There is no Epic Loot here, Only Puns.

Chapter 168: Shortcuts cut Short

"Is it so weird? A room to honor people?" Lim asked, and Yattina hesitated.

There was no real good way to say what she was about to say next.

"Yes, even the most advanced Dungeons we know of lack what we would consider empathy. It's just not known for Dungeons of any age to ever 'care' about those who enter it," Yattina admitted as she gripped the mana charm that kept her from throwing her guts up.

The mana in the air indicated the Dungeon was many things; between the detailed entrance room, the feeling, and more. It all pointed to everything in this Dungeon being compacted, pushed to the limit. There really was no better word for it other than this Dungeon felt 'thick.'

"Captain Yattina, we should move on," their escort said gruffly behind them. Yattina resisted the urge to turn and hiss like a feral cat. She did not enjoy being rushed in her research by dolts who could swing a sword and not a lot else.

"A moment please, Captain. Every discovery made could change how we approach this Dungeon," she said back to the man watching them. Yattina didn't like the new captain. Due to the sheer size of Fairplay, it wasn't uncommon for some of their members to never have met each other before an operation brought them together.

Captain Allatory was one such person. If Lim was her promising mind, ready to accept the world that existed outside his own viewpoint, then Allatory was a steel trap rusted over by years of loss and bitterness.

"As the Blade Captain, my authority supersedes your own whilst in this Dungeon. We need to move on. There is far more for you to see. More things you need to be informed on so we can be ready," he said, and Yattina narrowed her eyes.

The man was well-versed in the fact that the Dungeon was always listening.

What he wasn't saying was that he wanted Yattina to identify as many weaknesses as possible to set the stage for an assault by an expert squad.

It was extreme to even be considering such an option, but this Dungeon was hardly normal.

Normal or not, Yattina would do her best. It was down to her to walk a fine line between revealing too much or too little. One meant the Dungeon would be laid bare and relationships that it courted with the village might be soured because of them.

The other was good men and women could be seriously hurt in a misunderstanding.

This was why she didn't like people getting close.

They died due to being stupid or left her after hurting her.

Moving down the hall, the men halted before a room decorated in a wonderful spider silk garden.

"Avoid it, I don't want to deal with the Phantom Spider with Captain Yattina here. Her time is too important to see you all being flung about like damn toys. Cut down only the webs that absolutely need to be," Allatory told his squad, who moved in with practiced grace.

Yattina stopped to admire the web, enjoying how it felt more like thread than web, bouncing off her finger rather than clinging to it. The slight touch sent a tremble across the room, which Yattina watched as it all seemed to meet on the ceiling near the far corner.

If she was a gambling woman, she'd bet that was where the queen of this domain resided. Yattina could only imagine how beautiful the monster was. It wasn't often that a Dungeon had a diverse ecosystem like this on the first floor.

On the way past, she took some berries and quietly asked Lim to attune them to himself. The blank look she got in return made her remember that Lim had been on the Scout teams. High numbers, even higher turn over.

"Focus your mana on them, allow it to soak into it completely until it feels like your finger or hair. Then you sort of just pull it back to you. Don't do too many, or you'll exhaust yourself," she warned.

Yattina was oversimplifying it, but Lim didn't need to know that. There were a dozen different ways to make Dungeon items 'real.' The more complex or magical an item or material was, the more Mana and experience the gatherer needed.

Processing salt from the coastal or sea Dungeons was considered a closely guarded secret of a Culinary Guild, and people paid through their teeth to get pure enough salt in a timely manner.

This was why there existed Botany Guilds, Miner Guilds, Mason Guilds, and more. Some guilds were so specialized their methods could only work on a single Dungeon.

These sects were extremely insular, and Yattina heard their methods of inducting outsiders that made it past their lofty doors were brutal. They all had names based on the Dungeon they worked with and the nature of their exports.

Yattina only knew of one near Fairplay HQ by name; they lived on the peninsula to the north and were called the 'Raging Storm' Sect. Aspiring members passed through the city on their way to the sect every year.

