There was a void, not of blackness, but of empty, stark whiteness, and somehow, that was much more disturbing than if he had just been plunged into absolute darkness.

Nar could still feel his body, and he flexed his fingers, and tapped his feet to make sure he was all still there… He found that there was an up and a down, but other than that, there was nothing to be seen or heard, and no matter how much he looked down at himself, he could see nothing but utter and sheer whiteness.

Uh… he thought, feeling his lips twisting on his face. I don't like this…

However, suddenly, he felt himself arriving somewhere else.

First came the sound of gentle drops rhythmically hitting against many soft somethings in a sound that lulled him in with its serenity.

Then came the scents, and he inhaled deeply of a fresh, slightly damp and almost sweet smell that set his nose to nearly dancing and giggling.

Then came the coolness, perhaps even slightly cold, seeping in through his aura armor. Then, finally, came the sights… And knowledge flooded his mind with meaning.

Nar stood upon a small clearing of tall grass. Before him, stretched a line of tall conical trees, with dark green needle leaves gently dripping water, and dark brown and black wet tree trunks supporting them. And above them, from a uniformly dark gray sky, water came down upon them, as though they stood underneath a gigantic shower.

For a moment, nobody spoke. Nobody moved. It was just the sound of the water, and of the occasional breeze shifting through the trees and the grass around them.

"It-It's called rain…" Kur suddenly told them. "The water it… Well, it does a lot of things, but, in this state, falling down from the clouds, it's called rain."

Tuk released his helmet, and suddenly, his bare face was under the gentle downpour.

"My Crystal!" he gasped, a smile forming at the corners of his mouth. "Holy shit…"

His chest shook, and laughter grew out of him as he raised his hands to the skies.

"It's amazing!" he shouted. "Guys! You have to try this!"

Viy was the first to join him, and her eyes went wide before she quickly blinked and rubbed the rain from them. And yet, she too, lost herself in uncontrollable laughter, and not wanting to be left behind, Nar too, deactivated his helmet.

Cold tiny drops kissed his forehead, and ran down his cheeks, and his neck. He gasped involuntarily at the sudden coldness that immediately spread into him, and within moments, his hair was matted wet against his scalp. A smile touched his lips, and then it became a grin, until he too, was laughing… And he didn't even know why.

The water was cold, and his face was quickly growing numb from it, and his eyes blinked furiously to keep the rain out of them, and even breathing was constricted by his lungs seizing in shock at the sudden coldness… And yet… The rain fell, the wind sighed, and the silken, dark grass blades shifted and parted at his curious fingertips' exploration.

He felt mud under his feet, sucking him in and holding him in place even as he shifted slightly from its slippery nature, and he found a sharp rock, driving up into the sole of his right foot… He felt discomfort, yes! And yet, it was tiny, small, and relegated to a little corner of his mind.

That rain, each drop of it, now hit him with the strength of a hammer, driving him into the realization that he truly was out of the B-Nex. That he truly had made it, and that he truly was alive, and in a place he had only ever dared dream of… And that was so much better and beyond anything he could have ever imagined.

"Is this real?" Rel breathed.

"This is real!" Viy yelled, throwing her arms high in the air. "Woohoo! We're out! We're alive and this is real!"

Tuk threw back his head and bellowed out in great booming peals of laughter. Cen stared listlessly at the rain, her expression one of pure, blank wonder, while at her side, Mul frowned up at the clouds, unblinking, his hands crossed over his heatless flaming chest. Gad cupped her hands up in the falling rain, and stared as it filtered through the gaps in between her fingers, her all black eyes showing an almost utter incapability to comprehend what they were seeing. Besides her, Jul stared not up, but around her, with her mouth open and forgotten, and Kur, he stared down at the swaying, wet grass that reached up to his hips, as though that expanse of dark green couldn't possibly be real.

Is this what they meant? Nar wondered, recalling his master and others. Is this why people delve? To be here… To see this. Feel this… To live this?

Oh, and what a stark contrast it was, to his silent, dark, hot and stifling cubeplant.

One day, dad. One day you'll see this too, Nar vowed, his eyes dancing across the grass, and the trees, and the sky.

"Ugh… I'm soaking wet now," Mul said.

Nar chuckled and shook his head. Always the same Mul…

"Are you serious?" Tuk asked the brawler.

"What?" Mul asked back.

"You-You stand here, in the middle of-of all of this beauty!" Tuk said, his voice cracking with barely contained anger. "And you somehow still complain?"

Mul frowned at him, but it quickly disappeared behind the suppressor's pacified expression.

