I stood ahead of the party and stared forward, not moving a muscle for a second.

“Very funny, Khagnio,” I said.

He hissed out uproarious laughter. This time, I was positive his jaw absolutely did dislocate. Ugnash was chuckling softly too, while Cerea looked somewhere between exasperated and bemused.

The “monster” approaching me was a sheep.

At every step I’d taken to come to the head of the party, my mind had conjured wild images of what kind of brutal creature I would need to face down. Lots of fangs, claws bigger than my arm, a body that probably wouldn’t be damaged easily just by swinging my mace.

What I hadn’t expected was a floofy, familiar creature pawing the ground aggressively as it slowly prepared to headbutt me.

Ridiculous as it was to find a sheep of all things inside the dungeon, I didn’t fully relax. It really was looking forward to goring me with the tiny curling horns on its head. Plus, it definitely wasn’t any regular sheep I had ever seen. Its wool was dark as coal and the eyes were huge, easily covering half its head.

Worst of all were the strange wounds. They weren’t anything large or gory, but blood dripped from its neck, and there were more scratches around its legs.

“This isn’t normal, is it?” I asked.

Khagnio sniggered some more. “What, you don’t run into cave-sheep on your dungeon travels every day, mageling?”

“That’s enough, Khagnio,” Cerea said, though she couldn’t hide the amusement in her voice. It faded as she considered my question and observed the sheep. “It is strange a cave-sheep is down here in the dungeon. Maybe it got lost from its owner?”

“What would a cave-sheep shepherd be doing in a dungeon?” Khagnio asked.

“I don’t know, I’m trying to think of possibilities that make sense.”

“What the hell is a cave-sheep?” I asked. “And do they all like to attack people?”

“Capture it, Ross,” Ugnash said, now totally serious. “Stun it. Then we’ll hand you the ropes to tie it up.”

There was no room to argue that I was no expert at tying up rambunctious sheep because said sheep brayed a war cry and charged me down. Stun it, Ugnash had said. I swallowed, steadied my foot on the ground, and brough the heater shield forward.

Then I channelled Gravity. Infusion raised both mine and the shield’s weight. The sheep rushed me with no concern for its wellbeing, its horns clanging loudly against the shield.

The force didn’t make me move. I couldn’t feel myself budge even the slightest.

On the other hand, the sheep brayed again and staggered back, shaking its head like it had run into a brick wall.

“Now!” Ugnash threw me the rope. “Loop it around the neck and leash it tight.”

He said it like I was a cowboy with years of practice lassoing unruly farm animals. I tried my best. It was surprisingly not that difficult. I managed to lash the rope around the sheep’s neck before quickly tying it together to form a rope collar, trying to not make it too tight so I didn’t aggravate the poor thing’s injury further.

The stunning definitely helped. As I tied it up, the sheep wasn’t even aware of what was going on, much less actually protesting and fighting back.

It resumed trying to gore me in a bit, but I had the rope secure by then.

“Don’t struggle too much,” I muttered as it tried to pull free. It felt weak to me, which was another indicator of just how much growing my Power had changed me. Changed what I was capable of. Because back on Earth, I was pretty sure most sheep would have had me flying behind it like a kite if I tried to engage it in a tug of war. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

The sheep, being the dumb injured animal that it was, didn’t listen.

Khagnio slapped my armoured back. “Looks like you’ve got a new friend, mageling. Try to not let it die, okay? It’s more valuable than you.”

He laughed as he walked off, fading into the gloom again.

“We don’t have the luxury of returning it to its owner just now,” Ugnash said. “But we should be able to gain some decent change when we do get it back. I’ll make sure you get forty percent of the profit, Ross.”

We kept moving, Cerea urging me to focus more on the sheep. At first, just forty percent of whatever we got from rescuing the sheep felt a little odd to me, considering I was doing most of the work. But then I remembered the other three were probably going to be splitting the remaining sixty percent evenly between them, so I supposed that was a little fairer.

As we kept going, I tried to feed the sheep some of my health potion to relieve its injuries after it calmed down. Cerea confirmed they weren’t poisonous to cave-sheep like chocolate was to dogs. The sheep’s wounds did start to heal, which was nice.

We encountered actual monsters before long. Well, if slimes counted as monsters. According to Cerea, they were indeed officially classed as such.

“Officially?” I asked as Ugnash and Khagnio harvested the mana cores from the slimes. They were gelatinous little creatures, with little nerve-like threads spreading throughout them from a central core. It was this core that they were pulling out. They went into little dimensional storage bags we had, though of course, those were too small for the main haul to come later.

