“On your left!” Freya shouted as Wyn plunged his flaming blade into the stone golem.

  The mana in his legs responded immediately, and he darted to the right. A spear thrust towards where he had just been standing, missing by a few inches as the golem he’d stabbed was engulfed by the flames. The oddity of the stone burning once again struck him, but he was mostly past it.

  “Three!” he shouted as his unexpected attacker—a clockwork golem about his size, wielding a solid golden spear—took a step towards him. Before it could do any more though, a handful of seeds struck it in the side.

  The seeds burst open with a bright green light, spiked vines expanding rapidly as they entangled the golem’s limbs, toppling it to the ground.

  Wyn looked back towards Freya, her sling held at her side, breathing heavy. He nodded once and stabbed into the mess of vines. She nodded back and they turned to the rest of the fight.

  Jon tossed a disc towards a clockwork golem, snapping his fingers as it came into range. The disc let out a shrill whistle as thin lines of energy stretched out from its sides, spinning through the golem’s torso and bisecting it. After what seemed like a brief moment of confusion, its two halves began to move again, running on arms and legs respectively as they continued the attack.

  Jon wasn’t surprised though. He swung his hands towards the two half-golems, and the golden rings on his fingers expanded, chains growing as they lashed out with impressive speed and power, smashing the monster to splinters.

  Golems could withstand a beating before going down for good, fighting undeterred even after losing limbs, which made Wyn’s blessing even more valuable in its ability to quickly dispatch them with only a couple strikes.

  With each monster he struck, he felt his soul strain. He’d felt it during the colossus hunt, and thought it was the same weight he felt from a contract with a spirit, but that wasn’t quite it. The dungeon trip had proven useful, at least to help him understand the power a bit more. When he burnt—or purified a monster, it wasn’t like he was taking on a burden. It was more like… he was striking them on a level beyond the physical, and he could feel the resistance as he cut through.

  Something about that wasn’t right either, but he hadn’t figured out a good analogy yet.

  He cut down one that strayed too close to Freya.

  “Four!”

  Then impaled another as it tried to retaliate, giving its body to the flames.

  “Five!”

  As Wyn drew his sword back to burn another one, Corrin appeared in front of him, the air around his sword warping with power. He took a single, sharp breath and his sword flashed, dicing the golem into pieces.

  “Five here too,” he smirked.

  They both turned on the last golem, a large construct of stone half-again Wyn’s size. Their eyes met for a moment, then they charged.

  A huge lance of ice drilled into its chest, piercing its stone armor and driving it into the ground. The golem struggled for a moment, then fell still.

  Aya lowered her wand, looking around at the empty room, littered with golem shells and cores.

  “Damn. Three way tie.”

  As they began gathering the cores, Corrin walked over to Freya, showing her a gash on his arm.

  “Got a bit careless, could you heal it for me?”

  “Must’ve been bad,” Wyn remarked. “These coats are quality stuff.”

  He felt around his own body—he was unharmed. He’d actually taken a glancing blow at one point, but the thick demon-sheep’s wool coat had turned the blade. Eldress Edith had done great work for them in Straetum.

  “Yeah it was a mistake,” Corrin admitted. “Hopefully Jolaine can mend it for me.”

  “Hold still,” Freya said, grabbing his arm and pulling the sleeve up. She took a salve from her belt and worked it into the wound before beginning to chant. After about a minute, the salve glowed a golden-green as life mana gathered into it.

  As the glow dimmed, she wrapped his arms in bandages and pulled the sleeve back down.

  “Give it an hour,” she said. “Between that and your own natural healing, you should be fine by then.”

  Corrin rolled his shoulder. “No offense, but I thought healing would be a bit more impressive. This just seems like first aid with extra steps.”

  “None taken, I’m not a true healer. As I’ve said, my specialization is with plants. Even then, healing spells are difficult to perform—most actual healers are channelers, since it allows more direct control over the mana—and even then, they can just make things worse without the right knowledge. That’s why I stick to small wounds like these.”

  “Do you know if life mana can treat poisons and disease?” Wyn asked.

  Freya looked at him curiously. “I believe so, but both are orders of magnitude more difficult than injuries.”

  “I see, well that’s good to—”

  Wyn paused as the sound of golem footsteps echoed through the corridor—a lot of them. They were running.

  He drew his sword, cursing under his breath. There must be dozens, and they’d be on them in moments!

  The others had reacted similarly, watching the hallway where the sound originated, waiting for the inevitable confrontation.

