A few days later, I teleported back to the Sapphire Peaks, but instead of entering Tirrani's home, I jumped off the cliff, hoping I could manage a better landing without having to keep a watch on Cluma.

I cast [Dexterity] and made an attempt at doing some stunts. Hopefully, no-one was watching, because I was crap. Maybe with a few years of practice, maybe, I'd be able to do a tenth of whatever the hell Cluma did. What was with that, anyway? Why'd she pick acrobatics as the thing that she thought would make her more proficient at delving, and how did she wish for it so strongly to get a trait from it? A mere few years of practice was obviously insufficient to understand her thought processes.

My musings were interrupted when I fell through a freezing cloud, my clothing and skin immediately becoming caked with ice. Why was I being so stupid as to travel this way in winter, just to save a couple of gold coins? I cast [Endurance] and shivered, hoping my ice resistance enchantment would stave off any frostbite.

I managed to land awkwardly, but with both myself and my clothing in one piece, then tried to make my way back to the dungeon area. The bottom of the peak was actually free of snow and had temperatures that weren't freezing. That was a pleasant surprise; I'd picked this place for being my closest teleport beacon that would only require one portal hop, rather than any climate considerations. It was still damn cold, but at least it was bearable.

At the warehouse, I forked over a small gold for a one-way portal trip and jumped through. I'd need to find somewhere to leave another lump of toe in Synklisi, so I could get back there more easily next time. On my last visit, my [Detach] skill level had been too low for me to want to consume a link, but now I had a few to spare.

First though, I had a slime to visit. I marched out of the warehouse, ignoring the odd looks from the porters and clerks, and made my way down the street. As ever, varied parties of many species and appearances were walking around, but this time I didn't spot anything I hadn't seen before.

"Hey, where are you going?" called a guard, blocking my path as I tried to cross the wall. "This place isn't safe for children."

"It kind of is now, actually. And I'm an adult, anyway. I'm visiting your resident slime."

The look the guard gave me made it very clear as to why he thought I was visiting the slime, but I didn't feel the need to correct him. If he considered that a valid reason to let me through, then so be it. Alas, it turned out to not be quite so simple. "Dressed like that? This is still a dungeon. You aren't even armed!"

I pulled my staff out of my [Item Box]. It may be old, obsolete, and far too short for me, but that wouldn't stop me bashing things with it. Plus, the fact that I pulled it out of thin air should give him pause, and indeed he stood there looking completely nonplussed.

"I'm a rank three mage. I don't think I'll have trouble getting to floor six even if I was unarmed." A rank three mage with no offensive spells, but no need to mention that.

The guard raised a quizzical eyebrow. My [Soul Perception] showed him invoking a skill, and hazarding a guess as to which one it was having already hit him with [Analysis], I swiftly disabled [Secrecy].

Grant, Human, targeted you with [Appraisal]

The eyebrow raised further, but compared to the eyebrow master that was Lord Reid, I remained unimpressed. "You? Fine, carry on then. Have a good time down there."

I paused, wishing I hadn't just disabled [Secrecy]. It was fine having him misunderstanding my intentions when he didn't know who I was, but now he obviously did. I didn't want any more weird rumours about me spreading! "I just have something I need to talk with her about, not whatever it is you're thinking," I explained.

"Yeah, yeah. Talking. Just like every other boy your age. And most of the girls too."

Dammit Erryn! Her patch to make everyone understand I can lie is annoying as heck! Now he's going to think I'm... well... normal, I guess, from the way he was talking about everyone else. But that's besides the point!

Resigned to my fate, I entered the walled off area, surprised at the changes since my last visit. I'd not spotted anything different when looking from the outside. The wall certainly hadn't been any taller. That was because they'd roofed it off! The interior was now completely enclosed. Furthermore, I could tell with [Mana Sight] that it had been extended underground; they'd set up some defences against tunnellers. I couldn't tell how far they went; [Mana Sight] helped me see through the glare from the dungeon a little, but my range was still massively limited. The thought of three-digit level monsters tunnelling their way to the surface was horrifying, and I didn't envy whoever was tasked with managing this city.

With the guard bypassed, my next task was figuring out how to actually get into the place. There was still no physical entrance, and just a ring of black crystals. From watching the slime, all I knew was that you had to touch a crystal, but what happened next was a mystery. I picked one with no delvers standing around and held my hand against it, then jerked it away when a System message popped up in front of me.

Accessible floors: 1

Okay... So it's a similar interface to the library? I touched my hand against the crystal again, and this time, expecting the reaction, I kept in contact.

Accessible floors: 1

'One,' I thought as hard as I could, and the world flashed white. I found myself in a domed chamber with a single large crystal floating in the centre, my hand still pressed against it. The walls were made of large white bricks with a slight tinge of pink, and a total of six corridors jutted out. The multiple corridors reminded me of an important fact; I had no maps! That was stupid of me; I was in far too much of a hurry. In fact, I knew barely anything about this dungeon, and how it behaved.

Should I go and get some, or try to muddle my way through? How big was each floor?

I had paper and a pencil in my [Item Box]. Let's do this properly and not cheat. With no knowledge of the monsters, traps, or routes, I'd find my own way. Admittedly, my level was a cheat all on its own, given that I was only going as far as floor six, but I could ignore that for now. I took out some writing materials and picked a passage at random.

Ten minutes later, and I was starting to get frustrated. Every single room seemed to be camped by a party of newbie delvers. There were no monsters or traps. While monsters could spawn here even with delvers on the floor, the camping at all the spawn points meant that they barely had a chance to hit the ground before being pummelled to death. I never even got to find out what sort of monster the floor produced! This was... silly. I wasn't about to claim the anti-death safety net was a bad thing, but it certainly spoilt the ambience.

