Our party collapsed on the ground, panting for breath. Wisps of smoke rose from the first floor, wafting out on the low ceiling.

  {Ardenidi Aegis X: 0:00}

  Ardenidi’s shield of mana melted apart. “Anybody know what happened?”

  “This core is insane,” Toya grumbled, pushing himself from the ground. “The floor below was made of sponges soaked in oil. But it wouldn’t cause a chain reaction because the oil was so far inside the sponges. Sparks or even explosions would only scorch the stone outside. However, if the sponges were soaked in oil, they’d swell up, forming a chain just waiting to blow the whole dungeon to pieces.”

  He wiped the ash from his face. “How much mana must it use to build an entire floor all over again?”

  Ardenidi punched the springy ground on the second floor, finding a film of oil over her knuckles. “Huh. Looks like this place could explode too.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” Sip groaned. He flopped on his face, partially unconscious and wafting smoke.

  “I’m doing the best I can!” Soise snapped back in a shrill voice. “My board detects danger through hostile intention. Spears, explosives are made to hurt people, but oil is just…oil!”

  Catania rubbed the back of her head. A lump was forming where she’d dented her helmet. “Stupid cores and their stupid traps. Grind, you good?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. “And it’s not as bad as it looks. The dungeon floors are separated by actual stone to prevent—”

  Everyone glared at me.

  “No helping!” Ardenidi hissed. She cleared her throat. “But yes, as long as we survive the explosion we could just climb up the stone border of the dungeon to the next floor.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Catania asked. She got to her feet and started walking. “Someone grab Sip.”

  Soise huffed, clutching his ankle and dragging him along. “If there’s oil in the dungeon itself, couldn’t we light it ourselves in controlled bursts? We could prevent the floor from exploding by using up all the fuel.”

  “Maybe?” Catania shook her head. “I don’t know how much that’d help.”

  “Do you guys smell something?” Sip murmured in delirium. “Smoke?”

  We turned around the corner to a basin of flaming oil.

  Everyone stared.

  Soise turned around. “Back this way!”

  Unfortunately, the way back led to a dead end. I glanced at a gray sponge, bloated to droop downward.

  “Do you smell anything now?” Toya asked.

  Sip shook his head from where he lay. “Not really.”

  “Not oil?”

  He took another big whiff. “Just smoke.”

  Toya pressed against the sponge in the ceiling, releasing a few drops. “Water.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Catania asked.

  Soise threw out her hand in vain. “WAIT!”

  By that point, Catania was already in the air, flattening the sponge with a punch. The entire ceiling gushed with water, pooling up at our feet.

  Toya smacked his face. “Idiot.”

  As water was denser than oil, it displaced the oil in the sponges beneath our feet, pooling into a film on the floor. Since the trapdoor was on a raised block of stone, the oil couldn’t even drain.

  “We’re going to need more of those cleansing potions,” Toya muttered. “Seriously, Catania, what were you thinking? We needed that!”

  Catania took off her helmet, wading film through the inches of oil that’d built around our platform. “I was just trying to put out the fire!”

  Toya and Ardenidi grimaced.

  “Catania, you do not put water on a grease fire.” Ardenidi mimicked an explosion with her hands.

  “W-why would that make anything explode?” Catania muttered, “water puts out fires. Everybody knows that.”

  “Not oil fires.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  The oil drained into the sponges in the walls, soaking them.

  Sip drank a potion, removing the ridiculous amount of oil that’d soaked into his hair and robes. “You guys need to think outside the box.” He sat up with immense effort. “Literally, I might add. Catania did the right thing. The entrance is below us.”

  Everyone glanced at the trapdoor, which was still leaking smoke into the room.

  “Really?” Soise asked. “You’re sure.”

  “I know how puzzles work.” Sip adjusted his robes. “Would someone please carry me? I’m very fragile.”

  Catania picked him up like a sack of potatoes, peering over the trapdoor. “There’s nothing below us.”

  “That’s what the Core wants you to think. Just grab the edge of the trapdoor and hang outside.

  Ardenidi stuck a mushroom on the underside of the granite ceiling, blossoming out in a thick platform of fungus, which—after lowering our health—we clambered onto.

  Sip started fishing through his inventory, dropping to the shroomy floor. “I just need to buy something real quick. No issue.”

  Soise looked over the side to the smoldering wasteland below. “Sip? There’s nothing here.”

  “Of course not,” he stated. “Everything blew up.”

  Sip struck a match on the wall, tossing it through the trapdoor before he slammed the door shut.

  “We just needed to leave the blast radius,” He stated.

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  There was a tremendous shudder, rocking our platform, forcing Ardenid and Toya to shoot out additional supports before everything fell apart.

  Catania choked. “What—”

  Sip opened the door, leading us into the flaming husk of the second floor. “Ordered, cooked, and served.”

  The entire area was obliterated.

  I blinked, genuinely surprised that it worked. “There’s no way this was the intended solution, right?”

  “Oh absolutely not,” Sip chuckled, pointing out where the basin of fire had been only moments before, now a ring of crumpled ash and blackened sponges, reduced to dust. “That pool of flaming oil was being fed from a sponge’s reservoir, meaning it would probably burn for weeks before refueling. We were supposed to carry water from over there—” he pointed at the other end. “To displace the oil, so yes, Catania had the right idea. It would cause explosive fire, but that would burn up all the oil as well, so as long as we rationed the water out and had some decent protection from the fireball, water could have worked.”

  He grinned. “As you can see from the blocks of sponges, the Core kept real stone around the oil, to prevent the entire floor exploding, but it certainly didn’t expect us to displace oil from the floor into the walls, soaking just enough of the floor to cause a chain reaction with the rooms around us, skipping all the other very clever and certainly challenging puzzles we would have faced.”

