Chapter 13: The Unwritten Manual
A full stomach did wonders for morale. After their spaghetti, Azazel led the way to a well-stocked provisioner's shop. The reality of dungeon delving was, at its core, a logistics problem.
They moved through the cluttered aisles with purpose. Azazel's purchases were methodical: a bundle of health potions in crude clay vials, a small cooking pot, a tinderbox, a skin of lamp oil, and durable travel rations that looked like hardened bricks of grain and dried meat. Reginleif added a coil of strong rope, a small whetstone, and extra bandages to the pile.
As the shopkeeper tallied the cost on a slate, Azazel's mind was already on the next step. Field manual. Need a field manual.
Their next stop was the guild hall. Azazel approached the same receptionist, her dog-like ears perking up in recognition.
"Back so soon? Change your mind about the twentieth floor?" she asked, a hopeful smile on her face.
"Not yet," Azazel said, leaning on the counter. "I'm looking for something else. A guidebook. For the Fresh Tears Dungeon. Flora, fauna, environmental hazards, that sort of thing."
The receptionist's smile faded into polite confusion. "A... guidebook? For a dungeon? I'm sorry, sir, but no such thing exists."
Azazel blinked. There is no guidebook for dungeons. Well, I did not see that coming. The oversight felt absurd. In every game, every story, there was always a bestiary, a strategy guide, something. Guess I'm just gonna have to remember shit from the manga. And learn the hard way.
"Right," he said, his voice flat. "Of course not. Thanks."
---
Back in the sanctuary of their inn room, Azazel dumped his new supplies into a corner and sat cross-legged on the floor, the strange cube in his hands. Reginleif settled on her bed with a thick, leather-bound tome titled Beasts of the Northern Reaches.
For two hours, the only sounds were the soft scrape of turning mechanisms, Azazel's muttered curses, and the rustle of Reginleif's pages. The cube was infuriating. He'd already mentally mapped every colored square. This thing was rainbow-colored like a normal Rubik's Cube. Back home, I'd have been done with it in an hour. But his new hands felt clumsy, and the logic of the puzzle seemed to shift just as he found a pattern.
"Azazel," Reginleif finally said, not looking up from an illustration of a rock-skinned bear. "How long are you going to keep playing with that? The old lady said nobody can open it. It's scrap."
"Don't worry," he grunted, his focus absolute. "I know what it is. I just have to break the code."
Another hour bled away, marked by the slow arc of sunlight across the floor. Then, with a final, decisive twist, the last segment clicked into place.
The moment the final face was solved, the cube hummed. It leapt from his hands, spinning violently in the air with a soft, crystalline whir. It hovered for three full seconds, then dropped neatly back into his waiting palm, now glowing with a faint, uniform violet light from within its seams.
"What did you do?" Reginleif gasped, her book forgotten.
"I solved it," Azazel said, a grin spreading across his face. "Now what? Do you know how this thing works?"
She shook her head, eyes wide. "I've never seen an inventory tool activate like that. If you've truly bonded it... you should pour a thread of your Mythic energy into it. That should finalize the link."
Nodding, Azazel closed his eyes. He reached for the cold, dark pool of power within his core and directed a single, careful thread towards the cube in his hands. The violet glow intensified, then projected a shimmering, box-shaped portal of dark violet light into the air before him. It was about the size of a large chest, and through it, he could perceive an empty, grey space.
Heart pounding with a thrill of discovery, he picked up the new lantern from his supplies. He tossed it gently into the violet space. It vanished. With a thought, he closed the portal. The cube pulsed once. He willed it open again, reached his hand into the cool, dimensionless space, and his fingers closed around the lantern's handle. He pulled it out.
"Ha! Reginleif, look! It actually works!" His earlier frustration melted away into pure, childlike triumph. "It's so cool."
She let out a breathless laugh. "You... you actually figured out that weird cube."
"I told you I could do it."
"Yeah, yeah," she said, rolling her eyes but smiling as she returned to her bestiary. "Don't let it go to your head."
Azazel spent the next hour meticulously organizing the storage space. Potions in one corner, rations in another, tools along a virtual shelf. He checked and re-checked his other equipment: his notebook, his kukri, Reginleif's newly purchased bracelet. Everything had its place.
---
The entrance to the Fresh Tears Dungeon was less ominous the second time. It was just a hole in the ground that led to work. They moved with a rhythm now, a practiced efficiency born of their first run. They cleared floors one through six in a steady, silent blur of motion, their teamwork already beginning to solidify.
They stepped onto the familiar, crystalline growths of the seventh floor.
"We're back on floor seven," Azazel noted, checking a crude sundial he'd scratched into his notebook. "Took us about... ten minutes less to get here than last time. My sense of time has been kind of off lately."
Reginleif wiped a speck of monster ichor from her cheek. "What do you mean, 'off'? You're just always rushing to do things. I don't know why. It's like you're running against time."
The observation hit him with a strange weight. Running against time. Was he? He pushed the confusing thought aside. "Never mind. Let's keep moving."