Most of them returned harrowed beyond their years.

They paused at an intersection, and Yattina saw beyond an open door that there was a massive lake straight ahead. She felt her excitement spark, but Allatory cut her path off before she could take steps inside.

"The room hasn't been fully scouted out. Our Sensors think there may be a secret passage in the room, but it's not safe. We want to focus on the main path today," he warned, and Yattina pulled Lim into view.

"I have a guard," she insisted. Allatory looked unmoved by Lim's nervous stature.

Yattina also didn't want to be shown up by a stupid Sensor. Children of accomplished Dungeon Delvers. They had a way of seeing Dungeons that they couldn't explain to others.

They spoke of 'stars and lines that connected all to titans of light.'

Not that Yattina didn't not believe them, but they were all sort of smug, and Yattina found they tended to feel like the elite of Fairplay.

Premium members.

On her less kind days, Yattina called them blatant cheaters who could see through a Dungeon's efforts and peek under the table to see how it all worked.

'Lazy' was another good word for them.

However, something Allatory said had caught her attention now she thought about it.

"Your Sensors 'think'?" she asked, trying not to sound coyly amused.

"Their vision is clouded. The Dungeon lines are unlike anything they've seen before. They said it's like trying to read a sea during a storm," Allatory reported as he looked around, his pale features almost shiny in the gloom.

"Imagine having vision problems," Yattina said casually as her magic orb moved in her eye socket. To her delight, Allatory looked away uncomfortably.

"I'll look at the lake and determine if it's 'important,'" she said and moved past the man with Lim at her side. She tapped the side of her head.

"Come on, lil guy. Time to earn your rent," she muttered, getting a confused look from Lim.

Her 'eye' was a bit of a clunky thing. Still, she couldn't complain when it let her see things that she would never have seen otherwise.

Unlike Sensors, Yattina didn't see under the facade of Dungeons or through their tricks.

No, this sight was more of a monkey's paw.

When she got the thing, she should have been more careful when she told it to 'always show her the truth.' It was a childish whim from a hurt child, in Yattina's defense.

The lake began to glow as massive silver and gold lights danced underneath like playful stars. She slowly watched as the sky seemed to be dancing between the fake sun and moon in some odd dance.

She absolutely avoided looking at Lim or the others with her eye. She didn't look at people.

They were either devastatingly beautiful or beautifully devastating.

Slowly, she looked over a pre-set camp site, getting a warm glow of welcome from it. Past rocks and grass that radiated a gentle peace, far over the lake until her eye landed on the massive crimson eye staring back at her.

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A horrible serpentine feathered dragon was coiled around a throne of knives, each tip tapping a dragonscale in a cruel musical note as the long flowing mane reminded Yattina of black seaweed. The thing should not have fit in the room, but the Eye of Truth didn't really concern itself with geometry or space so much as being truthful.

Slowly, the creature spread its wings, and a glint of silver flashed around its head, showing a crown woven in the shape of talons clasped together.

The creature leaned down, and Yattina couldn't move. It opened its mouth, revealing fangs sharper than the knives it had collected.

"I will spare your mortal soul…" it rasped, and Yattina wasn't breathing.

"For that knife on the boy's leg," it finished in an almost honking purr.

The magic of the eye died down, and she was left staring across the lake at a much smaller duck. However, Yattina calmly accepted that she was staring at a potential superboss hidden in plain sight and took Lim's knife, holding it aloft.

"A knife… a knife for our safe passage," she croaked.

"Captain?" Allatory whispered, concerned as he moved to cover her with his sword half-drawn.

"I swear to whatever god you believe in that if you upset that duck, I will lock you in here with it after I run," Yattina hissed, her magical eye flashing.

Allatory gaped, then took three steps back.

Putting the knife down on a nearby rock, she watched the creature as it weighed the offering from across the lake. Yattina knew that such a paltry distance meant nothing to the duck.

"Quack!" it announced and buried its head into its wing to go to sleep.

Her heart started beating again.

Safety!

Yattina needed to order a crate of knives from Fairplay. She needed to study this creature, with its permission of course!

