Adrien dismounted from his horse. His eyes were fixed on the map as he studied it with a frown."The map leads to this place, but…"
"You made this map from old clues, and things have changed. Let's search."
"Okay, Vera, let us search this area thoroughly."
The duo quickly tied their horses to a nearby tree and began searching the area when Vera suddenly spotted a narrow entrance hidden behind the foliage.
"Adrien, over here, come quick."
As Adrien approached her, Vera spoke, "Do you think this is the entrance?"
"Only one way to find out."
With the gun and small lantern in his hand, Adrien squeezed in and found himself inside a small cave, with a partially exposed door at the other end.
━━━━━━━━ 🧭[ DUNGEON DISCOVERED ]🧭 ━━━━━━━━
Welcome to the 'Lovegrove's Rest' Dungeon
Rules:
* Single Clearance Dungeon
* No other difficulty level
* If anyone (NPC or Player) clears the dungeon, the dungeon instance will end.
* Needs a unique Dungeon Key to enter
Recommendation:
* Minimum Level 10 needed
* Minimum 4 party members
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
'Success!'
"Vera, you lucky girl, you found it," Adrien exclaimed with barely concealed excitement.
"Of course I am," Vera's smug reply floated in from the crevice. Then, her tone flattened, stripped of its arrogance. "But we have a practical problem. This gap is a death trap. If we need to retreat in a hurry with our packs, we'll get wedged tight."
Adrien looked back at the jagged rock pressing against his ribs. "Then we clear a path. Fetch the pickaxes."
The next hour was a gruelling, rhythmic nightmare, tearing the soil with their pickaxes. They worked in grim silence until the jagged teeth of the fissure were smashed away, leaving a passage wide enough to move through without scraping bone.
They hauled their heavy supply packs inside, dropping the secondary gear onto the dusty cavern floor while keeping their primary rucksacks firmly strapped to their shoulders.
Adrien reached into his backpack and pulled out the key. As his fingers closed around the cold metal, a sharp ping echoed in his mind, and the floating text of the system materialised before his eyes, flickering with updated parameters.
━━━━━━━━━━━ [ ITEM IDENTIFIED ]━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Key for Lovegrove's Rest
Type: Utility / Quest Interface
Rarity: Unique
Condition: Stable (Altered state detected)
Durability: 197 / 925
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Adrien, come on," Vera urged, her voice hushed but vibrating with manic energy. "Stop staring at it. Open it."
Adrien gave a sharp nod while gripping the heavy, hexagonal prism of the key and twisting the base. With a loud, mechanical snap, the metal casing shifted. A long, lethal-looking needle slid out from the core, its shaft ringed with asymmetric protrusions and angled teeth that looked more like an instrument of torture than a tool.
He located the narrow aperture on the stone doorframe. It wasn't a standard keyhole; it looked like a dark, weeping crack in the rock.
Adrien lined up the needle and pushed. The mechanism inside woke with a ferocious appetite. A cascade of rapid, metallic clicks echoed deep within the metallic wall, the gears swallowing the key inch by inch.
The metallic door shuddered. Deep within the stone wall, the locking mechanism groaned and ground forward, sending a violent tremor straight up into the cavern ceiling. A heavy shower of loose dirt and gravel rained down on Adrien's shoulders.
"The cave is giving out!" Vera cried, her eyes widening as a golf-ball-sized rock smacked the floor between them.
"Grab the packs!" Adrien yelled over the sudden creaking of the stone. "Throw them against the frame!"
Vera didn't need to be told twice. Together, they scrambled, dragging their heavy rucksacks toward the shifting threshold as the ceiling began to weep larger chunks of earth. The stone door was moving agonisingly slow, an agonising crawl of ancient geometry.
With a final, deafening clunk, the mechanism clicked home, and the door gave way. Adrien threw his entire weight against the stone slab, forcing it open just wide enough. They lunged through the gap, dragging their gear behind them, and hit the stone floor inside just as a roaring thud echoed behind them.
A wall of thick, choking dust exploded through the narrow opening, followed by the muffled thunder of collapsing rock, and then, silence.
They lay there for a long moment, coughing and swatting at the air until the dust settled. Vera rolled over onto her back, letting out a long, shaky breath.
"Well, we made it inside. The good news is, we won't get wedged in that crevice anymore. Bad news is, we're officially trapped."
