As it so happened, there were not just one, but two people in the city whose presence didn’t thrill me. The first, I’d seen last week. The second, however, had only arrived recently, and I’d be seeing him shortly.

Indeed, while Rock had stayed behind up till now, as we were soon to get the requisite settlement energy, he’d made the trek to Emer’Thalis. As the commander of the shadows, as well as one of the two people who’d been there to see the priest the first time, he demanded to be present for this as well.

In truth, it made enough sense that I was hardly going to put up a fuss. I also minded the man a small, infinitesimal sliver less since I’d gotten a chance to tell him off on our first trip into the city: While he was still a bastard, I had the sense he at least gave me some minor (minor) level of respect nowadays.

Hartha, while not strictly necessary, would also be coming along: Half of that was because she wanted to, and half of that was because she was supposed to take a larger role in important shadow affairs now that she had the Heart of the Forest class. When she’d expressed a desire to be there, no one had denied her.

Cal was coming along more so as a representative of Ftheran than anything else. Getting involved with Ephesis was theoretically why she’d come along in the first place, as she was supposed to be a light priestess. As that had largely been a lie, her presence had more to do with being the kingdom’s princess.

Then there was me. Did I bring much to the table here that the others didn’t? Honestly, probably not. Still, as the Protagonist who’d kicked a lot of this off and the one who’d gotten saddled with owning the settlement, my presence was expected.

Thus, three of the four of the group were already assembled, and we’d meet Rock there. Ready to put a close to this chapter of our lives, the three of us began to exit the forest.

Once we’d cleared the trees, we passed a few builders, idly walking about. Frankly, I was surprised they were still here, seeing as the bar had been completed a week ago, but for some reason Tuk was dragging his feet. Whether he got paid by the day, or he was just hoping that another rare building opportunity would drop into his lap, I wasn’t sure.

As for the fighters, we saw far fewer of them. Many would be helping the shadows hunt, and many more were off sparring with one another, fighting to pass the time.

Just as we were about to clear the inhabited part of the city, however, we happened upon a familiar face.

“Hey! Tess! Calilah! Hey!” A short, scaled, gator-man enthusiastically waved his hands above his head at us, the motion highlighting the particularly ridiculous party hat he wore. A second later, he made his way over. “Hi, hello! Fancy seeing you two while taking a walk! What are you all up to? And you!” He motioned to Hartha, animatedly. “We haven’t met! I’m Jason!”

Hartha returned the greeting, and seeing the confusion on her face, I clarified.

“Jason fought with us in Drawgin’s dungeon. As for what we’re doing…” I debated on whether or not to tell him. To a large extent, Agath had chosen to keep the fighters in the dark about some of the specifics of Ephesis and the dark god. They knew there was something going on, and that it was potentially dangerous, but not much more.

The reasoning was simple: Had the large mass of fighters been told that there was an ancient, sleeping Protagonist in the city, they probably would have sought him out. Likely, they’d try to challenge him. Some, however, might have worse ends in mind: Killing a high-level Protagonist, for instance, would be a surefire way to gain an incredible chunk of experience all at once, after all.

Still, we had a representative from Ftheran and from the Redmoss Tribe. In some sense, it was only fair to bring along someone from Drawgin, wasn’t it?

Even after I made that decision, however, I wasn’t really sure how to explain it to him. “How do I put this…”

Cal jumped in, having no such reservations. “We’re on our way to visit an ancient and powerful sleeping Protagonist. We’re going to watch him wake up and ask him about when we can open the dungeon, because there’s a dark god trapped inside of it.”

I could feel my temples pulsing in pain at her explanation. Who in their right mind would ju-

“Neat! Lemme come with then!” He hit us with a wide, gator grin, accepting Cal’s words without so much as a question.

Is that just because he’s lived in this world since birth, so that seems less weird to him? After thinking it over, I decided probably not. The more likely answer was that Jason was just Jason.

Well, Rock might not be happy about it, but making Rock happy wasn’t generally my top priority. Our party of three thus became four, and as Jason chatted away at us, we continued on.

In no time at all, we found ourselves by the great stone altar and the tunnel which ran beneath it. Descending into the tunnel and retracing the steps I’d walked months prior, we at last reached our quarry.

There sat the still-sleeping form of the wizened light priest. To his side stood one particularly stern-faced forest shadow. He did not look entirely pleased to see us, although to his credit, he wasn’t attempting to spear the priest this time around.

“Cutting it rather close, are you not? And who is this? This is not a party, Protagonist; one does not just invite a friend along to something like this.”

About the reception I expected. “Hey Rock! Great to see you too! It’s been too long! Really missed you. Jason, this is Rock. Rock, this is Jason. We passed him on the way, and it only seemed fair to have someone from Drawgin here seeing as this concerns them and we have representatives from both the Redmoss Tribe and Ftheran.”

