Chapter 91: 5.15 – What Lies Beneath

Robin wiped at his forehead. Sweat and dust mixed into a sort of paste he could feel smearing across his skin. Ironic, as he couldn’t feel much of anything inside.

Khavren was dead. Doornail dead. Six feet under dead. There was nothing they could do about it dead.

‘Does anyone have enough room in their storage space for the body?’ he asked abruptly.

They couldn’t do anything, but it was possible there were resurrection magics that the powerful or wealthy could access. Khavren’s mother was both. Even if there was nothing that could be done, Robin suspected she might appreciate having the body back.

Not that he wanted to be the one to bring it to her.

Savra whispered a benediction over the knight’s remains and then made a curious gesture with her left hand.

The body vanished.

Robin wrestled with his feelings. This world was a lot more violent than where he lived in the one he had left. Khavren had been a massive dick but seeing him die—Robin shivered. It was strange, and the fact that he didn’t feel super sad or upset about it was stranger still. It didn’t fit with the person he thought he was.

He didn’t have time to process this, unfortunately. They were still in the depths of a dungeon, and now they were one person down as a party. The one that was tough and stood between them and the attacking monsters, too.

‘I can’t believe he actually broke his oath,’ Jhess said.

‘I can.’ Savra’s tone was sombre. ‘His principles were always brittle when compared to his ego.’

‘But he led us to this place, just as you foresaw.’ Robin glanced at the seeress, wondering just how much else she had seen before helping to ensure the knight was with them when they descended.

Speaking of this place, Robin shot a nervous glance around the cavern, in case the mimics were massing or there was a trembling in the ceiling and it was about to come crashing down or something.

‘He shattered the core,’ Drev said grimly. ‘Guildmagister Zahn is not going to be happy.’

No, no he wouldn’t, though perhaps not for the reasons Drev was thinking.

Robin frowned.

‘If cores explode like that, why do people risk shattering them at all?’

‘I’ve not heard of one doing that before, but every living dungeon is different. This one certainly came with more than its fair share of traps, so perhaps it isn’t surprising.’ Drev reached down to sift a shard of the destroyed core from the blasted rubble on the floor. ‘They’re usually destroyed because they’ve gone rogue, or because some unscrupulous sort has found a ritual they can use to drain the core of its power. I’ve also heard they can be taken and bound with wards and geasa to make them incredible managers and defence systems for enchanted palaces or floating castles or the like.’

Plenty of reasons a powerful being like Zahn would want to get his hands on one, even if it was a no-go by most of the guild’s laws and practices.

‘I suppose we should start sifting through what’s left here,’ the bard said, ‘extract the treasure and be on the lookout for any remaining mimics.’

Oddly, they’d been left completely alone since the core blew. Had the monsters run off? It would fit with their controlling influence disappearing in conjunction with a massive detonation.

Something about the whole thing bothered Robin, though. The way Ruprecht hadn’t seemed worried, how the mimics knew to flee the blast, even the room. Something was off about this cavern.

He turned things over and over in his mind as he moved about the cavern, doing a sweep for mimics. When they found none, they began to sift through the treasure, dividing it into piles based on value (well, perceived value).

The treasure nearest the core plinth, the stuff that had clearly been the most valuable, had been blown either to bits or scattered all across the cavern by the curve of the blast. The stampede of treasure-mimics hadn’t helped either, their little bodies carrying and brushing the organised piles into a wash of heterogenous glitter.

And there was so much.

There was no way they could cart all of it away. They would have to prioritise. Gold pieces over silver, for example, and large jewels and fine art pieces over gold.

Likely, much of it would be fake. The dungeon was too tricksy to just leave this much treasure lying about, and hadn’t there been some mention of treasure, traps, and trickery? The test was figuring out which was which.

A test. Ruprecht had definitely said he was testing the whole party. Khavren had clearly failed.

Robin had no intention of doing the same.

‘That’s a good trick, faking your own destruction,’ he murmured in English when no one was around to hear.

There was no response.

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Was he wrong? Had Ruprecht actually perished at Khavren’s hand? No. There was no way the dungeon fell that easily. Robin was sure he was right.

He’d just have to force a response from Ruprecht to prove it.

But should he? As it stood he was returning to Guildmagister Zahn with only failure. He could play it off as not his fault, and blame the knight. No telling if Zahn would find that acceptable though.

