The half-rotten, skeletal undead slowly got onto its feet. It wasn't the only one, either, as the others also quickly got up. Now that they were standing, though, as Ryan was looking at them through Jester's eyes, he was able to spot a few peculiarities that he hadn't paid attention to before.

  Somehow, their bodies weren't quite... right. There were the regular distortions that were created by the dungeon itself, where some bones were in the wrong places or some of them had too little or too many bones in the first place, but there was something else going on as well.

  The bones had deep grooves carved into them; intentional patterns that looked surprisingly similar to something Ryan had with him at all times. Tiar. They looked like the patterns left behind on someone's skin when they bonded with a symbiote.

  "... What the hell?" Ryan muttered, "Jester, come back up, right away."

  And as the harlequin climbed up the sprues of the ladder, Ryan took a step back from the hatch. It didn't seem like the skeletons would be able to follow up the ladder, so they should be safe up here.

  "What's happening down there?" Modak asked, glancing down the shaft, "Is it something dangerous?"

  "Uh... It's like a..." rattled as he was trying to figure out what exactly was going on in this place, Ryan cleared his throat and looked at his friends, "It's some kind of laboratory. Or at least, uhm... there were full-on regular undead, half-rotten skeletons, and they're wearing lab coats. But they have all these grooves cut into their exposed bones that look like a symbiote's markings."

  Silvia glanced down at Ryan's arm, "Do they all have symbiotes? Did the dungeon replicate that?"

  "I don't... I don't know. Symbiote markings are physical in some way. I can feel Tiar moving around on my skin. But they're not engraved into me. Plus, Tiar has to concentrate a ton to not move around. So I don't know if they're real symbiotes... maybe the dungeon just misunderstood what they were again?" Ryan wondered, still trying to make sense of it all, "But in the first place, how would every single one down there have a bond with a symbiote?"

  "So, what? do you think they were trying to replicate symbiotes?" Modak asked, a bit confused, "And they did that by engraving patterns like that on their... bones?"

  It was ridiculous, of course, but it was possible. Ryan had heard of extremely fucked up shit happening when some alchemists or artificers or mages tried to do their morally more than questionable experiments. And that was just the sort of stuff you actually heard about on the news. Who knew what sort of messed up things happened in the side of the world that regular folk didn't hear about? Especially if these guys had anything at all to do with symbiotes, then that meant that this park was somehow connected to all of this before it was shut down back in the day.

  "Do you want to try fighting them?" Silvia asked, but Ryan quickly shook his head.

  "No, I don't think so. At least not yet. It's pitch-black down there, so I need some kind of lantern or something. And if we're dealing with undead here, I want to swap out Maximus' armour for his Paladin set. If possible I'd like to see if we can get another piece of that at the gift shop, too," he leaned onto the counter and groaned loudly.

  Silvia and Modak looked at each other for a moment, and then turned back to Ryan, "Are you alright?" the elf wondered, "You're not usually that anxious about this kind of thing."

  "Hm?"

  Modak quickly replied, since he was noticing that Ryan didn't quite understand what they were getting at, "She means that you're a lot more hesitant than you used to be. Which, frankly, isn't a bad thing. You used to be insanely reckless to a scary degree. And, well... you still are, sometimes. But awakening, and maybe being with the spirits and having this responsibility placed on you just kind of grounded you in a pretty intense way."

  "And maybe it even... over-grounded you. Wait, no, would it be under-grounded? Because it's about being low instead of being up in the sky, right?" Silvia asked, glancing over at the still open hatch as she did. Not sure what to say, Modak just looked away from her and cleared his throat.

  "... Anyway. Again, this isn't a bad thing, but I don't think you should be as worried as you are. I mean, your class sets you up for a lot more potential power than even a regular summoner. You're basically a full party in one person. Well, four, if you don't want to include Gaia. There's no need to be scared or anything like that."

  Ryan slowly nodded his head, straightening his back, "You're not wrong. I think nearly dying so often recently fucked me up a little bit," he ran his hand through his hair, sighing, "I mean, I just kind of don't know how strong those guys down there are. Skeletons apparently tend to be on the weaker side, but these guys are somewhere between skeletons and zombies. Plus, the symbiote markings... and this is a dungeon, so they're not even 'regular' undead. They might be a lot stronger than normal. I guess I'm just trying to be careful. I've got a lot more responsibilities now," he explained. And while he didn't say it out loud, in his mind, Ryan couldn't help but think about how scared he was to mess this up. The spirits depended on him. He practically shook the recklessness out of his head, stepping out of the stall's door, after kicking the hatch shut again, "Let's just get out of here. Modak, do you think you could-"

  "Make you a translator app so that you can scan the menu when you come back here next time?"