  A golem ran past the hallway, then another, and another. With each one that passed by, completely ignoring them, Wyn grew more confused.

  On the other hand, the three adventurers relaxed immediately, chuckling as they strangely began putting their weapons away.

  “Is it that time already?” Aya wondered.

  Jon shrugged. “Guess so. The sun must have set. Back to the courtyard then?”

  “Yep, let’s get going.”

  “Wait, what’s going on?” Wyn asked, his brow furrowed.

  “They just ignored us…” Corrin mumbled.

  Their new friends just smiled though, like they were in on a joke. Wyn could feel the tension draining from the air. There was something they knew, a rite of passage or something?

  “Don’t worry about it,” Aya said. “Let’s head back to the courtyard and you’ll see. It’ll be better that way.”

  More snickering.

  Wyn looked over at Corrin, and their eyes met.

  Hmm.

  The walk back to the courtyard was quiet. Though they took a different route back, they didn’t encounter a single golem. From what Wyn had gathered, The Hollow Bastion didn’t replenish each floor like The Founder’s Tomb did. Rather, it almost seemed like golems seemed to spread out from a single location, somewhere deeper in the castle.

  With that in mind, it made sense that the walk back would be quieter, but still… something about it felt off.

  Finally they reached their destination, and Wyn could immediately tell something was different. Even with its lack of a sun, the enormous open cavern was dark, mimicking the actual time above. Despite that, the courtyard was busier than it had been for lunch, abuzz with energy in the flickering torchlight. Fires had been started below, and people were cooking meat over them, playing cards at ramshackle tables, and generally having a good time. As he noticed the ladders which ran up to the tops of the walls, his confusion deepend even further.

  Atop the ramparts, figures moved in the darkness. At first, he thought they were people, but their movements were stiff, their gaits unnatural. They were golems, hundreds of them, rushing around like bees in a hive.

  Aya clapped him and Corrin on the shoulder. “Dinner’s on me rookies, get some food and take a ladder on up. It’ll be fun.”

  Half-dazed by the strange atmosphere, Wyn ended up getting some sort of leaf-wrapped meatballs from one of the vendors, each of which was the size of his fist and smelled incredible. Biting into one absentmindedly, he and Corrin followed the other three up the ladders.

  They had to squeeze their way through the golems—none of which attacked—but when he reached the outer edge of the wall, Wyn’s breath caught in his throat.

  Beyond the castle walls was a vast expanse of land, a snow-covered tundra that seemed a fit even above. In the distance, firs had grown into a fully fledged forest, next to which a small lake had frozen over. It was an incredibly convincing illusion, and if he hadn’t known they were underground, he may have been fooled.

  “How is this…” he trailed off, eyes roaming over the view.

  “Possible?” Jon chuckled, sitting casually in one of the slots on the wall. “No idea. But it’s pretty incredible, no doubt.”

  Corrin seemed just as awed, but he managed to ask another question. “Can we leave the castle? Surely someone’s explored out there right?”

  “Silver teams and above are allowed permission,” Aya said. “But even still, plenty don’t. The further you get from the keep, the colder it gets. At only a few hundred yards, you’ll freeze without some form of heat, or at least a full mantle. And there’s not much out there to make it worth it for most teams below gold.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Corrin took a bite of his own meatball, eyes watching the horizon. “Damn…”

  “Anyways, have a seat you two, the show’s about to start. And don’t worry about the golems, they won’t attack us at night.”

  “This isn’t all?” Wyn asked.

  Aya’s eyes glinted, and Wyn’s mind clicked some gears into place.

  He hadn’t given it much thought—it was a dungeon, there was no use trying to read into the logic of such a place. But maybe, if it hadn’t been, he might’ve asked the question sooner. Castles weren’t just for show, and it was called ‘The Hollow Bastion’. So if the place had such large walls, then the question had to be asked.

  What are they keeping out?

  As if on cue, a dark red light appeared on the ‘horizon’, past the frozen lake. It was dim at first, but quickly grew brighter and brighter, until it was impossible to ignore.

  As the light appeared, the snowy ground began to shift as something rose up from beneath the ground. Some of them rose within a hundred feet of the castle, but they were immediately shot by arrows from the golems atop the walls. However, as their dark figures collapsed against the stark white snow, Wyn could make them out.

  Corpses. Hundreds of them, no, thousands, tens of thousands. Human and beast alike. They rose from the snow, shaking the vestiges of death, their bodies preserved by the cold, with countless holes, cuts, and injuries filled by ice and frost.

