Cautiously stepping into the room, Stabby immediately notices the first trap of the dungeon. A large ‘rug’ of fabric, similar to the one they had passed on the way into the previous puzzle room. The center was sagging into the ground, clearly covering a pit extremely badly. The room was three times the width of the pit, so he simply walked to the side and went around the giant hole. Stuck to the far side of the wall, a door stood tall. Three keyholes, and a poem adorned the spearpoint portal blocking the way deeper in.

“Across time, summer looks at her compatriots. Before, the guard of life, beyond the waning of it. Life burns brightly.”

Stabby considers for a moment.

“Completely pointless nonsense.”

He turns away from the locked door, and starts heading back to the central chamber to inform the others of the dead end. As he steps near the obvious trap however, he hears a soft wail within his mind, sinking into metaphorical depths. Deciding on his course of action instantly, he stabs out at the cloth. The greatsword pierces the fabric easily, but below a force slams the weapon into the side of the stone pit, pulling the cover with it. Before Stabby can react, a handful of grit jabs into his eyeballs. He keeps a hold on his weapon, but is unable to connect with the fleeing creature that hit him with pocket sand before it escapes.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Shooty looked over the shallow pit with symbols emblazoned upon various tiles. Glancing around the empty room, he looks at the ten centimeter deep hole in the very center of the arrangement.

“What the hell.”

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Casually walking into the rightward room, Smashy sees the braziers in each of the corners, and the torch on the wall. Ignoring the pile of tiles in the center of the room, he pulls the flaming stick off the wall and ignites the coals in each of the obvious places. At the far end of the room, and the left wall, doors slide down as a chime rings out for a puzzle solved.

“Easy beginner dungeon.”

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Avery wakes up. She was not in her dungeon. Ideally, that meant the invader had fulfilled his end of the deal and healed her, which would mesh together quite well with the fact she couldn’t sense her surroundings with the map function. Every time she had cast this spell previously though, she had woken up in the gem. It was perfectly within the realm of reason to conclude that he had just brought her gem outside for some reason.

She blinked.

Having eyes probably precluded her being a rock. Sitting up straight, she used her eyes to see that for some reason the city wasn’t across the river from her dungeon. In its place were two copies of the invader standing near her, and a thick mud growing from the lack of river into a forest of blades and corpses. Not for the first time, she regretted not subsuming the onyx when she had the chance. That was a lot of potential skeletons she could have converted.

“Hey, why did you drag me outside? You weren’t doing weird things to my body were you?”

The two invaders looked at each other.

“No idea, and probably not,” says the one on the left. “I mean, no offense, but you’re a human. That’s kind of gross.”

Avery sits up straighter.

“Excuse me, I am more than just my species. How can you dare to denigrate someone simply for the circumstances of their birth?”

“It’s a matter of personal preference. Some people like humans, some people don’t. If I would rather keep most of my interactions within a social circle comprised of my more closely genetically relevant peers, I don’t see how that’s a concern of yours.”

“The mind is a far more important factor in regards to pleasant interaction than any kind of generic heritage. If you limit yourself to your own people, the ones who have all the same experiences and values as you yourself do, that intrinsically limits the diversity of thought and causes your culture to stagnate!"

“Look, if I wanted to hear this kind of thing I would have just stayed home. Come on fifty-three, we can explore the deadly wasteland instead.”

With that, the two walk off toward the basin. As they disappear over the edge, Avery considers whether that conversation could have possibly gone any better. Clearly not, she decides. If they were the type to walk off the edge of a cliff instead of taking the entire switchback trail down, they weren’t going to accept that a wizard was worth respecting for their intelligence.

o o o o o o o o o o o o o o

Down on the second floor, the gemstone sits below the hole leading upward. Normally when it had time to itself, it could focus on monster spawn rates and trap placement. With no mana, and an injunction on changing the layout during the dungeon war, it had absolutely nothing to do. At the most, it would be able to micromanage the units it already had.

Slimes.

Lesser slimes.

It had spent hundreds of mana it didn’t have the last time it was conscious, and while it had the potential to dip deeper into its own structure, that was not a sustainable practice. These lesser slimes weren’t even enough to slow down that infuriating monster, even in the mass quantity it had summoned. Now that it had slaughtered its way through them, they would prove to be less than a nuisance to the champions of the dungeon it had been placed against.

There were only…

Actually there were far more than it had summoned. And they had evolved. It could work with that. A slime wave might be just what this dungeon war needed.