The dungeon Node was located at the back of the entry room, near another wooden door with the number ‘1’ inscribed on its surface. The dungeon Node looked identical to the North Forest Node back in the North Forest Codexium, except it was black with vibrant green vines and branches twisting around it. Even though this was an undiscovered dungeon, the Node actually looked to be in much better shape than the North Forest Nodes. Perhaps it had been magically preserved by the dungeon itself before the Collapse.

  Or maybe Isaac was just that bad at taking care of the North Forest Nodes.

  Regardless, linking with the dungeon Node was just as easy as linking with a normal stationary Node. All we had to do was walk up and press our portables against its smooth surface. This was how I discovered that Ruth’s portable was a pendant hanging around her neck, similar to mine, although without the cracks and signs of age and damage mine had. Hers was white and purple and looked a lot more expensive than mine.

  Jonah’s, by contrast, was his right gauntlet, which I had suspected after seeing him cast spells using that gauntlet. Nimbus linked with the Node by simply touching his nose to the Node’s surface, which worked for him because Codex Beasts basically were living Nodes, at least on a functional level.

  As soon as we all linked with the dungeon Node, our portables pinged at the same time, and a white scroll with golden text unfurled in my vision:

  Dungeon Name: The Verdant Seal

  Node Identifier: SH-03-NORTHROOT

  Region/Kingdom: North Forest, Shinar

  Minimum Chapter Requirement: Chapter 1

  Dungeon Classification: Hybrid (Exploration, Combat, Puzzle)

  Dungeon Style: Overgrown Eldarian Temple

  Hidden beneath layers of tangled underbrush and ancient roots lies The Verdant Seal, a crumbling Eldarian Node Temple once used to channel botanical Codex magic. Its corridors pulse with rogue growths, twisting glyph-vines, and pockets of time-locked life. The Node within has slumbered since the Collapse—but its heart still beats.

  Primary Theme:

  Decay vs. Preservation – a test of balance and regrowth, born from corrupted Eldarian design.

  Origin Node:

  A Botanical Enhancement Node, originally used by Eldarians to accelerate crop growth and biodiversity. Following the Collapse, it sealed itself and began spawning malformed lifeforms—Verdant Echoes—in an effort to defend itself.

  Features:

  Entry Limit: 1–4 Codexers (solo or small party)

  Time Limit: 1 Week

  Entry Cost: Free on first discovery; future entries require mana payment

  Mob Scaling: Yes – scales to the average Chapter Tier of party

  Codex Beast Sync Threshold: Partial Sync or above to allow entry

  I’ll be honest: All of this was a lot to take in.

  And because this was my first dungeon, I didn’t know how much of it was typical of dungeons versus what was unique to this one.

  Based on the gasp of surprise from Ruth, as well as the raised eyebrow of Jonah, however, I could tell that the description of the dungeon must have surprised them, too. Even Nimbus seemed to be wriggling his nose more than usual.

  “An Eldarian temple?” Jonah whistled quietly. “Don’t see that every day.”

  Eldarian … that word seemed to resonate with me for a moment. “Eldarian? Aren’t they a myth?”

  Ruth side-eyed me. “No. It’s a well-established fact that the Eldarians existed, though there’s lots we don’t know about them.”

  Jonah snorted. “Other than they were oppressive bastards who enslaved humans before they died out in the Collapse. Good riddance, I say.”

  I pursed my lips. “Mom and Dad always used to scare my siblings and me with stories about the Eldarians when we were little. ‘Don’t go out at night, or the Eldarians from Sheol will eat your soul and turn your body into one of their meat puppets.’ Stuff like that.”

  Ruth cocked her head to the side. “Seriously? And you … believed them?”

  I raised my hands defensively. “I was a little kid, okay? I didn’t know any better.”

  “You still believed that until like five minutes ago, though, Aaron,” said Nimbus, scratching his ear. “So can’t use age as an excuse.”

  I glared at Nimbus, but Ruth, rubbing the back of her neck, said, “Well, the Eldarians have been extinct for centuries now. I’m not surprised that, er, some people don’t believe they really existed or use them as tales to scare children into compliance. I understand that’s pretty common in isolated or rural areas.”

  I nodded, despite feeling sheepish about being the only one here who hadn’t known that the Eldarians actually existed. I was familiar with the stories, even though I’d thought they were myths up until now.

  The Eldarians were a race of half-elf, half-human beings who enslaved humanity using the Codex. They were said to have been a cruel race who used the Codex to oppress humanity and enrich themselves at our expense. The things they did to humanity … I found myself wishing my parents had made them up now that I knew that the Eldarians were real.

  Like the blood sacrifices, for example.

  But the reign of the Eldarians effectively ended when humans also learned how to use the Codex for ourselves and fight back against those monsters. This led to the original Codex Wars, which ended when the Node Network collapsed and plunged the entire continent into the Century of Chaos before the Rekindling reactivated the Node Network, leading to the rise of the Nine Kingdoms of today.

