The Guild Hall was bathed in lantern light. Streaks of yellow and gold reflected off of the marble tile and the crystalline chandeliers. At the same time, the lantern light flickered across the oak desks and the polished countertops.

  It was the end of the night. The gigantic moon hung overhead, just shy of full; and the Guild experienced a rare instance of quiet. There were still some workers around, of course; the sound of clinking glasses and clattering plates echoed between the columns that held the Guild Hall together.

  In addition to the auxiliary staff, such as the cleaners, cooks, servers and barmaids, the Guild Master was still present as well.

  He sat in his office with his door adjunct; Hyzen loved ignoring his duties. For most of the day, he gazed through his adjunct door. He people-watched, eavesdropped, and overheard.

  And if he wasn’t doing one of those three, then he was instead bothering his apprentice, Martha. Sometimes he’d make up a ridiculous quest for her and send her packing. Other times he’d bombard her with pointless questions like why the moon had so many holes like cheese or if there was life beyond the stars?

  Martha didn’t mind, though, as her paycheck was tied to his. Work or not, as long as the Guild didn’t literally collapse overnight, the two would receive their heyday with little effort.

  Unfortunately for Hyzen, Martha had already gone home, and with the Guild mostly empty, it was the one time of day Hyzen actually committed to reviewing the Guild’s endless mound of paperwork.

  So with the sound of glass against ceramic playing in the background, Hyzen loosely flipped through the papers sprawled before him. He read their headlines and skimmed their abstracts, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anymore.

  The day had taken its toll on him. Whether it be the golden idiot or the blue boy of sunshine, Hyzen suddenly discovered that his plate was full.

  For the time being, Hyzen chose to ignore the Empire’s messenger boy. Even if they hadn’t passed the caravan on their way here, Hyzen was confident it had arrived in the capital. If it hadn’t….

  Well, as was said, Hyzen chose to temporarily forgo that concern. Instead, his attention was fixed on Blue’s message.

  What had happened to the southern fields?

  The fields themselves were not property of the Guild. In fact, they belonged to the Viscount and were ‘financed’ in a sense to many of the commoners that had recently relocated to the newly formed townscape.

  It was genius, really. At least Hyzen thought.

  This way, the Viscount could retain ownership over the land — he could tax it, reclaim it, or even demand what was planted in it — all while he didn’t have to protect it or work it.

  After ten harvests, the land would become the commoners. This was the ‘financing’ mentioned earlier. In essence, the Viscount lent out his land in exchange for tilling it; and for the next ten harvests the Viscount would claim 80% of the haul while the tillers could keep or resell the rest.

  The Guild was involved because, as the Viscount was not responsible for protecting the fields, the commoner’s instead turned towards the adventurers. They posted quests in the Guild Hall requesting for protection, services, and overall care.

  Thus, the fields were owned by the Viscount, worked by the commoners, and protected by the adventurers. It was a win-win-win for all parties involved — except for when one party screwed the pooch; and now, it was suddenly Hyzen’s job to fix it.

  Tomorrow’s job to fix it. Hyzen corrected.

  The lone Guild Master sighed. It was getting late.

  So instead of finishing his work, Hyzen scooped up the loose papers across his desk and shoved them into his drawers.

  As aforementioned, he’d work on it tomorrow.

  Hyzen grabbed his bag and slung it over his shoulder. He left his office and strolled through the empty Guild Hall; it was so quiet that his boots clacked upon the marble and echoed throughout the Hall.

  As he made his way towards the Guild’s grand oak doors, his gaze fell upon a face he didn’t recognize. Behind one of the lesser-used counters stood a young woman; her auburn hair was tied in a loose braid behind her and her eyes were focused intently on the ledger in front of her.

  She wore the Guild’s standard attendant uniform, but it seemed to fit her differently — more elegantly — as though she had tailored it herself.

  Hyzen paused. His curiosity was piqued.

  He leaned casually against the counter with his homburg hat tipped forward further than normal. Then, he flashed her a rugged grin.

