The stale, still air had become another constant along with the darkness and softly glowing roots, so when something moved across Hiral’s skin, he almost didn’t notice it at first. But then, there it was again. Just barely noticeable, like the last dying breath of a corpse, and Hiral stopped immediately.

When the others looked at him in question, he held up his hand for them to wait, his fingers spread so he could… Yes! A gentle touch on the tips of his fingers. “There’s a breeze,” he said. “We must be getting close to an exit, or at least a hole.”

“Finally,” Yanily said. “I was not meant to be underground.”

“Getting close to an exit means getting closer to something that wants to see us dead,” Seeyela reminded them.

“The Enemy,” Hiral said, taking a deep breath in through his nose. “The smell is changing too. I’d bet it’s rain.”

“Here’s the plan,” Seena said. “We’ll find the exit and see what it looks like out there, then we’ll backtrack into the tunnel here and set up camp. I want us all to get a good rest before we go out there.”

“I’ll ask Left to scout around while we sleep,” Hiral said.

“Too dangerous,” Seena said with a shake of her head.

“Not anymore,” Hiral countered. “When I got the new runes, Left got access to the Way of Shadow tattoo.” He tapped his chest-plate over where the tattoo would be. “It’s… not a popular tattoo since it requires darkness to work, but my parents wanted me prepared for anything. Anyway, at D-Rank it’ll give him limited control over darkness, and the ability to move through it. In shadows, he’ll be almost invisible, and much faster.”

“Hah, a sneaky ability!” Wule said, pointing at Seena. “I knew there had to be one.”

“Anything we can learn before we go out there reduces the risk,” Seeyela said to her sister, ignoring Wule’s comment.

“It does,” Seena agreed. “Okay. We’ll do that. First, though, let’s see what we can see with our own eyes.”

With a basic plan in place, the group continued down the tunnel. Despite the slight breeze across Hiral’s skin, it still took what felt like hours—though it was probably only one—before they found a wide, carved staircase leading out of the tunnel.

From the bottom of the stairs, Hiral looked up the incline—there were hundreds of steps—and saw the steady downpour of rain falling in the soft light from the glowing roots.

“That’s… a lot of stairs,” Yanily said.

“I’m going up,” Hiral said.

“We’re all going up,” Seena said, looking pointedly at Yanily.

“Fiiiiiiiine,” the spearman said, and the whole group started up, easily fitting side-by-side on the wide steps.

With their D-Rank End, they made it to the top with little trouble, and Hiral’s eyes widened as he looked out through the wide archway.

Obviously constructed in a similar fashion to the smaller dungeon archways, some kind of enchantment prevented the rain from getting inside, but that wasn’t what took Hiral’s breath away. Instead of a forest or maybe mountain scene ahead of him, a massive city sprawled out and up. Buildings towered into the rain, hundreds of feet tall, the glowing roots crawling up them and circling empty windows as big as some houses.

The light given off by the glowing plants was different than what he’d seen before, more soft blues and greens than the yellows, oranges, and reds from the E-Rank zone they’d been in. More than that, the plants were thinner as well, like bushes left too long without water, with few leaves and more stretching vines. It was different, yes, but no less beautiful in its own way.

Lightning flashed in the distance, illuminating hundreds—no, thousands—more buildings down the wide street ahead of him. Cobblestones the size of wagon wheels formed a perfectly level street, the constant water from the rain running into some kind of drainage system at the sides, with ornate filigree and carvings climbing the walls beside the glowing plants. The doorways at ground level stood around ten feet tall, but the higher up he looked, the taller each floor got.

And, the most striking part of all of it…

It was empty.