“Yes,” Cerea said. She was the only one in the group who could easily deal with slimes by zapping them. Apparently, one of her other Aspects was Lightning. “We don’t want to classify normal creatures as monsters. The distinction lies in their use of mana. If a creature uses mana in some fashion, then it is classed as a monster. If not, then it’s just a normal creature.”

That made sense. Although, was that going to be helpful for me? I could end up meeting weird flora and fauna on an unfamiliar world and everyone would act normal because it wasn’t a monster to them just because it didn’t use mana. Except for the small fact that—

“Unfortunately, most non-mana creatures died off long ago so even the most mundane ones you’ll see are technically monsters.” Cerea’s eyes thinned. Clearly, she didn’t quite enjoy the classification process. “But it’s not like we’re relying on definitions from the past to make modern value judgments.”

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True enough. We were killing slimes not because they were monsters but because their mana cores were apparently rather precious.

And because they had set a trap to jump at us, only to be struck down by Cerea’s Lightning.

I had to haul in and hold the sheep closer to me to prevent it from lashing out and jumping at the slimes. Ugnash had informed us that despite being Iron-ranked monsters—apparently, monsters had rankings too, based on how strong someone generally needed to be to take them down—they would tear apart simple cave-sheep pretty easily.

“No, sheep,” I said, pulling closer. “Those slimes are stronger than you, even if they look like glorified Jell-O.”

“What’s Jello?” Cerea asked.

“Uh, a weird food where I’m from. It’s terrible, you don’t want to know.”

Ugnash and Khagnio all handed the slime cores off to Cerea, who made them disappear with small flashes of black-and-white threads. The colour of her primary Aspect.

“I washed off most of the slime,” Ugnash warned. “But be careful.”

Cerea nodded. “I got it, Ugnash. Don’t you worry.”

One of the reasons slimes were hard to kill with physical blows was because their bodies were corrosive, thanks to being essentially constructed from digestive enzymes. Forget flesh, stronger ones could dissolve straight through rocks and metal. These ones weren’t that powerful, but they would still start burning through skin and muscles within a minute of direct contact.

“What’s your Aspect?” I asked Cerea as she took care of more slimes. “The one that you use for your dimensional storage.”

“Hmm? Oh, that. It’s called the Aspect of Dimensions.”

I stopped whatever else I was doing or thinking or—I didn’t even know. Cerea’s last words tugged on a faint but important memory. Dimensions…

Dimensional Weaving. That was what the bastard mage, the one who had pulled me here, had stated. There had been some other qualifiers before it, from what I remembered. Something similar to the ones the Weave used for Sacrifice, like [Minor], [Moderate], and so on.

But Dimensional Weaving. Those had been the important terms.

“Some… thing wrong?” Cerea asked, noting my expression.

“Where did you learn it?” I asked. “Or, how did you get it, I guess?”

“You seem extra curious, Ross.”

“Indulge me, please.”

“Hmm, alright. I learned it long time ago. Manifested it the normal way, as in, by working under my old master at Claderov.”

“And your old master was…?”

“He’s a retired mage now. Well-known public figure in Claderov, called Archmage Inash. Why are you asking by the way?”

Archmage Inash. Kostis hadn’t mentioned that name when we had talked about my summoner. “Just curious, because I know someone who talked about Dimensional Weaving and was wondering if there was a connection. Was your master’s rank at Paragon?”

“Paragon?” Her eyes widened briefly. “Oh no, he retired before he even hit Jade. Paragon-ranked is insane to think about.”

Well, that settled it. Cerea wasn’t directly related to my summoner. There was likely some connection, considering she had the exact same Aspect, but I’d probably need to dig up more information about her master.

And a dungeon delve really wasn’t the right time to do that. Especially when Cerea was looking at me with growing curiosity.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just got a little interested hearing you had the same Aspect.”

“I don’t know why you’re apologizing, but I’ll forgive you.” She grinned. “That is if you tell me how you got your Aspect as well.”

Oh, boy. Now she had me in a bind. I really needed to get a better grip on my excitement. It wasn’t that I wanted to keep the fact that I had been summoned to Ephemeroth a desperate secret. Revealing that wasn’t going to put me in danger or anything.

But at the same time, talking about it just felt… off. Even after all this time, even after I’d done so much to acclimatize to my new state of life and this new world that I was now a part of, the feelings that arose at being brought against my will to Ephemeroth only to be immediately killed in a ritual sacrifice weren’t easy things to consider. I wasn’t filled with a desperate need for punishing vengeance. But I also wasn’t going to pretend it didn’t leave me angered.