  “Well, well, well…” he drawled, his voice smooth with an undertone of amusement.

  “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. New to the Guild, are we? Or have I simply been too busy to notice such a radiant presence?”

  The woman looked up, startled but not unkindly. Her eyes, a striking shade of green, met his with a mixture of surprise and mild exasperation.

  “I’ve been here a week already, Guild Master.” She replied. Her tone was polite yet firm.

  “Though I suppose it’s easy to miss someone when you’re rarely at your desk.” She smiled.

  Hyzen chuckled, undeterred.

  “A week, you say? And yet you already know my habits? I must say, I’m impressed. Tell me, do you have a name to match that sharp tongue of yours?”

  Before she could respond, the Guild’s doors burst open with a resounding crash. An adventurer rushed in, breathless and wide-eyed; his cloak was disheveled and his boots were marred with mud.

  “Guild Master!” He gasped whilst clutching his side.

  “You’re needed — immediately! Something’s happened on the first floor of the dungeon!”

  Hyzen’s playful demeanor vanished in an instant, replaced by a look of resolute focus. He straightened his posture and turned towards the adventurer.

  “What’s happened? Speak! Quickly!” He ordered.

  “The floor Boss…” he hesitated, “it’s — it’s gone.”

  Hyzen’s eyes widened in shock, but he quickly brushed off the surprise and nodded along. He glanced back at the woman behind the counter, his earlier flirtation replaced by a brief, apologetic smile.

  “Duty calls, I’m afraid. We’ll have to continue this conversation another time.” The Guild Master removed his hat and placed it over his heart.

  In response, she raised an eyebrow whilst a smile tugged at her lips.

  “I’ll hold you to that, Guild Master.”

  Then, the Guild Master left with the adventurer, and the Guild’s auxiliary staff continued to work underneath the rising tension of impending action.

  The woman watched him go, her expression thoughtful, before she returned her gaze to the ledger.

  Outside, the night air was crisp, and fog from the sea pervaded through the town’s cobblestone streets. Hyzen’s stride quickened as he plunged into the depthless fog, his mind focused on the task at hand.

  Three interruptions! Hyzen recounted.

  Ridiculous!

  ***

  Due to the slight hiccup of Smoky’s form, Erin found himself with a slew of decisions to make. For one, he couldn’t simply leave the infant squirrel as the floor’s final Boss. Although he did not doubt the future capabilities of the squirrel, he was sure — after just observing him for the past hour — that Smoky’s mind had reverted to infancy as well.

  The baby squirrel ran around the first floor with juvenile enthusiasm. He tackled the Bat-Apes and playfully fought with each of them. Smoky even tugged at the acorns embedded in the walls; he clawed, nibbled, and licked them — anything and everything in an attempt to pry the acorns from the stone's grasp.

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  Clearly, Smoky was temporarily unfit to perform his duties. As a result, Erin led him further into the dungeon. For the time being, Smoky could patrol the second floor’s canyon, collecting the scraps that plummeted into the void from the adventurers above.

  Erin still needed a replacement, however, and with his recent advancements in magic, he had ambitions that stretched beyond mere bats.

  Erin had no issue with the bats; they had served him well, after all. From the bats, Erin propagated the Bat-Apes, the Batarangs, and the Vesperclaw.

  The Bat-Apes and Batarangs had already served their purpose. They were beginner beasts. They lacked magic and tactics. They were brutes. Simple as that.

  The Vesperclaw offered a little more. It was bigger, grander, and with the combination of a wobbly bridge — the Vesperclaw offered environmental utility that the other bat-spawn lacked.

  Overall, Erin was quite fond of the Vesperclaw. In a sense, he viewed it as his magnum opus — it was, by all means, the pinnacle of a bat’s evolution. It did everything a normal bat did, but better.

  Meanwhile, the other two — the Bat-Apes and Batarangs — their evolutions were a balancing act. To make the Bat-Apes bigger Erin sacrificed their mobility. Likewise, to make the Batarangs faster Erin sacrificed their mass.