  They shambled towards the walls, some slow, some fast, but as more and more emerged from the darkness, coming out of the ground, coming out of the forest, Wyn realized just how endless they were.

  The walls burst into action, as golems fired waves of arrows into the night, felling them by the hundreds. Circles on the outside of the wall lit up, shooting massive balls of fire that vaporized dozens at once, and the air filled with a cacophony of all sorts of projectiles being fired.

  For a moment, Wyn felt a surge of panic at the sight, but he caught himself. None of the other adventurers seemed concerned at all. Freya took a casual swig from her canteen as Aya tilted her bowl to eat her soup without a spoon, slurping noisily. Across the wall, other adventurers seemed similarly unconcerned. Wyn saw some shoot lazy shots out into the night, but it seemed more like target practice than anything.

  He took his hand away from his sword. Was this… normal?

  Corrin laughed awkwardly beside him.

  “Sit, sit.” Aya insisted again. “It’s fine. If they start to stack up around here, I’ll drop a firestone, but this happens every night. It’s the endless battle of The Hollow Bastion—the undead and the unliving.”

  Hesitantly, Wyn took a seat. He took a bite of his meatball, and watched as the endless horde shambled towards the wall.

  Eventually, the sea of corpses grew too large to be held at bay by the barrage of arrows and spells, and they smashed against the bottom of the wall. Once more Wyn grew nervous, but still, no one seemed concerned.

  In fact, it seemed this was what people had been waiting for. He saw people taking rocks and throwing them at the undead below, even as they began to pile atop each other, trying to climb and reach the top of the wall.

  “Here they come…” Wyn heard someone across the wall say, clearly unconcerned. “Whatever are we going to do?”

  A glint of red dropped through the air where the stack had formed. It fell into the heart of the horde below before exploding, annihilating hundreds of them, and sending the pile toppling to the ground as the group of men laughed.

  “Are they not worried about breaking the wall?” Wyn asked.

  “The walls are enchanted to Nladia and back,” Jon yawned. “Powered by the mana of a dungeon, they’ll take a lot more than that to break, and they can repair themselves too. Whoever, or whatever built them—they were made to last.”

  As time passed, more stacks grew and fell, repelled either by firestone, spell, or spears jabbed down by the golems atop the wall, and more corpses rose to replace them.

  Despite the unease in his stomach, Wyn eventually managed to relax. Throwing rocks at them did seem kind of fun.

  “What’s with the red light out there?” Corrin asked, pointing towards the fake horizon.

  Jon threw a rock down, striking a zombie in the face. It fell dramatically into the snow.

  “No one knows. It moves every night, and nobody’s found it during the day. You’d have to send an expedition out once it shows up, and well…”

  They glanced out over the land of the dead.

  “I see the problem,” Corrin chuckled.

  “My best guess? It’s one of those living cores you hear about in some dungeons. The theory that it's what’s raising all these guys is pretty popular. If so, then monster or not, it’s effectively the strongest necromancer alive today, or at least the most prolific.”

  “Huh, weird,” Wyn said.

  Jon nodded.

  They chatted against the backdrop of battle, taking turns trying to hit the undead with rocks. Apparently there were further fortifications in front of the gate, where the golems did battle with the undead directly, and Wyn could hear even more intense sounds of battle from that direction. But it was incredibly crowded, and apparently Aya didn’t have the pull to get seats.

  Eventually though, the ice mage got to her feet and stretched, letting out another yawn.

  “Alright guys, I think it’s about time we get going.”

  “We’re not going to wait for the end?” Corrin asked.

  “There is no end,” Freya said. “They fight till sunrise, then they stop, like clockwork.”

  Aya held up a finger. “And while they’re fighting, the keep is empty, which makes it the best time to go back.”

  That was that.

  With the silent sounds of the battle behind them, they descended the walls, gathered their things, and headed back into the keep.

  Just like Aya said, the stone hallways and rooms were completely empty as they returned. They didn’t encounter a single golem, and walked back in a comfortable quiet.

  As they ascended the stone stairs that led back up towards the guild, Corrin let out a sigh of relief.

  “That went surprisingly well,” he chuckled.

  The other three gave him odd looks. “Did you expect something else?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I thought maybe we’d get trapped, or come across a super rare and dangerous monster or something.”

  Aya snorted. “Dungeons are dangerous, but unless you’re one of those crazy people that tries to reach new places or fight the most deadly monsters, they’re not that bad. Stick to the mapped areas, and you’ll usually be just fine if you’re not stupid about it.”

