The standoff stretched for three heartbeats, then four. Misaki could feel the weight of the chalice in his hands—twenty gold worth of salvation being claimed by men who had no right to it. His mind raced through options, strategies, anything that might end this without bloodshed.
"Wait," he said, forcing his voice to remain steady despite the terror clawing at his chest. "If you give me twenty-five gold, the chalice is yours. Right now. No fighting, no risk to your team, and you still get the artifact."
The old mage's expression twisted into something between amusement and contempt. His glowing eyes narrowed as he studied Misaki like an insect that had just attempted to negotiate with a boot.
"Why," he said, each word dripping with venom, "would I pay you anything when I can simply kill you and take it from your corpse?" He gestured dismissively at Team Seven. "You're chakra users in a dungeon—a mana-rich environment where my power is effectively unlimited and yours is strictly limited. You have no leverage, boy. You have nothing but the choice between dying quickly if you surrender, or dying slowly if you resist."
The four younger mages began weaving spell formulas with their hands, arcane patterns forming in the air around them. Misaki could see the ambient mana in the fungal garden responding to their call—visible streams of energy flowing toward the mages like iron filings to magnets. This was their domain, their advantage, their killing ground.
"Riyeak," Vellin said quietly, her hand moving to her bow, "now would be good."
The young warrior didn't need to be told twice. He slammed both palms against the stone floor, and his Muladhara chakra blazed to life. The earth responded to his will with violent enthusiasm.
Stone erupted from the ground around the mages in a circle, flowing upward like water in reverse. The walls rose at incredible speed—six feet, ten feet, fifteen feet—forming a dome that enclosed all five mages in a prison of solid rock. The structure was crude and rough, more about speed than precision, but it didn't need to be elegant. It just needed to buy time.
"RUN!" Vellin screamed, and Team Seven moved.
They sprinted away from the chamber as the sound of explosive magic began echoing from within Riyeak's dome. The old mage's voice could be heard shouting incantations, and brilliant light flashed through gaps in the stone as spells tore at the barrier from inside.
"They'll break through in seconds!" Riyeak gasped as they ran, his breathing already labored from the massive chakra expenditure. Creating that much earth that quickly had cost him dearly. "That dome won't hold professional combat mages for more than—"
The explosion cut off his words. Behind them, the dome shattered in a blast of blue-white energy that sent stone fragments flying in every direction. Through the fungal garden's twilight glow, Misaki could see the mages emerging, their robes pristine and undamaged, their expressions now genuinely angry.
"AFTER THEM!" the old mage roared. "No survivors! Take the artifact from their bodies!"
Team Seven ran through Level Three's fungal garden, weaving between the towering bioluminescent structures. Misaki's newly awakened heat sense gave him an advantage in the dim light—he could detect the thermal signatures of his teammates and navigate accordingly—but it also showed him the five blazing points of heat pursuing them. The mages weren't just running; they were enhancing their speed with magic, covering ground at an impossible pace.
"We can't fight them here!" Deylos shouted as they ran. "The ambient mana concentration is too high! They can throw spell after spell without exhausting themselves while we're working with limited chakra reserves. We'd be dead in minutes!"
Vellin led them toward a section of the cavern where the fungal growth was particularly dense. "There's another path!" she called back. "A route to the outer levels that avoids the main passages. It's dangerous and partially collapsed, but it's our only chance!"
"Anything is better than fighting five mages in their element!" Riyeak agreed, his shield up and his eyes constantly checking behind them.
A bolt of crimson energy screamed past Misaki's head, so close he felt the heat of it against his ear. The spell impacted a massive fungal structure ahead of them, and the entire thing exploded in a shower of spores and burning biological matter. The mages weren't even trying for precision anymore—they were just throwing destructive magic to slow Team Seven down or force them into mistakes.
Vellin suddenly veered left, ducking through a narrow gap between two collapsed sections of Predecessor architecture. The team followed her into what appeared to be an ancient corridor, its walls still bearing faded murals that had once depicted scenes of Predecessor life.
As they ran, Vellin pulled items from her pack without slowing—small mechanical devices, vials of liquid, coils of wire. Her hands moved with practiced speed, setting each trap with minimal effort before continuing the sprint.
"What are you doing?" Misaki gasped, his lungs burning from the exertion.
"Buying time!" Vellin snapped back. She wedged a spring-loaded mechanism between two rocks, connected it to a tripwire, and kept moving. "They're mages, not scouts. They won't expect physical traps."
Twenty meters behind them, the first mage to enter the corridor triggered Vellin's trap. The mechanism released with a sharp TWANG, and a net made of wire shot up from the floor, tangling around the mage's legs and sending him crashing face-first into the stone. His companions had to stop and help, buying Team Seven precious seconds.
They descended into Level Four—the Burning Wastes—and the temperature immediately spiked. Misaki's heat sense was overwhelmed by the sheer thermal chaos of the environment. Lava flows carved channels through the rock, their orange-red glow painting everything in hellish light. The air itself seemed to shimmer with heat, and breathing became a struggle.
"Keep moving!" Vellin commanded, leading them along a narrow path that skirted the edge of a lava river. "Watch your footing—the stone can be unstable!"
Another spell—this one a lance of ice that seemed wildly inappropriate for the environment—shot past them and impacted the lava. The resulting steam explosion sent superheated vapor erupting into the air, forcing Team Seven to shield their faces and stumble forward blind for several steps.
"They're getting closer!" Deylos warned, glancing back. Through the heat distortion, the mages were visible as five determined figures, their robes somehow untouched by the extreme temperature. Magical shielding, Misaki realized. They don't even feel the heat.
