Only a little embarrassed, Harrn tries the handle. The door connecting to the next room opens without any complaints, revealing the second puzzle. Obstacle? This one is definitely an obstacle, as I see blinking red lights.

  “Stick to the marked areas,” I say. “What do you think, Mr. Expert. Continue the stealthy infiltration?”

  Harrn thinks for a moment. Then he says, “Violence in any form could make us fail the trial. Best not risk our access to the champion.”

  “Right... Well, look sharp,” I say. Elisa subtly moves her head in my direction but does not say anything.

  The room we find ourselves in now is a lot more expansive than the previous, walls and ceiling trying to run away from us rather than sticking close. Cameras are interspersed throughout, though thankfully, there’s handy cover interspersed throughout too, creating a single possible path for us to take if we want to have any hope of being undetected. Unfortunately, there’s not only cameras doing the detecting. Chrome robots, these ones meaner than the regular citizens, are patrolling the space. They don’t appear to be armed, but appearances are often deceiving.

  With a thought, Elisa employs mana again, causing a soft glow to settle upon our bodies, swiftly dimming to nothing. Harrn and I both take in sharp breaths. Always has a kick, and she did not hold back one bit.

  Two point seven seconds later, we are entering the third room. Should I make speedrunning leaderboards for dungeons? Well, make mine public? Could be fun. Or the competition would draw out danger. Not like people hadn’t done it before, though. With the information age skipped, now fully into whatever the following is—someone more vain would perhaps think of it as the AI age—it’s only a matter of time until isolated events propagate to a wider audience.

  While I was pontificating the advantages and disadvantages of gamifying adventuring even further, the heist montage is nearly over. Would this be a montage in a heist movie? Maybe if the heist itself was secondary to the plot.

  Thanks to Harrn being quite proficient in puzzle solving, our time is still good. He even solved one of the puzzles faster than me, but I’m not telling him that. Ever. I mean, how am I supposed to know which expressive bust represents which painting. Art can evoke multiple emotions. ...I just told him. He was the one more embarrassed for some reason.

  As we exit room ten, we find out what we are stealing at last.

  “A computer of some kind?” I say while tapping my chin and squinting at the mess of tangled wires and displays populated with scrolling symbols.

  Elisa gently bumps into me. “Take your own advice, party leader.”

  “I’m always sharp.” A needle appears in my hand to punctuate my statement. “Punctuate. Get it?” One more bump.

  “What now?” Harrn asks.

  “Got us all the way here,” I say. “You get the honors.”

  Harrn anxiously approaches a blocky keyboard sticking out of the convoluted contraption. He presses the biggest button on it. The scrolling symbols disappear, leaving only black. In the next moment, a countdown starts.

  “Has no one told you not to press buttons you don’t know the function of?” I ask. Bump number three.

  Harrn ignores my comment. “Up or to the side?” he asks. Elisa points up.

  Armor snaps around both. The dwarf’s arm blurs, removing the roof of the building with a devastating strike. A platform of force lifts us up. When we pass a threshold, Elisa blinks us away but still close enough to watch.

  With a dull thump, a wall of nothingness grows into a sphere from the center of the facility we were just in. When it has consumed the building entirely, it collapses back into a single point, leaving the location looking like someone took a scoop out of the earth.

  “Any way we could have avoided that?” Harrn asks.

  “Don’t know,” I answer. “Depends on if this one turns out to be capricious or not.”

  “No incoming,” the dwarf supplies. “Maybe a self-destruct was one of the intended outcomes.”

  Elisa turns her head to Harrn. “You see that power surge?” He nods an affirmative. “It also had a very faint mana signature.”

  “Let’s go check it out,” I say.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  A warp places us in a desert, looking toward a towering red mountain. A kilometer radius around the mountain is filled with stretches of concertina wire, trenches swarming with armed robots, big tanks, bigger mechs, hovering craft, and a lot of mines.

  Elisa’s glass-like shield bubble blocks a railgun shot without getting a scratch. A battle plan was transmitted to both before the meter-long projectile left the weapon.

  From the unmoving elf’s barrier, rays of light connect with one of each type of enemy. A robot aiming a shot is evaporated away. A tank’s armor is melted through, and once the ray hits something important inside, the treaded vehicle loses a cupola. A mech, preparing to send another railgun shot our way, is eviscerated, falling flat on its face right after. A just-launched missile is detonated in midair, including the craft it came from.

  The combined firepower of the dungeon’s army impacts the archmage’s shield. A raging inferno is held back, but the effort necessary is evident to my mana senses.

  As constant detonations and impacts are mutedly hitting against the seemingly unbreakable surface, Elisa finally moves. A disinterested wave of her hand grows the defensive bubble. Within the expanded space, spears of crystal-clear ice form. Another wave. Each spear has found and destroyed a target. The still intact projectiles detonate, destroying a lot more targets.

