Stairwells fanned out in a geometric web. Each step was uniform, made of a whitewashed stone the likes of which Calaf could not source.

  “Watch those corners,” Jelena said. “Going to be a lot of traps.”

  As the designated shield-bearer, Calaf went first.

  “I’ve been here before,” said the Squire.

  The Battletower had nearly flattened Calaf’s old party with false walls that smashed against each other and hidden chutes spewing poison barbs. They had persevered against these traps and hostile level-cheesing cultivators both thanks to the leadership of a wizened Battlemage named Gael, a determined Paladin named Kai, and a junior mage named Karol, Kai’s sister.

  That was all on the lower floors, the ‘occupied’ portions of the tower used for scholarly learning rather than dungeoneering.

  The western quarter of the tower was segmented from the other three segments by high walls. Pilgrims were truly meant to assault this dungeon in four full parties. Like a puzzle box on a massive scale.

  The first obstacle announced itself with a skittering nails-on-chalk-sand screech. A creature built like a dire-chicken with hands, a leg for a neck, and feet for feathers waddled out of a nearby alcove.

  Starting with a high-level enemy.

  This chimera creature bounded down the stairs with a mighty leap. Its feet-feathers swung at Calaf. His shield blocked the blow, but the sheer force pushed the Shielder back. His boots struggled to find purchase with the minimal friction of the stairs.

  The main stalk of this amalgamation beast raised up, preparing to peck over above the shield and onto Calaf’s vulnerable head. Just as it reached its zenith and began to snap down, however, a bolt of lightning struck the creature on the ‘head.’

  Zilara’s lightning bolt spell shaved scores of HP off the creature. Many more than a starter lightning-throwing spell ought to have done. Calaf got a stab in with his spear for another five HP or so. Then a dual-spell fire-lightning combo courtesy of their youngest member burnt the creature to cinders.

  “Weak to spells,” Zilara said, triumphant. “Alright. My stocks going up.”

  The foot-bird-thing melted on the stairs, awarding another few hundred XP to the two Branded members of the party. Calaf kicked the remains.

  “Huh. It’s burlap.” He kicked it again.

  While ‘alive’ the creature was in constant motion that aided with the illusion of flesh. Now dead, this skin was a thin sack over cotton stuffing and magic-enhanced rubber tendons.

  “Some sort of spellcasting target practice,” Zilara said. “It’s a mage dungeon after all.”

  “Why’d they have to make it look like that?” Jelena asked.

  A second hand-creature, a level seventy-two Manuchimera, appeared from an alcove on the far side of the same staircase the foot-beast crawled out from. Before it could attack, Zilara hit it with another lightning-fireball combo. The web of hand-tendrils burnt away, fully perishing with a second fireball.

  Level up!

  “Heh. Check out the stats,” Zilara said.

  “Ah, I was so close myself,” Calaf said.

  If only he’d been able to land a blow on the second beast. Whatever the nature of these strange homunculi, they provided experience by the bundle.

  Upward they climbed. Soon a third creature appeared.

  A slug-creature. A human head for a body and a strange, malformed amygdala for a ‘foot’ left a trail of something unclean on the stairs. It opened its mouth and a multi-pronged proboscis of tongues jutted out.

  “Eww.” Zilara said and then hit it with another burst of lightning.

  This time less than ten hit points were removed.

  “Swapping the rules up without a notable state change.” Zilara frowned. “Poor form!”

  “Allow me.” Enkidu took a step forward.

  The wild man leaped far beyond the confines of realistic mortal limitations. He landed atop the creature’s mouth and swung wildly.

  Calaf moved forward to get a stab in with his spear only to be stopped as Jelena’s arm blocked the path.

  “Hold on. Let him solo it,” Jelena said.

  Blood, or some simulacra of it, spewed from the beast. Each wound healed instantly with new tonguelike growths. Still, Enkidu sliced and swung for as long as it took for the head-monster to stop moving. By the time the Menu listed the creature’s HP as zero, the corpse was just a pile of tongue-matter.

  “This is creepier than anything those fungal creatures have hit us with yet.” Zilara furrowed her brow.

  “Makes you wonder what the mages are cooking up behind locked doors,” Jelena said.

  The group continued to ascend. They were beginning to unravel the nature of this dungeon. Strange artificial entities, some weak to magic some to steel, amidst a fourfold arena that required yet-unrevealed teamwork.

  A longer, singular staircase awaited. Calaf took point once more… and brought his shield up in time to block a lunge from a creature with a dire-hound’s body and the jagged maw of a dire-barracuda in place of a head.

  The creature landed on the shield. Calaf braced his shield with both hands and swung it over his head. The hybrid beast toppled over and fell over the edge of the stairs. The group looked down at the creature as it fell to the next platform far below. There was no sound when it landed.

  Level up!

  It had been a while. Not bad for a midlevel stat spread. The higher stats would scale exponentially despite the naturally lower gross stat gains.

  “Surprised that counted as a kill,” Calaf said.

  “Pity you don’t have any offensive spells,” Zilara quipped. “They really come in handy here.”

  From this high ledge, they could see past the walls hemming in the western quadrant. They could see clear through to the far side, where a handful of barely discernable figures represented their equal and opposite crimson mage party. While hard to make out much of anything, it appeared they were down a few members.

  “Ahoy!” Zilara yelled, to no response.

  They were too far away. This top half of the tower spread outward like a reverse pyramid. Even having scaled less than a fourth of the dungeon tower, the distance looked larger inside than on the exterior.

  A personal goal, beyond scaling the tower and assisting with this mage’s ritual, was to find the next hidden gospel of the ancient heroes. The sooner they cleansed the tower, the sooner they could resume the search.

  The far team was trying to communicate something with hand signals and elaborate positioning. Not that Jelena and company could make out anything.

  This quarter-platform contained a handful of dire-hound hybrids. They all had different heads and were listed as dire-beasts in the Menu at least. Calaf received a third of the requisite experience just from these creatures while Zilara was nearly at level 42. As for how to proceed, there was only a single door with a strange, engraved carving at a thirty-degree angle slant embedded into the door.

  A static symbol on the door plate appeared as a forked rune, not unlike the harsh demontongue that occasionally marked the old gospels. The three-pronged symbol was matched by the mark on Calaf’s left arm, in duplicate in Zilara’s eyes, and just barely visible in a cloudy, faded look beneath Jelena’s eyepatch.

  “Huh. The Brand,” Zilara said.

  Jelena touched the medallion to no effect. Calaf tried it with his gauntlet on, likewise doing nothing.

  They were at a roadblock until Calaf unequipped his glove armor and tried it again bare-handed. There was a static, hazy feeling as his left, Branded, hand touched the lock.

  It was an Interface-compatible lock. Calaf selected [Use], and the brand shifted so the three-prongs were pointed south to their left.

  “Hmmm.” Calaf scratched his chin.

  Across the way, the mages jumped up and down to signal they were on the right track. They did something with the corresponding medallion on the far end. An interior locking mechanism slid with a dull sound of stone on stone.

  The two sides were interlinked.

  Another spin of the western medallion resulted in the prong pointing downwards. It now passed along the floor, through the elevator entrance room, and across the way towards the eastern quadrant.

  Another stone-on-stone lock clasping sound came from the walls. The door opened onto a narrow exterior walkway and a harsh whir of high-altitude winds.

  “So, it’s all an elaborate exercise in teamwork,” Jelena said.

  “Needs a Brand too,” Zilara added.

  “Good thing you two are here.” Jelena winkd at Calaf and Zilara. “Come, everyone. Before any of those limb-monsters return.”