Matt’s heart leaps, realizing where they are. The transition from dirt to stone is not only abrupt but jarring. That, and the realization that despite not carrying a torch, he is able to see just fine. An ambient light saturates the glorified cave, which becomes noticeable in the face of real torchlight up ahead. As if the reality-bending rules of the dungeon can only be enforced in specificity at the point where the stone touches and anything beyond is under the general sway of the dungeon’s core reality melting influence.

Matt shudders, remembering stories of higher-level dungeons capable of altering gravity or nullifying entire classes of spells inside their zones of influence. But with no evidence that this dungeon is that powerful, Matt isn’t too worried.

So with the real dungeon in front of them, the party crosses the threshold between reality and fantasy and catches up with the skeleton warrior sent up ahead. The warrior in question waits patiently around the corner, its mind only having two thoughts to rub together, and those thoughts only revolve around the presence of orders or the lack thereof. Combined with nothing presently attacking it, the skeleton mind retreats inward in boredom and doesn’t, for example, notice the many armored legs scuttling in the distance beyond the torchlight.

As Matt and Greg turn the corner, a brief sigh of relief is exhaled as the skeleton warrior is still standing. And though Matt would have known if the skeleton warrior was under attack, or worse, dead, it still makes him feel safer to see the undead servant with his own eyes.

“March,” Matt commands, and the skeleton warrior obeys. Greg, however, decides to take the rear without much prompting, the playoff boredom seeming to be extinguished in the face of the dungeon-like atmosphere. As they walk, they pass many rooms, all unoccupied, and some even have dirt floors. Matt’s mind reasons that even now, the dungeon is still forming, which means that whatever monster remains shouldn’t be too hard to deal with.

“Thank god for Orcs!”

“What?”

“Nothing,” Matt grumbles but proceeds to chuckle to himself. All this time stressing about this dungeon run, and he’s going to just walk in and get a dungeon core for free. Free.

Well, that’s what the necromancer thinks. Up ahead, the hallway abruptly ends and becomes an ominous flight of stairs. A sickly red glow at the bottom of the stairs seems to bleed along the walls but not up the steps.

“The core,” Matt whispers and commands the skeleton warrior he has under his control to rush forward as he starts to speed walk toward the steps. Greg, suddenly confused, would have followed if he didn’t notice something odd about the shape of the light-

“Wait Matt!” the skeleton insists, and he almost stops the young necromancer from getting his head removed from his shoulders, but alas… this isn’t that type of story.