As soon as we entered the dungeon, we assumed fighting positions. Smitty in front, shield and spear at the ready, I behind with sword drawn, and a light spell in my hand. Cori crouched low, crossbow at the ready, situated to shoot around Smitty's shield, and Myth taking up the rear.

  We waited a moment, letting our senses adjust to the gloom. After experiencing a real dungeon, it was sort of a letdown, I admitted to myself. It smelled too clean, the sounds too regular, light spells working too well at fighting back the artificial darkness.

  How long would running in a simulation dungeon still benefit us? How long till only the real thing would improve our skills. No time to dwell on that. Focus.

  "Everyone good?" I whispered. Everyone responded softly in the affirmative. I tapped Smitty's back gently to signal her to advance down the hallway, slowly.

  I had come up with a series of silent signals with Smitty that all involved taps on her back, to indicate directions, as she felt in her role as defender, wouldn't allow her to turn her head to see other hand signals, and talking was too inefficient in a combat situation. I needed to figure out something with the others, but we never seemed to find time to settle all that.

  We moved slowly, up the hallway, checking corners, revealing small side chambers. Since we weren't focusing on treasure or such, we didn't bother with searching them other than to make sure we weren't being snuck up on. Cori was very good at ducking into them quickly, checking the roof and corners, and joining back up with our formations. It felt smooth when she did it. Professional.

  Every time I did drills with her, it just made me more and more curious about this short human with the farmer's accent.

  After returning to our group she held up a fist, signalling to stop, and I put my hand on Smitty's back to pass the message on.

  "What's going on?" I whispered.

  "Heard something up ahead. I think its hiding around the bend." She replied. I focused down the hallway, and could just make out the shadow of something poking out from the edge. I realized it was a blade, but what kind I couldn't tell. Whatever it was, it was too tall to be a dungeon goblin, imp, or anything else I could place.

  "What is that?" I muttered.

  Smitty sniffed before huffing in irritation, realizing that illusory monsters all smelled the same. It was something she kept forgetting, but given how important scent was to her, I understood.

  We waiting for a few moments before I gave the signal to move up. We slowly made our way forward, keeping our eye on the corner. We tried to keep quiet, hoping to get the drop on whatever it was, but the shadow we could see suddenly receded.

  "It left?" Myth asked, surprised. I nodded. I wasn't used to the monsters thinking tactically. This added some wrinkles to our excursion.

  "Keep your eyes peeled, and your head on a swivel. Something weird is going on, and I don't like it." I said quietly. We continued our slow advance and turned the corner, only to find even more corridors.

  I sighed. "Ok gals I think we'll need to pick up the pace. We'll run out of simulator time at the speed we're going."

  Smitty huffed. "More dangerous, yes, yes. But you're the boss!" She changed her stance, one that allowed her to move quicker but still keep her shield ready. Cori likewise changed, still keeping her eyes and head mobile, checking corners as we proceeded.

  Myth was getting more nervous. Even in the low light, I could see her starting to sweat, and her face had a creeping panic on it. I tapped on Smitty to get her to stop for a moment.

  "Are you ok, Myth? You look really freaked out. It's ok! It's all simulation, we won't get killed, we'll be fine." I put a hand on her shoulder.

  "I know, but something feels off? I'm not sure how to explain it. I feel like we're being watched, and I don't usually feel that in the simulator. I didn't even feel that in the real dungeon!" She whispered, her words coming out in a fearful torrent. I stopped, closed my eyes, and listened intently to see if there was something to her fear. I could hear our breathing. The movement of our equipment. There was something else, just on the edge of my senses that I couldn't pick out exactly.

  Machine noise? No. It was like wind through trees at night. Almost like a voice in the distance. Why was this familiar?

  The source popped into my head like a flash.

  "Wraiths!" I hissed, raising my sword, and turning just as one reached through the wall to swipe at my face.

  Wraiths were difficult creatures to fight. They could strike you and it hit like any normal blow, but you would often feel strange effects on your body afterwards, like dizziness or a sense of overwhelming dread that made you loose your nerve and run. Which, for Wraiths, was the best way to hunt you down and drain your life, as you would be too afraid to properly defend yourself. Striking them would work to dissipate them temporarily, but they would reform after a few moments and attack again.

  There were, however, a few tricks up my sleeve for handling them.

  Trick number one, salt. I reached into my pouch and grabbed a little pouch and threw it at the wraith that had reached for me. It screeched in pain and disappeared.