  "That would be great."

  "I gotchu," Modak slightly held his healthy arm forward, and Ryan smiled and slightly fist-bumped him.

  "Alright, let's just get to the gift shop now. I want to see what it will offer to you."

  A wire was pushed into place and a screw was tightened. In the background, EDM was blasting through the speakers, as Richard pulled back and slightly stretched his neck, "Finally."

  He held his hand to the side and snapped his fingers. A full-sized Roxie, actually larger than Richard himself, stepped up to him and gave him a drink and a towel. With a glance to the side, Richard looked at the monitor standing next to his desk, and he quickly rolled his eyes. He rolled his chair over toward the wall, pressing his palm onto the pad beside the door, "Christopher. What do you want?"

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "What do I-" Christopher's voice blasted through the custom intercom system, "I'm here to check on you. I'm still your employer, but you haven't answered any of my calls in days. Now open the fucking door."

  Rolling his eyes, Richard stood up as the Roxie unit brought the chair back to the desk. He walked out of the room and made his way to the front door. Christopher slithered into the apartment, taking a look around. Everything was completely spotless. There was no clutter or even any speck of personal belongings here. For a moment, Christopher doubted if Richard even actually moved in here.

  "What have you been doing, holing yourself up in here? It's been almost a week since the events at Bonfire plaza," Christopher moved around Richard, trying to slightly stand up onto his tail to tower above him even more than he usually already did. But the gnome wasn't impressed. He just started walking back over toward his workshop.

  "I've had some work to do. That dwarf did a lot of damage to him, and then that demon lady and the guy you told me to be careful of, Runar Aglecard, showed up and destroyed all of my Roxies."

  "Well, you still managed to infect the fire spirit, so it can't have been all that bad, can it?" Christopher groaned, "Plus, just because you have some repairs to do on one of your little projects doesn't mean you can just ignore me when I call you."

  "This simply took precedent," Richard explained, smiling lightly. That in itself piqued Christopher's curiosity. Richard didn't smile a lot these days.

  "What did you do?"

  Richard stopped, looking up at the lamia, "If I tell you, will you finally get me in contact with your boss? The big guy?"

  Christopher hesitated, "If this is something worth it, I'll try to speed up the process. But trust me, even I can't get to him that easily, so it needs to be something that can really convince him."

  "Oh, trust me, it will," the gnome stepped forward into his workshop. The EDM was still playing, so Richard snapped his fingers and stopped it. What was left behind was the soft beeping of medical equipment that had been drowned out until now, "You know, that gunman that you let me take command of? He was pretty useful. And he was somewhat compatible with my corruption as well. Made him pretty damn strong, though even more moronic than he had been before. Even let him take down that ridiculously strong dwarf, with some help from me of course."

  Christopher was stunned. He was just staring at the thing he was seeing on the other side of the room with disbelief. Even for him, that was something he neither expected to see, nor could really stomach. Richard walked over to the desk and grabbed the small metal tube that he had just finished putting together.

  "But after that fight, some parts of his body weren't quite usable anymore. Corruption seems to mess with physical recovery a bit, so even healing potions were no good. The back of his skull was blasted off, he went into multiple organ failure, and completely lost the ability to use his legs. The corruption kept him alive, but... he was useless. So, instead of just killing him, I decided to make some improvements."

  With a slight whistle, the tune of a gnomish folk song that was far too cheerful for the scene that was happening in front of the two, Richard peered over the body of the gunman, carefully placing the metal tube into his chest where his left lung should be. His heart that should be in there, beating, was replaced by a small, rumbling motor, and the blood that was supposed to be flowing through his veins was now a brown, viscous oil.

  Ryan rang the bell sitting on the counter in front of him. A clown with a broad smile on his face popped up from nowhere, as both Modak and Silvia flinched.

  "Uh... What is... what is that?" Silvia asked concerned, taking a step back.

