“Whoa…” Karl said.

“That’s…” added Delan.

“It’s…” Merry started.

Merry shivered in the middle of her thought.

“It’s cooooold,” she whined.

“It’s a good thing we aren’t hanging around long,” I said.

Delan stepped forward to the edge of the platform and I followed him. There were steps which led down into the sand dunes as we looked out into the expanse around us.

“It’s big… hey, you have a skill to unlock, yes?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, I’ve been hanging onto it,” I answered.

“Don’t you have a flight skill available as an option? Do you want to get that and scout out the area?”

I knew what Delan was talking about. Vampires had a specific version of a flight skill:

Vampiric Flight: Grow a pair of bat wings to assist in flight. No mana cost.

I had the levels to unlock another skill and the only requirement was to be a vampire, so I could unlock it now. I didn’t have a particular preference for my next skill so I hadn’t picked one. Being able to fly seemed interesting and it would be useful here, so I decided to unlock it.

I took a step away from Delan to use my new skill. A pair of wings grew out from my back - oddly, they didn’t seem to tear my clothes which was a welcome surprise. How would be a mystery for later, but in the moment, I needed to scout out some of the structures.

“Be back soon,” I said.

I jumped into the air and tried to fly upwards. The wings on my back flapped as I moved upwards, though it felt like their motion was mostly decorative. They seemed to be manipulating mana to cause flight, rather than any sort of standard flight mechanics.

Getting my mind back on task, I looked around for any notable structures in the area. To my left was a stone platform sticking out of the sand with what seemed to be a pedestal on it. I flew down and landed on the platform.

It was a stone platform, like the one the rest of the party was on, but smaller. There was a pedestal on it with a button and a stone backdrop behind it with a triangle pattern engraved on it. What the button did was unclear, but I wasn’t going to press it yet - there was more to explore before it would be worth the risk pushing it. I took flight again to look for anything else.

In the distance, a healthy walk from where we entered, there was a stone building with a door on the top of it. Is that the exit? I thought. I flew over to investigate.

Landing in front of the door, it looked like the previous end-of-floor doors we had seen. I recalled that the entrance to the floors of the dungeon could skip ahead to the fourth floor - I figured finishing this floor would unlock the ability to use the skip to the fourth floor. The problem however was when I tried to open the door: it wouldn’t budge.

“It’s locked, huh,” I mused.

I had spent nearly 10 minutes exploring and Merry wasn’t about to get any warmer. Karl had Flame Strike, but that was a bit of a blunt solution to the problem - not to mention it didn’t help the fact I was feeling pretty cold too. Instead, I decided to call it here and started to fly back to the rest of the party.

Returning to the entrance of the floor, the rest of the party had huddled back in the covered part of the entrance area. I landed in front of them to report what I found.

“There’s a few platforms in the area which seem to have pedestals on them. The one I checked out had a button on it - not sure what it does. The exit is probably twenty to thirty minutes walking away, but it was locked. Sounds like we have a bit of a puzzle on our hands.”

“Any monsters?” Delan asked.

“No, none that I saw.”

“Hm.”

“Can we go now?” Merry said.

“Yes, we can,” Delan answered.

The rest of the party stood up and started making their way to the door. I deactivated my newly-acquired flight skill, and followed them to the door.

We opened it to reveal the island we started from in the morning, but now lit by the midday sun. The air in the entrance area felt quite warm compared to the cold temperatures of the third floor. Therya and Maya were still inside the new guild building, and since the support staff from the guild wasn’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow, no one was around to greet us.

We made our way to the pavilion to sit down for a bit. As we approached, Kaya appeared from nowhere to greet us by the pavilion.

“Did you appreciate the item?” she called out.

“That was you?” Delan said.

“Yes,”

“You have my thanks,”

We made it to the pavilion and started to take seats on the ground to rest. Kaya joined us.

“By the way… on the first floor, we say Giriya,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, I saw that,” Kaya said.

“Am I correct that you put that as a lesson of when to not fight?” I asked.

Kaya looked down for a moment before answering.

“Am I that predictable?” she sighed.

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea. I just think it’s something which you’d come up with, that’s all,” I answered.

Kaya still looked a little embarrassed at how easily I had guessed her handiwork.

“Don’t feel bad, Kaya. It’s not a bad thing,” I said.

I leaned over and gave her a hug.