How did the elves create the dungeons?
It was believed that dungeons were locations once used by the elves. Places like this maze raised a question, though. Why would the elves build a place like this? Why were some dungeons made to look like scenes outside if they were meant to be buildings? And, most importantly, where do dungeons go when they leave this world?
The other side existed. A realm or alternate reality. It was only known about thanks to a single madman. The Lord of Threads once stepped into a dungeon and allowed it to take him to the place dungeons go when they contain no new boss.
Everyone thought he was gone forever. They thought he would die or never return or come back as something new.
Of course, when the dungeon he entered reappeared in the world, and he stepped out perfectly fine, the world became even more shocked. The only reason the existence of this other world is known about is thanks to the Lord of Threads. So, what did he say about it?
"I saw the truth. I saw creation. I saw a universe of only light where not an ounce of dark exists, and I saw beings bigger than any giant, holier than any angel, and more magical than any elf. They lacked heads. Bodies, planets, stars. Monsters. I saw numbers. Zeroes, ones, zeroes, ones, zeroes, ones, the digits go around, the digits go around, and I saw the letters and the quill and the page that we're on as a story and a tale and a destiny was written out. Time didn't matter. Space didn't matter. Life, death, fate, destiny, false, truth—none of that mattered. I'm not a human. You're not a human. I saw the truth. I saw creation. I saw God."
The Lord of Threads vanished into a dungeon nine hundred years ago. Five hundred years later, he returned. He was no longer himself. As it turned out, it wasn't 'him' that returned. Indeed, humans could not travel to the other side and come back.
After his speech, the Lord of Threads transformed into a beast that lacked a body, and he slaughtered a city full of people. He hasn't been seen again in over four hundred years, and he disappeared back into the other side.
After this incident, others tried to copy what he did; however, they've yet to return. It is believed they wouldn't come back as a human if they did manage to make it to the 'other side' that the Lord of Threads was talking about.
There is still so much that is left a mystery when it comes to the dungeons. It is believed that the other side is a realm likely created by the tyrant king, Sylas. The creation of new universes has happened before, such as when Haru created the underworld and sealed the race of demons away, and so, it is thought that, as his life was about to come to an end, Sylas used a forbidden spell as well as a Vow to create a cursed universe, which activated all the dungeons the elves created.
This realm is thought to be where the radiation-like effect that dungeons give off comes from. When a boss is killed, a dungeon will vanish out of reality and reappear in this other universe, where it will recharge and fix itself up, and brand-new monsters and bosses will be placed into it, at which point it will then teleport back to the real world at a new point in space and time.
This phenomenon was now about to occur again. The labyrinth dungeon had its boss defeated by Pantheon, which meant it would take at least one hour before it was able to be sealed. When a boss was killed, the dungeon wouldn't seal itself away for at least a one-hour window. After that, one hour was up, and it still wouldn't instantly seal itself but would instead operate on a random timer. Sometimes it would happen as soon as the hour was up; other times it could remain fully open for weeks or even months.
In this case, the dungeon had likely been about to close, but then White's Vow turned him into a monster, and since he was the only monster present, he was given the title of 'boss' monster and promoted into it. This caused the timer to pause but not reset, and so when the Brass-Bull died, the dungeon decided it was time to leave this world.
"Shit, shit, shit!" Ken cursed and ran through the halls as fast as she could. "Why did it have to be a fucking maze! Do you remember which way we entered from?" She yelled, still clutching onto the unconscious Olivia.
"Not a clue," Davi grunted.
"Fuck finding the right path." Sieg's body ignited with lightning. "Row Lightning Bow!" He created his bow and fired a bolt of pure heat straight at the wall. "We'll blast our way through this shithole!" Usually, he'd need to preserve his mana, but being in a hurry, he cut loose and began to spam, sending bolt after bolt.
The walls shattered and crumbled, and they ran in the direction of where the exit should have been, not bothering to play the maze's twisted game.
As they ran, Davi couldn't help but be transfixed by the sky. From the get-go, this maze had been odd, forged out of gigantic stone walls that went up and up and up, seemingly forever. It was impossible to tell if they were indoors or outside, but now that the maze was starting to shift back to its reality, everything had ignited in a wave of light.
The sky itself was on fire and had been shifted to a bright white that bathed the entire maze and the four of them in its glow. Lines of pure mana ran through the walls of the labyrinth, and space was twisting, the air shaking and cracking. Davi felt every hair on his body stand up, and his mouth tasted like batteries. There was a powerful ozone smell in the air, along with a strong humming sound. He felt hot, his blood almost boiling in his veins, and his teeth strangely felt heavy in his mouth.
As he ran and stared up at the mass of light, Davi's eyes widened at what he saw next. In the shifting space, a mass of something began to form. At first, they were hard to see, since they were white and glowing, just like the sky above, but the closer they got, the more Davi realized that hundreds of hands were reaching down.
