The third site was an exercise in contrasts. The white stone walls and pillars clashed with the moss and vines that threatened to engulf them. Similarly, the shattered pavement had been forced apart by the muddy soil underneath.

The most jarring thing, though, was the odd silence among the ruins compared to the chomps and roars and sounds of tearing flesh coming from the surrounding perimeter.

The Wights fighting back the incoming tide formed an impenetrable wall around the ruins. I was quite impressed with how well they held up as well. They slashed and bit and ripped apart the enemy with an alarming efficiency.

Indeed, it looked like raising human bodies for combat was greatly inferior to raising monsters that had been bred for deadliness, and their personal mana cloud made sustaining them much easier.

In fact, I could simply sit back and watch them tear each other apart, only occasionally intervening to raise a few more from among the fresh corpses.

Truly, the dungeon had picked the worst kind of enemy for us.

A soft ping informed me of another level up, and I opened my Status to assign the point.

“That’s not fair, you know?” Sarah said, crossing her arms as she looked at me. There was a twinkle of amusement in her eye.

“Few things are,” I said agreeably. “What specifically are you referring to this time?”

“You leveled up, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

She spread out her arms. “Hogging all the experience, that’s what’s not fair.”

“You still have more levels than I do,” I pointed out.

She snorted. “Yeah, for now. Not much longer, though.”

I looked back at the wall of undead and shrugged. With their System access, the Heroes were much stronger than dozens of my Wights put together—but there wasn’t much individuals could do against a swarm. “It’s the nature of this engagement. I’m sure the dungeon will change tactics soon enough.”

“Have you taken a look at the ruins yet?” she asked, changing tracks.

“Not yet.” I’d been too busy admiring my impromptu army. “Did you find anything promising?”

“Nothing at first sight. This place definitely isn’t the temple, but there might be something to point us in the right direction,” she said with a sigh. “At least, Alexis thinks it might. She’s giving it a closer look.”

I nodded and went to join in on the search.

Sarah was, of course, right—these ruins could not have been the temple. It looked more like a handful of rows of houses, forming what might have been a small village.

A village of mostly white stone and marble. That wasn’t something you’d see every day, but I supposed it didn’t have to make sense. If the dungeon could transport people across dimensions, there was no reason why it couldn’t have just transplanted the buildings from somewhere else.

Now that was a chilling though. Magic like this was easily beyond what I’d ever thought was possible. Was this, then, the real power of Origin mana? I suppressed the urge to manifest some in my hand.

Chasing away the idea, I brought my focus back to the ruins, and passed over them with Soul Sight. Indeed, there were wisps of mana flowing about the walls, but I couldn’t tell if it was something inherent to them, or the remnants of a bigger spell.

What I could tell was that the mana wasn’t distributed evenly. Indeed, as I walked through the ruined village, I could see the mana become more and more dense, from tatters to something solid. The effect appeared to be radiating from the remnants of a house near the center of the village.

It was missing an entire wall, and inside, I found Alexis crouching over a spot on the ground. To my Soul sight, the entire room glowed brightly—but more importantly, there was a great quantity of mana where Alexis was looking.

I approached, clearing my voice as to not startle her.

She looked over her shoulder amusedly. “Yeah, I heard you already. You’re not exactly quiet.”

“I heard from Sarah that you found something.”

“Yeah,” she said, turning back to tap on the tile in front of her. “It’s this whole room, you see?”

“See what exactly?” I turned off my vision spell, inspecting the room as it looked in reality. It only took a moment to understand what she’d meant. “Oh, the floor.”

“Exactly. It’s broken everywhere else, but not here. Doesn’t really make sense, unless it’s built differently.”

I tapped my foot against the floor. Indeed, it felt solid and sturdy. Nothing like the shards of stone in the other rooms, which would move around if you pushed on them hard enough.

“And here,” she gestured to the spot she’d been focused on. “Hear this?” She tapped on it with her knuckle, and the sound came out hollow.

“You think there’s something there,” I said.

“Pretty much. Maybe not the temple—”

“No, it’s probably the temple,” I interrupted. “This whole room reeks of magic, and that spot in particular.”

Alexis frowned. “You think this is the place, then? It doesn’t look like much.”

I shook my head. “A path, or an entrance, I think. I can feel my scouts still searching, but there’s just nothing else out there—which means the temple isn’t somewhere you can see with the naked eye.”

It wouldn’t make sense, otherwise. There was only so much ground you could cover in twelve hours, and we were already down to…

 

Time limit: 9 hours 30 minutes

 

Almost three quarters of the allotted time. Now, I just needed to figure out how this room related to the temple.

“Oh, so it’s here?” David said as he walked up from behind the wall.

“I believe so. Have you found anything worthwhile in the other rooms?”

“Nah. Just dust, dirt, some broken furniture—and most of it made of stone. Like, seriously, it’s not even that much of it, but who uses stone for all their furniture? My ass hurts just thinking about sleeping on one of those beds.”

Shiro appeared out from another room and rolled his eyes. “It wasn’t all stone—that’s just what’s left. Anything wood or cloth probably rotted away or something.”

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.”

“I don’t suppose you had more luck in your search?” I asked, turning to Shiro.