  In other words, Erin viewed the Vesperclaw as a complete evolution. The Bat-Apes and Batarangs, on the other hand, were flawed. They were merely created to serve a specific purpose and, as such, were incomplete evolutions.

  Since Erin didn’t want to mess with the bat’s genomes any further — and he couldn’t exactly have a Vesperclaw as the Boss for both the first and second floors — then he needed to create something new.

  Something that stood on par with Smoky’s previous peak. Something that, hopefully, coincided with the acorn theme Erin had spent so much time designing.

  But what? Erin asked himself.

  Squirrels didn’t exist on this side of the globe, apparently, and without them — what the hell else had to do with acorns?

  Screw acorns. Erin thought.

  What the hell else was even related to nuts? Was there any other creature with an identity so tied to legumes that they would fit within the Acorn Halls?

  Erin wracked his brain, but he couldn’t think of any. Presumably, there were more species in this world than his last, but then again, knowing that was pointless if Erin didn’t know the new species to begin with.

  Whilst brainstorming, Erin thought of the oak forest spread above his dungeon.

  Why don’t I simply observe what eats the acorns? Erin thought.

  So in a flash, Erin’s consciousness appeared between the towering oaks that littered the land. The birds chirped sporadically, enchanting the forest with an upbeat tune one could sing along to.

  The breeze rustled the leaves and spread through the grass. Butterflies and bees fluttered through the trees. They intermingled between the wild flowers that grew underneath the oaks and the dandelions that swayed atop the grassy fields.

  It was night. The moon hung overhead and illuminated the land. Erin found it strange that the bird’s were awake, but after observing for another hour — he had his answer.

  The bird’s that chirped at night did it as a diversion. The chirping awoke the forest and convinced its inhabitants — those that lived beneath the soil — that it was day.

  When the creatures that lived in burrows rounded their heads out into the world — the bird’s struck; they plummeted from the branches above and plucked snakes, rabbits, and some foreign strange worms alike.

  For a few hours, Erin solely observed.

  During his observation, he noticed the unrest among the Guild. One of the stationed adventurers posted outside of his dungeon had left. A party of four had entered about an hour ago. They obviously discovered the empty Boss Room and, as such, delivered word to the stationed adventurers.

  It took Erin barely a tenth of his mental fortitude to track the adventurer’s mana down the mountain and into town. He ran through the streets desperately and, due to the heavy fog, even got lost on the way to the Guild Hall.

  With another tenth of his mind, Erin glimpsed into the Guild. Hyzen was working late tonight — an unfortunate rarity.

  What to do... What to do…? Erin rummaged through his thoughts.

  He couldn’t close his dungeon. He had tried that already long ago. It appeared as though Erin was forbidden from cutting off the routes that led to his core. He could hide his core behind chains, bars, fire, and hell, but if a pathway didn’t exist for the mana to cycle — Erin would die.

  He would choke, essentially. Like a human cut off from oxygen, Erin needed an open pathway to the surface in order to 'breathe' its mana.

  Even if he could close his dungeon, Erin didn’t want to react anymore than he already had. To put it another way, Erin had been a fool.

  He should have never moved the manacorns after they were discovered.

  Well, I should have never created them to begin with.

  To create a lure one must first desire something, and desire was something no other dungeon possessed. Erin learned about it just recently in the library; the breadth with which dungeons could obtain.

  According to history, dungeon’s had been around longer than man. With the dungeon’s came mana, and as the dungeon’s grew stronger they spewed more and more mana out into the world, but eventually — the dungeon’s collapsed.

  Without man to step in to manage them, the dungeon’s fell one after another and the monsters that were raised beneath the surface exploded out unto the world.

  As the dungeon’s slowly decayed over time, so too did the mana that they released. So in theory, for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, dungeon’s rose and fell like empires and spread their dying influence among the surface world.