Her scientific soul was in heaven!

This could be the legendary Dark Drake! A species thought to only rise up every thousand years in migration when the Demon World aligned with their world. The trail of destruction left behind them was said to be the stuff of legends!

How was one here? It took incredible mana and magic to summon something so powerful.

How did anyone summon a Dark Drake?!

---

Quiss paused as he looked down at a bunch of Fairplay people getting grifted by Grim.

"Dungeon Maps, complete with side tunnels. Deluxe maps with two secret passages available on request, price non-negotiable!" the boy howled. People gathered around, hustling to be the one with the upperhand.

He stepped closer so that only Grim could see him when he asked his question.

"Why are several rooms incomplete or just wrong?" he asked, and Grim shot him a grin.

"I'll finish it eventually. It's a promise to my customers who bought it regardless," he said simply.

"And if they happen to get lost or traumatized?" Quiss raised a brow.

"Sounds like a grim tale," the boy said without thinking, then paused, then cursed at himself. Someone elbowed Quiss in the stomach to get closer to the maps, and he almost burned the Fairplay employee to ashes in reflex when he twisted his tongue harshly in a folded forked motion.

"Duck!" he snarled. A small black duck appeared in a poof of smoke on Grim's table.

"That looks sort of familiar," someone muttered as Grim threw himself over a fence with his earnings.

"If you like grim tales, you'll love duck tales!" he called back to them a second later.

"I don't even get that joke!" he cursed himself as he fled.

Quiss picked the duck up and looked pensive. He took the docile but curious thing to the pub, where Seth was nursing a drink with Happy Nina.

He saw Quiss, began to smile, then spotted the duck.

"The blackest of undays are returned. Many not-knowing will perish," he said, sliding under the table with a pale expression.

"What's with him?" Happy Nina beamed.

"When I summon three black ducks in a row, it means I accidently started their migration early again," Quiss said grumpily.

"What happened last time?" Happy Nina asked as Sad Nina sobbed her way through a sink full of dishes nearby.

Quiss pointed to the world map on the pub's wall and to the very south-eastern island.

"That happened. If I summon two more dark ducks, then it's going to be a repeat," he said sullenly as he told the bartender to send over a shot of whatever was going out of date.

"Isn't that Funland?" Happy Nina asked, tilting her head, still smiling.

Quiss hated that name.

Funland was short for Funeral Island. It was home to five compact Dungeons that sprung up after Quiss set off the migration. The land was still covered in battle scars and rumors had sprung up that something else had been imprisoned there.

"Well, if this is the first one, you still need to summon two more, right?! You just have to be careful," Happy Nina nodded seriously, and Quiss felt a small smile tug on his face as he turned around to feed the duck, but he found it was gone.

"Ah, damn it," he sighed and turned, running right into Ruli's puffed out chest.

"Fu-Duck!" he screeched in surprise as she snuck up on him. A poof went on the table, and a second black duck appeared, confused before eating some of Nina's fries.

"Oh, we're so ducked!" Happy Nina clapped her hands with a smile of terror.

---

Delta wanted to stalk- er, follow this new woman with interest, but she was being called by Wyin of all people.

"Don't let her or her little friend die!" she told Maestro, who had eyes all over the floor. It didn't take long for her to arrive in Wyin's boss room to see the tree looking thoughtful and oddly worried.

"You rang?" Delta called from the entrance with a low grunt then grinned to herself. It was impossible to give her monster's actual space since she was all the space in the walls, but a little effort never hurt anyone. Wyin looked and absent-mindedly beckoned her closer.

"I've been having 'thoughts' since we arrived back from that dingy little sad salt cave," she began, her voice a slow drawl.

"Foodie, his name is Foodie," Delta reminded her, but Wyin didn't seem to hear.

"I've come to the conclusion that I may be suffering from a mortal case of boredom," Wyin admitted and it seemed to pain her to actually say it aloud.

"But all you did was train a few salt bats to attack Jack and kick a turtle," Delta said, voice incredulous.

