All she could see was pitch black.
Whether she moved forward or backward, ascended or descended, the view remained unchanged. It would be strange to find light here—Tasha, possessed by a spirit, was deep underground, surrounded by earth in every direction. Hours had passed since she left the hall, and so far, she had found nothing.
Tasha adapted well to her predicament, but she didn't believe this peaceful underground farming existence would last forever. What lay beyond this structure? It could be a picturesque surface world, or some unheard-of, terrifying place. She didn't want to face the unknown unprepared. Playing with her pets relaxed her frayed nerves, but indulging too much was courting death.
Tasha stopped the molech from digging further. The slime farm could handle accumulating blue ore; it wasn't worth risking tunneling into something dangerous. During her game of fetch with Ah Huang, she realized the ghost's purpose: reconnaissance.
Ghosts could fly silently, vanish into thin air, and pass through barriers—perfect scouts. As a structure, Tashan's field of vision remained fixed, unable to see beyond the hall and mine shafts. Ghosts could. And if she encountered something she couldn't escape, she could simply release the possession and return.
Thus, Tashan left the safety of the hall and began traversing the unknown areas.
She circled clockwise around the hall, using it as a center point. This reconnaissance route covered all nearby areas. With the majority of souls anchored in the hall as reference points, Tasha's navigation was as precise as a homing pigeon's, free from worries of straying off course. Yet the execution proved trickier than anticipated. Being underground felt like submerged in water; even on the same plane where nothing seemed amiss, she couldn't be certain what lay above or below.
She'd have to take it step by step.
Tasha had no intention of ascending vertically, fearing ghosts might perish in light as in legends. She prioritized spaces on the same plane as the hall, hoping to discover if other sections of this vast city had survived.
Moving through the earth felt like passing through mist, though in truth, the phantom itself was mist. The soil remained unaffected by her presence, yet she could discern the contours of objects shrouded by her phantom form, as if tracing the outlines of tangible things with her hands.
She discovered fragments of ruins. Most stones lay shattered beyond recognition, making it difficult to distinguish them from natural underground rock formations. She unearthed metal scraps, corroded beyond shape. Among the sand and stones lay several human skeletons. One was exceptionally small, yet its sturdy bones suggested not a child but perhaps a dwarf. Tasha had never learned to deduce cause of death from bones, only that these had long since perished. Finding so few remains across such a vast area felt oddly sparse.
Tasha found no written records (and likely wouldn't have recognized them if she had), leaving her no clue as to what had transpired here.
She spent the entire day exploring, yet found not a single intact ruin. This buried city had either been destroyed too thoroughly in its time or worn away by too many centuries, leaving seemingly little behind. But compared to the indistinguishable remains elsewhere, why was the main hall preserved so perfectly?
Tasha returned to the hall. Ah Huang lifted its head from sleep and nudged her with its nose. Distractedly patting its head, she surveyed her reborn body.
The stone pool shimmered. The blue layer at its bottom now resembled a sea of glowing fungi, rippling with iridescent waves. The ruby suspended above appeared far brighter than before, its crimson glow illuminating the entire hall like a lighthouse, outshining the blue light below.
If there was any difference between this section and the other shattered fragments, the most obvious was this stone pool.
No. Before the pool was filled, before the runes were activated, the earliest anomaly had come from this ruby. Tasha leaned closer to examine the fist-sized ruby. Its shape was highly irregular, neither artificially carved nor naturally formed.
Her gaze followed an unusually smooth cut surface downward, revealing a massive crack running through the stone pool.
The crack had always been there, like an old, healed scar, and it did not interfere with the pool's ability to hold ore. Tasha had always regarded it as just another ordinary fissure in the hall. Now, connecting the two, perhaps the same cause had damaged both the ruby and the stone basin.
Upon closer inspection, the crack didn't just run through the basin; it spread across the floor, a shallow trail cutting through the entire hall. It was as if a gigantic sword had cleaved the gem, the basin, and the entire hall in two.
Impossible, right? Tashan glanced up at the ceiling—the vaulted top remained perfectly intact. If such a sword had truly fallen from the sky, the hall should have collapsed long ago.
As if something had blocked it.
This thought took root in Tashan's mind like a seed the moment it emerged. She felt inexplicably certain this was the truth, her intuition persistently pointing toward the ruby. Perhaps this very gem had intervened during the catastrophe that ravaged the city, preserving this relatively intact chamber—an unscientific notion, yet in this bizarre realm where stone moles scurried, slimes cultivated ore, and buildings housed rampaging ghosts, such a strange conclusion might just be plausible.
