Chapter 57: Dungeon Fail

  The world snapped back into focus as Alex landed on solid earth. The sterile white of the dungeon shop blinked away, replaced with the looming shadows of the mountain pass. The air smelled starkly of moss, trees, stone, and metallic taint of blood.

  The Dungeon Gate stood in front of him, its titanic arch still half-buried in dirt and boulders, the carved runes pulsing faintly with System light. A scar in the world, waiting to be reopened. And waiting there, arrayed in silence, was the rest of the raid party.

  They looked… wrecked.

  All were covered in bandages and makeshift splints, with bruised faces etched by exhaustion. All of them carried wounds that hadn’t faded with a potion’s glow or a healer’s chant. Missing fingers, hands, ears, limbs or other. Stumps wrapped in bloodied cloth. Faces pinched not just with pain, but with the realization that some parts of them simply didn’t grow back. Not without treasures beyond the reach of ordinary healing.

  Alex’s stomach tightened as he took them in. His own arm still ached like hellfire, but he flexed his hand and felt the dull throb of bones knitted back together enough to move. His arm hadn’t been fully severed, and that made all the difference. A potion here, a bandage there, all said and done, he will still end up with two arms intact.

  It was luck. That's all, just stupid luck.

  He caught more than one lingering glance, many eyes flicking from their stumps to his healed arm. He lowered his gaze as guilt chewed on the edges of his relief. But, there was nothing he could do. Not yet anyway.

  So he stepped forward, and they gathered around.

  There were no jokes passed about, or bravado to be performed. There was only quiet, waiting faces peering back at him.

  He took a breath, preparing himself, and told them what happened. Told them how it all ended in the dungeon. The clash with the Queen, the ferocity of the fight, and most importantly, his failure. He didn’t tell them everything. He left out the golden energy, left out the sickening fear of having something pulled from his very soul, but he gave them the truth otherwise.

  “I lost,” he said simply.

  It felt like dropping a boulder into still water. The ripples spread across their faces, shock, denial, something breaking beneath the surface of their minds. Even Eric, who always seemed to find a way to puff himself and everyone else up with positivity, being the strong shoulder for everyone to lean on, looked hollowed out.

  They had all thought it, even if they never said it aloud. That Alex could pull off the impossible. That he could claw out a win where none of them could. But even he had lost, even he had been defeated. And now that faith they built in him had cracked.

  The silence that followed was heavier than the Queen’s aetheric aura.

  “…So what do we do?” Holly sounded tired, almost small.

  He swallowed and turned toward the Gate. The carved runes were still dim, but when he pressed his palm against the stone, the System flickered to life. A translucent display bloomed in the air.

  The countdown ticked down one second. Then another. They all stared at it, the truth settling in slowly.

  “Ten days,” Alex said. His tone sounded far calmer than he actually felt. “That’s what we’ve got. Then the gate can open again. And when it does…” He flexed his still-aching hand into a fist. “We finish it.”

  “Well…” Garret coughed, adjusting the sling around his arm, “at least the Queen doesn’t know how strong we’ll be for round two. She’s gonna choke when she sees us stroll back in looking meaner, uglier, and angrier than before.”

  The joke earned a weak chuckle from Holly, though her eyes didn’t move from their laser focus on the dirt. One by one, though, the group began to stir.

  “I got something,” Devon said quickly, like he’d been waiting for someone else to go first but eventually gave in. He tapped the heavy case strapped awkwardly across his back, his eyes glinting with excitement. “Spent a fat chunk of my points on a modular spell-tool. Basically, a rune-carved frame I can load with spell formulas and have it cast spells without needing to focus all my attention on it. Won’t be as strong as manual casting, and needs a crap ton of aether batteries, but it’ll let me throw support magic way faster.”

  “Finally making yourself useful,” Allie teased, though her smile was worn thin.

  Devon flushed, but nodded firmly. “Yeah. That’s the idea.”