They were huge. The sky was so far above that it was taking time for the light to reach them, and yet these hands were big enough to wrap around the entirety of the maze, and they kept coming.
A trillion of them?
No. There were far more than a mere trillion.
Davi felt his head pounding, and he saw red as blood began to gush out of every orifice in his face. His eyes, his nose, his ears, and his mouth. His skull ached, and his brain felt like it was on fire, and he almost thought his head would explode, but something suddenly covered his eyes.
Sieg slammed his mask down onto Davi's face, blocking his brother's gaze. "Don't look up!" He yelled.
Ken's own face was also covered in blood when she gazed up earlier, but she managed to snap her gaze back down, staring at the ground as she ran. "W-What the fuck is that?"
"No clue, but don't look at it." Sieg hollered. "If we look at it, we'll die."
Davi managed to snap back to his senses, thanks to the mask blocking his face. He gripped it and followed Ken and Sieg as they finally reached the exit. There was an issue, because of course there was; why wouldn't there be one!
The dungeon had been a hole in a cave, but now there was a pair of heavy metal doors that were starting to seal shut. Sieg fired his bolt of lightning at them, but the doors didn't even budge. The damage to the dungeon was also rapidly fixing itself even as they ran through it. The dungeon no longer cared to wait for people to be outside of the area; it was all molding and changing in real time.
The moment those doors shut, it would be their end. To make matters worse, the hallway they were running through was expanding and stretching as if the dungeon itself was trying to do everything it could to keep them locked within.
The hallway kept getting longer and longer, and the doors were starting to get closer to closing. Any second now and it'd fully shut! They weren't even close to reaching it.
"Shit!" Sieg fired more shots as he ran forward, but none of them did anything, and the walls healed faster than he could destroy them.
"We're not going to make it," Ken yelled.
The glowing light got brighter, the humming in the air grew louder, the shaking got worse, and the doors held only a thin sliver of an inch between them as they were about to shut for good. Space, time, and anything else began to distort as the dungeon was about to move—
"Row Shadow Vault!" With nothing else to lose, Davi opened his vault, using the shadow that was cast from the light above, and his dark reflection began to twist and open into his vault. Inside that realm, he controlled it, and so he twisted it and brought something up. "I hope this counts."
Ken felt a familiar shiver go down her spine, and she nearly tripped over her own two feet when she heard the crying of a bird. Sieg's eyes widened, and he entirely stopped and twisted to look at Davi in horror, but it was too late.
The shadow blasted up and lifted off the ground. A wave of blue fire followed, and the head of a hawk burst out of the ground behind Davi. It was forged from a mix of blue and black and looked like it was made from pure energy. It kept coming up, revealing a human body that had wings instead of arms and talons instead of feet. The creature's beak opened, and it shrieked wildly as it fully jumped out of the vault and went into the sky, staring up at the glowing void above.
"I—Is that a spirit?" Ken asked, completely baffled.
Monsters were made of flesh and blood, but this thing was a being of pure magic, just like Yujin. That meant it had to be a spirit or a construct. A construct lacked emotion and thoughts, something this thing clearly had, because it kept screaming in rage and flew wildly in the air, smashing its body back and forth against the walls of the maze. It acted like a confused animal. That meant it had to be a spirit.
At least, that's what Ken thought, but then she became even more confused, as something strange happened.
The maze stopped shaking. The walls of the dungeon grew still, and the humming began to go quiet. The bright light above rapidly faded, and only a single limb remained. The doors to the dungeon flew open just as that limb came down and pressed a finger to the bird's beak.
A new boss had been selected. Spirits couldn't be chosen as bosses for a dungeon because they weren't monsters, so then that meant this thing was a monster? But a monster with a spirit's body? Or was it something else altogether?
Ken didn't have time to think about it for long because a wave of intense mana suddenly filled the air. The bird collapsed to the ground and screamed as it began to transform. It was twisting into the boss of this dungeon. This space now belonged to it, and the mana of the dungeon surged into it, promoting this being into the boss.
It rapidly grew in size, becoming massive, just as the Brass-Bull had been, and the blue fire along its form went out, replaced with a surge of purple energy that crackled like lightning. Its blue eyes also shifted into a royal purple shade, and more feathers started to grow along its body and legs. It began to look more and more bird-like, and soon it was identical to a hawk, but one made of shadows and purple lightning.
The bird stood tall on its talons, just under fifteen feet tall. It raised its beak into the air and spread its wings, letting out a majestic caw.
Ken blinked. "S-So, it's the boss now? Is it on our side?"
A beam of pure mana suddenly blasted out of the hawk's beak, aimed directly at Sieg and Ken, the two Knights barely dodging to the side. The beam tore through the walls of the dungeon, splitting them in two, and the newly born boss glared at them.