Wait—if it could truly block something...
Tashan plummeted downward, the ghost piercing through the thick floor, sinking, sinking, until light flooded his vision.
Directly beneath the hall lay a space nearly its equal in size. As Tashan had surmised, rooms preserved beneath the hall remained intact.
Tall, orderly bookshelves lined the room. Were they bookshelves? The shelves were empty, and if this were a library, these shelves reaching to the vaulted ceiling seemed far too tall—books on the upper shelves would require flying to reach. The material of these enduring shelves was unknown: not wood, not clay, not metal, not stone. The room was astonishingly bright. She looked up and saw a starry sky on the vaulted ceiling.
Fragmented fluorescent grains of sand formed a Milky Way, while night pearls the size of eyeballs cast a soft glow. The stars illuminated the entire room like tiny night lights, reminding Tasha of a softly lit coffee shop where reading wouldn't strain her eyes. Overwhelmed by this unexpected beauty, she sank to the floor without realizing it, her feet touching solid ground—her ghostly form didn't pass through the floorboards.
Looking down, Tasha saw the stone floor carved with intricate, bizarre patterns forming an enigmatic tableau. They resembled obscure characters in a book—ones you should recognize but simply couldn't decipher. She frowned, studying them for a long moment. The meaning lingered on the tip of her tongue, stuck at the final step, impossible to articulate. Shaking her head, she stepped toward the room's center.
A solitary bookshelf stood in the room's center. Unlike the other neatly arranged rectangular shelves, this one stood alone, more like the lectern a priest uses to place the Bible during worship. Upon this lectern sat the only book in the entire place.
Its pages lay open.
Thankfully it was open, otherwise the ghost couldn't turn the pages. Though it probably wouldn't understand it anyway, Tasha thought to herself as she looked at the book. It was blank.
At least, it had been blank when she first saw it.
A faint glow flickered across the pages. The yellowed paper seemed to ripple, suddenly coming to life. One second ago, it had looked centuries old; the next, it appeared freshly printed, time itself shaken off like dust. Tasha saw a line of jet-black characters appear on the page, the ink seeping from the paper itself.
"Welcome, my dear friend!"
She almost took a step back, then forced herself to stay put, realizing the writing wasn't Chinese. The characters resembled a fire burned to ashes, possessing a spine-chilling beauty. They were unlike any script Tasha knew, yet she understood their meaning.
"Fear not," the book said. "Did you not journey through this dungeon to find me?"
"Dungeon?" Tasha repeated blankly.
The pages remained still—perhaps it had no ears. Tasha reached out, and the translucent mist that formed her ghostly body seeped into the pages like quicksand, composing the ash-like characters.
"What do you mean?" As Tashar had hoped, the words inquired.
"You don't know?" The next line appeared instantly. "Then why are you here?"
Tashar didn't know why she was here, nor why it assumed she had a purpose. She tentatively countered, "You don't know?"
"Ah, I see," the book said. "A lost soul. Not one who belongs here."
Tasha's hair stood on end, and she withdrew her fingers from the pages.
"You don't know why you're here, nor where this place is?" the words continued. "You don't even remember what a dungeon is, though your connection is so deep it binds you here. How pitiful. You remember nothing. Fate brought you to me, yet you believe it mere coincidence."
"Who are you?" Tashar asked.
"Me?"
The pages lifted as if weightless, each one fluttering like a flag in a fierce wind. They raced backward from the first page, their patterns merging into a continuous swirl. The sight made Tasha close her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, the book had turned to its center, revealing a vertical yellow eye. Merely being stared at by it sent shivers down Tasha's spine.
"I am the deepest knowledge, opening your eyes to see truth; I am the crimson key, unlocking the door of bone. "Words scrawled wildly across the pages, appearing and vanishing. "I am the pass to immortality, the contract that holds destiny, the answer to all your questions, the antidote to all your pain."
The latter half was no longer text. Tashan heard the voice inside her own head. It was both a roar and a whisper, like the convergence of countless voices. A pale pen materialized in Tasha's hand. The yellow eyes stared at her, and somehow, she felt the book was smiling at her.
"I am the Book of the Dungeon," it said. "Come, write your name! Then power, authority, wealth, answers... everything will be yours."