The sky stayed clear and the air dead. It only took a few minutes for the barrel, and the shipwreck, to vanish withing the haze. It was a surreal sight, the hulking wreck blinking out as if it had never existed. Ayn took a few steps back to see if it reappeared. It didn’t.

  “I guess that’s all the help we’re getting,” Bren said. “If the archaeologist is correct, and we end up teleporting back, do you think leaving from a different spot will matter?”

  Ayn shrugged. “We’ll have to hope it does, or this is going to be a long floor.”

  Bren frowned and went silent.

  With the soft sand eating the noise of their footsteps, the quiet quickly became oppressive. Ayn almost sighed in relief when the mobs attacked. Almost. The things squirmed out of the sand—five white worms with red dots, each about as big around as Ayn’s arm. The way their ridged skin glistened, and how their tubular bodies undulated, reminded Ayn a little too much of the Abyssal mobs. Dread surged up as she unconsciously stepped behind Kayara.

  Kayara, for all of her increased silence, hadn’t lost the edge to her combat abilities. She darted forward without hesitation, curved daggers flashing as she danced in and out of danger. The worms writhed at the sudden attack. Their heads whipped around, circular mouths opening to reveal insides covered in little, sharp teeth. Her wolverine joined the fray. A worm lashed out to hit it, only to find its tail cut clean from its body. Yellowish ichor sprayed the wolverine’s face. It snarled and jumped back, where three more worms emerged from the sand to surround it.

  Ayn tore her sabers free of their sheaths. There were no whispers, no sense of something about to rip your throat out. These weren’t Abyssal mobs. They were just ugly.

  The worms rolled and twisted, back and front ends reaching out with equal dexterity to find a hold on their assailants. The things were damned hard to hit. Ayn already had fewer chances to hit as she dodged the flailing, and every time she struck, her target slipped out of the way like spaghetti. It was infuriating, and Ayn’s remaining shock at seeing the mobs flared into rage.

  She abandoned defense.

  AEGIS OF AGILITY ACTIVATED

  183 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING

  172 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING

  160 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING

  151 POINTS OF ABSORBTION REMAINING

  The worms slapped against her shield as she waded into the thick of them. They coalesced around her, all of their attention right where it should be. Her attacks wouldn’t have any higher chance of hitting their mark, but with a big, unmoving target to throw themselves against, Kayara and her wolverine had all the openings in the world.

  Even before gaining the Stalker class, Kayara had gained Backstab, and each hit on the distracted mobs was a critical. The mobs puffed away.

  “You know,” Bren said. “It’s nice to save mana, but you three killing mobs so fast is starting to make me feel a little useless.”

  “They’re trash mobs anyway,” Ayn said. “Name one boss or mid-boss where we haven’t needed your spells.”

  “I suppose.”

  Ayn checked her shield. Eighty-seven points left. Enough to block a decent attack or two, but then she’d be vulnerable until the cooldown finished, and she had no way of getting rid of it early. She supposed that was the trade-off for damage immunity.

  “Here.” Kayara stuck out a hand. A blob of off-white jelly wobbled in her palm.

  Ayn took it before she thought too hard about it. Kayara had barely spoken to her. She wasn’t about to upset the Stalker further by refusing…whatever she offered.

  Despite her best efforts, Ayn couldn’t keep her face from scrunching up in disgust as she took the lump. It was hot, slick, and squished between her fingers when she grabbed it.

  The fat disappeared into her inventory, mercifully leaving only a slightly greasy feeling. She wiped her hand on her pants. “Thanks. Fire resistance should come in handy out here.”

  Kayara moved on without replying and gave Bren and Sheyric their own lump of worm fat. Ayn grimaced knowingly when Bren’s face turned a bit green.

  With the mobs taken care of, they continued on. The silence weighed back down on them. It didn’t last long. In one moment, Ayn was walking ahead, staring at the flat horizon. The next, two halves of an ancient shipwreck flashed into existence right before her eyes.

  “Well,” Bren said. “That confirms the archaeologist’s theory.”

  As if on cue, said archaeologist popped out of the stern’s hatch. “Hello! Welcome back. I’ll assume by the perturbed looks on your faces that you found nothing particularly useful. I just put on water for tea. Care to have some?”

  “No!” her party yelled in unison. An involuntary shiver ran through Ayn. The last time they’d had tea, it had set off nightmares which still plagued her.

  John looked taken aback. “More coffee people, eh? Apologies. I wager I found the remnants of some old coffee beans in the front half of the cargo hold, but they’re little more than dark sand at this point.” He retreated into his camp, the hatch closing behind him with a solid thunk.

  The party wasted no time in setting up a new barrel. It clearly did nothing to keep them going in the same direction, but it at least ensured they’d leave at different spots.