"I think it's you who needs to open their eyes, you dumbshit," Mul said, emotionlessly. "It's raining, and it's interfering with our gear. Don't you see your aura going down?"

"What?" Tuk asked, blinking.

"We'll need to turn it off, and then we'll be wet and cold, and everything is muddy and wet around us," Mul said, casting a wide wave at all that surrounded them. "That means we need to get out of this rain, now. And don't forget we're in a freaking dungeon too."

Nar clenched his jaw and quickly scanned the forest. The tree line stared back at him, looking a lot more sinister than it had just a second ago, and the rain, once wonderful, now felt heavy and cold, and it dampened his senses to any possible dangers that might already be stalking them.

Way to kill the mood, Nar thought, now on full alert. However, he couldn't fault the lengos for the reality check. It was possibly one of the most beautiful moments of his entire life, but it was still a dungeon, and their lives were all on the line here.

"I mean, you're right but, did you have to be so…"

"Shhh!" Jul hushed at the trugger.

By now everyone knew better than to argue with Jul when she told you to shut up, and lips were sealed, helmets reactivated, and battle stances were taken.

"What's wrong?" Kur whispered, scanning their surroundings for any signs of imminent danger.

Jul however, pointed not at the tree line, but at Cen.

"Something's happening to her," Jul whispered. "She hasn't moved since we got in…"

"Cen?" Mul asked, raising a flaming hand to shake her.

"Stop!" Kur hissed. "Don't touch her! Everyone back off and shut up!"

Mul clenched his hands into fists but he reluctantly obeyed Kur and they all stepped away from Cen, edging closer towards the forest.

"What's wrong with her?" Mul asked, his tone pacified.

"It's enlightenment," Kur said, awe in his voice.

"You mean, for her affinity?" Tuk asked, stunned. "It's unlocking now? Already?"

"Is it the rain?" Rel asked, glancing up.

"Shhh!" Kur said. "I don't know. Maybe it will unlock, maybe it won't, but it's still an important step in the right direction."

They all stared back at Cen, who silently gazed up at the sky, her eyes unblinking, her expression frozen in between questioning and pure wonder.

"What do we do?" Gad asked. "Can we move her?"

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Kur shook his head. "We need to wait it out, for as long as it takes."

He looked up as well, to the cloudy rains still unleashing their load upon them, and then he scanned the tree line.

"We can't stay here, though. Mul's right," he decided. "This rain is eating away at our auras, so we need to find somewhere a little bit more covered and deactivate our armors."

"Won't we be exposed without it?" Tuk asked him.

"We will, but we have no choice," Kur said. "We need to save our auras for the fighting."

"Do we go into the trees?" Gad asked, aiming the question at Jul instead.

"I don't sense anything in there," Jul said, inclining her head in that familiar way that told him she was listening for threats with her antennae.

"Let's do it, then," Kur said. "Everyone under the trees, and we'll keep an eye on Cen from there. And Mul, don't worry, there's nothing but the boundary through that way. If anything wants to get her, it will have to go through us first."

Mul fixed his catatonic sister with a long stare, then he nodded, and turned around to be the first to head towards the trees. Meanwhile, as the rest of them followed after the silent brawler, Nar quickened his pace to approach Jul.

"Can you hear anything in this rain?" he whispered to her.

"It's really loud," she whispered back, her face appearing from behind her helmet of shadowy aura. "And it hides a lot of stuff, but I don't think anything will sneak up on us. I can still hear well enough…"

"That's good."

"And you?" she asked him in return.

Nar shook his head. "Not much. Just rain and the trees. I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll be much help to you this time around. Not unless I really, really focus… Or this rain stops."

She smiled and patted his arm.

"Don't. That would eat away at your stamina. And besides, you still have your [Instinct]."

"That's way too close," Nar said, peering up at the canopy as they stepped beneath the swaying trees. "I don't know if I'd be able to react in time with something like that… Plus, it only covers me."

It was, fortunately, significantly quieter under the trees, and Jul managed to find them a spot where little to no rain seemed to be falling.

"Right, armors off," Kur said, deactivating his own bronze like armor, and whipping out his touch-screen. "And gather round."

The seven of them huddled down on the soft blanket of pines that covered the floor, while Mul remained standing, watching over Cen with his arms folded. Nar crouched to run his hand across the needle and moss-covered floor, and a childish smile took his features as the needles prickled against his fingers.

"Why's the rain affecting the armor?" Tuk asked. "It didn't happen in the confluence."

"It did," Gad rumbled. "Just not as bad as this."

