First Ray of Dawn Through Wet Leaves teleported out of the bird cage, flew to the cell bars, then teleported through those too. Dan hadn't needed to think hard to imagine scenarios where the ability to teleport a couple of feet came in handy when Ray described the long and impressive list of what they could do, but as he watched the raven fly down the hall he wondered whether he'd underestimated just how powerful that trick was. Without it there was no obvious way for either of them to free themselves, though Dan assumed they would have come up with something. The dead guards had fallen quietly. They had wounds as if from shotgun slugs where the Dark Bolts had hit, but the two naga who had been struck in the body rather than the head had dropped just as fast. The life drain property of Dark Bolt must work quickly. So far there had been no reaction from other guards, no fallen naga rapid response team rushed to the scene. The hall was a roughly eighty foot long arch, and the ceiling was shallower than in the prison cell, just over six feet high. It terminated in a heavy wooden door, shaped to match the curve of the hall, at the far end. The key chain hung on a ring just over it.

There was something odd about that door though. Dan couldn't tell what was behind it - not with any of his senses. Even with Penetrating Sight, the barrier remained opaque.

"Ray, that door is weird. Be careful."

"Oh? Weird how?"

"I can't tell what's past it, not with any of my senses or abilities."

"Odd."

The lack of further commentary was not reassuring. Dan had gotten rather used to Ray being the bizzaro world equivalent to Wikipedia. The raven grabbed the key ring, flew back down the hall, tossed it between the cell bars, teleported into the cell, picked the keys back up and flew them to Dan's waiting hands. As this happened, the human tried System Identify on the door, and got an error message of all things. He considered. It was clear by now that this dungeon was meant for him, either plucked out of a functionally infinite multiverse or purpose built with Dan Martin in mind. So a door that screwed with Perception and Esper abilities? Yeah, that made sense. The dungeon couldn't have him cheating. If he knew what was around every corner, it'd all be too easy, wouldn't it? A door like that wouldn't lead to an empty room. There was something dangerous, not in the abstract but to him personally, at the end of the long creepy hallway.

Dan went through the keys one by one. As he did, he mentioned his concerns about the door and that he'd leveled up. Ray had a suggestion for which level six perk to select: Familiar Mind Link was both useful and had a name that accurately described what it did. He and Ray would be able to share virtually instantaneous telepathic communication, from up to roughly a couple dozen miles away. There were a lot of other options, but Dan was willing to accept his familiar's judgment. He did not want to die feeling stupid because he'd saved that perk point for later, when he had more research material on perks, against Ray's advice. Besides, it did sound terribly useful. The second to last key unlocked the handcuffs, then shortly afterward Dan's feet were free and he was out of the cell. He also took the perk and tried telepathic conversation. It felt more natural than he'd have guessed.

"So, any good ideas on how we should approach the unknown danger behind the ominous door with the highly suspicious ability to negate my greatest strengths?"

"Carefully."

"How helpful. Other than that?"

"I could use Sphere of Darkness to absorb all light in roughly half of the hall. It would be impossible for anything or anyone, including us, to see through or past it, but you could use echo-location, Unerring Aim, and your other senses to aim Dark Bolt and sling bullets."

"In other words, blind everyone in the fight and assume that favors us."

"Yes, though that would use one third of my aether pool."

"Still, it's a thought. I've got a few ideas too..."

They plotted.

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Dan was back in the cell where they'd started. It was locked. Three quarters of the way down the hall from him, two of the cell doors across from each other had been opened so that they met in the center of the hall, and he'd used his rope to tie them together as securely as he could. Five spears from the dead naga angled up through the bars, the shafts tied into the knots and their bases buried in the dirt floor. The barrier wouldn't stop a charging wrax. The rope could be cut. But it was something.