On the other hand, if he left without forcing Ruprecht to respond he’d not get any more answers about the dungeon’s possible origins on Earth. At least he wouldn’t without sneaking away back down here on some other occasion. The rest of the party was likely to want to rush back as soon as they could, laden with whatever treasure they could find amongst the trickery.

Speaking of trickery, where had all the mimics gone? And how? There were no obvious entrances or exits to this place when the core gem exploded. So either the mimics teleported out or there was another hidden door around here. Possible several. Yes. That made the most sense.

Robin pulled out his map, glancing between it and the cavern around him. It’s wasn’t big enough, he realised. This place was too small to occupy the whole of the unmapped centre of this place. It was barely a fifth of the size, if his estimates were correct.

It wasn’t even dead centre.

And Ruprecht’s gem had to be dead centre of the place, if it was a proper sphere. Wait. No. If he were in Ruprecht’s place he’d offset himself, knowing the adventurers would make that assumption. He’d keep his dungeon slightly smaller than his actual area of influence. Plus with all the shifting walls and trap doors, as long as he had a minion to move him about, he could control the dungeon from almost anywhere within it. No. The idea of the centre was another trap.

But that didn’t mean he was wrong about this cavern being too small. And if it was too small, there had to be at least one other, and probably three or four more, realistically. Probably three. One true centre, and two others just like this one to make a set of three surrounding the core. That would fit with the logic of this world.

He was definitely right about Ruprecht faking his own destruction. There were too many other places the core could be and still maintain control over most of the dungeon. This was too easy.

‘A lot of this is fake,’ Jhess complained.

‘It’s all fake, technically,’ Drev said, holding a diamond up to Savra’s magelight to examine its sparkle. ‘Made by the dungeon. None of it is naturally occurring. So in that sense, it’s all fake.’

‘This isn’t a diamond, though,’ she said, snatching the thing out of his hand. ‘It’s some kind of hardened rock crystal. And a lot of this gold is only gilding over lead coins.’

Of course it was.

‘There had to be a hidden vault,’ Robin said. If Ruprecht wanted to play coy, so be it. Robin was more than happy to play a game of his own. ‘We should check the perimeter for secret doors. Drev, how long does that spell of yours last again?’

‘I can maintain it for several minutes at present, I should think. I wouldn’t want to risk more, or expend energies on increasing range or quality of image, but if we just want to make the doors glow with their inherent magic, that should suffice. This cavern is not overlarge.’

The mage frowned, eyes scanning the periphery. Drev was no fool. He’d see what Robin had seen soon enough. His mind wasn’t as twisted, but it was as sharp, if not even moreso.

‘Should we start opposite where we came in?’ Robin glanced to the spot that was most likely to conceal the entrance to the true centre of this labyrinth. ‘Or should we start from there and work our way around the perimeter?’

‘Around,’ Drev said firmly. ‘It’s the most efficient use of my remaining magical energies.’

Efficiency was always a concern at their present level. Robin couldn’t wait until he had some serious power to burn. Though finding those tricks would require some time to research at-will abilities and the peculiarities that made them possible. Or other, stranger powers that might be found. There were a lot of tomes on illusion magic he had yet to get his hands on, as well.

‘Right. Prepare yourself to cast and hold the spell. I’m going to do one last check for mimics, just in case. We don’t want to get ambushed mid-search.’

Robin slipped away. He gave a few desultory kicks at piles of coins that hadn’t been sorted yet, but he wasn’t really expecting to find anything. His main purpose in putting some distance between himself and the rest of the party was to nab another chance to talk with Ruprecht unobserved.

‘You sure you’re shattered and gone? Because if you aren’t we’re going to find you soon enough. Might as well reveal yourself now so you and I can come up with a plan that makes sure the others don’t discover that fact.’

The English felt odd on Robin’s tongue after all this time. He hadn’t realised how quickly he’d start to acclimate to the new common tongue he was using. It was a very surreal feeling.

Still no response from the dungeon. Robin almost began to doubt, almost began to believe that Khavren really had shattered Ruprecht’s core.

Almost.

He knew better.

‘Come on now,’ Robin said. ‘You’re just being stubborn at this point. And obvious. Neither of which becomes you.’

You can be terribly insufferable when you’re correct about something, did you know that?

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