Chapter 109: Dungeon Find, Back

```

[ Victory credited to territory owners. ]

[ Leon Flanke: +1 Elimination ]

[ Ruby Starviel: +1 Elimination ]

```

Logan stopped walking and read it twice.

"We have been standing in a cave for about a minute," he said slowly. "How did we get an elimination?"

Alice pulled up the same panel and scanned it. Then her eyes went wide.

"Somebody attacked the island."

They looked at each other. Neither of them moved for a second.

’Somebody hit our base while we were gone.’ Logan felt his stomach drop, then felt it climb right back up. ’And the base won.’

Then the second half of it landed properly, and he started to laugh.

"They lost." He said it out loud, like he needed to hear it. "Whoever went after our island, they lost badly enough to be removed from the match. Both of them."

"Billy is going to be unbearable about this." Alice was grinning now too. "He is going to tell that story for the rest of the game."

"He earned it."

Logan closed the panel. The grin stayed on his face anyway.

’I spent this whole match building that place so it would not need me.’ The thought sat warm in his chest. ’It just proved it.’

"Later," Alice said. She pointed deeper into the cave. "We came here for a reason. Look."

---

The cavern did not look like much at first.

The walls were plain grey rock. The floor sloped down at a gentle angle. The only strange thing was the light, which came from somewhere further in and did not behave the way light should.

Then they crossed an invisible line about forty meters down, and the air changed.

```

[ Dungeon Detected ]

[ Hollowveil Crystal Sovereign’s Hollow ]

[ Rank: Mythic ]

[ Party may enter. Entry is one-way until the dungeon is cleared. ]

```

Alice let out a low whistle.

"A Mythic-rank dungeon." She nocked an arrow without being asked. "That dog marked a good one."

"One-way until cleared." Logan rolled his shoulders and drew Grimlord’s Blade. "So we clear it."

The tunnel opened into a chamber the size of a small town.

Crystal grew out of every surface. It covered the floor and the walls and most of the ceiling. All of it glowed with a cold blue light that did not flicker.

In the middle of that chamber, something enormous uncurled from the floor.

```

[ Hollowveil Crystal Sovereign ]

Mythic | Level 40

```

It was built like a serpent made of glass. Its whole body was crystal, and every time it moved, the light inside it shifted and reflected off a thousand faces at once.

It was beautiful. It was also very clearly trying to kill them.

The fight went about how Logan expected.

The Sovereign was fast and its scales shrugged off the first three attacks he sent at it. Arrows glanced off the same way.

Then Alice found the trick.

"Logan!" She was already drawing. "The light inside it moves. Watch where it pools before it strikes!"

He watched. She was right.

Before every attack, the glow slid forward through the crystal body toward the part it was about to use. It was telegraphing everything, in a language neither of them had known to read a minute earlier.

After that it stopped being difficult.

Logan waited for the light to pool in the tail, stepped inside the swing, and put Grimspire Lance through the spot the glow had just left.

The crystal cracked all the way down the body.

Alice put an arrow through the crack while it was still spreading, and Puncture carried it straight through into the core behind it.

```

[ You have cleared Hollowveil Crystal Sovereign’s Hollow. ]

[ Mythic-rank Dungeon cleared. Rewards generating. ]

```

The serpent came apart into a thousand pieces of falling glass. The pieces never reached the floor.

They hung in the air, turned, and pulled together into two chests instead.

---

"Two." Alice was already walking toward them. "Two chests for one dungeon."

The first one opened easily. Inside it sat a single flat disc of pale metal with no markings on it at all.

```

[ Sovereign’s Reprieve ]

[ Type: Artifact ]

[ Rank: Mythic ]

[ One-Time Use ]

> For fifteen seconds after activation, no allied unit inside your territory can be reduced below 1 HP.

```

Logan read it, and then he read it again, and his eyebrows climbed.

"Fifteen seconds of nothing on the island being able to die." He turned the disc over. "That is not a fight-winner. That is a disaster-survivor."

"Somebody just attacked our base," Alice pointed out. "And we were not there for it."

"I know." Logan closed his hand around the disc. "That is exactly what I am thinking about."

’Two hundred and twenty-seven players left in this match.’ He put it away in his storage ring and made a note of exactly which pocket. ’Somebody else will come. Maybe while we are standing in another cave.’

"Keep it somewhere you can reach fast," Alice said.

"That is the plan."

The second chest was heavier.

Inside it lay a pair of gauntlets. They were shaped for a big frame, plated in gold and deep red, and the metal was warm to the touch.

```

[ Dawnfire Sovereign Gauntlets ]

[ Rank: Mythic ]

[ Attribute: Light and Fire ]

> Attacks made with these gauntlets deal additional Light and Fire damage.

> The wearer’s Light and Fire attribute skills gain significantly increased effect.

```

Logan lifted one of them and turned it over in his hands. It was too big for him, and it was the wrong kind of weapon besides.

He thought about a crimson-armored paladin standing on a broken causeway, burning brighter the more he got hit.

"These are not for me."

Alice looked over his shoulder and got it immediately.

"Solveig."

"Light and Fire, on a guy whose whole thing is holy wrath and getting angrier." Logan was already putting them away. "It would be a crime to give these to anybody else."

---

They came out of the cave through the exit the dungeon opened for them, and the island was waiting on the horizon.

The welcome was loud.

Billy told the story first, and he told it badly, because he kept jumping ahead to the good parts and then going back to explain them.

Sonic corrected him eleven times. Winsmoke added details about the food that nobody had asked for.

Logan let it run. He wanted to hear all of it.

Then it got to Terry, and the noise stopped.

Thessaris brought him out without being asked. The walking garden opened the hollow in its chest, and the green light inside showed everything it had been holding.

The core sat at the center. It was cracked almost all the way through and burned black on one side.

Every piece of Terry was stacked around it in careful order. Plating with plating. Frame with frame.

Logan looked at it for a long time.

"He took a battleship’s main gun for the wall," Billy said quietly. "Then the bomb went off on his back while he was holding it."

"I know." Logan crouched down beside Thessaris. "I can see where the plate failed."

His hand went to his storage ring without him deciding to move it.

The disc was still in there. Fifteen seconds of nothing on the island being able to drop below 1 HP.

’I was holding that while this happened.’ The thought arrived cold and sharp. ’I pulled it out of a chest a few minutes ago, and I was standing in a cave when the beam came down.’

It would not have mattered. He had not been on the island, and the artifact only worked inside the territory when somebody triggered it.

Knowing that did not help as much as it should have.

He reached in and touched the core. It was faintly warm, and the light inside it was still moving, slow and stubborn.

’Still going.’ Something tightened in his throat. ’After all that, he is still going.’

"Can you fix him?" Sonic asked.

"I am not going to fix him," Logan said.

The whole plaza went very quiet.

"I am going to make him better."