Phong decided, with the solemnity of a man making a strategic military decision, that it had been far too long since they had a proper hotpot.
This announcement came after the evolution of the Greencap Bunny captain into a Greencap Hare.
Camp Stymphalian had become too tense, filled with constant movement and unease. Scouts came and went without pause, wounded Greencaps muttered about banners, mice hurried along with messages, and lizardmen checked their weapons with increasing frequency. Meanwhile, too many members of Team Nemean were testing new skills, to the point that nearby plants seemed to develop what Phong suspected was collective anxiety.
So he clapped his hands once in the middle of the camp square and said, "Hotpot."
Rico, who had been lying upside down on a crate while pretending to supervise pixie labor, shot upright immediately.
"Finally. Civilization returns."
Joanne pointed at him. "There will be no coffee broth with hot pot."
"This is raccoon oppression. I demand freedom of culinary innovation."
Phong ignored both of them and began issuing orders.
By evening, the result was less a dinner and more a diplomatic summit that happened to involve boiling soup.
Every race allied with Phong sent representatives. The Kamohai chieftain arrived through the canal with a delegation carrying bundles of fish, seaweed, and several Floor Two runners tied by the legs and screaming with enough hatred to count as seasoning. Dominic saw them and immediately pointed.
"Steroid chickens."
The Kamohai chieftain blinked. "They are runners."
"Steroid chickens."
"They are vicious predatory birds."
"Exactly."
Phong sighed. "Dominic."
"They have chicken energy, Phong."
The Giant Cricket president came next, arriving in one enormous leap that sent dust puffing around the fields. He wore a sash woven by mice and carried a polished stone tablet listing construction progress, because even during a celebration, crickets apparently could not ignore their KPIs.
The lizardmen queen came with medics, guards, and baskets filled with fish, prawns, crabs, and other aquatic delicacies.
The Buforian minister arrived damp and dignified, accompanied by attendants carrying bundles of edible marsh roots and fermented sauces that smelled alarming but tasted excellent. Phong took one look at them and quietly made an agreement with Séline and Camille that frog legs would be banned as a delicacy whenever the Bufforians were present.
The Inkborn sage came almost silently, his black-ink robes drifting like liquid shadow while his eyes gleamed with ancient humor. He brought scrolls, tea, and a jar of dark seasoning that made Jake whisper, "That is either sauce or a curse."
The H'Re chieftain arrived wrapped in bandages, his forehead eye closed, moving with the quiet gravity of someone every sensible creature respected from a safe distance.
The pixie queen came under strict agreement, surrounded by a disciplined swarm that had adapted far too quickly to crop mash and now eyed the hotpot ingredients with unsettling curiosity.
The Great Burrow king appeared from beneath a table, announced himself with a squeak translated by the dungeon into regal dignity, and then immediately asked where the safest crumb zone would be.
Even the Mushroomkhan sent representatives.
Three Mushroomtrons walked into camp in perfect formation: Defender, Technique, and Power. Their mushroom heads tilted slowly as they observed everything. No one knew whether they were guests, diplomats, cameras, or all three, but Phong bowed politely to them anyway.
"Please tell Mushroomkhan I appreciate the visit."
The Technique Mushroomtron copied the bow exactly. The Power Mushroomtron stared at the hotpot meat, while the Defender Mushroomtron projected a small forcefield around its group, possibly because Rico was staring at them like he wanted to ask for a transformation sequence or sampling right.
The treants came too, which was rare.
They moved from the tree line with slow dignity, their bark bodies creaking and leaves whispering in a wind that did not reach the ground. Even the baby treant on Rico's back stiffened with something like respect. The older treants did not speak much; instead, they stood near the Lime-Oak, placed rootlike hands into the soil, and allowed the celebration to unfold beneath their shade.
Under the Lime-Oak, across three floors connected by living roads, Yuè gathered to eat.
The tree had grown into something more than a plant and less than a god. Its trunk was broad enough that several people could stand around it without touching hands. Limes glowed faintly among oak leaves, and the air around its roots shimmered with the distant sensation of Baratok Town and Fort Erymanthian. Food could be carried from one floor to another without crossing a gate, and guests arrived in careful waves. Hotpot stations were arranged around the roots, each adapted for different species: deep stone cauldrons for trolls, wide shallow pots for lizardmen, smaller guarded pots for mice, suspended broth basins for pixies, and human-sized tables for Team Nemean.
