"Carmine…” I shook my head. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s nothing personal.” Carmine chuckled wryly. “I simply follow a higher power.”

“Lydia, now!”

Lydia was upon Carmine before she could blink. Of course, Carmine’s betrayal was something I had considered as well. We depended on her capacity to take control of the dragon too much. If she decided to not destroy the dragon, it would be a danger forever. Fortunately, Lydia and I had already exchanged a few looks ahead of time, and while the lore was descending, she had closed the distance to Carmine while using the massive dragon as cover.

Without hesitation, Lydia used her speed to close the distance and toss a potion at Carmine’s feet. It exploded, and a gas rose up, covering the woman. As for Lydia, she had already jumped back a dozen feet, watching with another bottle in her hand. I didn’t want to hurt Carmine. The bottles only contained a sleeping draught. It had been made by Miki and I and was part of the arsenal of potions we kept on hand just in case.

In this situation, if we could just knock Carmine out before she made the dragon hostile to us, then perhaps we could attack and destroy the dragon before she woke up. That’s what I was hoping for, but the gas had just risen over Carmine’s head when the dragon suddenly let out another ear-splitting roar. He spun and lashed his tail wildly. As for Carmine, I only realized she had already left the cloud of smoke a few moments later. It had been a diversion!

I cursed as I realized that her goal wasn’t to fight us at all. Rather, using the flailing dragon as cover, she made it to the center of the room and snatched the lore. At that point, I realized we couldn’t sit back anymore. Ending this peacefully was impossible.

“Miki! Celeste!” The two tossed out spells Carmine’s way.

However, she was a paladin, and the likes of spirit attacks were nothing for a woman like that. Her high defense also made Celeste’s devastating air attacks nothing more than papercuts. Meanwhile, when someone attacked Carmine, it was the dragon who retaliated. With Terra running beside me, I had closed off the direction of the backroom. My intent was to keep her from shattering the lore and then leaping through the platform. It was only when I got there that I realized she was heading in the opposite direction with a dragon between her and me. She planned to use the kiosk to flee?

I hadn’t considered this, because Carmine hadn’t registered with the kiosk with us. I believed her way out would be the final teleportation platform. After all, the dragon couldn’t even fit up in the preparation room. She reached the stairway and turned back. The look on her face made me realize the truth. She had this all planned out from the beginning. This wasn’t an emotional decision made in the moment. From the moment she brought us here, she was playing us.

She let out a laugh. “Sorry… thank you for the help, but I can’t have you following me and causing problems. The church will light a candle for your soul!”

“You- you can’t take the dungeon lore with you!”  Terra cried out helplessly.

“Why not?” Carmine tilted her head. “They’re popular high-level alchemy ingredients. Without the lore, this dungeon will whither up and collapse. You will be buried in this grave… well, if you live long enough without starving to death first. As for me, I’ll likely be promoted.”

“You can’t control it!” I shot out.

“If it’s one thing the church knows how to do…” Carmine chuckled. “It’s control things. I’ll worry about the dragon. I think you all have something more important to worry about.”

With that, she spun around and left. As she raced up the stairway, the dragon let out a terrifying breath attack. However, he didn’t aim at us. Rather, he aimed at the stairway. Within a moment, the location became nothing but a mound of rubble. The clockwork dragon suddenly turned to smoke and then disappeared into the cracks of the rock. Carmine must have had some kind of ability which allowed her to take the dragon with her. Perhaps it was a pet version of a storage ring or some skill I wasn’t familiar with.

I hadn’t known about it until she suddenly used it. I also hadn’t known she must have previously registered with the first-floor kiosk. Perhaps she had wanted to avoid having us register at the kiosks specifically so that she could leave us to die. She always looked annoyed when I insisted on doing it, and she never did it herself. Now I understood why.

Once the smoke left the room, the five of us were left by ourselves, standing in the former boss’s room of an empty dungeon. Since the lore still existed, the treasure room and the return portal hadn’t been summoned. On the other side, the kiosk that would allow us to return to the previous floors was blocked by mounds of heated rock.

Carmine’s plan had worked splendidly. She had the dragon, and we were trapped!