Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
2.47 Core of the Sky Island Dungeon

We enter into the passageway Kristil had mentioned a few minutes prior. This time, I’m in the back of the group with Lindsey in front. My [Ether] is still barely above half, even after consuming our penultimate [Ether Canister], and we’ve all judged that it’s best that I’m not our point defender.

In contrast, Lindsey still looks fresh and ready for combat, even after spending more time fighting and less time resting than I and the others have. Stats and the System aside, it’s clear that her many years of training and exercise— physical and mental alike— have given her a much higher baseline for each stat point to apply to. And from my vision of training with Madison in my past life, I know that doing so does improve combat abilities even without Experience gain. They knew much more about the System than we do, and if they thought it a worthwhile use of their— and my—time, they were probably right.

We step up a flight of stairs— the first we’ve seen to this point. It’s pitch black through the stairwell, with no skylights or windows or arrowslits or whatever else might be appropriate in this sort of architecture. It’s odd, seeing as it’s the first such instance of a completely dark passageway we’ve encountered to this point. It almost seems as though we weren’t supposed to find this stairwell. If the entrance is as well-hidden as Kristil insinuated, that would make sense.

My first instinct is that we’ll find some extra-well-hidden treasure here. My second is that it’ll be hidden behind puzzles or even nastier monsters and/or curses. And I’m not sure we can afford to deal with either. The Molochian— the Servant of Moloch, the System called it— was a more fearsome foe than any we’ve dealt with to this point, and it was only by sheer dumb luck that we managed to escape with all of our lives still intact.

My mind swirls with the possibilities— good and bad in equal measure. Mostly good; we’ve had a rough go of it so far today, so I’d like to remain cautiously optimistic.

Mostly, it’s good to know that such passageways exist. Although now I have to wonder if Chloe and I missed something back in the South County dungeon a few months back. A small part of me wants to go back and investigate further, but I realize that it’s a waste of time. The dungeon is simply too low level, and the time we’d spend in the dungeon, refighting Oneiros and Armosi or whatever replaced them, would be better spent crafting, studying Ethertech, or taking on challenges more appropriate for our level.

Our footsteps clip and clop against the stone steps, up and up and up. If anything, this stairwell reminds me more of the ones back from the Tower Gauntlet. Quiet. Eerily quiet, a brief bit of superficial respite within the hellish dungeon grounds. A chance for me to continue to regenerate my [Ether], but never a time to fully relax and unwind.

Another stone door awaits us after three hundred and twenty-four steps across thirty-six flights. We must be near the apex of the dungeon. Or at least, we would need to be so, if not for the fact that the System is well-known for taking the postulates of Euclid and spitting in their faces before killing them and shitting on the remains. We might not even be at a higher elevation than we were when we started, had we inadvertently passed through a warp portal or two in the darkness.

Chloe detected no such thing with her [Ethersight], but I dare not assume that the absence of evidence can be taken as evidence for their absence. I would examine them myself, except I’m trying to conserve every drop of [Ether] for whatever awaits us on the other side of this wall.

Kristil tries the same thing she did before to no avail. I check my [Ether] once again. A little over twelve hundred now, thanks to Chloe’s [Ether Channeling] skill. Not enough for a protracted engagement with a powerful enemy, but enough to spare the thirty or so it takes to Manifest my trusty [Unlock] glyph. My power disables the internal mechanisms holding the device shut and allows us to enter the final room.

This room, unlike the stairwell behind us, is lightly lit, glowing a dim, fluorescent blue. Overall, the room is most similar to the room where we fought Oneiros. Futuristic. Lots of techno-gadgetry, diodes and flickering lights in a circular room. A bit of nostalgia sets in, with how similar it looks to my room. The one the original Seraphina was trapped in until Dr. Chotono and the others were able to give her the power of 「The Anomaly」. The same power which now rests within me.

“So, what do we do now?” Kristil asks, stepping forward into the center of the room. “I doubt it’s as simple as frying the whole damn thing.”

“Well, considering we are on a sky island over Red Clay City and scrapping the whole thing might cause us to catastrophically tumble back down to the surface, I must ask you to reconsider,” Lindsey says. “Besides, if it’s like the last dungeon, there’s a boss waiting for us now that we’re here at the core.”

“Well, that’s just ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag,” Kristil says.

I can’t help but be amused by the expression, but I do my best to not let it show on my face. Considering that Chloe is also trying and failing to suppress a grin, I have to assume I’m not doing a great job. Kristil doesn’t seem to notice either of us, nor the fact that our fingers have found their way to one another and are currently intertwined. Lindsey’s quick elbow jab, despite her still looking ahead and not at us, shows that our antics haven’t gone wholly unnoticed.

It’s still too damn quiet. Oneiros didn’t show up immediately, but it wasn’t more than a minute or two before he did. Maybe the consequence of us appearing through a hidden passageway instead of the intended route. Maybe– No, no sense in baseless speculation. Thoughts of Nicholas’s and Alexey’s warnings about getting too speculative spring to the surface.

I turn on my [Ethersight], wondering if there’s something we’re overlooking. One of these diodes? A switch on the wall? A remnant, a half-formed glyph carved into one of these strange computational devices? Maybe a screen like our televisions back home? I search and search for anything that seems out of place within this strange room. Everything does, but not by the standards of the room itself.

My eyes drift downward toward the floor. Then up to the ceiling. For a split second, I think I see a glint in the corner of my eye. I focus a bit more, taking flight once more upon the [Wings of Icarus] until I reach the ceiling fifty feet above.