The air smelled of broth instead of blood.
Spiced soup bubbled steadily while thin slices of meat curled as they cooked. Mushrooms softened in fragrant stock, greens vanished into steam, and the prepared Floor Two runners turned out to be tough but flavorful enough that Dominic looked vindicated.
"Steroid chicken," he said after tasting it.
The Kamohai chieftain tasted a piece, considered it carefully, and then nodded gravely. "Steroid chicken."
Dominic beamed.
The elf children experienced hotpot for the first time and showed no hesitation at all. They attacked the food with the ruthless efficiency of small predators who had discovered dipping sauce. Meat vanished, vegetables vanished, and broth disappeared just as quickly. One of them even drank straight from a ladle until Janet gently confiscated it and explained that soup was communal, not a personal river.
Rico stood on a stool with a skewer in one paw and a bowl in the other.
"You younglings do not understand history," he announced. "I was there when Phong threw his first hotpot party in a tent."
Phong groaned. "Rico."
"There were no walls, no diplomatic seating, and not even a giant cricket president or cool raccoon kamen rider armor. There were just vibes, soup, and possible death."
Alex smiled into her bowl. "That describes most of our early strategy."
"It was rustic," Rico said. "Artisanal trauma."
The elf children listened with wide eyes.
Rico leaned closer. "Back then, Phong had fewer vegetables and more anxiety."
"You peed yourself when trolls first arrived."
"Piss of joy."
That made Joanne snort broth into the wrong pipe.
For a while, they simply ate. Team Nemean sat together with Phong and reported what had happened over the last ten days, like students returning to a coach after an especially violent field trip.
Dominic showed his status first.
Level 49.
Phong stared at him. "Dom."
Dominic held up both hands. "In my defense, the old man was level 65 and full of eyeballs."
"That is not a defense. That is a warning label."
Joanne leaned forward. "I hit 48."
Emma nodded. "Same."
Alexei, dignified and visibly pained, said, "I am a few EXP from 48."
Jake patted his shoulder. "The almost club welcomes you."
Jack, Séline, Camille, and Janet showed level 47.
Then Alex showed level 45, along with her secret of bīng.
Phong opened his mouth, but Alex raised a finger.
"Wait."
She showed the title.
Knight of the Aspect of War.
Then she revealed the triple EXP requirement, followed by the double stat growth per future level, and finally the evolved Bai Hu's Storm branch skill: Charge of the Bloodless Knights.
Phong read it all silently.
His expression shifted through pride, concern, fear, calculation, and finally settled into the weary acceptance of a farmer whose fiancée had become a cavalry-themed natural disaster.
"Okay," he said.
Joanne grinned. "That is all you have?"
Phong rubbed his forehead. "I am choosing peace during hotpot."
"Coward."
"Yes."
Then they showed him the bones. Jack demonstrated the Yeak's left leg bone carefully, raising a controlled pillar of cold at a safe distance from the food while Phong watched with fascinated horror.
"That used to be part of a boss?"
"Yes," Jack said.
"And now it is your leg upgrade?"
"Yes."
Phong looked at the pot. "I miss when you guys were normal."
"Look who's speaking! Welcome to our world, mr I'm gonna introduce a new plant that make my friend lose faith in reality every other week." Alex said.
"In my defense, I did not cause them to mutate like that."
Emma showed the white vajra next, still cautious with it. The relic made from the Sky Emperor's tooth hummed softly in her hands, lightning and spatial presence folded into something too refined to be called a weapon and too dangerous to be called an ornament.
Phong stared at it for a long moment. "That came from his tooth."
Emma nodded. "According to the mural."
Phong glanced toward the sky despite the leaves overhead. "I am never criticizing dragon dental hygiene."
Alex laughed.
She had been doing that more lately. She was not less fierce, never less herself, but she had become steadier. The wild edge of her had not disappeared; instead, it had become like silk over a blade, soft until drawn. She sat beside Phong now with one hand in his, her thumb brushing the back of his knuckles as if confirming he was still there.