  Their second foray ended after a scuffle with giant scorpions, and their third ended after being ambushed by hyena-headed men. Their fourth, fifth, and sixth were similar. They trudged out until the ship vanished, fought trash mobs, then shortly after, got teleported back. On the upside, they’d cleared all of their auto-generated quests by their fifth outing and gained various materials besides. On the downside, they’d seen nothing that even remotely looked like it belonged to a ship.

  Ayn stared at the same scene for the seventh time. John the archaeologist hadn’t peeked out of his hole since they’d yelled down his offer of tea, and the thought of accepting it still made Ayn’s skin crawl, but damn it all if she wasn’t thirsty as hell. Not to mention, she wasn’t sure she could stand another dead quiet march across the sands just yet.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  With her decision made, Ayn walked over to the stern’s hatch and pulled it open. Only after did she think about knocking. Then again, she wasn’t feeling polite.

  John exclaimed something she assumed was an old-time curse as he jumped away from a little campfire with a little teapot hung over it on a wire spit. The archaeologist had made quite a camp within the upturned stern. Unlike the front half of the ship, the inside of the stern was mostly hollow. Only splintered remains of boards and jagged metal stuck to the walls harked back to when it, too, had been divided into floors. Various barrels, crates, cannons, and other metal artifacts littered the ground, laid on top of large squares of cloth surrounding the campfire.

  “Oh,” John said. He cleared his throat and stood up, doing his best to look dignified. “I see you finally took me up on that offer of tea. That blasted sun can really dry you out, eh?”

  Ayn grunted a vague affirmation. He was partially correct, yet no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t find what she wanted. “I’d rather water than tea.”

  “Water over tea?” John scoffed. “Whatever for?”

  “There’s less you can put in plain water.”

  John made some rather undignified noises as his composure slipped. “Are you accusing me of trying to poison you? Ha! The nerve.”

  The rest of her party piled in behind her. Kayara stayed back and looked uncomfortable, her silent treatment apparently extending to the NRC.

  Bren took the opportunity to step up. “It’s not precisely that. Let’s just say we enjoy our drinks…simpler. Besides, a cool glass of water sounds far better than hot tea, does it not?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” John said. “I could go for a glass of cold water. If you find one, my boy, do let me know.”

  With that, he plucked the teapot off the fire, pulled a teacup from a random crate, and produced tea leaves from a leather pouch on his belt.

  Ayn’s mood soured further. She wasn’t in the mood for a catty NRC. “Where’s the rest of your water? The stuff you haven’t heated up in the middle of a desert.”

  “Oh, is that what you’re looking for? Well, after my own stocks ran dry, I refilled my canteens at a watering hole I found on one of my many attempts to escape this bloody place.”

  “And those canteens are where?”

  “There.” John pointed at a nondescript crate. “But if you’re truly worried about poisoning, I’d avoid drinking from them. The water is…let’s say a bit unclean, yes? Making it drinkable requires a little…how did you put it? Heating up in the middle of a desert.”

  Ayn let out a slow breath. “Fine. I’ll take some of the hot water, then.”

  “If you insist, but you are missing out. What of the rest of you? I grew these tea plants myself, and I dare say they have quite a complex flavor.”

  Unsurprisingly, the rest of her party took hot water as well. They may have stumbled into more traps than Ayn cared to count, but at least they learned from their mistakes. John appeared more slighted than ever and kept harrumphing at them as he sipped his tea. After what felt like the hundredth harrumph, Ayn couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Tell a story,” Ayn said.

  John paused, his eyes narrowing. “You want to hear one of my stories about this place?”

  “Sure. The desert, the ship, whatever.”

  John’s countenance changed in an instant. His face lit up, his grin so big it showed his teeth under his handlebar mustache. “Excellent. I have one for many of the objects here, but to appreciate their stories, you need to hear the most important one of all—how this shipwreck came to be.”

  “How would you know that?” Bren asked. “Isn’t the ship ancient?”

  Ayn side-eyed Bren, half expecting Kayara to chide him for forgetting The System didn’t always follow logic. Kayara didn’t look up.

  “Oh, it is, my boy,” John said. “But legends persist through the ages, do they not?”

  Bren nodded. He absently took a sip from his cup and grimaced as the hot water hit his tongue.

  “This particular story made its rounds early in my archaeological career. A ship in a desert, proof that water once covered a much greater expanse of land, and that time changes all things. What made this story even more intriguing was the ship’s supposed origins. Not a boat of any native design, but a full-fledged pirate ship! Not exactly ancient history, eh?”

  Ayn didn’t bother correcting him. According to her original life, pirates were quite ancient. She honestly didn’t remember when John’s flavor of archaeologist came about, though.

  “It was ludicrous,” John said. He threw his hands up in emphasis. “And that’s what made it fascinating!”