Adrien sat up, dusting off his coat, and cast his eyes upward. "Maybe not. Look at the top right corner over there." He pointed to a jagged crack where a thin, diagonal needle of pale sunlight pierced the gloom.
"The cave-in can't be that deep if daylight is still making it through. Worst-case scenario, we can dig our way back out."
Vera followed his gaze, her lips twitching into a sceptical line. "Assuming the system lets us, and as for your faith in design? Lest we forget the wonderful launch-day bug that spawned us in the middle of a jungle."
Adrien chuckled, the tension finally leaving his shoulders as he offered her a hand up. "Fair point, but seeing as our backward route is currently a solid wall of soil... let's see what this place has to offer."
"Hey, Adrien," Vera said, her voice dropping to a low, serious murmur. "About that dungeon recommendation... the one saying we needed four people."
"I know what you're thinking, Vera," Adrien replied without looking back, his eyes still fixed on the unsettling golden statue. "But we don't exactly have a roster of trustworthy players to call up. You remember how the others behaved after our last quest?"
Vera's jaw tightened as she spat out, "How could I forget? When that idiot accused us of cheating and tried to block us from taking our well-earned loot, the rest of them just stood there. Sitting on the fence, watching the drama unfold like it was entertainment."
"Exactly. They're a friendly bunch on the surface, but that friendliness only lasts as long as you're useful to them," Adrien agreed, a bitter edge to his tone. "We literally handed them a free class ascension, and yet their gratitude will expire the second things get uncomfortable, and if we brought them here, they'd either stab us in the back or use us as bait at the first sign of trouble."
The dungeon was carved from a suffocatingly dark stone, vein-struck with raw, semi-metallic gold that caught the flickering beams of their lanterns. The atmosphere was dead, thick with a stale, heavy stench of stagnant air and centuries of decay.
Vera coughed into her sleeve, her voice muffled. "Hey, Adrien. Let's get our helmets on. It's going to mess with our peripheral vision, but it beats breathing in whatever poison this is."
"Good call," Adrien muttered as he pulled his helmet over his head. Then, his posture froze, and through the tinted visor, his eyes narrowed at the darkness ahead. "Wait... look down the passage, and get ready.
"The duo raised their firearms in perfect sync, shoulders pressed close as they crept forward into the gloom."Statue," Vera sighed, lowering her barrel with a click of disappointment. "And here I thought we were finally getting a real fight. It's just a chunk of rock."
"Don't lower your guard," Adrien warned, his voice cracked like a whip, and without losing focus, his eyes locked on the silhouette. "We've been moving through this place for too long. No traps, no patrolling mobs. Nothing. Doesn't that strike you as wrong?"
Vera tensed, the casual attitude vanishing from her shoulders.
"My gut is screaming at me right now," Adrien continued, his grip tightening on his weapon. "And if years of playing RPGs have taught me anything, it's that nothing in a dungeon is decorative."
Vera raised her gun again, her knuckles turning white. The more she stared at the figure, the more a cold sense of dread settled in her chest.
The statue loomed over seven feet tall, cast from a dull, deceptive alloy that mimicked gold. It possessed a strikingly humanoid face frozen in a serene, benevolent smile. A heavy, ornamental helmet framed its head, matching the intricate, flowing carvings etched deep into its metallic torso, but it was the limbs that made her skin crawl—six double-jointed arms, bent and folded into precise, elegant mudras that looked less like a monument and more like a dancer frozen mid-motion.
"This statue is seriously suspicious," Vera whispered, her finger twitching against her trigger. "So, what's the play?"
Adrien bit his lower lip, calculating their options. "It's cast from solid metal, and if this thing wakes up, I'm not entirely sure our bullets will even dent it."
"Guess we'll find out soon enough," Vera said, her voice dropping an octave as her eyes darted to the shadows just beyond the gold reflection. "Because we've got an uninvited guest. Please tell me you noticed."
"I see it," Adrien hissed. "Scatter!!"
The words had barely left his lips when the heavy air tore open. The golden statue snapped to life with a deafening shriek of grinding metal, its six arms blurring forward to crush Vera where she stood. She dove sideways, hitting the dusty floor and rolling clear just as the heavy alloy fists smashed into the stone.
At the same instant, a shadow detached itself from the pitch-black ceiling above. A second metallic monstrosity plummeted downward like a falling anvil, its bladed limbs extended to skewer Adrien straight through his armour.