  "Oh, that. It's technically a dungeon monster, but don't try to attack it, otherwise you'll be banned from ever using the shop again. Anyway, you just have to shake its hand now," Ryan explained, looking over at the elf. She was hesitant, but she figured that Ryan knew better in this scenario. She carefully walked over toward the clown and held her hand forward, grasping the clown's gloved hand. It squeezed Silvia's hand in return, and the clown's smile dropped as the lights shining onto the old, broken toys turned off. Some of them flickered on again, revealing seven total items. Though, and this came as a surprise to Ryan, they weren't vouchers as they were with him and the spirits for some reason.

  They were just the full items, openly displayed on the shelves.

  One of them was a fancy-looking paintbrush, and three of them were just small ceramic pots, around the size of a regular cup, each labelled 'Pigment Jar'. The next item was a small chisel, looking pretty similar to the paintbrush. There was something folded up as well. According to the label underneath, it was some kind of apron. And then, the last of the items was almost too small to even spot. It was a sewing-needle. It reminded Ryan of the one that was in his tool kit. At first glance, it looked normal, but if you looked closer, there were some slight shaves and patterns placed even on this incredibly thin piece.

  To get all of the items, she would have to spend a total of 3000 points. These items were a lot more expensive than the vouchers, but it was definitely still doable. Ryan was going to try and at least get Jester and Gregor up to level 10 soon. And since there was a batch of plants that should be ready for harvest soon, Gaia should be able to get to level 10 with that as well, so all the four current spirits would get a new skill that should boost the overall combat potential of the group quite a bit.

  "Ooh, hell yeah! And I have around... three points right now... Ryan, could you buy me one of those?" Silvia asked, but Ryan just scoffed, shaking his head.

  "Yeah, no, sorry, I don't have enough points for that right now. I'll be able to buy one of the items for the spirits with the coins I got from the boss, but yours are too expensive. Don't worry, I'll make sure to save some up for you until you come back next time," Ryan said reassuringly, and Silvia just let out a loud groan.

  "Maaan... you can't show me all that cool stuff and then tell me I can't even buy it! Look at that brush, it's so cute, and it's definitely a magic item!" she exclaimed, dropping onto one of the old nearby seats with a disappointed sigh.

  "Don't worry, I'll make sure to hurry it up," he explained, and then turned back to Modak, "Anyway... now to you. Want to give it a shot as well?"

  The orc shrugged, "If you think I can, then sure. Why not?"

  "Perfect. Alright, come over here, and place a coin into the chest. Close it, wait a moment, and then open it again, and it hopefully should make a card pop out."

  Modak glanced over at the small plastic card that Silvia was holding, "Are you sure that's going to work with me? It looks like some kind of appraisal-based ability, since it has the person's name and all, but appraisal abilities don't work on me."

  "Wait, really?" a bit surprised, Ryan raised a brow, though he quickly realized, "I mean, yeah, I guess they wouldn't, huh? That's good to know, I think..."

  "It's also incredibly annoying. So many security checkpoints have basic appraisal sensors now..." Modak groaned, "I can still give it a try, but I doubt it's going to work."

  "Might as well," Ryan shrugged, handing one of the small plastic coins to the orc. He was trying to hide it, but he was actually pretty excited to see what would happen himself. With a held-back smile, Modak put the coin into the chest, and then closed it. As Ryan said, he waited a moment, and then pulled the lid back open.

  The coin was gone, and a small plastic card had taken its place. Eager, Modak picked the card up, and quickly took a look. But... instead of showing his name on it, all the text was completely scrambled. And not even in the same way that the rest of the text in the dungeon was scrambled, but rather, all the places where text should be was replaced with random symbols similar to those that appeared on the hatch's lock.

  He quickly showed it to Ryan, "... Huh. Maybe that's just what happens when the dungeon doesn't know what to do? Come on, give it a shot. Shake the clown's hand."

  Though the orc was hesitant, he still had to admit that his curiosity wasn't letting him back down at this point either. Though he was disappointed he probably wouldn't be able to get proper items from the dungeon, the thought that he would be able to make something happen that even the Aglecard family hadn't been able to trigger was pretty exciting.

  He walked up to the counter and held his hand out toward the clown, before it was quickly grasped. And instead of staying that bored frown, the clown's face quickly turned into an expression of absolute terror.

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