"And it was glorious!" Wyin threw her arms up, her very slender arms ending in dozens of branches that all swished as she moved. Delta could argue, but she had a point. Wyin hardly got any time to be her 'gentle' self to adventurers.

The first floor was just too good. Delta tried to avoid feeling too smug about that as pride went before the fall into something that would make her scream.

"Think, think, think," Delta mused, tapping her head as she thought of ideas.

"If you ask me for any honey for your rumbly tummy, I'll be the first boss monster to be fired for slapping their Dungeon Core," Wyin said dryly.

An idea came to her. It was so simple and yet also so slimy that it made her grimace.

"Wyin, it's time I became something I swore to never tolerate," she inhaled, trying to ready herself for what she was about to say.

"Desirable?" Wyin offered, and Delta opened her mouth, then closed it for a few moments.

"It's not a crime to put video games and my students first before romance! If I wanted someone to be with, I'd have actually looked outside of my romance books," Delta said and blinked. That was a new semi-memory.

She didn't have a 'special someone.' That oddly made her feel a little bit better about being 'here.'

"I had Jack bring me some of those books from the Third Floor. I would not want that poor sweet Deo to even glimpse the covers," Wyin said with a sly smirk.

"It's not 'dirty books.' It's mature reading material," Delta said with an indifferent shrug.

"'Mature' was books 1-3 in that one series. 'Deviant' came into the picture from books 4-19," Wyin said, and she sounded like she shamelessly read them all in one sitting.

"Anyway!" Delta interrupted, her neck burning with a blush.

"What if I opened up Quee's entrance? It goes past Renny's circus to the outside," she explained, and Wyin frowned, turning serious as she turned the idea over.

"Dangerous, we cannot risk the honorable Sir Fran being simply 'skipped," Wyin said, sounding more concerned about her darling knight than any of the actual first floor.

"I agree, but if the entrance fee was something that even Fairplay might balk at paying? A ticket that only gets cheaper everytime you reach Fran's room, and even cheaper if you win," Delta suggested.

"The price would have to be something even they wouldn't risk losing out on," Wyin said, bending at her knees to sweep low to the ground.

Delta blinked and then began to smile as something occurred to her.

---

"Captain, you shouldn't-" Lim said, and Yattina pulled her head out of the mud filling the room with a blink.

"Lim, this mud is amazing, it's rich in helpful minerals and the perfect temperature for usage on skin," she proclaimed, making him mana-infuse a jar of the stuff so she could take it back to her lab to study.

"It's mud; she's mucking around like a pig," someone muttered in the group behind them. Lim turned with anger in his eyes, but Yattina touched his arm. Allatory turned once and seemed to glare at one man.

"You can retreat by yourself. I don't care about your opinions, but you will respect the chain of command," he said coldly.l

"But the duck, sir-"

"Go." Allatory's voice was even colder now.

"I'm no fainting damsel, Allatory. I can take a mean comment from a nobody meathead," Yattina said as she stood up, wiping her face of the wonderful mud. Lim eyed the goop and would try to 'indulge' his captain if she asked him to join her in having a mud facial later.

"If he is willing to mouth-off to you within earshot, I don't doubt he has comments about me in private. I don't need insubordination from 'meatheads,' as you call them," Allatory said factually. The rest of his men seemed split in two opinions, the older loyal sort who nodded compared to the younger more nervous followers.

"What's a little mud on your face compared to the marvels we could bring to the world?" Yattina said with a smile, and Lim eyed the mud once more, trying to imagine how the world looked to his captain.

He sort of wanted to have that excitement for things as she did. The Dungeon began shaking, and everyone made rough groups of three, spreading out as much as the room and corridor allowed.

"What's going on?" Lim called, and Yattina steadied him with one hand as the shaking slowly subsided.

"Did it form a new floor?" one of the Blades called in alarm.

"There was no Mana surge; we'd all be on our butts if there was a new floor," Lim called, and Yattina shot him a bright smile to show her happiness that he was already picking up her lessons.

Lim flushed and tried not to grin like an idiot in return.