  He puffed out his chest. “You’re welcome by the way.”

  Soise stared. “You know…I always forget you’re more competent than you look.”

  “Thank you—” he choked. “What’s that supposed to mean!?”

  “Enough of this bickering,” Toya grunted. He brushed through the ash, kicking up a chest. Some mechanisms sparked, but there was nothing to ignite, letting him effortlessly grab the orbs and equipment inside. “There’s not as many chests but they have much better rewards. Everyone should gear up for the final floor.”

  {Toya}

  [Lead]

  [(+3) 43k Mana (+10k) 11k Atkspd ]

  Ardenidi bumped my side. “See? We can handle this.”

  “Yeah.” I nodded.

  She scoffed. “That was convincing.”

  “Look…” I slowed my pace so me and Ardenidi could have a more personal talk. “I don’t know. A three-star core isn’t the same as fighting Nightmares. It’s one thing to gimmick through traps, but if Sip hadn’t come up with that idea, there might not have been a way through. And then there’s the core. Judging by the loot, this is definitely a stronger than average Core, probably on the strength of Leads. I just don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Good. We can’t die, so the only way to really hurt us is if you don’t trust us.”

  “I trust you but—”

  “Trust requires action,” Ardenidi snapped. “Stop worrying and just enjoy the dungeon. It’s fun solving puzzles, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Focus on that. Maybe we’ll teach you a thing or two.”

  “Guys!” Toya called. “I found something!”

  He smacked a big granite ladder, covered in the dust of sponges. It immediately disintegrated.

  “Nice going, Toya,” Catania chuckled.

  “Shaddup. It wouldn’t have held us anyway,” Toya grunted. His eyes darted around the hall of blackened stone and broken rock. “I think this used to be under a whole pool of oil, judging by the crater.”

  He aimed upward, firing a line of foundation web, from which he formed the messy semblance of a staircase.

  Soise nodded. “Handy.”

  When we cracked open the hatch to the third floor, there was only a single, massive room where the Core sat on the floor, arms to the ground. It had a body of tight metal mesh, easily the size of a house.

  Speaking of which, the ground was an enormous oil-soaked sponge, entirely on fire. Not to say the fires were particularly high—only a couple inches—but having fire at all was disturbing enough.

  The Core watched us, rising up. The monster took a step and the flames around it went wild, blasting out in intense heat.

  Catania was the first to move, jumping from our not flaming little platform, swinging her fists toward the Core. “TOYA!”

  He moved immediately, latching a web onto the ceiling, which Catania grabbed, whipping in an arc to the monster’s face.

  Her punch contorted the core’s entire body, flinging it backwards, spilling water over the flaming oil.

  Catania let out a shout as she fell into the superheated fireball, splashing even more flaming oil everywhere.

  [{Catania} has been afflicted with Burns I]

  [{Catania} has been afflicted with Burns IV]

  [{Catania} has been afflicted with Burns XVII]

  ~

  {Catania :(-13k) 17k Hp}

  Crap. Catania had a lot of durability, but her health was still relatively low. “HEY!---”

  Ardenidi braced me. “Trust us.”

  Soise scrabbled around her board, healing Catania’s injuries, speaking fast and sharply through her earpiece.

  Toya nodded, unleashing a stream of mana, smoothing in a foot of thick webbing.

  {Toya : (-43k) 0 Mana}

  “Catania!” He shouted, “those are only going to hold for a couple seconds!”

  She was already moving. “Cover me!”

  The Core was completely unharmed, having bounced back into shape. There was a tremor of mana and the sponges in the ceiling squeezed themselves, dripping water on the tiny fires that already peeked out from Toya’s rather flammable webs, bursting into blazes.

  The pockets of fire simmered to wisps of smoke.

  Sip bought another bag of baking soda from his market, handing it to Soise’s guards, who could jump into the fires almost entirely unharmed, dousing the flames. At the same time, Catania was zipping around the hall, pummeling the Core, not that her attacks did anything to the metal sponge.

  Her voice cracked over my earpiece.

  “The core won’t take damage!”

  “I’m working on it!” Soise called. “Just keep the monster busy for as long as you can!” She glanced at Ardenidi. “Could you?---”

  Ardenidi smirked, tightening the knot in her scarf. “No problem.”

  Toya grabbed a potion from Sip, restoring enough mana to repair his webbing. Catania and the Core were splitting the webs as they moved, exposing the simmering oil.

  “Brace yourselves!” Catania shouted, kicking the Core in the face, jumping off to the roof where she released all the water at once. A fireball swallowed up the entire floor, hissing against our platform, stopped only by Soise’s line of floaty blue soldiers.

  Though the fire stained the metal Core, it couldn’t damage its body.

  The fire simmered, leaving a charred earth, soaked in water vapor.

  The core could barely register anything before Ardenidi had a mushroom at the living sponge’s damp side.

  Soise grinned, kicking over the biggest piece on her board. “Annnndd Checkmate.”

  At first the core was still.

  {Gauntlet of Sponges : (-1) 1 Hp}

  The heads of little mushrooms peeked out of its arms and shoulders. Mana clustered in a visible roar as the Core tried and failed to reach its second form, overrun by little shrooms.

  {Gauntlet of Sponges : (-1) 1 Hp}

  There was barely a moment before a mushroom exploded from the monster’s corpse, obliterating its central crystal, punching a hole through the roof above us. It kept growing, smashing the ceiling and spreading into the damp sponges that formed it.

  {Shroom Princess IV : Cooldown : 10:00}

  {Ardenidi : (-30k) 0 Mana}

  Ardenidi took a deep breath.

  “HA!”

  The core lurched upward, puffing up like a parade float, pouring gasoline over the empty floor.

  Then it caught on fire.

  // {Notice} //

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