The problem was that the anger had nowhere to go. Didn’t it need a direction? A target?

I couldn’t be mad at the cult, at people like Escinca and Aurier, when they were generally just good people trying to make the best of their situation. I couldn’t even really be angry at Hamsik because even if he didn’t think much of me, he was at least someone who cared deeply about the cult and its humanitarian endeavours.

Who the hell was I supposed to raging against then? The clearly overpowered mage that nobody liked to talk about who had brought me to Ephemeroth in the first place? He was the only available target.

I slowly realized the other reason why I preferred to focus all of my negativity on the mage with a Sovereign-ranked Aspect of Dimensions. The reason my mind hadn’t recognized yet.

If I concentrated my wrath on a target so distant from me, then it helped to shove away the feelings themselves. Something I could deal with later. I was well aware from brief therapy sessions that pushing away emotions and refusing to really process them wasn’t exactly good.

But I had needed to focus on staying alive. Letting grudges influence my judgment was not the best way to go about it.

“I’m waiting for my answer,” Cerea said.

“Ah yeah, sorry.” I rubbed the back of my head. “It’s a long story involving the cult. How about I tell you all about it when we’re out of the dungeon?”

“I’ll be looking forward to it then!”

We kept moving after the slimes. Our footsteps echoed on the rocky walls. The tunnel slowly widened the farther we went, and the air grew muggier and hotter. I began sweating, feeling like I was back in Gutran’s smithy. Eventually, the Darkstick lamps turned off on their own.

The cavern we arrived at was tall, high enough that the ceiling was lost to the gloom. But there was light closer at hand from all the bubbling lava pools strewn about the room, tall stalagmites casting shadows on the walls. The fires they belched out were lightly smoking.

What really caught my eye, however, was the monster taking up nearly half the space in the gigantic chamber.

The gigantic serpentine creature was easily as wide as a school bus. I couldn’t see its full length because most of its rear end was stuffed inside a different tunnel, though several large fins along its body made me wonder how it had even fit itself through the tunnel. Its scales didn’t catch the light, like the shine had been leached out of them

“What is that?” I asked. “A Brillwyrm?”

My heart had started thudding in worry, especially since I had to shush down the cave-sheep when it got antsy. But I calmed down as Ugnash and Khagnio approached the scaly creature without any change in stance. The monster’s stillness registered then. It was dead.

“A Greater Brillwyrm,” Ugnash confirmed. “A rare, full-grown version.”

“The more important question is why it’s dead,” Cerea said.

I looked around. There weren’t any signs of fighting or other scuffles, strangely. No broken rocks, no splatters of blood, nothing of the sort. Had it died of natural causes? Could monsters die of natural causes?

Khagnio got right up to the scaly creature and whistled low. “This one is going to be one nice haul.” Then he frowned at Cerea. “Although, it’s too big even for your Dimensional Storage, isn’t it?”

Cerea nodded morosely. “I couldn’t even carry its head, much less the whole thing. It’s too big. To think something like it just died…”

Ugnash went around inspecting the monstrous corpse, and I followed his glance, noting the wounds. They were very small, not even dripping any blood, and all along the middle section of its body, weirdly enough.

“Those don’t look like fatal wounds,” I said.

Ugnash slowly nodded. “It’s rather strange.”

It was uncanny. The closer I looked, the more oddities I spotted. Several lustreless scales had fallen off, which Khagnio was busy picking up to hand off to Cerea, but I was looking past them at the skin of the monster. The extremely pale skin, but not one that looked like it was decomposing just yet. Which suggested the monster hadn’t been dead for that long.

“Hmm…” I stepped forward, drawing one of my knives. “It is dead, right?”

Ugnash nodded, looking curious what I was about to do. I stabbed into a scaleless exposed bit, the skin giving way pretty easily. When I pulled out my knife, there was almost no blood. None pouring out of the wound, and only the barest trace of it on the knife.

“A monster that hasn’t been dead for long,” I said. “But one that’s somehow lost all its blood…”

A chill slowly worked down from the base of my neck. Before I could voice my suspicions however, the ground began trembling. A low, sibilant roar emanated from a different tunnel, accompanied by sets of heavy thumping all drawing louder. Closer.

“Looks like we’re about to meet our Brillwyrm-killing culprits!” Khagnio said, drawing his long daggers. His forked tongue flickered out in anticipation of violence.

I wasn’t so sure though. But I put my suspicions aside for the time being.

My first real fight in the dungeon was about to begin.