  As a result, thousands of years later, the world found itself pumped to the gills with mana both new and old.

  Erin wasn’t sure if the human’s could differentiate between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mana. To them, it might all be the same, but to Erin — it’s like the difference between Heaven and Earth.

  The old, decayed mana was sluggish and impure. It taxed Erin’s very being, like crawling through sludge, and Erin was very limited with what he could do with it directly.

  On the other hand, the mana that Erin himself produced was fresh and light. It was easily malleable and flowed like a currant of water through Erin’s very grasp.

  The point in bringing this up, however, had to do with the widely regarded and accepted limitations imposed upon dungeons. These were essentially ‘rules’ that most, if not all of the dungeon’s both past and present seemed to follow.

  Highlighted in bold, italicized and underlined — the John Hancock on the list of rules — written proudly front and center — was the world’s greatest restriction imposed upon dungeons:

  Dungeons cannot be autonomous.

  In layman's tongue, dungeon’s could not be intelligent. They had no identity and no consciousness. Dungeon’s were merely the cell wall that protected the life within them.

  For the most part, with over 90% of the dungeons included, they unanimously operated like some sort of program. Over the thousands of years that humans had studied them, they began to decode the program that dungeon’s seemed to abide by.

  Due to this, most dungeon’s could be considered predictable. For example, no matter a dungeon’s rank, the first floor was always the smallest.

  The first floor also never carried more than one hundred foes. Moreover, a dungeon’s fifth floor consistently had something referred to as a ‘Mini Boss’ and a dungeon’s tenth floor always expressed a qualitative leap in difficulty.

  Over the centuries, of course, enough rules and patterns had emerged to fill a book’s worth of pages, but to Erin, these rules were meaningless.

  Thankfully, there existed a classification for dungeons that stood beyond the typical limitations; these were known as unique dungeons.

  Unique, in the literal sense, that they did not follow most, if not any of the aforementioned rules and regulations.

  Unique dungeons were, to a human’s understanding, complete oddballs. Each seemed to operate under the guise of their own rules, and yet still, after centuries of attempted contact and thousands of hours of research — none possessed anything close to autonomy.

  They were mindless mana factories that sucked in mana and churned out more floors and more beasts all in an effort to protect the heart of the operation — their core.

  The only difference was the means in which they did so. Unique dungeons were notorious for their unique defense applications, such as the Elve’s Uncanny Valley which projected a person’s greatest fears unto reality, floor by floor, until their heart’s turned numb and their head’s erred on the side of suicide.

  The Uncanny Valley remained, to this day, the only dungeon to have never personally claimed a life; as it instead coerced its adventurers to do it themselves.

  What did all this mean for Erin, however; as the Oakroot Catacombs were regarded as a unique dungeon, and yet Erin had already broken the cardinal rule. He had expressed desire; emotion; autonomy; intelligence.

  Erin should have never tried to lure anything.

  He should have never made his first floor so peculiar.

  And he certainly should have never depicted language and drawings upon the nest of the second floor’s Boss.

  But the past is the past. What’s done is done.

  So far, the human’s were none the wiser. Sure, they found the moving of the manacorns odd, the writings upon the walls concerning, and the eerily human design of the dungeon unsettling; though thankfully, humans were remarkably unreliable.

  They were too smart for their own britches.

  Humans had a bad habit of needing to understand the incomprehensible. In doing so, they often created rabbit holes that led to nowhere; or simply lied and made something up.

  And it was the latter far more than it was the former.

  So, Erin needed to redirect them. He needed to hand deliver them crumbs that led to other explanations, other possibilities for why the dungeon did what it did.

  All future stuff, of course.

  For now, Erin observed the forest. The messenger had made it to the Guild and Hyzen was on his way to the dungeon.

  Just in time. Erin thought.

  As he had finally discovered the perfect being to replace Smoky’s tenure. Hopefully, if Erin worked fast, he could set it up before Hyzen arrived.

  Erin would just love to give one of his old friends a pleasant surprise.