  “Are we going to get to the actual legend?” Ayn asked.

  John harrumphed. “Context is important, my girl. Regardless, as you wish. After much legwork, I pieced together the tragic tale of the end of The Bloody Serpent and Captain James Blackdale.”

  “The truncated version, please.”

  “Yes, yes. Captain Blackdale burned bright and fast. He scoured the waters with his crew, and no ship in his sights could withstand the barrage of The Bloody Serpent’s hundred cannons and unbeatable sword fighters. Few ever survived laying eyes on him or his, and the few who did all agreed on one thing—the captain had sold his soul to the devil.”

  Ayn rolled her eyes. It was always a demon, or an evil sea spirit. John didn’t seem to notice her reaction as he continued.

  “His luck ran out when he robbed a trade ship commissioned to bring artifacts to the Church. It’s said the very wrath of God hit him for his transgressions. An unnatural storm whipped out of nowhere, picking up his ship and dropping it into the middle of the desert, leaving him and his crew cursed to die far from the open sea they loved so much. The most poetic bit? All of his hard-won infamy vanished overnight. All but a select few remembered he even existed.”

  “Convenient,” Ayn said.

  “Quite. And a jolly good reason to dismiss the tale as wild imagination, yet here we are, cursed to remain in a desert with a broken pirate ship.”

  Ayn stood and stretched. The hot water had done a decent job of wetting her throat, and the shade of the stern’s walls had cooled her skin a little despite the fire. As the discomforts faded a little, her legs started to itch. Her party didn’t need any coaxing to head back out.

  As annoying as it was to get ported back to the shipwreck repeatedly, it was still a Dungeon floor. If they persisted long enough, they’d find the way out.

  *****

  Ayn kept repeating that as they forced themselves through a few more skirmishes in the middle of the desert. At this rate, they’d enclose the ship with barrels before getting anywhere.

  This time, as the ship vanished behind them, a cluster of palm trees seemed to spring from thin air. The smell of water mixed with the heat, and Ayn rushed forward without thinking. Water stretched out before her in a large oval. Cacti, trees, and greenery circled the edge of the oasis, the deep blue water as still as glass.

  At the center of the pool, maybe fifteen feet from the edge, sat a small island just big enough for one person to stand on and on top of the island was a metallic object Ayn had never seen before. It resembled a protractor with bits of metal sticking out and what looked like the top bits of a microscope.

  “That’s it!” Bren said with more enthusiasm than he’d shown on the entire floor. “That’s the sextant.”

  Ayn took his word for it and stepped up to the water. The whole pool was opaque, deep blue obscuring everything below. On the surface, it looked shallow, but with no way of seeing the bottom, it could have been endless. Probably was.

  “Kayara, can you phase to the island?”

  “No. Nothing’s attacking.”

  Great. Kayara had turned into Sheyric. Still, she’d answered the question. It seemed her phase step counted as a dodge, and not an activated skill.

  “Okay,” Ayn said. “Bren. Can you cast a boulder over the water? Maybe we can at least see how deep it is, or if it’s trapped.”

  “Sure.” Bren pulled out his drum and sang.

  Boulders rolling

  No eyes, it’s blind

  So all get moving

  It won’t be kind

  Ayn sighed. At least his tenor was more pleasant than his couplets.

  A spherical boulder appeared between them and the sextant, just touching the surface of the pool before splashing down in a spray of water. It only sunk halfway. Considering the boulder’s six-foot circumference, that meant the water was about three feet deep. Even she could wade out in that with no problem. It didn’t prove there were no traps, though.

  The ripples in the water calmed, and the pool went glassy again. The boulder stayed whole and unaccosted. So, no to acid, she supposed. She’d also figured any living creatures hiding underneath would have been startled out by the sudden appearance of the boulder. In previous times, she’d have decided that was good enough and plowed ahead. But now she had Sixth Sense, and it was blaring.

  “There’s something dangerous here,” Ayn said.

  “It could be hidden in the sand,” Bren said. “Most things around here are.”

  Ayn nodded, but it didn’t make sense. If the danger lay under the sand, what kept it from attacking? The very air felt dead. One thing was certain—nothing in the environment was going to give her a clue. Fine. Her legs were itching, anyway. She took a step into the water and nearly fell.

  As soon as her feet touched the water, all of it drained away, sucking into the sand as if the desert itself had gulped it down. Someone grabbed her from behind, stopping her fall and leaving her staring down at the now dry pool. The bottom of the pool lay bare a mere few feet down. Still, Ayn had no desire to continue into it. Twisted, angry faces lined the bottom. Dozens of them, all made entirely of sand. Each rolled their eyes toward Ayn as she teetered over the edge. They opened their mouths and shrieked.