"Really?" Nar asked, looking up at her.

She nodded. "I kept an eye on it, as I don't have that much aura, and everytime we went into one of those clouds, my aura dropped quite a bit."

"Ah…" Nar said, with a grimace. He had so much aura that he usually didn't worry much about maintaining his armor, and Gad smiled at him, correctly interpreting his thoughts.

"Don't worry about it. Just needs a closer eye, that's all," she said. "As for this, I think that the rain, being physical, has a higher effect on our armor than aether did. But that's just a hunch… It could also be caused because this rain is much denser."

"I guess that makes sense," Kur mused. "Weather interference… Does it mean that anything else will interfere with it as well? Mud… A branch…"

"Blood fizzles against the armor," Nar offered.

"Yes, I've noticed that too," Viy said, as she leaned on her spear.

But Kur shook his head at them. "Something for us to figure out once we get back. For now, I want everyone to keep an eye on their auras, and for now, and until we enter combat, we'll proceed without them on."

The party leader turned on his touch-screen and flicked and tapped until he got to where he needed to be.

"First things first, you should have all unlocked the dungeon compass," Kur said.

That was something that Professor Thim hadn't mentioned, but which had come with their dungeon brief. The dungeon compass was an integral component of every dungeon and domain, and provided a simple, yet reliable way of navigation to all delvers.

"I see it," Gad said, turning in place. "So that's north."

"That makes a lot more sense now," Viy said.

"That's neat!" Tuk said, turning his head left and right to watch the needle in his UI compass shift.

"Alright, here's where we are," Kur said, holding his screen horizontally so they could see the map of their dungeon. "Here, on this tiny little corner at the very southern edge of the dungeon."

(Link to the map image in post author notes!!)

"Ooh, looks like a fish!" Tuk said.

"What part?" Viy asked him, checking to see if the truggers eyes were closed.

"There," Tuk said, pointing. "Open mouth here, a… Weird body here, and a very big, flat tail there."

"The mouth looks more like a hoof," Jul mused. "It's a leg that's narrower at the ankle."

"But the tail-like… No, never mind," Viy said.

"Guys, focus," Kur told them. "We're standing on a mountain shelf. To the west, there's a ravine as the boundary, and to the east, there's the mountain, though it's currently covered by the clouds. The forest itself, the… Fish-hoof thing is literally split into two. We have the forest area, where we are now, and the deep forest area which covers the second half of the dungeon. And our itinerary looks like this…"

He tapped the screen, and a dotted line began crossing the map.

"First, we head directly west, towards this stream here. There, we'll fight our first boss, the Mud Elemental," Kur said.

"Great…" Mul muttered. "Mud."

"Then, we'll keep heading west to fight the Moss-Back Snake Duo," Kur continued, dragging his finger across the dotted line.

"Ugh, snakes…" Tuk said, with a shiver. "These ones don't fly, do they?"

"No, they don't," Kur said, and tapped the screen again. "From there, we're finally turning and heading north, skirting the western boundary through this prairie here. Past the prairie, we'll aim northeast, go back into the forest, and we'll come across the Wolfs' Lair."

"Oh, I don't want to kill wolves!" Viy pouted.

"They'll want to kill you," Kur said. "After that, still aiming northeast, we'll come across the Goblin Camp, and this should be a proper and challenging encounter. There are an estimated fifty to sixty goblins living there."

"What?" Tuk asked, shocked.

"That is a lot of monsters," Gad rumbled. "But we'll figure something out."

Kur nodded. "We will, and we have all the other encounters and bosses to worry about before we get there, but from camp, we'll head north once again, heading into the deep forest. There is one optional boss to fight in there, the Great Brown Bear Matriarch, but we're under no obligation to fight her. We can see how we feel about it when we cross this shallow ravine here that cuts the deep forest in half, but other than that, no more bosses as we head east, up the mountain, and end the dungeon with the Forest Troll Trio. All told, it's about 30 miles of forest, and we have until 10PM tomorrow night to get out."

Nar checked his clock. It was almost 9AM already.

"In this?" Rel asked, gazing deeper into the forest. "And fighting our way through it? Will we be able to do this all in time?"

"The forest is mostly flat," Kur told her. "And we should be able to make a lot of time back in the dense forest. Of course, that's not to say it's not filled with dangerous beasts and even monsters. There's some kind of tree monster that lives there, but they're supposedly friendly unless attacked, so, let's give them a wide berth. As for the coyotes… Well, we'll see."

"Why?" Tuk asked, picking on Kur's hesitant tone. "What's wrong with them?"