He shook his head. “Same as this guy. Everything worthwhile is gone.”

“So, what’s special about this room?” David asked.

“Aside from the obvious? Alexis found a hollow space under the floor,” I said, pointing at the girl.

“Why didn’t you open it up yet?” Shiro asked.

“We were still debating what to do. And also, I’m afraid it might break whatever is in there.”

“Let me have a look,” I said.

Alexis hopped to her feet and leaned against the nearby table. “It’s all yours. Don’t break it.”

Crouching over the mysterious tile, I activated Soul Sight again and tried to make sense of the magic there, which was difficult, because the tile blocked the contents of the hollow space from view.

I could tell the tile and the contents inside were connected, however, with flows of Dimension and Force. They came from inside and attached themselves to the weave on the surface. With only half the puzzle visible, though, it was an exercise in futility to understand the mechanism.

“It seems to make different sounds depending on where you poke it, by the way,” Alexis pointed out. “Forgot to mention it.”

Experimentally, I tapped the tile on the connection points, each triggering a different sound—and some of them sending a pulse through the thread of mana beneath it.

I played around with the connections, trying to see if the pulses did something, but, or why only some of the threads were sending messages, but the device was inscrutable.

“Hey!” Sarah yelled out from a significant distance as she stomped her way to the center ruin. “Need some help on the perimeter. Your minions are getting chewed up.”

“I’ll be just a moment,” I said to Alexis as I got up from the floor. “Maybe try poking at it some more? Especially around the corners—it might activate something.”

A pair of fresh eyes could never hurt, and her senses were the best among the Heroes. She might easily see something I’d missed.

I made my way to the edge of the ruins with Sarah by my side. I only now noticed she’d had her sword out, and it was red with blood.

“Did you join in on the fighting?”

She shook her head. “Nah, I didn’t see the point—but Winnie did, the stupid bear. Had to go rescue him after he went in too deep.”

“Really? Why would he do that?”

Sarah shrugged. “No idea. Call of the wild, or something? Or maybe he was just bored.”

We arrived in sight of the problem spot a few moments later, and just in time to save the day. My line of Wights had gotten dangerously thin, and the enemy monsters were seconds away from punching through, which would have overwhelmed the rest in no time.

Sarah jumped in to hold the line while I animated a few more dozen monster bodies. It was getting easier still.

As the fresh Wights reinforced their brethren, Sarah extricated herself from the melee.

“Maybe it’s a good thing we have you. These guys are annoying to fight.”

“I’m glad to have your vote of confidence.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let it get to your head,” she said with a wry smile.

I began walking along the perimeter, raising more Wights to replenish the ones who’d died. I was not even a quarter done when the ground shook violently.

“What the—” Sarah started.

At the same time, a strange thing happened among the attacking monsters—the ones who were engaged in a fight continued to fight, but their reinforcements, the ones who were waiting for their turn just… backed away and began to walk off.

“—hell? Where are they going?” She sounded about as lost as I felt. “I hope this doesn’t mean something nastier is coming.”

Startled by her words, I sent out a pulse of Mind to check for any new arrivals. I found none, thankfully, but I did spot the monsters simply disappearing into thin air after retreating a certain distance. They weren’t walking out of my detection radius, even—they simply stopped existing in that space.

A shiver went down my spine. Had the dungeon just teleported them somewhere? The amount of mana needed for teleportation on that scale was staggering. Or had it simply… unmade them?

I didn’t even want to think about that option.

An explanation on why the monsters had left arrived shortly after, by way of System message.

 

Trial One Stage One: Find the Argent Temple — Complete!

 

“Okay, then,” Sarah said, nonplussed.

I smiled. “Looks like Alexis came through.”

“Looks like it. Let’s go back, then? It doesn’t look like you need any more bodies.”

We arrived at the center of the ruins a minute later, to find Shiro, David, Alexis and Cam outside the building. Alexis and Shiro were arguing.

“You can’t just smash things without asking! What if you’d broken it?” she asked, somewhat irate.

“I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter, alright? It worked out. And, mind you, I asked.”

“You asked if you could take a look, not punch it.” Alexis pinched the bridge of her nose.

“As I said, it worked out. It’s called percussive maintenance, and it’s legit.”

“Look,” Alexis said, sounding at the end of her wits. “Just ask next time, alright? If you were wrong, this could have screwed us over.”

He sighed. “Right. Fine, I promise.”

“Did you really just smash the lights out of it?” Sarah asked amusedly.

“She’s exaggerating. I only gave it a good thwomp.”

My eyebrows went up. “And that triggered the mechanism?” It made a startling degree of sense, actually. The more I thought about it, the more the device seemed like it had been broken, and violence did have an alarming tendency to shake things back into place.

“Looks like it. Just look inside, if you wanna see.”

I walked past the group, and looked inside the three-walled ruin. The floor had parted, giving way to a marble stairway, about six feet wide, leading into the depths. The stairway was well illuminated by magical lights hanging on each wall, but even so, I couldn’t see where the stairs ended.

“You know,” Sarah said as she gazed into the stairwell, “I really hope the dungeon teleports us to the next trial. Because I am so not climbing these stairs again when we’re done.”