  Corrin grinned sheepishly. “I guess I’ve just had bad luck in the past.”

  There was a bit of laughter about that, and they reached the top of the stairs. The guild was apparently staffed at all hours of the day, so after pooling all the cores they’d collected, the guild bought them for a decent sum. They split the total amount, and Corrin and Wyn each got to go home with several silver pieces each.

  Not bad for a day’s work. Not bad at all.

  “Would you guys like to venture again tomorrow?” Aya asked as they stood at the doorway, preparing to head their separate ways.

  “This isn’t really an everyday thing for us,” Wyn said apologetically. “But maybe next week? If you all still need frontliners.”

  Aya sighed, hands on her hips. “It was too good to be true wasn’t it? Oh well, that’s the name of the game I suppose.” She held out a hand. “It was good working with you two. Hopefully I’ll see you again next week then.”

  Wyn clasped it with his own. “It was a pleasure. See you next week.”

  Corrin saluted playfully. “See you next week, captain.”

  Aya blushed a bit at the title, but covered it with a smug grin. “That’s right! You two better be there, or I’ll track you down. I need a lot more money by the end of winter if I want that new wand, so I’m counting on you!”

  They laughed and said their goodbyes to Jon and Freya as well before heading off into the city.

  Corrin whistled as they walked, hands in his pockets, the tune echoing through the empty streets.

  “People are trying to sleep, Corrin.” Wyn chastised.

  In defiance, Corrin whistled louder for a moment before giving up and striking up a conversation. “I can’t believe how different it was.”

  Wyn nodded. “No kidding, the tomb might have been deeper, but in terms of sheer size, there’s no comparison.”

  “And talk about gross,” Corrin laughed. “Did you see those undead? Blegh, I mean they were really nasty.”

  “Did you see the one I absolutely beamed?” Wyn grinned.

  “Yea, right in the eye? That throw was insane! But how about that two for one I got?”

  Wyn hummed thoughtfully, putting on a snooty voice. “It was quite nice, yes. I give it nine out of ten points.”

  “What? C’mon it was a ten for sure!”

  Their voices broke up the silent night as they walked, laughing and chatting the whole way.

  They used a spare key to get inside the house, as everyone had already fallen asleep.

  “Couldn’t even stay up to make sure we were okay,” Corrin whispered, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “They don’t really care.”

  Wyn held back a snicker as they snuck up to their room, avoiding the creaking floorboard on the way.

  He could really stand to go for a bath, but there wasn’t much for it with the public bathhouse closed for the night. They’d just have to wash themselves and the sheets the next day.

  Getting out of their coats and leather, they changed into looser tunics to sleep, and got into bed, pulling the thick fur blanket over them. The sleeping arrangements worked well, because Wyn was a blanket hog, and Corrin got hot during the night and tended to kick blankets off anyways. But after returning from the freezing air of the dungeon, even he didn’t mind the warmth.

  “You know,” Corrin mumbled as they settled in. “That was a good time.”

  Wyn smiled, his eyes closed. “Agreed. It was a bit nostalgic too.”

  Corrin laughed quietly. “I wouldn’t mind exploring more though. What sort of stuff is out beyond those walls? Maaaan and that red light too! I want to check it out…”

  “I think we might be a bit weak for that. Unless you’ve managed a full mantle and haven’t told me.”

  Silence.

  Wyn rolled over. “Wait have you actually—”

  “Nah just messing with you.”

  Wyn kicked him under the covers.

  “I guess you’re not wrong,” Corrin admitted. “Still though, I think we should at least aim for silver rank while we’re here. It’s the best chance we’ll get for a while.”

  Wyn thought about that for a while. “Yeah that’s not a bad idea. If we can take silver ranked jobs in other towns and cities, we can earn money quickly when we need it.”

  “I’m pretty smart huh?”

  “Yeah yeah. A real genius.”

  Wyn rolled back over, closing his eyes and pulling the blanket tighter. One of his companions had been pretty quiet all day. It wasn’t entirely uncommon. Sometimes she was out doing her own, ‘spirity things’ as she called it. In fact, he could feel through the bond that she was somewhere out in the city right now. But gestures like this were important.

  Goodnight, Eia, he sent.

  Goodnight Wyn, and dream well. Seriously though, spirits can’t dream, so appreciate it. Tell me all about the dungeon tomorrow!

  He smiled. You’ve got it.

  “Night man,” he whispered aloud.

  “Nighty night,” Corrin whispered back.

  Wyn drifted off, warm under the blanket.

  It had been a good day.