  Allie sighed and lifted a small, translucent vial from her pouch. Inside swirled something like quicksilver, shot through with red streaks. “I burned nearly all my points on this. A one-time-use item called “Draught of Life”. It will temporarily boost my light-attunement cultivation by a crazy high amount. It’ll hurt like hell, but…”

  “Worth it,” Kate muttered from her side of the circle.

  Kate's left arm was gone from the elbow down, wrapped in layer after layer of stained cloth. She didn’t say more than that, but her eyes lingered on Allie’s vial like it was the holy grail.

  Allie, as light-dark attuned mage, was their best healer, even better than Myrae. If she could push herself enough, she might be able to regenerate and heal wounds that simple Dungeon Shop items couldn’t. At least that's what everyone seemed to be thinking, Alex included.

  “I went with armor. Reinforced mail, enchanted with absorption runes. It’s not flashy, but it’ll hopefully keep me upright longer. Next time, I won’t be the first one dropped.” Henry said, posing with his new shiny treasure already equipped. The armor did look powerful, the metal gleaming in the light, with runic glowing symbols etchined into the leather underneath. It was a sobering contrast to the bloodied stump that was his right hand.

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  Peter lifted his palm and a faint shimmer of aether appeared around his skin. “I got an Augmentor spell upgrade token. It took my spell up to Novice grade. I can stack a second boosting layer now, too, without risking major backlash like before. That should help Eric, or Alex, or anyone else pressing the front line.”

  Alex grunted acknowledgement. His torso still ached from the Queen’s claws and probiscis, but the idea of Peter pumping even more raw strength into him stirred something in him that resembled grim hope. He had enough boosting effects at his disposal already, but he would never say no to another effect giving him even more power.

  Eric had been quiet up until then, just listening. “This is good,” he finally said, scanning them with tired eyes. “But let’s not kid ourselves. We’re not invincible just because we’ve got shinier toys, we aren't going to be at peak condition due too... well... We can’t spend the whole week camped right here, either. The villagers bring offerings to the gate. If their little cult catches sight of us lingering around, it won’t just be them coming to get rid of us, it’ll be soldiers. Maybe even other factions. Trouble we don’t need.”

  “So where?” Zach asked.

  “Up the mountain,” Eric replied simply. “We can find cover and train. Take these days to cultivate and heal up what we can. If we’re going to take another swing at the Queen, we need to walk back through that Gate sharper and harder than Adept grade steel. And not on the brink of death like we are now.”

  One by one, heads nodded. Even the reluctant ones. Alex dragged in a deep breath, watching his friends and comrades slowly rally around the idea of potential revenge. His body still felt like fragile glass held together with string and tree sap, but he was with them anyway.

  “Then it’s settled,” he said. “We’ve got ten days. We need to make it count.”

  As soon as he said it, the Gate pulsed faintly behind them, as if hearing their decision and stating its defiance.

  The mountain retreat was quiet. There were no more shrieking chimeras, and best of all no echoes of endless claws scrabbling across stone tunnels. They only contended with the cold wind rolling down from the peaks and the muffled crackle of their campfires.

  Once training began, everyone settled into their own rhythms.

  They all needed time to breathe, to patch wounds, to take stock of what they had left and go through what they had gained. The purchases in the Dungeon Shop were pivotal most of all. But everyone also talked, sharing food and conversation.

  It was hard to take that sort of downtime while in an active dungeon dive. Inside, there was always a blade at your throat one way or another, but with everyone now settled in, even with all their injuries, the team got back to feeling of bare normalcy.

  Cole and Rynel no longer bothered with their pretense. Their easygoing conversations were now openly threaded with stolen romantic glances and smiles.

  Kate, Eric, and Zach huddled together on the far side of camp with parchment spread across a flat rock as they drew rough maps of the dungeon’s chambers. Their discussions rose and fell in a steady currents as they went over the previous dungeon dive. They spent hours dissecting what worked, what didn’t, and how they might cut cleaner paths when the gates opened again.

  Garret and Lance hammered out rough fittings and made gear repairs alongside Doran, their improvised forge was little more than a repurposed brazier fed with ores that the dwarven smith had stockpiled. Sparks and embers flew into the dark while Garret cracked jokes over the ringing of metal, earning the occasional grumble or chuckle from his companions.