For Rock’s part, he seemed to bite back a reply, thinning his lips and drilling a hole into the man with his eyes.

For Jason’s, he smiled and waved. “Great name dude.”

As for the cutting it close part… I pulled up my settlement interface once more.

Dungeon Reactivation Energy: 4998/5000

At the current rate we were gaining energy at, it would still be a few more minutes before we made it all the way.

Under the withering glare of Rock, we spent those minutes in tense silence.

Well, except for Jason. He seemed to be having a good time just hanging around.

Eventually, however, the moment came at last.

Dungeon Reactivation Energy: 5000/5000

Quest Completed: Into the Dungeon

You have rebuilt the ancient city of Emer’Thalis enough to reopen the dungeon portal.

Rewards:

+2500xp

High Priest’s aid in trapping the darkness responsible for expanding the deadlands

It was done! At last!

Another notification followed the quest completion notice, and I read the first line before quickly dismissing it. It contained details about new dungeon options in the settlement interface, but that was hardly as important as the priest waking up.

Only… he didn’t.

All five of us looked at the priest, still surrounded in his light shell, waiting for him to stir. After a full minute of tense silence, Cal finally opted to say something.

“Um. Do we need to do anything? Like, maybe give him a little tap?” This was proving to be slightly more anticlimactic than expected.

“Well,” replied Jason. “Sometimes when I’ve been sleeping for a long time, it just takes me a while to wake up, you know? Maybe we could sing him a song or something? That usually helps me wake up.”

Rock turned to the man with the most dead-eyed stare I’d yet to see on the man. “We are not singing a song. Do not even consider starting to sing right now.”

Jason shrugged in response, although secretly I thought it was a better idea than doing nothing. In fact, if Ephesis took much longer, I was half worried that Rock would repeat his earlier performance of banging against the man’s shield with his spear.

Hoping to avoid having the priest wake up to such a welcome, I bit the bullet, approaching the man’s shell and tapping on it. “Um. High Priest Ephesis? Wakey wakey?”

Well, so much for that idea. Ephesis showed no signs of bei-

Abruptly, a swirl of white energy began to coalesce in front of me, obscuring the priest from sight just as I was alerted to a new notification.

High Priest Ephesis has initiated the opening of the dungeon. Time until opening: 20 seconds.

What? What? How the hell-

Cries sounded from everyone present, demanding to know what was happening, but I had no answers outside of the obvious. Frantically, I pulled up the previous notification I’d received about the dungeon, praying it would tell me how to stop the activation. This wasn’t the plan!

On reading it, I blanched, cursing myself for having dismissed it.

Congratulations! You have fulfilled all the necessary requirements to reopen your dungeon! The Dungeon tab of your settlement interface has been restored.

At this time, you may assign a Dungeon Master to run the dungeon for you. Calculating… Defaulting to previous Dungeon Master. Dungeon Master selected: High Priest Ephesis. To alter this choice, proceed to the Dungeon tab of your settlement interface.

“He’s opening the dungeon! He has access from when he owned the city!” Despite the others being right next to me, I found myself shouting while I pulled up the settlement interface as rapidly as I could.

“Well close the damned thing then!” Rock shouted back.

I was trying!

I moved to the dungeon tab of the interface, spotting where Ephesis was marked as the dungeon master, and without a spare thought, I assigned it to myself instead. Sadly, that did little to stop the activation process.

“Where the hell is a ‘cancel’ button!” The timer ticked down and down, already at 10 seconds left, and for all that I was supposed to be in charge now, I saw no way to shut the process down.

9s…

8s…

7s…

As more and more energy funneled into the whirling mass, it grew and took on a more definitive disc shape. So too did its color change, rapidly shifting from the plain white of what I assumed to be settlement energy into a daunting pitch black, marking the entrance to a Darkness dungeon

6s…

5s…

4s…

“I don’t think there’s a way to stop it. It’s opening…” At my admission, the other four tensed up, ready for the worst. Well, not Jason actually. He still looked like he was having a great time, but that was hardly the point!

3s…

2s…

1s…

The energy fully filled the space before me, swallowing the high priest and shifting about until it became a perfect replica of the entrance I’d seen in Drawgin, minus the coloring. Belatedly, I considered running, but if anything was going to happen, I doubted even the full 20 seconds head start would have done us any good.

The five of us stared at the portal. Waiting. Ready.

As a few more seconds passed, however, it really just seemed like… a normal dungeon portal.

“Damn, that was unnecessarily scary. Maybe Ephesis is inside trying to fix things? Wouldn’t it be awesome if we just didn’t have to do anything?” That was pretty much the ideal scenario from the start. “Honestly, I’m not even sure why we were so scared. The dark god is supposed to be trap-”

Without warning, a massive wave of dark mana spilled out from the portal. Before we could do so much as cry out, it swallowed us all.