The platform buzzed, a metallic beast lumbering deeper into the unknown. Violet streaks from the rails flashed past, a hypnotic blur against the encroaching darkness. A cool breath, smelling of aged coin and industrial grit, drifted up the shaft.
"Floor fifteen," Harmony's voice crackled in Roy's ear. "Map to the boss is ready. Sending it to your Allphone now."
"Perfect," Roy murmured, his fingers already anticipating the device. The Allphone's screen glowed to life in his palm as the map popped up, a precise line drawing itself from the elevator doors, snaking across the display, and ending at a brass-ribbed archway on the far side of the floor. "Three hundred feet that way," Roy noted.
With a final shudder, they halted. The doors slid open with a soft hiss, revealing a landscape of bridges spanning unseen depths, deep cutouts in the rock, and light pulsing faintly from hairline seams.
"Straight shot," Roy stated, his voice flat with purpose. "We're just gonna skip all the mobs and beat the boss as a way to measure the difficulty."
The hallway was a tight gash of damp stone, torches spitting shadows that writhed across a floor carved by old violence. Heat surged as Orin, Andri, and Rava pressed forward, spilling into a chamber that burned like a forge's core, the air thick, the low ceiling forcing them to stoop. Bloodstains marred the rock underfoot, baked-in relics no one had scrubbed away.
A roar ripped through the air as a goblin lurched from behind a scarred pillar. Its helm, dented and crooked, sat heavy on a skull made for brawling. Thick wrists flexed, hoisting a club, wood battered and splintered from countless skulls. It stomped into the chamber's heart, bellowing again, as if its voice could crush the stone itself.
"Andri, care to give it a shot?" Roy asked, gesturing at the incoming enemy.
She was already moving after a small step to settle her weight. After closing the distance in a breath, hips turning through a strike, her palm crashed into the goblin's ribs and the creature's whole body folded around it. The club rang against the floor and the goblin hit flat on its back. A second later its chest slumped, spine loosened. Gold flecks skittered across the stone like dry rain.
Takara erupted in excitement. "Yes! That's what I want to see!"
In a deep crouch, Orin scooped up two bright flecks between knuckle and thumb. "What else did you expect? These guys are nowhere near as tall as us! We're twenty times their size! It's like a playground for us, but for them, it's a battleground."
A figure appeared behind Orin and grabbed him by his head. "Watch the attitude, kids," Eryndra said as she brought Orin closer, "or else I won't save you when we reach an enemy that trounces you."
"Even little girls hit harder than me. Wonderful." Roy said to himself, still observing the small crater Andri's palm had left in the sternum of the goblin. It spoke volumes of the raw, untamed power she possessed, despite her seemingly delicate frame. He sighed, a sound that was a mix of exasperation and grudging admiration.
Andri subtly rubbed the heel of her hand, a fleeting gesture that betrayed a slight sting, and then lifted her chin, a small, almost-hidden display of pride. Her eyes, usually so focused and intense, held a glint of satisfaction. She knew she was strong, but seeing the tangible proof of her power always brought a quiet thrill.
"Back to the elevator," Roy commanded, his bored voice cutting through the lingering silence of the boss chamber. The air still thrummed with the faint echo of the impact.
The doors hissed shut with a soft, mechanical sigh, sealing them inside the confined space. Immediately, the floors began to slide past once more, signaling their descent. The hum of the motors filled the small cabin, a low thrumming that resonated in their bones.
"Floor twenty mapped, sending now," Harmony stated, her calm, synthesized voice emanating from the comm system embedded in elevator. "Arena style layout. Route pinned."
Stepping out was like walking into a lung. The air was hot, wet, and so heavy it shimmered over the sandstone walls. It was a suffocating heat that coiled at the back of the throat and pressed against the eyes from within.
Orin laughed as he turned to face the group. "Betcha wish you didn't have so much clothing weighing you down and boiling you alive!" Orin yelled as he slapped his compression shorts.
The Presidroids drew ice and wind runes on their hands, projected them forward and a pale chill rolled over Roy's and Takara's shoulders. Eryndra drifted close enough to share the draft without ever looking like she needed it. Rava and Andri edged into the wash too, pretending it was coincidence.
"Pathetic!" Orin shouted. "That's not very tall of you!"
Ahead, the chamber fell away into tiered seats around a central plate of stone. A Bluecap and a Redcap snapped their heads around as one at the sound of boots on the step, the Bluecap coiled over its ankles like a spring, the Redcap already digging its heel in for a charge.
"Hmm," Lynder's eyes narrowed, a subtle shift. "That's highly unusual. Those two goblin types rarely operate in concert."