They'd tried running a few experiments to get even a little information on what lay past the door, but the only thing that had even the slightest result was Dan's danger sense: It was dangerous for him to open the door, and quite insistent on the point. So Ray was there, ready to open it, and Dan was as far away as he could get. Cowardice perhaps, but the twilight raven was smaller, faster, had vastly greater combat experience, and could teleport. An ordinary bird could not physically have opened the door, but Ray of course was in no way ordinary.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

The end of the hall, including the improvised cell door wall, plunged into darkness as the door swung open. Before the door could even open fully, Dan's senses revealed a great deal, even though no light could penetrate the Sphere of Darkness in either direction. Sense Life, Sense Power, Sense Aether, Thermal Sense, and Detect Monster worked together to take an ugly, instant snapshot. There was a massive, powerful monster at the end of the hall. It had an Aether aura similar to what the goblin chieftain had, though much stronger, and its body was the same temperature as the air (cold blooded?). A fifth of a second later, echo-location gave him a rough picture of the monster's shape to pair with a name from System Identify.

Elder Goliath Toad (Aural), lvl 11. Monster Type: Goliath Toad

Something was interfering with his Tactical Precognition. It was like a television switching rapidly through the channels when someone in the room unwittingly sat on the remote just wrong. A massive tongue shot out of the toad's mouth, aimed at Ray. Dan was still functionally blind, and it moved too quickly for him to detect and react through echo-location. Somehow his familiar did sense the attack in time and teleported to the side. There was a window there, a sliver of a second, where Dan could have hit the monster in the mouth with a Dark Bolt, but everything was moving too fast. He wasn't used to being blind, and his haywire Tactical Precognition disoriented him. The window closed. Ray flew to the improvised barrier they'd prepared and teleported through. The toad chased after. The monster was nearly too big to fit in the hall, which now seemed to have been cut to the toad's size and shape. Sense Weakness told nothing other than the obvious - eyes and interior of mouth were soft spots.

Dan launched a Dark Bolt and a sling bullet at what he thought was the thing's left eye. It was a moving target in the dark and his precognitive cheat powers weren't working, but he did still have Unerring Aim active. There were two wet squelch sounds in quick succession, and the aether aura that suffused and covered the monster shifted. The toad did not slow or otherwise react to the attack. It did stop before it hit the spears. How did it know they were there?

"Ray, plan?"

"Brute force. Dark Bolt until we're both down to one Dark Bolt of Aether Pool left, aim at the eyes."

"It's messing with my Tactical Precognition."

"Then you're disrupting its precognition too."

Lovely, a highly perceptive giant murder toad. Dan and Ray launched an artillery barrage of Dark Bolts. Eighteen hit home within seconds, each invoked at the speed of thought. Dan threw in another sling bullet for good measure. They'd gone for broke, put everything they had into that attack. It had to work. Fortunately, it did. Dan watched the effects primarily through Sense Aether. The first several were seemingly absorbed by the monster's shifting aether aura, a resilient shield. Then the shield was overwhelmed. It broke and the bolts slammed into the massive monster.

Congratulations! Dungeon Mini-Boss Defeated.

Reward Bonus Multiplier - Party of One!

Reward Bonus Multiplier - Dungeon Pioneer!

Bonus Aether Gained.

Congratulations! You have reached Level 7 in Esper Class. 2 Points of Perception awarded. 1 free attribute point awarded. 1 free level seven perk awarded. 1 free Aether Ability awarded. Aether Ability "Roving Eye" (R5, Esper) awarded.

Monster Defeated, Elder Goliath Toad (Aural), lvl 11. Aether Gained.

"I am so deeply glad that killed it. We were very, very screwed if it didn't. I leveled."

"Congratulations. That is one of the forms of power such dungeons offer - aether gains come fast. Dan, we must survive to warn Weaverton. This place is a death trap for those of your kind who are not you. Very few parties could survive such a monster. It was the first mini-boss."

"That is not what I wanted to hear."

"It is truth."

"Fair. Uh, dumb question. How do we get past it? I mean, physically? It's blocking the hall."

Ray chuckled telepathically. Which only seemed weird when Dan thought about it.

"First let's wait until our Aether Pools are full again. I don't imagine it will be a serious problem. You do have Cleanse, do you not?"

Dan groaned.