The world snapped into focus with the disorienting silence of a system booting up in a soundproof room.
One moment, there was the roaring hum of the gateway; the next, a profound quiet, broken only by the steady...
...of water and Cass's ragged breathing beside me.
The air was cool and carried the scent of wet stone and ozone— the distinct smell of raw, active mana.
The light came from patches of phosphorescent moss clinging to the cavern walls, casting everything in an eerie, blue-green glow.
"We're in," Taking in all the primary sensations, I whispered, the words swallowed by the oppressive stillness.
Cass just nodded, his grip on his staff making the wood creak.
Then, I felt a shift on my shoulder. A surge of… recognition.
It was not from me, but from the small, feathered being sitting there.
It was a primal, instinctual feeling that traveled through the Soul-Latch bond, a deep-seated knowing that this place, for all its danger, was a native environment.
'Home,' the feeling whispered in my mind. It felt surreal...
"Qwy?" I murmured, a little worried about my child. Thᴇ link to the origɪn of this information rᴇsts ɪn NoveI★Fire.net
In response, she looked at me reassuringly and pushed off. Her tiny, previously vestigial wings, which I'd thought were purely decorative, beat the air with a sudden, solid thrum.
They weren't weak at all. They were strong, purposeful even.
She lifted from my shoulder, hovering in the air before me, her single green eye wide and taking in the cavern with an intensity I'd never seen on her.
A flying eyeball... she had turned into a flying eye of the higher beings.
But the real shock wasn't her flight. It was the flood of information.
As Qwy rose, my own perception split. I was still me, Aria, standing on the damp stone floor next to a terrified mage. But I was also her.
I could feel the subtle currents of air against her leathery skin, the minute shifts in mana density that were invisible to my human eyes.
I could see the cavern from two angles at once— my own and a floating, bird's-eye view.
'We share all of their sensory information.'' Rose's words echoed in my memory. I hadn't truly understood them until now.
It was like running a continuous, high-bandwidth data stream between two separate terminals. I could feel her curiosity, a bright, sharp spark, and she, in turn, felt my awe and my calculated caution.
"Whoa," I breathed, my mind reeling as I adapted to the dual input.
"Is… is she supposed to do that?" Cass, unaware of what was happening to us, asked, his voice trembling.
"She's just… calibrating," I answered with a weak smile, the cloud-term coming automatically.
My architect's mind was already whirring, cross-referencing the sensory data from Qwy with the memory of this place from my ghostly form during the exam.
I still had the guest access.
The layout of the tunnels, the flow of mana, the hidden pressure points— it all superimposed itself over my vision like a translucent HUD.
The knowledge was there, a guest-level access to the dungeon's basic schematics assisting the new operations.
But the Quest, the guided objective I'd had before, was absent. This time, we were operating without a tutorial.
And according to the mental map, we weren't in a standard entry zone.
"This is complicated..."
We were in a secluded sector, a less-traveled branch of the first floor. People usually fell into certain dungeon zones after entering through the main gate.
Where they end up may be random, but people don't usually fall off into secluded places one.
This felt intentional, as if the dungeon itself had routed us here.
"Okay, Cass," I spoke with a little hesitation that he felt as well, forcing my voice into a calm I didn't entirely feel myself in. "First things first. We need to run a perimeter scan. Let's confirm if we're alone."
Cass nodded, and I closed my eyes, focusing entirely on the Qwy-stream. 'Go, little scout. Show me what's out there.'
I pushed the thought through our bond.
She understood instantly, zipping away silently down a nearby tunnel.
My vision split further, my body standing still while my consciousness flew with her. I saw empty passageways, strange mineral formations, and felt the absence of any other life signs.
There were no adventurers here, no monsters either. It was just us three.
Qwy returned a minute later, landing back on my shoulder with a soft, confident chirp. The data was clear. We had this sector to ourselves.
"The coast is clear," I reported to Cass, who looked marginally less like he was about to faint. "But we're off the beaten path. The standard exit is about a kilometer through, past what my… intuition… tells me are a few critical chokepoints. Probably not empty."
His face fell as soon as he heard my analysis. "Chokepoints?"
"But," I continued instead of answering the question, a slow grin spreading across my face as another part of my mental map pinged something nearby: a soft, persistent glow in a chamber to our left, away from the main path.
It was an anomaly even when I saw it from the spectral vision. An untouched resource node. A treasure chest, in simpler words.
"Before we make for the exit, there's a… side-quest. A local repository I'd like to check."
"A repository? Do you mean treasure?" Cass's eyes widened simply at the mention of it, fear now battling with a mage's innate curiosity for rare artifacts.
He had not questioned me about how I knew all these things and directly attributed them to Qwy, but then again, this was more than that.
He knew I had some special skills, and he knew the best not to delve too deep into something those like me didn't disclose themselves.
"Let's call it a signing bonus," I corrected him. "The dungeon practically put it on our doorstep. It'd be rude not to collect."
To come all this way and leave without the one thing the dungeon seemed to be hinting I, the Guest Architect, was meant to have? That would make this entire run meaningless.
It was an unclaimed resource, and in my world, you never left unclaimed resources on the table.
"Stay close, and stay quiet," I instructed him, my gaze fixed on the dark mouth of the tunnel that led towards the ping on my internal map. "We're going off-script from here on out."
With Qwy on my shoulder, her eye gleaming with shared anticipation, and Cass following nervously behind, we moved forward, leaving the known path behind and stepping deeper into the dungeon's silent, waiting embrace.
'Let's see what it is, dear dungeon.'
Sadly, at that time, I had no idea just how big and bad this whole matter would turn out to be for all three of us.