Another ten minutes later, and I'd found the boss room, easily dispatching a trio of low-levelled kobolds and claiming my reward of three coppers from the chest. With the boss defeated, a new crystal appeared rather than the floor-based teleporter from Dawnhold. Touching it gave me the option to continue on the next floor, return to the surface, or the start of any previously visited floor. Useful for boss-running a single boss repeatedly without having to rerun the previous floors, I guess. I hit the option for the next floor and appeared in a chamber very much like the first floor entrance.

The next pair of floors went the same way, and it wasn't until floor four that the crowd started to get sparser and I saw my first monster. Why were that many people even here? Camping rooms for spawns can't be that exciting.

The monsters weren't even aggressive; a couple of goblins playing cards together. They even invited me to join them, but even if I wasn't in too much of a hurry, I still remembered reading about this in the list of warnings the guild had posted. It had definitely said not to play with them.

I explored the maze and made my way to floor five, where I found plenty of slimes, but not the one I was looking for. They were aggressive, and were larger versions of what I'd fought almost ten years earlier.

Emperor Slime, level 5

I grinned at the hyperbolic name as I dispatched them with single [Far Reach] powered swings of my staff. These slimes weren't ruling a single room, never mind an empire.

The boss was a hundred of them. Similar to Dawnhold, the bosses let me make the first move, but here I couldn't do much but stare for a couple of minutes. Okay, so on inspection they weren't all emperors; they were varied in size, and most were only level one, but still, a hundred monsters at once for a fifth-floor boss seemed a bit unfair, however weak slimes were.

I pulled my lightning glove from my [Item Box] and washed the arena in lightning, my improved control being enough to fire the four crystals in four separate directions. Two could play at the unfairness game.

Dumping my new steel ingot into my [Item Box], I started exploring floor six. The first thing I noticed was that the brickwork had changed. Instead of the pink tinge of the previous five floors, it was now a muddy orange. There was less light, and constant clicking sounded from all directions.

The source of the clicking became apparent in the very first corridor I stepped into, with a metre long centipede crawling across the ceiling. I blasted it with lightning from what I considered rather less than my preferred safe distance, i.e. a different continent. Nope. Don't like this floor. I rushed through it as quickly as I could, melting the grotesque bugs from as far away as I could manage.

Despite the glut of monsters and dearth of delver teams, there were three parties queuing for the boss room. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; I bet people took longer to 'defeat' this boss than the average.

I joined the queue, only to have the slime come running out minutes later. "Peter!" she yelled.

"Hi," I called back, hoping that she wasn't about to say anything about Erryn in front of an audience.

"Well, don't just stand there, come on in!"

She ignored the queue and grabbed me by the arm, yanking me into the room and then through a side door. I had a brief view of a bunch of pedestals and bars of colour spaced around the walls, each with little shelves underneath. What sort of puzzle was that supposed to be?

"You haven't visited in years!" she complained. Her room looked completely unchanged, still containing a mind-numbing amount of pink. The slime herself looked unchanged, too. Now I just needed some way to carefully extract her current name without accidentally insulting her.

"I've only recently turned fourteen. I wasn't allowed to use the portal network before then."

"Bah, so what? You should have just pushed your way in. It's not like anyone would remember. Sorry, I can't offer any tea now that mother isn't providing it. I've only got alraune nectar."

"Sure, why not? And I was wondering where your tea came from. I've never seen any of the plants around."

"Mother said they grow naturally to the south somewhere. It's mostly demons down there, and they tend not to drink much tea."

I took a sip of the glass of nectar, noticing far too late that [Danger Sense] was reacting to it. I hadn't had much use out of that skill over the past couple of years, and I was far too slow to respond. The stuff burnt, leaving me wheezing and coughing up blood, and from the looks of it, some amount of the lining of my throat. Reflexively casting [Endurance], I noticed I was down by a whole thirty points of health! What the hell did she just give me to drink?!

ding

Skill [Enlarged Health Pool] advanced to level 4

"..." I tried to complain, but I couldn't make any noises other than incomprehensible wheezing, so I had to settle for glaring at her pointedly. Thankfully, I'd replaced my health potion stocks for my first visit to the Sapphire Peaks, and I still had lots in my item box. I grabbed one and downed it, thankful to find that my breathing quickly eased.

ding

Skill [Accelerated Healing] advanced to level 7

"What the hell was that?!" I asked once my vocal cords were functional again. "It almost killed me!"

"Oh, sorry! I forgot you were human. I'm supposed to dilute it for humans!"

She took my glass, disposing of most of the contents and filling it back up with water, before plonking it back in front of me. [Danger Sense] was no longer reacting, but I nevertheless viewed it with great suspicion. I wasn't thirsty, and I had plenty of known non-poisonous stuff in my [Item Box] even if I was. Not to mention that a single health potion didn't come close to restoring my lost health, so my throat was probably still in no condition for use. Someone would have needed over twenty-five endurance to survive that. How many people in the queue had that much? This slime is a danger!

"For not being dangerous anymore, this dungeon sure has a bunch of deadly slimes," I muttered.

"I already said sorry! And what other slimes?"

"The fifth floor boss. I know they were weak, but there were a hundred of them!"

"You fought them?" said the slime, giggling. "You could have just... No, never mind. I'm not spoiling it for you."

Wait, it was supposed to be a puzzle? I wasn't supposed to fight? Well, now I feel silly. With a sigh, I decided to put aside the slime's idiosyncrasies and start on the topic I'd actually come here for. "Two more souls from Earth have been reincarnated here," I informed her. "How do I save them from being bound by the Law?"