"They can manipulate fog… And illusions."

"They can do what?"

Gad clasped the ring tosser in the shoulder.

"We can worry about them when the time comes. For now, our first concern is getting to this Mud Elemental," the tank said. "What can we expect to find on the way there?"

Kur opened a list over the map.

"Green-jeweled eye mountain lions, which are a feline predator with… Well, some very valuable green eyes which we'll need to harvest," Kur said, reading from the list. "Mud hornets, which is a very angry bug with a very big stinger."

"Also for harvesting?" Tuk asked with a shudder.

"Also for harvesting," Kur said. "White acid skunks, which squirt acid, of course, so be careful with that. Then there's the red striped rabid rhathks… Crystal, what a mouthful."

"They look cute," Jul mumbled.

"Their bite carries a status effect that can turn you momentarily rabid, and attack anyone in sight. Friend or foe," Kur said, arching an eyebrow at the quam.

"Oh. Not cute," Jul said, wincing.

"Nothing's cute here, people," Kur told them all. "Well, there are birds, fish and other small beasts that are all at level 0, and these are just animals and insects. As in, they barely have any attributes and aren't really any threat, so those can be cute… I guess."

"Nice!" Tuk whispered, exchanging a grin with Viy.

"Anything else?" Gad asked.

"Not for now," Kur said. "But once we kill the Mud Elemental and cross the stream, then we'll also have to worry about the pine needle vipers, and we'll have to be very careful with those. They camouflage very well with the floor, and it says here that they are very hard to detect, even with enhanced senses. And they're venomous."

"Lovely," Tuk said, sounding like Mul. "Eh… How long has it been? For Cen, I mean?"

"Almost seven minutes since we came here," Mul answered, from his solid, watchful position.

"It will take as long as it takes," Kur said.

"And her armor?" Gad asked. "It's still active."

"We'll have to do with whatever aura she has left," Kur said. "Her [Meditation] is the highest and best in the party, so hopefully she'll make up for it when we make camp for the night."

"And where is that going to be?" Viy asked, scanning the map.

"Here," Kur said, pointing at a dot just past the Goblin Camp, and which was half disguised by the dotted line running through it. "There's a cave here that should be empty. We can get out of the rain there, and try to get dry and comfortable-ish for the night."

"And if it's not empty?" Tuk asked, frowning at the map.

"Then we make it empty," Mul said.

"Exactly," Kur said. "Nar, Jul, how are your senses in this rain?"

"Better under the trees," Nar told him. "But it's still interfering with my [Hearing]. I won't get much from it without using a lot of stamina."

"It affects me too, but it's not too bad," Jul said. "I have us fully covered in about three hundred and fifty feet around us, and with [Instinct], I can sense much further… But it will depend on the level of danger. And if the enemy is afraid… Then-then I can sense a little bit of that too, maybe. It's all still very new."

So, she's starting to properly add fear into her sensing? Nar wondered, recalling how she had been able to sense his fear and worry a few weeks back, as he struggled to meet the aura skill targets set by the Master of Aura. If she keeps going like this, at some point, nothing's going to be able to get past her.

"Wait, you can sense fear?" Rel asked, clearly out of the loop.

"Easier up close, but getting better from afar," Jul said, looking down, away from the archer's intense emerald stare. "Maybe soon, I think. It's not very good yet…"

Kur patted her back. "That should be plenty. Now, here's what the two of you need to sense for…"

"Cen!" Mul suddenly shouted.

The brawler sprinted out into the rain and Nar looked over to the clearing. His blood turned to ice in his veins when he realized he couldn't see the caster, and without a word, he was on his feet. He was back under the rain in the blink of an eye, running and slipping in the mud, but still easily able to overtake Mul, and he got there first.

"Cen!" he shouted, finding her laying on the grass.

The lengos opened her eyes just as her brother dropped to his knees at her side.

"Cen! What happened?" he asked. "Are you okay?"

"Y-Yeah…" she murmured. "I'm… I'm okay. Don't worry."

"Is she okay?" Viy called, arriving ahead of the others.

"Seems like it," Nar said, hesitating as he scanned her for any signs of injury of pain.

"I am. I am," the caster said, though her neon yellow irises were still unfocused. "Just, uh… Help me up."

Frowning in concern, Mul pulled her gently to her feet.

"Cen, you alright?" Kur asked, as he finally arrived.

The caster suddenly shivered.

"I am, but I'm cold…" she said, her teeth clattering.

"Come on!" Gad said. "Let's get you out of the rain."

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