Vellin set another trap—this one a vial of alchemical compound wedged into a crack in the rock. When disturbed, it would release a cloud of caustic gas. Not lethal to someone with magical protection, but irritating enough to slow them down.
They crossed into Level Five—the Crystal Labyrinth—and the environment shifted again with dizzying speed. The walls here were made entirely of crystallized mana, their surfaces reflecting light in impossible patterns that made navigation nightmarish. The crystals hummed with barely contained energy, and Misaki felt his chakra responding strangely to their presence, as if the ambient mana was trying to interfere with his internal energy flow.
"Don't touch the walls!" Vellin warned. "The crystals disrupt both mana and chakra. Skin contact can cause feedback that damages spiritual channels!"
The labyrinth lived up to its name. Corridors branched and twisted, some ending in dead ends, others looping back on themselves. The crystalline surfaces made it impossible to mark their path—every direction looked the same, and the reflections created the illusion of infinite passages stretching in all directions.
A spell impacted the crystal wall beside Misaki, and the entire structure lit up like a circuit board, energy cascading through the crystalline matrix in a brilliant display of destructive beauty. The feedback from the impact sent smaller energy discharges arcing through the nearby passages.
"This way!" Vellin ducked through an opening that seemed barely wide enough for Riyeak's massive frame. The young warrior had to turn sideways and force himself through, his armor scraping against crystal with sounds that made Misaki's teeth ache.
They emerged into a larger chamber where multiple passages converged. Vellin set her most elaborate trap yet—a series of tripwires connected to bottles of alchemical compound, all positioned to create a chain reaction if triggered. When the mages came through, they'd trigger a cascade of caustic gas, flashbang compounds, and one bottle that Misaki didn't recognize but that made Vellin handle it with extreme care.
"That should slow them significantly," she said with grim satisfaction. "Now we just need to—"
The floor beneath them suddenly gave way.
The crystal that had seemed solid was actually a thin shell over a massive void. Misaki didn't even have time to scream before he was falling, the sensation of weightlessness mixing with absolute terror as darkness swallowed him whole.
They fell for what felt like an eternity but was probably only seconds. Misaki hit water—not hard stone but water—and plunged deep into darkness. The impact knocked the air from his lungs, and he flailed desperately, disoriented and unable to tell which direction was up.
Then hands grabbed him—Riyeak's massive grip—and hauled him to the surface. Misaki broke through gasping, coughing, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Everyone alive?" Vellin's voice called from somewhere in the darkness.
"Here," Deylos confirmed.
"Present," Riyeak added, still holding Misaki up.
"I'm okay," Misaki managed between coughs.
They'd fallen into an underground lake, the water cold and utterly black. Above them, impossibly far away, Misaki could see the opening they'd fallen through—a tiny circle of crystalline light that seemed like a portal to another world.
Vellin produced a waterproof light crystal from her pack—every experienced scout carried emergency supplies—and the faint blue glow revealed their situation.
They were in a cavern so vast that the light couldn't reach its walls or ceiling. The lake they'd fallen into stretched out in every direction, its surface perfectly still except for the ripples from their impact. The architecture visible along the shore was different from anything they'd seen in the upper levels—older, stranger, with designs that hurt to look at directly.
"Where are we?" Riyeak asked, his voice echoing strangely in the enormous space.
Vellin swam to the shore, her small form moving efficiently through the water. The others followed, dragging themselves onto a stone platform that had clearly been constructed rather than naturally formed.
Once everyone was out of the water, Vellin examined their surroundings with her light crystal, her expression growing increasingly concerned.
"This is Level Six," she said finally, her voice tight with tension that Misaki had never heard from the unflappable scout. "The unexplored level."
"Unexplored?" Misaki repeated, water dripping from his soaked armor. "What do you mean unexplored?"
"I mean no team from M'lod has ever successfully mapped this level and returned to report their findings." Vellin's light crystal illuminated a nearby wall covered in symbols that predated even the Predecessor script. "Three expeditions have reached Level Six over the past century. None of them came back. Their bodies were never found. Whatever is down here killed experienced teams and left no trace."
The weight of that statement settled over them like a shroud. They were in unknown territory, cut off from the upper levels, hunted by mages above, and surrounded by darkness that had swallowed entire teams.
Misaki's hand unconsciously moved to the chalice still secured in his pack. Twenty gold. His freedom. His salvation.
And he was further from safety than he'd ever been in his life.
Above them, distantly, they could hear the mages shouting to each other. The voices were too far away to make out words, but the tone was clear—confusion, anger, and the determination of hunters who'd lost their prey.
"They don't know we fell," Deylos observed. "They think we're still running through Level Five."
"Which gives us time," Vellin said, though her voice carried no relief. "But time to do what? We can't climb back up—that shaft is at least forty meters vertical with smooth crystal walls. And we can't stay here. Level Six is active—I can already hear movement in the darkness."
As if to punctuate her words, something large splashed in the distant lake. The sound echoed through the cavern, impossible to pinpoint but clearly massive.
"We go forward," Riyeak said, his usual cheerfulness completely absent. "Find another way up, or find an exit. Standing here just makes us targets."
Vellin nodded slowly. "Agreed. But we move carefully. Every step could be our last down here."
She raised her light crystal higher, and in its faint glow, Misaki could see the shore extending into the darkness, ancient buildings rising like the bones of dead gods, and passages leading deeper into the unknown.
Level Six. The unexplored depths where teams vanished.
And Team Seven had just become the latest expedition to descend into its hungry darkness.
[WARNING: Entering Unexplored Territory]
[Dungeon Level: 6]
[Survival Probability: Unknown]
[Map Data: None]
[Recommended Action: Extreme Caution - Retreat if Possible]