The trio moved quickly through the broad hallway, the smooth, bioluminescent walls casting a steady, pale glow that illuminated their path. Despite the relative silence, the air felt thick with the weight of the mountain above them.

  Aiven adjusted the strap of his pack, his eyes darting toward the ceiling every time he heard a distant rumble. "Pelka," he began, his voice echoing slightly. "How are we supposed to navigate this place? If the dungeon is sentient and can shift its own hallways, we’re essentially walking through a living maze that doesn't want us to find the exit."

  Pelka, who was walking with her head buried in her data-tablet, didn't look up. "It’s a valid concern, Sir Aiven. But even a sentient dungeon like the Sunken Fane has its limits. It’s not a god; it’s a biological-magical engine."

  She paused to adjust her glasses. "Dungeons operate on mana pools, just like mages. Shifting internal geometry, and especially summoning high-tier guardians... it all takes a heavy toll on the core’s resources. Every time the dungeon changes a wall or manifests a beast, it’s spending currency it can’t easily replenish."

  Aiven frowned. "But this dungeon houses the Loom-Breaker. An artifact that can unmake any seal in existence. Doesn't the Fane have access to a massive mana pool? It should be able to keep this up forever."

  "A huge pool, yes," Pelka conceded, her ears twitching. "But not an infinite one. These kinds of dungeons have a very specific survival instinct: they isolate and eradicate the strongest threat first. It’s a matter of efficiency. Why waste mana on three 'weak' intruders when there is a 'virus' in the system capable of deleting the entire hardware?"

  Aiven stopped walking as the pieces of the puzzle clicked together. "Virelle."

  "Exactly," Pelka nodded, her expression grave. "The three of us were teleported away, and we're all fine. The monsters sent to kill us—like that gorilla—were strong, but they weren't mythical-level. They were 'low-cost' solutions. The Sunken Fane is focusing the vast majority of its resources on isolating and exhausting Miss Virelle. It knows that if she reaches the core, the game is over."

  Aiven felt a cold spike of worry in his chest. He looked back toward the direction they had come from, imagining Virelle alone, covered in the blood of boss-tier monsters, fighting an entire dungeon by herself. "So she’s taking the brunt of everything."

  "She is," Pelka said softly. "But honestly? After seeing her erase that three-headed lion, I believe she can handle almost anything the Fane throws at her. In fact, if my hypothesis is true, it’s only a matter of time before the dungeon exhausts its immediate mana reserves trying to stop her. She isn't just fighting; she's a drain on the building's very lifeblood."

  "Pelka is right," the Lion added, looking down the long, empty corridor. "We’ve been walking for a while now, and yet there have been no traps. No hidden mana-wires, no pressure plates. It's almost too quiet."

  Pelka checked the reading on her wrist-gauge and then looked at Aiven’s left arm. "The Aetheric Echo is silent, isn't it?"

  Aiven lifted the Armvil Mark 4. "Nothing. Not even a vibration."

  "Then it’s safe for now," Pelka decided, her ears perking up. "The Fane is so preoccupied with Miss Virelle that it has stopped 'caring' about our sector. We don't even need to waste time deploying the trap-detecting spiders. Which means..." She looked at Aiven with a glimmer of hope. "...we should be able to reach the Loom-Breaker without much danger."

  "All that’s left is to figure out where 'there' is," Aiven noted. "How do we find it in a place with no maps?"

  Pelka reached into her suit jacket and pulled out a small, brass device that looked like a compass crossed with a pressure gauge—a high-density mana-meter.

  "Strong artifacts like the Loom-Breaker are usually guarded inside a primary chamber, surrounded by either high-mana traps or a legendary-class beast," Pelka explained, tapping the glass face of the meter. "In a normal situation, this device wouldn't be very useful because the entire dungeon is saturated with mana. But right now? Since the Fane is concentrating its power in two specific spots—Miss Virelle’s location and the Artifact’s resting place—the readings will be skewed."

  She held the meter out. The needle was vibrating violently toward the north. "If this reads a high mana concentration, it’s either the hall where Miss Virelle is currently fighting for her life, or it's the Loom-Breaker. Either way, it's a win for us."

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  Pelka looked at Vane and Aiven, her bangs hiding her eyes but her voice sounding more resolute. "Ideally, we find Miss Virelle first. Because if we stumble into a legendary-class monster guarding that artifact... I don't think the three of us have enough firepower to walk back out."

  Aiven nodded, his grip tightening on his short sword. "Then let's follow the needle. We're getting her back."

  The carnage was absolute. In the center of the hall, the remains of mythical and boss-class monsters were scattered. Some got covered in light before dissolving into nothingness. Virelle stood in the center of the dissolving remains, her breathing audible.

  The Sunken Fane, however, showed no signs of surrender.