"They'll have to, to survive even a moment," Rava countered. He lifted a hand, settling into a stance like a craftsman aligning glass. A tight cone of fire erupted between his palms, searing straight down the lane. The Redcap met it first, a shriek was torn from its throat, then the Bluecap, attempting to cut through the same space, hit the hottest section. Both collapsed, almost piled one atop the other. Ash and a shower of gold scattered in a brief, fiery fan.
Rava closed his fist, and the heat winked out. "Little effort this time."
"You looked pretty tall doing it," Orin said, delight softening his voice. "Still shorter than me, though."
As he stepped closer, Rava's head cleared Orin's by a full foot. He laughed once, a short, sharp sound, and gave Orin a quick, playful shove to the shoulder. "Shut up."
Andri shook her head, a mock disappointment. "Honestly, I thought you'd do it faster."
"Captain," Lynder pointed at the scorched circle where red and blue had overlapped, "I want to reiterate, that was a very strange pairing. The dungeon is forcing neighbors that would rarely share ground. I guess anything is possible down here."
"Onward," Roy said after acknowledging Lynder's comment with a nod. "We are still shopping for the first real challenge."
Back on the platform, the cold breath through the grate was a welcome relief.
"Relief!" Takara yelled, her voice echoing.
"Next stop, floor twenty-five, get ready!" Harmony announced.
The platform doors hissed open on the twenty-fifth floor, and the first thing that hit them was the stench. It was the thick, coppery reek of a slaughterhouse, an oppressive wall of odor so heavy it clung to the back of their throats.
Takara gagged, covering her mouth. "Ugh, what the hell is this? This floor is disgusting."
Their exploration of the first sector only deepened the mystery. Some corridors were battlegrounds, the walls streaked and splattered with gore as if something had been torn apart only moments before. Yet the boss rooms they found were often the opposite: sterile, untouched, and unnervingly silent. No blood, no bodies, no sign of a struggle. Just a profound, echoing emptiness that felt more threatening than the carnage.
Roy's expression tightened. "Back to the elevator. Check the higher floors."
The twenty-fourth was the same story. Patches of brutal violence followed by sectors of absolute stillness. Then the twenty-third, and the twenty-second. Blood, silence, and an unnerving absence of monsters. By the time they reached the twentieth floor and found it just as barren, Roy's patience had worn thin. Real concern edged his voice.
"We need to figure out what the hell is going on here."
They ascended again, the elevator vibrating as it climbed, stopping this time at the twelfth floor. In the first hall, they found it: a single, long-bladed sword lying abandoned on the flagstones, its steel smeared with drying blood.
"I think we might have an injured adventurer here, we should help them," Roy murmured, his eyes scanning the corridor ahead.
Eryndra's gaze sharpened. "That sword looks familiar."
Roy took a step forward, his boot crunching softly on the stone. He saw more blood then, a dark pool coalescing just ahead and leading around a sharp corner. Before he could investigate further, Orden's voice barked out a sharp warning.
"Roy! Watch out!"
Eryndra looked back to see Orden pointing a single finger at the ceiling, then curling it down in a sharp, definitive gesture. The stone overhead groaned, then gave way in a deafening landslide of rock and dust, completely burying the path ahead. Eryndra's hand shot out, yanking Roy back a split second before the first boulders crashed down where he had stood.
Enraged, Eryndra turned to Orden, a furious retort on her tongue. But the words died in her throat. His finger was pressed to his lips, a silent command that chilled her to the bone. His face, usually so warm, was a mask of cold, emotionless intensity. Never had she felt such a primal fear, a dread that seeped into her very core. She got the message, whatever Orden was trying to save Roy from clearly must never be spoken. Shaken, she abandoned her outburst, her hands trembling as she began to dust Roy off.
As the dust settled, a series of heavy, rhythmic thuds echoed from the floor directly above them. Something massive was moving.
"It's on the floor above us," Roy said, his voice flat. "We must have descended right past its trail of carnage as it was going up."
On the next floor up, they found it. The creature was a grotesque, doglike beast with wrinkled, leathery skin and giant, bared fangs that dripped with gore. It was hunched over the corpses of two goblin bosses, a Redcap and a Pygmy Goblin huddled together, tearing at them with savagery.
Lynder eye'd the scene. "Redcaps consider themselves so far above Pygmy Goblins. You'd never see them together like that, even in desperation. Something's driven them up here, out of order." He watched the beast for another moment. "A Kabar'ra. They're mischievous, solitary predators. Even if you ever saw a group of them, it'd be two, three at absolute most. But they're never pack animals. This one is alone, like it should be, which makes no sense. A single beast couldn't have cleared this many floors this quickly."
The Kabar'ra lifted its bloody head, its eyes fixing on the group. A low, guttural chuffing sound rumbled in its chest.
Roy frowned. "Is it laughing at us?"
"They're tricksters," Lynder confirmed. "And this one is… unnatural. I feel it."