  Salt, for some reason, had a powerful effect on the undead, especially ghosts like wraiths. Other, more solid, undead would balk at it at minimum, and some weaker ones would take minor damage. Ghosts just fell apart at the touch of it.

  The problem was, where there was one ghost, there were dozens more, and salt was expensive, and after it touched a spirit, it wouldn't work again. Another one of those weird mysteries of life, I suppose.

  Which leads to trick number two. Enchanting weapons.

  "Ghostly foes flee from my sight, bless our blades with burning light!" I chanted, which caused our weapons to shimmer with a pale white light for a moment. This was a spell I had picked up specifically for handling the undead. It would allow you to strike spirits and injure other undead for a short time.

  "We should advance quickly. If we move slowly, we'll be a feast for any wraiths comin' through the walls. We need more room to fight." Cori suggested.

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  "Agreed. Ok girls, let's hustle!" I directly as we began jogging down the hallway, making an unholy racket with all of our armor jangling and clanking.

  A few wraiths tried to attack us, but our blessed weapons finished them off in short order as we made our way through. I had begun to notice a pattern in the hallways, though. Other than small side chambers, it kept turning to the right. Always to the right.

  I then realized we were in a spiral pattern. Spiral patterns weren't a good sign for a dungeon.

  Most dungeons have seemingly random patterns or patterns that seemed to mimic normal structures, but were wrong. These sorts of dungeons seemed to be focused on treasures or something of that nature. No one was quite sure why dungeons formed this way, but those kinds of dungeons were fairly simple to prune when it became necessary. You only had to find the core and do the job.

  Spiral dungeons, however, were a known and highly dangerous factor. A spiral dungeon was the domain of a powerful creature created by the dungeon to prevent access to the core. These dungeons grew at a ridiculous rate, had to be pruned constantly, and you couldn't get access to the core without defeating said creature, or colloquially known as The Boss.

  Which we were going to have to face. I was less than thrilled about this, but I suppose that's what I get for asking for a combat-heavy simulation.

  Eventually, we came across a large chamber, completely cloaked in darkness. We moved into a new formation, Myth in the middle, and the rest of us took up positions around her. As we each scanned the room, we could see wraiths hovering at the edges, passing through the walls into the chamber.

  Wraiths, for all the danger that they posed, always looked silly to me for some reason. They looked like see-through skeletons that someone had thrown a dirty, torn-up bedsheet over. In my mind, they were just sad, floating bones. I had to keep reminding myself that these were dangerous monsters and I shouldn't let appearances fool me, but the thought was always there.

  Despite my feelings about them, I was getting increasingly concerned.

  "Why are they not moving? They're just sitting there!" Myth whimpered.

  "Steady yourself! I don't know exactly what is going on, but be ready." I snapped back at her. I appreciated the fact she was scared, and she was doing well to make it this far without her herbs, but I couldn't have her falling apart now.

  One by one, around the chamber, torches lit up until every part of the room was aglow in the flickering red of fire.

  "Friends, we have a problem!" Smitty growled, and we turned to look.

  In the center of the room was a figure on a throne made of smooth-cut stone. It was a tall figure, much taller than any of us, glad in night black armor. In one hand it held a sword, in the other a helmet. From what I could tell whatever it was had no head. Then, eyes lit up in the slit of the helmet, a black mist began flowing from the neck hole of the armor.

  As it began to rise slowly, it finally dawned on me what we were fighting, and why the wraiths were waiting. It was a Dullahan, a powerful undead of a classification of undead called a Soul Eater Lord.

  I was going to have to complain about this. This was far above and beyond what I thought I had requested. I really should have double-checked my simulator use request.

  No matter, it was time to act! I recast my weapon blessings on everyone's gear, and everyone began to move.

  Smitty ran forward, her shield spike driving down into the stone, banging on her shield to get its attention while Cori and I began to move for its flanks. I saw Myth freeze for a moment, her eyes transfixed on the black armored horror before her. To her credit, she quickly snapped out of it, and began a chant I recognized as a bolstering charm on Smitty, a spell to help maintain our defender's stamina. She was going to need it.

  With no fanfare or lead-up, the dullahan swung its sword down on Smitty's shield, which rang like a bell at the strike. If it hadn't been for the spike, she would have likely been thrown across the room.

