“How is this possible?” I asked, gaze full of wonder.  

As my senses, power gauge, and more took in the whole of what I was seeing, I was startled. I quickly look up… only to not see a damn thing. Where there should have been a ceiling was instead an orange sky, complete with clouds, and what looked like a real fucking sun far off into the distance.

“What the hell…” Tyler said, mouth dropping open as he finally caught up to me. Riary and Konohora weren’t far behind. I could see in my perception that Riary looked pissed for a moment… but the wonder of what we were seeing even washed over her, gaze wandering to the massive brachiosaurus in the distance. 

Konohora just smiled that small peaceful smile of hers. I noticed she didn’t seem as awed by the brachiosaurus. Fair, I guess. We’d seen much, much bigger by now. 

“Dungeons are generally like this.” Konohora said. A simple, truthful, explanation but was missing the whole point. I looked to Riary, practically pleading with my expression. If anyone would understand a magical phenomenon, it would be her. 

Riary eventually snapped out of it, noticing not just my gaze but all of ours. For once I saw a smile play on her lips that wasn’t purely full of spite or bloodlust. Although she did seem quite smug. 

“Dungeons, according to the books I’ve read, begin to alter and distort the world as they grow closer and closer to the leylines. It creates space where there is none in ways that defy our current understanding of space and dimensional magic. Dungeon researchers, Elven dungeon researchers at that, have spent their whole lives before trying to understand them. We have learned a lot but… the how is still a mystery.” 

Even in this world, no, especially in this world of might and magic, there remained mysteries abroad. I could practically feel my own heart beating in my chest. I wanted to know, to see, to wander. To know what the solutions to those mysteries were, to see new races, to… gods. How long has it been since I’ve felt this way? 

…Not since that Elven town, Nors. That felt like a lifetime ago. That had been the last time I’d actually been excited about anywhere, purely. There had been moments in The Jungle and here too for sure but… too many life and death situations, too much of a threat, for me to properly enjoy. Now I had some measure of confidence. 

…Not a lot though. I could feel plenty of B-Ranks in that town over there, reaching all the way to here. We were in the dungeon properly now and that meant… they weren’t the only B-rank things around. I quickly looked around, knowing my luck a horde of B-Rank badgers or something was going to attack me the moment I had that thought. Nope, nothing except- 

“Motherfucker.” I cursed. 

“Hmm?” Riary said, looking at me and my gaze turned towards a tree. 

“Nothing, just a nasty squirrel.” 

Even in pre-historic times the squirrels were this freaky?! WHY? Everything else here is normal! The wolves, the fish, the dinosaurs for god's sake. Why do the squirrels on this damn planet have four eyes and two tails?! No wonder it looks so freaky though… apparently its lineage goes all the way back to millions and millions of years ago! …I’d rather just be attacked by a B-Rank swarm of bees than see another freaky squirrel. 

“Should we stop by the town?” Tyler asked. 

I snapped a bit to attention on that. 

“I don’t know… there’s more than a few B-Ranks down there, not all of which I’d like to tangle with.” I said. 

Riary grimaced. “Fighting any B-Grade is a bad idea.” 

I blinked. 

“Why?” 

Riary looked at me in a classic look of ‘are you fucking kidding me’, confusion, and ‘are you really this stupid?’ 

“Because they’re B-Rank?” Riary asked, questioningly. 

I frowned. “I thought we had this discussion… back before training. Has it really not come up?” 

“Has what come up?” Tyler asked, while Konohora watched on. 

It suddenly hit me like an epiphany that my group had no idea. 

“...even before the training we all underwent, we could take weak B-Ranks on with extreme difficulty, if we worked together. Now… we could probably each take the average one on, more or less.” 

Tyler seemed surprised but it was nothing compared to Riary and Konohora’s reaction. The looks on their faces were so shocked I nearly took a step back in horror. They were looking at me like I’d told them the most surprising facts in the universe. 

“...what.” Riary said, no trace or hint of her normal personality in it. The word practically fell out of her mouth. 

“D-Did… you guys… not know? I thought we all knew? We definitely talked about this before. We had to have. There’s no way this wasn’t mentioned. Or your trainers had to have told you. Or, or you guys should have known. I may be able to read power but you have to know how strong you are right?” 

Tyler was like a chicken or a bobblehead, quickly looking back between me, his teammate, and his stunned girlfriend and other teammate. 