Their relationship had settled into something that made the team tease them less and trust them more. Alex no longer worried about him every few days like she once had when they first started dating while she was away diving, and Phong no longer looked surprised every time she chose him openly.
They were, somehow, calmer together.
Hotpot helped, as did the broth and the strange peace of a world where, for one evening, Mushroomtrons observed and ate bones politely while pixies learned vegetables and Great Burrow mice enjoyed noodles in bowls bigger than themselves.
Then Phong and Alex vanished.
One moment they sat beneath the Lime-Oak with their fingers interlaced, and the next, their seats were empty. Little Fireball vanished with them from Phong's hood.
For half a heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then every allied race in Yuè reached for weapons at once.
Phong opened his eyes on gold.
He stood on a disc made entirely of it, polished so perfectly that it reflected clouds beneath his feet. These were actual clouds, flowing from the edge of the disc like waterfalls into open air.
Alex stood beside him, her hand still in his.
Little Fireball popped out from his hoodie hood, feathers puffed and eyes bright.
"Okay," Phong said slowly, "this is not Camp Stymphalian."
Alex did not answer because she was looking outward.
Far away, across an endless sea of milk, a giant walked. The giant was so large that scale became meaningless. His legs moved through the pale ocean as if wading through mist, and on his back he carried a temple with pillars, stairs, banners, and towers. Upon the temple's highest roof rested a ball of orange fire too familiar for any human from Earth to mistake.
It was the sun, not a symbolic one or a lamp named as such, but the actual sun carried like a temple flame.
Phong's mouth went dry. That was why the light in the dungeon felt so odd, why it didn't have all the characteristics of light on the surface. It came from here, on the back of a man several dozen times higher than mt Everest at least.
Then the giant sank slowly and silently into the sea of milk until the temple, the sun, and his head vanished beneath the pale surface.
Another giant rose elsewhere.
This one carried a boat on his back, and behind the boat, tied with chains of light, hung a crescent moon. Its surface resembled Earth's moon—rocky, cratered, and pale grey—but it was not spherical. Instead, it curved like a blade, a crescent mass of impossible lunar stone dragged behind the boat as though celestial mechanics were merely a polite suggestion.
Alex's hand tightened around Phong's.
"The Land of the Giants," she said.
Phong looked at her. "What?"
"I saw it in the True King's memory," Alex explained, her eyes still fixed on the distant moon-boat. "The Emperor Eye came from a place called the Land of the Giants. I think this is it."
Phong immediately disliked knowing that.
Before he could say so, a voice came from behind them, deep, slow, and warm.
"It had been called that by some of the dungeon species. True Irises were among them."
Phong and Alex turned.
A black tortoise stood upon the golden disc. Its shell was vast and dark as night-water, patterned with star-like flecks, while its limbs were thick, ancient, and calm. From behind its shell rose a snake, not coiled around it but part of it, with the snake's head serving as both tail and second gaze. The serpent's eyes regarded them with the same patience as deep winter.
The tortoise lowered its head.
"My name is Hyeonmu," it said. "I summoned you here, to the tenth floor, to give you something."
Phong stared.
Alex's posture shifted slightly, not aggressive but ready.
"Tenth floor," she repeated.
Hyeonmu did not explain.
The air changed as heat arrived first, followed by the scent of ash, flowers, and volcanic glass.
A monstrous phoenix descended onto the golden disc with six wings spread wide, six eyes burning across its face and crown, and nine tail feathers patterned like a peacock's fan made for war instead of beauty. Its beak curved like an axe, its talons were black as obsidian, and every feather seemed edged in ember.
Little Fireball chirped loudly. The monstrous phoenix looked at her. Little Fireball puffed herself to maximum roundness and chirped again, clearly offended by something only birds and Pillars understood.
Phong blinked twice, and any suspicion he had ever entertained that Little Fireball was secretly the Monstrous Phoenix vanished instantly. Whatever Little Fireball was, she was currently yelling at the phoenix like a tiny customer complaining to management.
Then lightning gathered.
A jade dragon coiled through the air above the disc.
The Sky Emperor.
He was enormous beyond buildings, with scales shining imperial green and a body long enough to encircle clouds. As his head descended, Phong's mind snagged on the two upper jaws stacked one atop the other, making the dragon's face look both majestic and anatomically unsettling.