  The Eldarians were said to have perished in the chaos of the Collapse, though their spirits were said to haunt the remains of Sheol, which is another name for the Codex Ruins east of Shinar. My parents would always warn us against going too far east for that exact reason.

  Yet if Ruth and Jonah were correct, then the Eldarians had died out a long time ago and probably hadn’t left any spirits to haunt any old ruins. Not that the Codex Ruins were a safe place to go to in general, but at least now I didn’t have to worry about getting kidnapped by Eldarians, at any rate.

  All this brought to mind my mysterious Codexed Quest to end the Codex Wars, which, again, made no sense if the Codex Wars had ended centuries ago. The ten-year countdown timer still ticked away in the corner of my vision, at least if I pulled it up. I tended to keep it down most of the time because it was pretty distracting otherwise, and I didn’t like thinking about it.

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  Jonah slapped the top of the dungeon Node. “Yeah, but Eldarian-designed dungeons are supposed to be the rarest kind. Makes sense, though. Shinar is near Sheol, which used to be Eldarian territory. Most Eldarian dungeons can be found in the Kingdoms bordering the Codex Ruins, while the further west you go, the rarer they become.”

  I glanced at the ‘Minimum Chapter Requirement’ line in the description and frowned. “Surprised that a rare dungeon like this only requires Chapter One Codexers.”

  “ ‘Rare’ doesn’t always mean difficult or challenging,” said Ruth. Her gaze had gone slightly out of focus as she looked at the description of the dungeon as well. “I remember reading that most Eldarian dungeons have lower Chapter requirements than other kinds of dungeons, though they also tend to give out better rewards.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” said Jonah, still scanning the description. “My uncle got his weapon from an Eldarian dungeon he completed when he was my age. Besides, notice how it says it scales mobs depending on the level of the party. That means that even if we’d all been Chapter Seven, Page Ten Codexers, so would the mobs we run into in this dungeon.”

  My head spun from that revelation. “Dungeons scale their difficulty? How?”

  Ruth frowned. “There’s some debate on the specifics, but Codex scholars generally agree the Arcane Codex scans the portables of every entrant and then scales the mobs accordingly, as the Codex spawns the mobs that appear in its dungeons. These mobs are supposed to protect dungeon Nodes.”

  I blinked. “Why do dungeon Nodes need protection?”

  Ruth shrugged. “Again, there’s some debate, but the research currently suggests that Node Dungeons may be a self-defense mechanism of sorts for the Arcane Codex. Not every Codexer is content to use the Codex to help others or keep the peace.” She glanced at me. “As you probably know by now, Aaron.”

  I thought of Wolfbrand and Jezebel, two rogue Codexers who I certainly didn’t want anywhere near the rewards of this dungeon. I thought I heard a voice inside my head agree, but perhaps it was just my imagination.

  Then a question occurred to me, and I looked at the dungeon Node sitting unprotected in front of us. “But this Node is already unprotected.”

  Jonah shook his head. “This isn’t the main dungeon Node. The actual main dungeon Node is probably at the end of the first floor, though I’m surprised it says it has multiple floors. I mean, most dungeons do, but I didn’t expect this one to.”

  I scratched my chin. “If we clear this first floor, will we be able to go down to the lower floors?”

  “Possibly,” said Ruth, “but it’s also possible that the lower floors might have higher baseline requirements. That’s another common feature of these kinds of dungeons.”

  Jonah glanced at the door next to the Node. “If we can clear this first floor, we will be able to leave the dungeon. And other people will also get access to the dungeon, though they probably won’t get anywhere near the same amount or rarity of rewards that we will as the first ones to enter this dungeon. Well, maybe if they are the first to complete the subsequent floors, but that’ll be for them to find out later.”

  I nodded. “Okay, but what if we don’t clear this first floor within the given time frame? Will we die or something?”

  It was a genuine question on my part because none of the notifications from the Verdant Seal had made it clear what would happen to us if we failed to complete the first floor in time.

  Jonah folded his arms across his chest and shook his head. “Probably not. Basic dungeons, like this one, usually just eject people who can't complete it within the time frame that it gives the explorers. So if we are still here by next week and we haven't completed it, the dungeon will probably just eject us back out into the forest where we entered, so we can try again later.”

  Ruth scratched her cheek. “I agree that that is what would happen if we were trying to complete an already finished dungeon, but because this is a newly discovered dungeon, we probably won't get a second chance at it for at least six months. Other people would be able to try to complete it, though.”

  I stroked my chin thoughtfully and looked over my shoulder at the sealed entrance. “Could we take advantage of that to leave the dungeon early? If we make it clear that we don't want to advance deeper into the dungeon, then maybe the dungeon will just kick us out.”