Strangely, it was Riary who gathered herself first, Konohora continuing to stare down at her own hands. 

“B-Rank? As strong as an average B-rank? Are you sure?” She asked with a massive frown. 

“Of course I’m sure. You have your fire, I have my Analyze: Power Gauge mode. Don’t doubt my ability to read strength. I’m telling you… we could each take on the average B-Ranker right now.” 

I was… somewhat downplaying exactly how strong each of us was. It was not… equal and saying who was stronger than who was a recipe for a nasty disaster. It was enough to know what we each could do. 

Riary looked down, staring at her hand, before a fire coalesced into it. She stared into her own flames, mesmerized. Konohora finally snapped out of her daze, muttering ‘B-rank…’ under her breath. I sympathized. For someone who had been in this world for over five decades… and been through a war even just as a healer on the sidelines… that level of power must mean a lot to her after all this time. 

“T-This… is a… good thing right?” Tyler asked nervously. 

“Of course it is.” Riary was quick to answer. “Just… surprising. We grew in strength so quickly…” 

“Well, yeah.” I said. “Tyler is ‘special’, you’re literally a certified Genius, Konohora got boosted by ‘that’, and I’m naturally powerful as a demon with the added advantage of my Ability. Our team is pretty… unique. Powerful.” 

“Derek is right.” Konohora said, while her gaze lingered for a moment. She had noticed I’d technically spoken no lies but had not told the whole truth, a small smile on her lips. It was always fun playing that game with Konohora. “We have advantages. But we should still be careful. This city is much more powerful than we expected. The dungeon will most likely have people and monsters we can not hope to defeat or possibly even run away from. Staying away from others and training away from people is our best option, I believe.” 

We all nodded to that. Tyler hadn’t brought that frankly huge backpack for nothing. We had tents, food, and water for at least a week and that was before we ate the local cuisine. Eating roasted dinosaur… my excitement was growing again. 

“Alright, come on, that’s enough talking for now. Let’s get going, I want to see more dinosaurs!” 

The others nodded and we began heading out. Seeing the mega fauna was… exciting. It wasn’t the size, although it had plenty of that. No, it was the type and species. Plants I’d seen or heard of rarely in dinosaur movies or rarely books, but plenty of things that were either unique to Ero or never made it to the fossil record. Some plants looked distinctly… odd. Something about them was just inherently off. It was almost like… no… couldn’t be. 

“...Why does that plant look like a dick?” Tyler asked, confused. 

Alright, so I wasn’t going crazy.  More than a few plants seemed to be, bizarrely, genital esk. Which was a phrase that shouldn’t exist. Dicks, vagina, weird fluids leaking out. It wasn’t all of them, but enough to be disturbing. 

Riary and Konohora shrugged, they had no clue either. Knowledgable they were, but there were limits. They weren’t historians, let alone pre-history historians. 

We ignored it, continuing to move on. The goal was simple really, find and fight strong B-Rank monsters. Well, uh, average B-Rank monsters. Push ourselves to our limits in a way that training just could never do. No matter how much I fought Xilvia, unless she actually tried to kill me, I wouldn’t be in a life or death situation. There’s a difference between needing to punch a little harder or move a little faster to not take a grievous injury and needing to do so to live. Hopefully we wouldn’t be getting into anything that dangerous but the threat would push us further. We were all still hum- …mortal. People. And people broke past their limits when under threat. 

Though Riary frowned as she noticed exactly where we were heading. 

“...why this way?” 

I was in the lead, having decided immediately where we were heading. 

“Hmm? Oh, I just wanted to see the Br- the big dinosaur.” Better to not use scientific earth names, even if they probably translated just fine over here. I was paying more attention to what Tyler said now. Calling what he called Raptors as something else, or showing off more knowledge than I, an ‘outworlder’ should have… not smart.  

Riary continued to frown. The brachiosaurus was, honestly, fucking massive. It was almost as big as the Gaieldr. But I’d seen how her eyes had lit up. I didn’t think it was a monster or even dangerous. I could sense more than a few insects, animals, and just normal plant life around. This dungeon probably had monsters as well but it wasn’t exclusive to that. I just wanted her to experience the joy of seeing a brachiosaurus close up. 

It was still a ways away, as we continued our journey, when I noticed something that had my pupils shaking. 

We were being followed. 

Followed by someone or something very, very strong.