  As the dust of the previous guardians settled, the floor groaned. Three new summoning circles—larger and more complex than the last—erupted into life. From the light emerged creatures that usually required multiple parties of Class A adventurers to even stall: a Twin-Headed Chimera wreathed in black lightning and a Frost-Giant with skin like glacier-glass.

  Virelle didn't wait for them to roar. Her eyes flared with a manic, lethal intensity.

  "Still more?" she hissed, her voice cracking.

  She threw her arms out. A barrage of mana slashes cut through the lightning of the Chimera, followed instantly by a forest of large mana spears that rained from the ceiling to pin the Frost-Giant in place. She didn't stop to admire her work. She pivoted, a concentrated mana beam shrieking from her palm to pierce the heart of the Chimera while simultaneously snapping her fingers to trigger a chain lightning spell that arced between the remaining threats.

  Whenever a monster fell and the hall offered a heartbeat of reprieve, Virelle would unleash a violent blast—not at a creature, but at the wall. She was trying to blast through the dungeon's very skin, flying at high velocities through the holes she made, desperately calling out for Aiven.

  But the Sunken Fane was clever. As soon as she breached a wall, the stone would groan and shift, the corridors reconfiguring themselves in a sickening display of self-repair. The hall she had just exited would be replaced by a solid barrier, or the path she took would loop back into another combat arena.

  Virelle skidded to a halt in mid-air, her chest heaving. She could feel it now—a dull, heavy ache in her core. Her breathing was jagged and heavy. It was a sensation she loathed, one entirely alien. Soloing multiple mythical-class monsters back-to-back while simultaneously attempting to dismantle a sentient, high-class dungeon was beginning to take a physical toll.

  This is a battle of resilience, she realized, wiping a smear of monster blood from her cheek. It is a question of whose mana pool is deeper. Mine, or this stupid dungeon’s.

  She knew she had the power to end this. If she stopped playing the dungeon’s game—stopped fighting the distractions—she could focus entirely on sensing the dungeon core. She could brute-force her way through every wall, flying at her maximum speed toward the heart of the island to unmake it.

  But as she looked at the next set of monsters manifesting in the distance, her heart hammered against her ribs with a different kind of fear.

  What if I ignore them? she thought, her magenta eyes darting toward the shifting walls. What if the monsters I leave behind find their way to Master? Without her there to erase them, Aiven would be defenseless against mythical-class threats.

  The realization was a chokehold. She couldn't truly focus in finding the core because she had to move while culling the herd.

  It was a deadlock. A battle of endurance where the dungeon held all the cards, and Virelle was slowly, inevitably, running out of time.

  Aiven, Vane, and Pelka navigated the shifting stone corridors, following the erratic twitching of Pelka's meter. As they moved deeper into the fane's inner sanctum, the silence grew oppressive.

  Thrum.

  Aiven's humerus bone gave a sharp, low-frequency ache. He winced, holding his left arm. "The Aetheric Echo," he whispered. "The vibration... it's getting stronger."

  The hall ahead of them opened into a massive chamber. As they stepped inside, the bioluminescence revealed a gruesome sight. The floor was littered with the dried, desiccated remains of several mythical-class creatures. A humongous elephant-like creature with rocky skin and gigantic tusks lay in the corner, its massive, stony hide cracked; nearby, a monster that looked like a giant snake with multiple-heads was dried up.

  Pelka scanned the room, the needle on her meter spinning in a complete circle. "This hall... it's too empty," she whispered, her voice trembling. "The mana signature is huge, but Miss Virelle isn't here. And this isn't the chamber for the Loom-Breaker. This is just... a graveyard."

  Aiven felt a cold draft on the back of his neck. A sensation of being watched—not by the dungeon, but by a predatory, singular mind—made the hair on his arms stand up.

  Thud. Thud.

  Before Aiven could even say anything, he heard the sickeningly soft sound of bodies hitting the floor. He looked back to see Pelka and Vane slumped on the stone, their eyes rolled back, unconscious before they could even draw a weapon.

  Standing directly behind them was a figure Aiven remembered with a visceral, instinctive terror.

  She was slender and pale, her white hair—usually loose—now tied into high twin-tails that swayed as she tilted her head. She wore the same dark coat accented with crimson, and her eyes were twin pools of malicious, blood-red light.

  Sylphaine.

  The vampire girl showed a mischievous, wide-eyed smile, her sharp fangs glinting against the pale glow of the room. She stepped over Vane's massive, unconscious form as if he were nothing more than a rug.

  "Hello, human," Sylphaine purred, her voice a lazy, melodic drawl that echoed through the silence of the graveyard. She idly tapped a slender finger against her chin. "I need your help with a little project of mine. And unfortunately for you... refusing is not an option."