Phong immediately wanted to be back at hotpot.
Last came wind, white and cold, edged with war. Bai Hu appeared beside Alex as a white tigress with legs made of moving air, stripes like storm fractures, and eyes that made Alex's title feel heavy in her chest.
Four sacred beasts had gathered, at least according to the dungeon's logic.
Hyeonmu spoke again.
"Someone close to us is about to return because of you."
Phong did not like the direction of that sentence.
"So," Hyeonmu continued, "we give you that person's belongings, that you may return them in our stead."
Alex's gaze flicked to Phong, and he gave a tiny shake of his head that clearly meant he did not understand what was happening either and was emotionally opposed to it.
Hyeonmu lifted one foot, and the endless sea of milk responded.
A sea's worth of water rose into the air, defying gravity as it gathered under the Pillar's command. It spiraled above the golden disc in impossible volume, forming a floating ocean condensed by sacred beast will. Gradually, the water narrowed, folding and smoothing as threads formed from the waves until the waves themselves became silk.
A ribbon drifted down, blue-black and silver, soft as fabric yet heavy as tide.
Bai Hu stepped forward next.
Wind gathered around her paws, spinning into circles before tightening into shape. A pair of spinning wheels formed from storm, pale and sharp, each turning without axle or hand while humming with movement, pursuit, and impossible speed.
The phoenix opened her beak.
Phong had half a second to worry before she unleashed a torrent of lava.
Lava and flame poured from her mouth in a river, crashing onto the golden disc without burning it. Heat blasted Phong's face, and Alex instinctively shifted in front of him while Bai Hu's wind cooled the edge of the eruption. The molten flood rose, compressed, and hardened into a spear.
The shaft was lava, black-red and glowing through cracks, while the blade was flame given shape. Little Fireball leaned out of Phong's hood and chirped at the phoenix with intense disapproval.
The phoenix's six eyes blinked.
Somewhere in Phong's head, a thought failed to fully form.
Unbeknownst to him and Alex, the Monstrous Phoenix before them was not the true one at all but a copy conjured by the Sky Emperor, shaped using power he had confiscated from Little Fireball after her battle with Em threatened to turn most of Floor Three to ash. To Phong, however, it simply looked like four Pillars had gathered to complicate his day.
Finally, the Sky Emperor lowered one claw.
Lightning condensed between his talons, twisting into a circle as it struck itself again and again until it became solid. The result was a ring of storm, gold-white and imperial, humming with restrained power.
The jade dragon tossed it.
Phong caught it on instinct and immediately regretted having hands.
The four treasures floated around him: a ribbon, wheels, a spear, and a ring.
Alex stared at them.
Phong stared harder.
Then he looked up at the sacred beasts.
"May I ask something?"
Hyeonmu's snake-tail tilted its head.
Phong swallowed. "The person close to you who is about to return… did that person, by chance, go by Nezha?"
No one answered, which was answer enough.
Phong's eyes widened. "Oh, come on."
The Sky Emperor's whiskers moved slightly, Bai Hu looked amused, and Hyeonmu's ancient gaze remained warm and unreadable. The phoenix-copy ignored him entirely and continued staring at Little Fireball, who chirped one final time with victorious tiny fury.
Then the golden disc vanished beneath their feet.
Phong had only enough time to clutch the ring and Alex's hand before everything disappeared: the tenth floor, the sea of milk, and the giants carrying sun and moon. They returned beneath the Lime-Oak in the middle of the hotpot party.
Every weapon in the celebration was pointed at the place where they reappeared.
Rico stood on the table holding a ladle like a sword. "Identify yourself!"
Phong looked at him.
Rico lowered the ladle. "Okay, probably Phong."
Alex still held his hand. Around Phong floated a ribbon of condensed water, a pair of spinning wind wheels, a spear of lava and flame, and a lightning ring humming with imperial impatience.
The entire camp went silent.
Joanne slowly put down her bowl. "Phong."
"Yes?"
"Why do you have mythological boss loot hovering around you during dinner?"
Phong looked at the four sacred treasures, then at the allied leaders gathered under the Lime-Oak, and finally at the hotpot broth still bubbling peacefully on the table.
He sighed.
"I think," he said, "someone is coming home."