  Devon was nowhere near camp, unsurprisingly given his ever increasing dangerous enchantment experiments. The faint, fwoomp-fwoomp-fwoomp, of testing shots carried from the slope above, each one followed by the mage's loudly muttered calculations. He was buried in his work of upgrading his rifle, rewriting aether runes and swapping channels as if he were tuning a musical instrument.

  Henry, calm as ever, sat with Myrae in his makeshift garden. She fussed over sprouting herbs she had coaxed to life in the rocky soil, while he dug with quiet patience, turning earth with the care of a man who could snap stone in half with patience alone, but preferred not to.

  And Allie… Allie had thrown herself into cultivation.

  Her posture was rigid, breathing carefully controlled, with the twin treasures of her Dungeon purchase and the item Alex had given her pulsing with faint light and shadow at her side.

  Threads of dark aether and shimmering motes of light coiled into around her head, weaving through her Essence Gate in alternating tides. Alex watched her from where he leaned back against a boulder. The dark ather attuned item he bought her was him paying her back for her healing efforts, that was what he told himself. But really, seeing her aura brighten as she focused, seeing her thrive, it helped ease the guilt burning in his own mind.

  Meanwhile, his body still ached and his channels still thrummed with the memory of straining under too much power. He couldn't do much for now, so he let himself rest.

  “Alex.”

  The voice tugged him out of his drifting thoughts. It was Holly's soft tone, but carried that sharp edge of hers that always made him listen. She was near the fire, cross-legged on a blanket. Her hair and face shown beautifully as they caught the flicker of the flames beside her, but his eyes slipped inevitably downward, to the place where her leg should have been.

  The stump ended just past the calf, wrapped in clean bandages.

  Guilt returned again and slammed into him harder than any Chimera ever had. His teeth ground together as he looked at the proof of his failure to protect them.

  He should have been able to stop it, should have taken the hit instead, should have made himself stronger, faster, better, so she never had to lose anything. All of it was stupid hindsight, and he knew it, but that didn’t stop the regret from gnawing at him.

  He pushed himself up anyway, and went to her.

  Without a word, Alex slid down behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. She leaned into it immediately, tilting her head back until it rested against his chest. He squeezed tighter, as if he could hold her together just by willing it.

  “I’m sorry,” Holly murmured after a long silence. “For not being more help back there.”

  That stunned him.

  For a second he thought he’d misheard. He looked down at her, saw the shadow in her expression, and it stung worse than his still-healing wounds.

  “Don’t,” he said, the word come out rough from his throat. “Don’t you ever think like that. You’ve given me more than you realize. You… You’re the reason I keep pushing forward. You’re the reason I fight the way I do. That’s more help than anyone could ask for.”

  Her lips twitched upward, almost into a smile, but not quite. He swallowed hard and went on, dropping into a whisper. “I’m the one who should apologize. For not being right beside you, for not giving you that same support you've given me.”

  Holly shook her head, “You do. You always have. We support each other. That’s what we do.” She glanced down then, her eyes falling to the missing leg. “But now…”

  Alex didn’t let her finish the thought. He slid his hand up, cupped her chin, and turned her face back toward him. Her eyes widened a fraction as his gaze locked onto hers.

  “No,” he said firmly. “Don’t look at that. Don’t even think that it makes you any less. You’re still Holly. You’re still you. And that’s all that matters.”

  Her breath hitched slightly at his words. And then she leaned up, her lips found his. The kiss was soft at first, but fire burned in his chest, passion and hunger pushing closer to the surface. For a moment, he let it take him, let himself sink into the warmth and the feeling of her against him.

  But then he pulled back reluctantly, his forehead still pressed to hers. “We’re in the middle of camp,” he muttered, with a crooked smile.

  Holly chuckled, the sound warm to his ears. “Maybe after we’ve finished with the dungeon problem, then.”

  “Yeah,” Alex whispered, holding her tighter. “After.”