I see symbols on the ceiling, though they look like no glyphs I’ve encountered to this point. And channeling [Ether] through them produces no effect. At least none that I can detect.

I drop back down and rub my fingers along the doohickeys and dingdongs on the wall, wondering if any of them spark any memories of my past life. Anything that might help us decipher the puzzle within the room and move on either to the boss or to the end of the dungeon.

“Why do you think nothing has tried to attack us?” Lindsey asks. “I sense a hostile presence, but that’s just my human senses going off in the back of my mind. My [Identify] isn’t picking anything up at all.”

“Maybe it’s–” I pause for a moment. “The inscription at the start of the dungeon. It said that if we took nothing, we could proceed through the challenges without fear. And other than the Spawn of Pazuzu, the difficulty of each encounter has scaled with the number of treasures we took with us.”

“That’s right,” Chloe says. “Only two of the four doors opened, an Apophisite behind each of them. I have no doubt that had we taken the other two chests, those other two doors would have opened and we would have been overwhelmed by all four of them. I’m sure the curses wouldn’t have helped either, and even the Spellbooks Kristil and I got wouldn’t have been enough to turn the tide.”

“But there was only one Molochian,” Lindsey says.

“That only used two of its swords,” I counter. “Its other two arms… I don’t think it used them even once, other than as a display of intimidation. That would match the two treasures that we took after the second fight.”

“Isn’t that odd?” Kristil asks. “The Temple of Greed didn’t offer any treasures the last time around.”

“Probably took the wrong passageway to get here,” Lindsey says. “I doubt this was the intended path.”

“Well,” I interject, “my System notification said that I got bonus Experience for defeating, and I quote, ‘a dungeon boss’. I don’t think there’s much better proof than that. The System is an asshole, but I’ve never seen it actively lie about anything.”

That’s not a completely true statement, I realize. It has obfuscated the truth about my origins and about how my anomalous power works. It tries to obscure my [Seraphina Overlimit], which still appears as glitchy text whenever I take a look at my Status. And it sure as hell doesn’t like me much, a sentiment which is mutual. But I suppose obfuscation and omission isn’t quite the same as lying outright.

“So what do we do?” Kristil asks. “I’d really like to get the hell out of here as soon as possible.”

“I declare that we’ve cleared the Temple of Greed,” I say. “Break the curse and give us our dungeon clearing rewards.”

Nothing happens. I didn’t expect anything would come of such a simple declaration, and yet I still end up disappointed. It’s not like simply declaring something to be so will bend reality to accommodate the declaration. I imagine declaring myself to be the ruler of the cosmos. No, better not. I’m the last person anyone should want in charge of anything, let alone all of reality.

And I don’t know of any glyph of [Solve] or [Clear] or anything else that might be useful, either. Still, there’s one final puzzle here before we get to leave. And I just don’t know what it is.

This is the Temple of Greed, or so the Molochian said. A warning about coveting material wealth. A warning about the System. Just like my new [Wings of Icarus] hanging off my back. Flying too high, seeking too much power, too soon, would only lead to calamity. For each of us individually, and for ourselves collectively. Then the opposite would be…

Chloe beats me to the idea, setting her gear on the floor in the middle of the room as she stands up and stretches. The room rumbles. Chloe rushes back to grab her belongings, but I stop her. She opens her mouth to protest, but I give her a solemn shake of my head until the temple stops half a minute later.

Another pedestal appears, this one much like the first. And I begin reading, the glyphs and System helping me decipher the words much like they do with Skill books.

“Let the trials of this dungeon show everyone this universal truth. Treasures can be stolen. Gear can be sundered. Items and trinkets of all types can be cursed, lost, forgotten to time, history, and the minds of mortal men. Only one’s personal strength, honed through challenges, tempered through trials and adversity, is inviolable.”

The words themselves carry meaning, yes, but I can’t help but feel that there’s a particular unpleasant message directed at me specifically. The System is calling me out for being an artificial creation, for being a [Planetouched Mechanist], for dedicating myself to crafting as much as to fighting and gaining personal power for myself. And worst of all, I can’t even fully deny its words.

At the same time, my glance turns to my left arm. A clear counterexample of personal strength being very much violable, and how technology can overcome our inherent limitations. How I was created to be a counterweight against the System and whatever forces lie beyond its creation and intention.

Who’s to say what will triumph in the end? My hand slips into Chloe’s, the two of us sharing a smile as we look to the center of the room. A portal has now appeared, which we step through, arriving back on the surface with all of our belongings intact. System notifications follow, a welcome relief as the sun dips low and we make our camping preparations for the night.

[You have cleared Dungeon E3-971-147.179.4, codename [Temple of Greed]. You have gained a boosted 22,500 Experience for being the first party to clear this dungeon. You have gained two free stat points for clearing this dungeon. Please assign free stat points (Remaining: 2).]

Odd. I’m surprised the cultists haven’t already cleared this dungeon. They’re certainly high enough level to do so, if those level 31 to 34 minions we fought were any indication. Something to ponder on later. I slot those free points directly into my [Mind] stat, for the same reason as before.

[The [Curse of the Forgotten Kings] has been dispelled. Stats return to normal.]

[Level: 30; Experience: 259,745; To Next: 14,550]

[Current Stats: [Health]: 3,082 / 3,082; [Ether]: 1,974 / 2,028]

[Current Stats: [Strength]: 27; [Speed]: 25; [Vitality]: 66; [Mind]: 100]