"We're leaving. I'm taking no risks," Allatory commanded, and there was no argument from Yattina, which must have meant that it was serious. Leaving felt too quick, as if the Dungeon was helping them hurry along.

---

As the group fled the entrance to regroup with the waiting Fairplay members, they all came to a stop as something rose into the air far into the forest behind the Dungeon. At first, it was just a pillar of orange Mana that spiked into the sky until it began to take shape over the treeline.

"Impossible," Yattina whispered aloud, in such a way that her excitement and grin were just as hard to ignore.

The orange mana faded until a solid large tree, far bigger than any around, loomed like a giant in the distance. The tree had a strange curve to it; not anything a storm would have caused, but if Yattina blurred her eyesight just a little, it looked like a woman blowing a kiss to the world.

A barely visible path encircled the tree, weaving in and out of dangerous brambles that overgrew the ground all around the base.

Yattina insisted she be part of the first expedition, and Allatory was too shaken to disagree. He, too, knew what it meant for this Dungeon to have a second entrance of sorts. Approaching the tree wasn't hard, but one wrong path or misstep had people buried up to their thighs in wicked thorns that sometimes grazed, sometimes nicked.

Only the truly hasty got stabbed by them.

Half-way up the tree, roughly where a 'heart' would be on the vaguely human-shaped tree, was a round wooden room built into the tree itself. A massive set of double doors greeted them with an intricate carving of a smiling woman holding them closed with her arms carved into the wood itself.

In sunlight, the woman might have been charming or approachable, but in the setting sun, her smile took on an edge as wicked as the thorns that grew all around them.

There was a sort of basin set in the middle of the room with roots and branches growing up to keep it locked in place. The wide rim looked old, but clean. Yattina was having to fan herself with a fresh notebook at all she was seeing.

She nearly cracked the spine when she saw the inscription by the basin.

"The Second Floor wants the pleasure of your company, but there shall be no poaching of the Swift Sir Fran. To use this entrance, one must test themselves repeatedly against the first floor, each lap lowering the price of entry," Yattina whispered as she wrote this all down. The writing curved along the rim of the basin, so she started pacing around in sync with the words.

"For those who have not even tried, the price is simple. You-" Yattina stopped cold and stared for a long moment, her mouth dropping open.

The words glinted back at her, unmoving and unashamed.

"Return in one year and be assigned to a Dungeon of Delta's choosing as a contract," Yattina finished, the rest of the group froze at the announcement.

"It can't… enforce that," someone said, and around the basin, symbols began to appear, the universal sigil for a Dungeon Core, a glowing circle and that strange thick-sided triangle.

She bent down and allowed her eye to gaze at the symbol.

Utter protection, safety, and determination.

"It can. If you use this basin, your soul will enter a contract that you won't be breaking without the help of the Archmage and a few others," she warned.

"Who would pay that?" someone demanded, and there was a noise as someone entered the space.

"Excuse me," a young boy said with an unnaturally serious face. He had a sword on his hip, and despite his smaller stature, he had an aura of power.

He walked in, and to Yattina's shock, put his hand in the basin without warning, causing the statue of the smirking woman to peel her arms back and the heavy doors to open.

There was a strange billowing white mist obscuring the other side to Yattina, and likely any who had yet to pay the price.

"Who are you?" Yattina asked, getting a bit worried about the youth in this town.

"Alpha," he said slowly as if listening to something coming from the tunnel. He eyed Yattina with more attention than anyone else.

"Do you know what you just paid?" one of the Blades hissed, fear on his face. The boy known as Alpha looked at him with an indifferent expression.

"Nothing. The price is for those yet to beat the first floor or make serious attempts. I've been to the third floor already. I have a free pass," he said simply, and there was a thick silence that followed that statement.

"You are just a boy," a larger man said, looking furious at the statement. Alpha shrugged and turned away.

"This Dungeon just wants to lure children in to feast on them. You're being used by a heartless demon," the man spat. The boy paused and then lowered his hand that he was raising to the mist gate.