  Smitty responded with a strike of her spear, which sizzled and sparked when it made contact with the Dullahan, an effect of the blessing. Her strikes weren't doing much damage overall, but she wasn't trying to. She was doing her best to keep it focused on her.

  Cori quickly moved around to it's rear, using the throne as cover and took shots at its joints. Since it was an undead spirit, it wasn't likely to notice; however, the armor it wore was solid enough, and her bolts were hampering its movements.

  Meanwhile, I kept sending bolts of force magic, again not enough to truly damage it, but it was keeping it off balance so it couldn't get strong hits on Smitty. My main goal, however, was to keep it off balance enough to get to its weak point, its helmet.

  From what I could remember from our class on Dungeon Monsters, if a dullahan got separated from its head, it would lose some of its durability. If by some chance I could destroy it, maybe it would weaken even more.

  We kept this cycle up, each of us doing our part. It was going swimmingly. Time for the next part of the plan.

  "Smitty, bash it!" I cried out, and Smitty disengaged her shield spike and rushed the dullahan, shoving it in the torso, causing it to stumble, its bolt-choked joints making it nearly impossible to correct itself. It fell to the floor, and I dashed forward and grabbed the helmet and moved as far from it as I could.

  I set it on the floor and cast a spell to strengthen my sword to crack the thing open like a melon.

  "Gods below of bitter hell, strength now this mortal shell!" The power flowed from within me and into my blade, and with a powerful strike, I cleaved the helm in twain. From it, a black mist rose, the red eyes still glowing within. The armored form thrashed and buckled, and the misty being cried out in what I could only call pain and rage.

  I couldn't help but cover my ears, the sound was so shrill and piercing, it hurt. I couldn't imagine how much Smitty was suffering right now. Elves had sharp senses, but they couldn't hold a candle to a Kobold's.

  It eventually stopped, and all I could hear was a sharp ringing in my ears. My sense of balance was all off, and I found it hard to stand. Some kind of debilitating final attack? I hadn't heard of such things from a Dullahan. And why were the Wraiths just standing there?

  I tried to get my eyes to focus, to check on my companions, but I just couldn't think straight. They seemed to be stumbling around likewise. I tried to remember a spell to cure such effects, but I couldn't get my voice to work. My spells required a poetic chant to work, and if I couldn't talk, I couldn't cast anything more than the most basic of attack spells.

  My legs finally gave up on me. My vision slowly corrected itself as I sat dazed on the floor, and I saw a sight that filled me with dread. The Dullahan stood up, the black mist having taken the once-empty spot of its head. The bolts that had been stuck in its joints caught fire, wreathed in black flame, before turning to dust.

  It glared at us with naked disdain, and it raised a gauntleted fist. With the motion, the wraiths that had been lurking at the edge began to shriek and lose their form, becoming a sickly smoke that drew towards the open hand of the being before us, congealing into a ball of blackened energy.

  I didn't know what this was, but it didn't match any kind of dullahan I had read about.

  Smitty struggled back to her feet and tried to strike the armored creature, but it batted her aside. It raised the globe of darkness, and I could feel waves of dread emanating from it as I felt weaker and weaker. I couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I had to save them. My friends. I had to-

  And my mind suddenly snapped to at the sound of the klaxon horn. The being froze, turned to blue light, and disappeared. The darkness of the dungeon was replaced by bright lights, and the walls receded into the floor around us.

  We all shakily stood, and I stumbled over to check on everyone. Myth seemed deeply shaken and pale but she was standing on her own power.

  Kugarth approached us. "Better luck next time, students. Get checked out at the medical station by the lockers, just in case, and then hit the showers. It was a good try, but you need a bit more experience before trying that again."

  I turned to him, my throat full of rage. "What the hell was the Kugarth?! We're year one students! First semester even! Why was that so hard?"

  He looked down at me with a pitying expression. "You requested heavy combat, level 7."

  He handed me the clipboard. "It was supposed to be level 1!"

  I looked at the clipboard and scowled. It was my handwriting, but someone had ever so slightly altered the number one to look like a seven. I wanted to scream accusations, demand recompense, and demand revenge, but I knew that without proof, it would not only go nowhere, but I might also get punished.

  I took a deep breath to try to wrangle whatever level of calmness I could manage and stormed off, my companions left behind. I didn't even stop in the lockers or by the medical station.

  I marched out to the plaza outside the simulation hall and screamed the loudest, foulest elven curse I could think of.