"I don't think it's on our side." Sieg turned and ran for the exit. Davi and Ken quickly followed, and the bird howled and flew after them.
Thankfully, now that the hallway wasn't being extended with magic, they were able to get away, jumping past the open entrance and stumbling out into the real world. The hawk monster was too big to follow after them, but it kept firing more beams of mana at the three of them, causing them all to scramble and duck down.
Eventually, the hawk gave up and let out a loud snort. It clicked its beak several times and then turned away from them. With a wave of its wings, the metal doors returned and slammed shut behind it. Outside, in the real world, Sieg watched as the dungeon doors closed, and then suddenly the space that held the dungeon was gone, leaving a blank space in the forest as the entire tower, which had jutted out of the ground, also vanished.
It was as if it had never been there to begin with.
"What the fuck just happened?" Ken demanded.
"I have no clue," Sieg admitted.
Davi collapsed onto his back, breathing heavily, and the red mask Sieg had placed on him slid off his face. He rubbed his broken arm numbly and closed his eyes. "I'm gonna black out now."
"What?" Ken glared down at him, but it was too late. His eyes were closed, and he was already snoring. "Well… Someone is getting yelled at!" She turned her anger on Sieg but then froze when she saw his face.
"Damn it." Sieg cursed and face-palmed.
Ken remained transfixed and nearly drooled. Sieg was exceptionally hot. His body was already impressive, toned and perfect, with sculpted abs and defined muscles. He had just the right amount of scars and an intriguing and sexy snake tattoo that went from his neck down past his chest and stomach and dipped into his pants. His face was something else entirely, though.
It was pretty and delicate. Handsome and beyond perfection. He had soft golden eyes and curled, feminine eyelashes. His hair was perfect and combed back, and even after running and fighting and firing all those spells, not an ounce of dirt, grime, or sweat clung to his majestic form.
It wasn't just his looks either. He almost seemed to radiate and glow. Like an aura was around him, and Ken swore she could feel hands caressing her body, tilting her chin to make her look at him, whispering all the words she wanted to hear in her ears.
What was going on?
This wasn't right. She knew that. Part of her was yelling and screaming inside her mind. She could feel something worming its way around in her brain. Feelings that weren't hers were forcing their way out of her body. This wasn't funny or sexy; it was horrifying.
What was he doing to her?
"That's enough." Suddenly, it all ended as that ugly red mask covered Sieg's face once more. Just like that, the glowing aura, the whispers, and the caressing were gone. "Snap out of it."
Ken blinked and felt as if she had just woken up from a dream. The man before her was attractive, and she'd even say he was hot, but she no longer felt like she had to jump on him and claim him for herself. A twisting knot of disgust formed in her gut, and Ken gritted her teeth. "What was that?" She hissed.
"That's why my mask stays on." Sieg let out another sigh. "Sorry. I know that's a sucky feeling. I didn't do that to you. It's out of my control, and I wish it hadn't happened as well."
Ken wiped some drool from his chin, and her eyes narrowed slightly. "That's that charm aura, right? It's seriously that intense when you aren't wearing that mask?"
"This mask holds in a lot of my power." Sieg seemed to exhale, and suddenly he shrank. His muscles almost deflated, and his height went down. He was still fit and muscular, but more lean and athletic-looking rather than the battle-hardened warrior he had been moments ago. As soon as he was done, he collapsed to his knees and grunted. "Looks like I used up more power than I thought."
"Ha." Ken let out a laugh. "Look at the three of you! All of you are out of energy, while I, the mighty Ken Yuan, am perfectly- Why is the ground getting closer?" Ken crashed to the floor, managing to land on her back with Olivia on top of her, as her legs also gave out. "Ouch…" Sieg snorted. "It's not funny!" That caused Sieg to fully start laughing, and Ken's eye twitched. "Alright, maybe it was a little funny." She also let out a giggle before wincing in pain. "So. Is it over?"
Sieg managed to stop laughing and rubbed the back of his neck. "I guess. Are you okay? Those guys did kidnap you after all."
"They did." Ken's smile faded and was replaced with a frown. "Why did all of you try to save me? We all barely know each other."
"Like it or not, we're all in the same guild." Sieg slowly collapsed onto his back, lying next to Davi. "I guess that meant something to Davi and Olivia as well. I just didn't want my brother to get hurt, so worry not, I don't care for you still."
"You're an ass." Ken rolled her eyes but softly smiled. Her smile then faded when the forest rumbled, and several trees fell down. Ken sat up, as did Sieg, and they turned to look at the woods as two figures stepped into the moonlight.
"We're here!" Merlin announced.
"Indeed!" Gormay raised his fist to the sky. "Who needs help!"
"You guys are late!" Ken and Sieg both yelled.
And with that, the four squires successfully survived their first dungeon together as a team.
***
The quill began to write.