They pushed deeper into the seventh floor, where the air grew colder and the crystalline structures threw sharper, more confusing shadows. That's when the ambush came.
From above, three Crystal Tear Stalkers dropped silently. They were humanoid but moved with insectile grace, their arms ending in jagged, foot-long purple crystals that gleamed like knives. From the walls, four Echo Sprites phased through the crystal, their forms wispy and insubstantial. A high-pitched, discordant hum immediately filled the chamber, scrambling thought and making the very light seem to vibrate.
"Eyes and ears!" Azazel barked, his kukri already in hand. The sound was a physical pressure, making it hard to focus.
The Stalkers didn't hesitate. Two lunged for Azazel in a pincer movement, their crystal blades whistling through the air. The third went for Reginleif, who was already a blur of motion.
Azazel didn't try to match their speed. Instead, he focused on the shadow of the lead Stalker, cast long and distorted by the dungeon's eerie ambient light. He reached out with his will and his Mythic power. "You Shadow."
The Stalker's own shadow erupted from the ground like black tar, wrapping around its legs and anchoring it mid-lunge. The creature stumbled, confused, giving Azazel the opening he needed. He ducked under the second Stalker's wild slash and came up inside its guard, his kukri carving a dark line across its crystal-armored chest. It screeched, a sound lost in the Sprite's cacophony.
Meanwhile, Reginleif was a tempest. She didn't meet the Stalker chasing her head-on. She kicked off a protruding crystal, using the momentum to redirect herself towards the wall, then pushed off again, her trajectory becoming unpredictable. The Stalker tried to track her, but she was already behind it. Her daggers flashed once, twice, finding the seams in the crystalline growths on its back. It fell, shattering.
But the Sprites were the real problem. One pulsed, and a tear-shaped flash of light exploded near Azazel. White spots swam in his vision. Another's hum shifted frequency, and a wave of dizziness made Reginleif's next jump fall short, forcing her into a desperate roll to avoid a crystal shard.
"Clear the noise!" Azazel shouted, blinking away the afterimages. He couldn't snare something that barely cast a shadow. He had to trust her.
Reginleif didn't answer with words. Still rolling, she snatched a dagger from her belt, not to throw, but to flick. She compressed a burst of air around the blade with a practiced twist of her wrist. "Piercing Feather."
The attack wasn't aimed at a monster. It was aimed at a stalactite above the densest cluster of Sprites. The needle-thin projectile of condensed wind hit with a sharp crack. The stalactite shattered, and a rain of crystal shards forced the Sprites to scatter, breaking their formation and disrupting their harmonic hum for a precious second.
It was all the opening Azazel needed. While two Sprites reformed, he targeted the Stalker he'd wounded. "You Shadow." This time, the darkness didn't just anchor; it crawled up its body, pinning one of its crystal arms to its side. Azazel closed the distance and drove his kukri into its throat.
"Two left!" Reginleif called, now using the environment to her full advantage. She ricocheted between walls like a silver pinball, her attacks not just strikes but movements that herded the remaining Stalker towards Azazel. It was a dance of controlled chaos.
Azazel saw her plan. As the Stalker turned to face her sudden appearance on its flank, its back was to him. Its shadow was clear on the ground. "You Shadow." The dark tendrils shot up, entangling its weapon arm. Reginleif didn't miss the cue. From her impossible angle, she dropped like a hawk, both daggers plunging down into the creature's skull.
The physical threats were gone, but the four Sprites were regrouping, their hum building to a painful crescendo.
"Together!" Azazel yelled. He didn't try to attack them directly. Instead, he poured his power into the room itself, expanding a dome of utter silence and shadow around the two of them. The Sprite's maddening sound was swallowed, becoming a distant, muffled buzz. The blinding flashes dimmed to faint flickers.
Inside their pocket of quiet, Reginleif could finally aim. She took a breath, her body still. She flung a dagger, not with brute force, but with perfect, spiraling precision. "Piercing Feather." The wind-wrapped blade became a bolt of silver, piercing straight through one Sprite, then a second behind it. They popped like soap bubbles.
The remaining two Sprites wavered, their power diminished. Azazel dropped the silence dome. In the sudden return of normal sound, the Sprites' hum was weak. Reginleif finished them with two simple, well-aimed throws.
Silence, true silence, fell over the chamber once more, broken only by their ragged breathing.
Azazel leaned against a crystal formation, his kukri dripping with dark fluid. Reginleif retrieved her daggers, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
"See?" she panted, sheathing her blades. "No guidebook warned us about that."
Azazel looked at the fading motes of light, then at the solved cube glowing softly on his belt. He had used You Shadow to control the battlefield. She had used Piercing Feather and her acrobatics to create opportunities. They were learning this world's rules, one puzzle, one painful flash, and one perfectly coordinated strike at a time.
"No," he agreed, a grim smile touching his lips as he caught his breath. "It didn't."
"Ok now to the 8 floor"
Azazel and Reginleif eginleif descend to the 8th floor of the Fresh tears dungeon.