The air in the room changed, and even Yattina, who had no core, could feel the whispers of magic picking up.

Yattina made to apologise for Fairplay's rude behavior when the boy turned, his calm eyes taking on a hard edge.

He pulled his sword free and buried it just in front of the gate, the tip sliding into the floor like a hot knife through butter.

"Pull this free, and I will personally vouch for you and allow you to avoid paying the price. Fail, and this sword will bar you from ever using this entrance, no matter how many times you complete the first floor," he said, his tone firm.

The scout swaggered forth and put his hand on the pommel and pulled. Nothing happened. Yattina watched with both deep curiosity and disbelief as the man turned red from effort as he lifted with his knees and both hands.

Her eye said the sword hadn't been enchanted. It was just. That. Heavy.

The scout fell back, his hands red and blistered from the sheer raw tugging he had done.

Three of the Scouts tried to lift it together, but it still didn't budge. Yattina shot Alpha a look, and her eye returned a confusing sight. She was willing to risk looking at someone to get some answers.

He was a human being, but there was something beyond strange with his 'self.' His core wasn't just in his chest, deep inside, but it was like his flesh and core had been perfectly merged. Potential could form at any part of his body. No part of Alpha was left untouched, and the sight was beautiful.

If Fairplay and its Core Armaments were a harrowing hacking of the self into a morbid tool, Alpha was the evolution of self. A being in sync with the concept of potential.

The boy reached forward, and his power, contained tightly like a coiled spring, lifted his sword easily and turned to leave.

"Wait!" Yattina called, and Alpha paused before looking back.

"You can visit the Dungeon and ask to be shown around. Delta wouldn't lie or even need to. You'd be safe and… you'd like it," he said finally and walked through the mist; the white swirling barrier rippled once before the doors closed behind him.

Yattina stared for a while before an odd thought crossed her mind.

An extremely evolved Dungeon happened to befriend what Yattina was sure was the world's most evolved human being.

That… couldn't be coincidence.

"Tricks. Just tricks," the Scout from earlier told himself as he stared at his hands. Yattina knew that once reports made their way back to HQ, she might not be allowed to continue to study the Dungeon, and it could be handed over to more senior researchers.

The idea made her feel dread. There was too much happening here, and she would be damned if some stuffy old guy got her miracle.

"Captain!" someone yelled as Yattina turned to the basin and slammed her hand into it.

Now, she had a whole year to study this Dungeon and her ties to it.

After that, she would get to see how this 'contract business' worked. If her sister did it, then Yattina supposed it had to have some massive benefit.

Study Dungeons, stick it to the smug senior staff, understand her sister, and keep herself involved in all the things.

Yattina was quite proud of how many birds she was killing with one stone. From the basin, black thorns made of ink and mana rushed up her arm and into her chest, where her Core would be, nestling deep in the remains like a warm snake.

The contract failed to find purchase, going dormant seconds later. Meaning Yattina had found a massive loophole in the system.

But she didn't really have to tell anyone that.

Especially her bosses.

It was sad that she couldn't do a single drop of magic, but the plus of being a null was that magic just struggled to do anything to her in return. The more finicky and ritualistic it was, the more Yattina just walked all over it.

Pure mana attacks were the worst, like Dungeon air, but Yattina was happy to glue herself to Lim and have the poor lad haul her near-dead corpse around so she could study the Dungeon.

Science would wait for no one, and Yattina had just been handed a golden ticket to do all the science!

"Um… I do this so you don't have to," she told the shell-shocked team that had been escorting her.

"Why?" a faint voice asked.

"We do what we must," she said, trying to sound upset so people wouldn't think she was too crazy.

"Because I can?" she ended weakly.

"Captain Yattina," someone said with an odd tone, and others moved forward to bow their heads in respect.

Yattina would let them think she took one for the team.

But the only team she was on was "Team Science and sometimes Lim.'

The doors opened once more, and Yattina entered the mist, hoping her mana ward would hold. As soon as she was on the other side, Yattina began to hop in place with pure excitement.

"For science and being selfish!" she cried and took off.