  Jonah gave me an ‘are you kidding’ kind of look. “That's not how dungeons work. At least, that's not how newly discovered dungeons like this one work. The deadlines are firmer than the foundations of the heavens. Even if we just spent the entire week sitting in this entrance chamber, we still wouldn't be able to leave early. We would just have to wait until the dungeon decided that it had been a week, and then we would leave, but I don't know about you, I'm not interested in sitting around when we could be exploring and discovering a brand-new dungeon that nobody else has explored in centuries. It’s literally the opportunity of a lifetime.”

  Ruth nodded. “Jonah isn't wrong. At this point, ninety percent of the Node Network has been rediscovered since the Collapse. The last estimates I saw said that approximately one new Node Dungeon is discovered per year, and that rate has been declining for the past ten years. Lots of researchers even think that the entire Node Network will be rediscovered and reactivated by the end of the decade, though that is dependent on us discovering all of the remaining lost Nodes, of course.”

  Huh. I didn’t say it aloud, but that theory seemed to go with the Ten-Year Reset Protocol. I wondered if that was a coincidence.

  Nimbus scratched his ear again. “That's fascinating and everything, but how does time work in a Node Dungeon? Will we literally be trapped in here for a full week? I've heard that some Node Dungeons have time dilation effects where time inside the dungeon moves faster—or slower—than time outside the dungeon.”

  Jonah pulled out a piece of straw from nowhere and popped it into his mouth, though I noticed that it was colored blue and slightly shiny. “Hard to say for sure, given how this is a new dungeon, but Basic dungeons like this one usually don't have time dilation effects. Maybe on the lower floors with higher difficulties, but at least on the first floor, a week in here should be the same as a week out there.”

  Though I had known about the weeklong deadline we had inside the dungeon ever since we entered it, it just now hit me how long that actually was. That meant I was going to be trapped in here for seven days with two people who were strangers to me. I wouldn't be able to leave and see my parents or my siblings, or neighbors, or even Isaac.

  And that was assuming we completed the dungeon and didn't die while doing it. I knew a lot less about Node Dungeons and how they worked than Ruth and Jonah, but one thing I did know was that dungeon diving was a pretty dangerous profession. Granted, it was not too bad if you stuck to exploring dungeons that matched your current Chapter, but even known dungeons could still be dangerous. And unknown dungeons, like this one, were undoubtedly the most dangerous because you couldn't rely on stories or information from previous explorers to help guide you and avoid the worst dangers.

  The only saving grace about this dungeon, as far as I could tell, was that it was designed for Chapter One Codexers like myself. It helped, too, that I had Nimbus, Ruth, and Jonah, so we could form a Codex Party. Strength in numbers and all that.

  Despite the challenges before us, however, I couldn't help but also feel excited about it. Jonah was right that this was the opportunity of a lifetime. Very few people ever got the chance to discover new dungeons, much less complete them. And if Jonah and Ruth were right, then the rewards awaiting us at the end of this floor would probably be amazing.

  And they might be just what we needed to defeat Wolfbrand.

  Because that was what really scared me about being trapped in this dungeon for a week. No one outside of the dungeon could possibly stop Wolfbrand from razing North Forest and killing all of my friends and family, at least no one in the North Forest area. The only Codexer of any note who could stand even half a chance against Wolfbrand was Isaac, and I wasn't sure exactly how strong Isaac was. I mean, sure, Isaac had been willing to stand up to Herod, but Herod, at least, was a law-abiding individual who worked with a known Guild and was willing to abide by the laws of the Codex Constitution even if they personally inconvenienced him.

  Wolfbrand was a complete rogue who didn't care about anything and just did whatever he wanted.

  Not for the first time, I found myself wishing that Salome was still around. Whatever the truth about her alleged attack on the Grand Codexium of Bela, she could probably wipe the floor with Wolfbrand without even thinking about it.

  That Wolfbrand felt so comfortable outright attacking us, however, even knowing about my relationship with Salome, meant that Salome definitely wasn't anywhere nearby at the moment. I suspected that if Wolfbrand had believed that Salome was nearby, then he would have just left me and Nimbus alone.

  But Salome was gone, on the run from the Obsidian Order, and was not going to come to our rescue anytime soon.

  Therefore, it was up to me, Nimbus, Ruth, and Jonah to stop Wolfbrand. I would have added Sheminith, who was Jonah's mentor, but I didn't know if Sheminith was even alive anymore. Isaac was still a factor, too, but again, I didn't know if he would still be alive by the time we got out of the dungeon.

  But we were going to complete this dungeon no matter what.

  And we would complete it well within the week that it had given us.

  I looked at Ruth, Jonah, and Nimbus. “All right. If we only have a week to do this dungeon, then let's do it.”

  Nimbus nodded. “You say that like we have any choice in the matter. But don't you think you are forgetting something important?”

  I looked at Nimbus in bewilderment. “What would that be?”

  Nimbus thumped his right foot and immediately appeared on my shoulder. He then nudged my face and said, “Banana time, of course!”

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