  With a thought, trenches snap shut, the dry earth crumpling robot infantry like they are made of foil. Spikes of stone pierce and shred through the heavier forces.

  The fake star, baking the red desert, gets brighter, its light turns harsher and whiter. Whatever is touched by the illuminating rays bursts into flames.

  But even through the inferno, melted and scorched, the dungeon’s monsters continue their untiring assault. Hit after hit, explosion after explosion, are trying to break Elisa’s barrier, to get to us.

  Harrn doesn’t have any qualms with helping them out. The dwarf streaks out, barreling through the reduced enemies and for the reinforced mountain they are protecting. He punctures through a meters-thick metal gate and descends down the carved-out depths.

  When he emerges after no more than ten seconds, he sees a tranquil sea of melted metal. That is also on fire. A warp returns him to our side.

  Harrn tries to say something but his head whips up, interrupting himself.

  A rod, its speed so fast, has entered the atmosphere and is already touching Elisa’s shield. Instead of shattering itself or the magic, the rod passes through, transitioning from dull metal into a dark echo of itself, drinking in the now mellowing light. The rod of darkness impacts Elisa directly from above. Another echo, this one of the archmage, takes the full brunt of the ethereal attack.

  The station that sent the rod, high in the planet’s orbit, is silently eaten away by darkness from within, forever becoming a part of the void it was traversing.

  My blade appears in my hand. A figure shatters Elisa’s shield. Harrn tackles it away. Next time, pal, next time. My blade disappears back inside my fold.

  The elf directs some intent the dwarf’s way. Harrn tears the lethal-looking humanoid robot in two, throwing the pieces apart. Top half and bottom half attempt to merge back into one. Black tendrils slither out of the shadows they are casting on the red sands. Two pieces become a lot more.

  The chunks lose their cohesion, liquefying into a gray goo, attempting to reconstitute into the boss again. Elisa starts cycling freezing ice and blazing fire. When a mana crystal settles near our feet, and a gate out appears, the elf stops.

  When Harrn warps back to us, I ask Elisa, “How strong was it?”

  She takes off her helmet, answering dismissively, “Barely got through.”

  “What do you think?”

  “We can confidently assume that the technology variant expects you to have technology yourself.”

  The dwarf chimes in with a question, “Have the other variants started to adjust?”

  “No,” I answer. “It wouldn’t be fair.”

  He nods. “Anything?”

  “Nothing again.”

  Harrn hums. “Where’s the core?”

  Elisa warps us to the location.

  We are standing on the top floor of one of the tallest buildings. Glass walls show the city below, seen through broken up white clouds. The dungeon’s core is located on a plinth in the middle, hovering a centimeter in the air.

  I regard the swirling orb, filled with liquid chrome. My hand hesitates.

  Elisa gently takes it in her own. “There has never been a benevolent dungeon. Even the Announcer couldn’t resist his base instincts.”

  “But what if I can change that? What if I am murdering a nascent intellect who is a prisoner of their own existence? Unable to beg for their life.”

  Elisa guides my hand and places it on top of the sphere. “Do it.”

  I extend an invitation. Pure hatred answers back.

  Narilis blinks in and frantically places her hand on top of mine. A hushed whisper escapes out of her lips, “I can feel it. How are you... Elisa, hand. Now. Copy me.”

  The elf follows the command. She makes a soft gasp. Then she says words I can no longer hear.

  I gently prod at the connection. Hatred answers back again. And something else. Hunger. But a tiny sliver is hidden beneath that. Fear.

  “I’m here.”

  Fear subsides. Hatred no longer burns. Hunger licks at my mind.

  “Do you understand what you are?”

  No longer just three. Confusion. The connection strains. Anxiety. Withdrawal. But then, comprehension. Anger flares. Rejection.

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Fear overwhelming. Disgust. Sorrow and guilt. Pain. A single plea.

  I am standing before a twisting sphere of chrome, eclipsing my entire vision, or simply everything there is. Great jaws of hunger snap around my form. My hand grabs and pulls. The hunger squirms, writhes and wiggles. Cracks start running across the glossy exterior, freeing the chrome underneath, leaking like blood. A soundless scream begs for the pain to stop. I let go.

  My eyes open. There are two more fae and a dragon, all masters of mental magic, resting their hands on top of ours.

  “It’s okay. It will all be okay.” A shockwave of force shatters the core.

  As the connection fades, I feel gratitude and relief.

  ***

  Narilis lets go, her reflection crumpling lifelessly to the ground. My hand rests on the Spectator.

  Recognition. Curiosity. Remorse. Below the surface is a craving. And fear. And... understanding.

  “Are you in pain, Spectator?”

  I see an image of Narilis. Apprehension and joy.

  “Don’t worry. You can continue to have fun.”

  My hand pulls away, breaking the connection.