"It looks like it's mostly winding down. The giant ant won," I said as I sat on the bottom steps of the stairway.

  "Shoot, looks like I owe you, shorty," Aria grumbled.

  Iris crossed her arms with a smug look on her face. "I knew it would win!"

  "What does the place look like now?" Piper asked.

  "Still destroyed, for now," I replied. "Should we go check it out?"

  Luna frowned. ("Have the tremors stopped?")

  I nodded. "Yeah, those ended shortly after the giant beetle died."

  "What happened to its body?" Maxwell asked.

  "The ants... I don't know, devoured it? They swarmed the beetle corpse, and by the time they finished, there wasn't anything left. The whole thing shrank under them, and then the body was gone," I said with a shrug.

  "What about the swarms?" Piper asked.

  "More active than before, but they're spread out. They stopped fighting each other once the beetle died to the ant, but all the different insect monsters are running around all over the place up there," I replied.

  "Is it possible that it's safer than when we drew some out?" Aria asked.

  I nodded. "I think it might be. The ground is more unstable, but I think that all of the monsters are so focused on whatever it is that they're doing, they might not swarm at us the same way... but some of the monsters are still glowing."

  After we had retreated during the worst of the combat between the two giants, we talked a bit on the stairs before deciding to send me back up alone to keep an eye on things. Unlike everyone else, it would be difficult for me to get killed instantly by a stray burst of magic in my direction. Just in case, Piper had stayed relatively near the top of the stairs to support me if I needed it, but it hadn't been necessary. I had been able to watch the entire fight between the two giant bugs without any of the beetles intentionally attacking me or heading in my direction. We need as much information on the third floor as possible, and it didn't seem too unsafe for me in particular. I got hit by stray magic a few times, but nothing I couldn't shrug off with my armor and my natural regeneration.

  Maxwell pulled one of the glowing rocks out of his pocket that had been attached to one of the beetles. "I think it's becoming a bit redundant for me to say this, but this stone changes a lot. Valuable gems were one thing, but valuable gems empowered with dungeon magic are another. This dungeon keeps sliding up the scale from useful, to priceless, to dangerous."

  "How dangerous are we talking?" I asked.

  Luna hummed. ("The lightning shards you created are comparable. Each one of them can be used to generate attuned mana for casters, make spells of matching affinity more powerful, or power enchantments for people who don't have any mana or the correct affinity. Each one of those glowing stones could make a matching army spellcaster go much farther or be much more potent for the same amount of mana. An entire army equipped with a good focus matching their affinity could be devastatingly effective.")

  "What happened to those lightning shards anyway? Did you sell them?" Iris asked.

  I shook my head. "We gave one to Talia, but we have all the rest of them. With everything that's happened since we reached Ironcastle, we haven't had the opportunity to do anything with them."

  "We should change that," Maxwell said. "We can explain where we got the lightning shards, but like the mundane stones, we can't talk about these empowered ones yet. We should do everything we can to better protect ourselves before news of this place travels. You're starting to use lightning more effectively, Luna. You should have a focus crafted and maybe get a passive defensive item too. It might be good to establish a relationship with whoever can craft something with those before Celeste decides to capitalize on these stones."

  I hummed. "Do you think she'll tell the crafters about them soon? It sounded like she was keeping it quiet until the king decides to fortify this place."

  Maxwell shook his head. "It's only a matter of time now, I think. I suspect she'll want us to collect as many of these as possible to give out to her soldiers sooner rather than later. From everything I've heard, most of these soldiers are fiercely loyal to her. I would be surprised if she didn't change her plans to arm her soldiers to the teeth, rather than wait for whatever support the king is able to divert this way. It would give Celeste a much stronger position to negotiate from when she needs to advocate for herself and Luna, at minimum."

  "What about us?" Aria asked. "Do you think she'll let us take some of the gems to get stuff made for ourselves? Maxwell and I, our bodies get stronger and faster the more we can increase our empowerment by killing monsters, but we don't get the same amount of versatility that you casters have... I'm not even going to start to compare myself with Helena. A few enchanted pieces of equipment could go a long way in increasing our effectiveness."

  Piper frowned. "Celeste has seemed fair and reasonable so far. If she starts having things made for her soldiers, I'm sure she would let us equip ourselves first with what we can bring back. I think she's been happy with Valkin's team so far as well... but I'm not so sure about Jol'ket's team. This was supposed to be the deal though. We bring stuff back, and the crafters craft things for us for free."

  "We should go back up there and see what we can collect before time runs out, then," I said. "We have the one bag of gems we collected earlier, but we should see if we can take advantage of the lull in the monster's aggression."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  With everyone's agreement, we quickly went back up the stairs. The moon above us was now a waning gibbous before the last quarter. As I had told them earlier, the tremors had stopped, but there was still a buzz of activity as all of the monsters scurried around doing something with purpose, though what they were doing was hard to identify. Occasionally, the two groups of different types of insects would get too close to each other and there would be a clash, but for the most part, they left each other alone. Many of the insect monsters still glowed, but the intensity of their light wasn't as powerful as it had been at the peak of the frantic battle between the two giants. But even when not empowered as deeply as they are during the peak, they would still be incredibly valuable based on the way they glowed, especially if we could get a fire one for Luna and a wind one for Iris.

  "So, how do we want to do this?" I asked.

  Maxwell was looking around with a furrowed brow, trying to get an understanding of the situation. "Let's just attack one of the larger groups of beetles near the stai—"

  Before he could finish, the ground began to rumble as one of the larger shards of broken marble that was sticking into the air began to slide and fall back into the same orientation as the rest of the ground. With a loud slam, the broken shard fell back into place, but the cracks between the nearby rock hadn't noticeably mended yet. Thankfully, the shaking stopped once the shard had settled into place, so we wouldn't have to deal with that the entire time.

  "We need to be careful of the standing shards of rock and any gaps between them. Let's go attack that group over there," Maxwell said, pointing.

  We approached the monsters, but the same problem that we had before was still the case now. Half of our party wasn't really capable of fighting them effectively.

  ("I want to try something, can you wall them off for me like before, Helena?") Luna asked.

  "No problem." I shifted into a frost salamander and began to wall off the area around the crowd of beetles we were targeting. It looked like Luna was about to try some new magic. She just stood there for a moment in deep concentration before raising her hand and sending shards of ice in the monsters' direction. I had seen her use icicles before, but these ones were noticeably different. On impact, they exploded into a wet mist of water that sprayed across the beetles. Rather than focus on hitting anything directly, she was trying to create maximum coverage with the attacks instead.

  The beetles started to run all over the place erratically. They didn't seem to like water very much, but they didn't have much time to worry about that, because Luna followed up with another spell shortly afterward. My slimy skin began to prickle just before a loud crack of lightning boomed, and the lightning bolt exploded out in every direction, frying the entire crowd of beetles all at once. The lightning surged into the walls of ice I had spit around the area and made the whole thing blow out in all directions, hitting two other groups of monsters.

  ("A little too effective, Luna!") I yelled through the ring. I began to spread my mucus out between my friends and the enemy, claiming the nearby territory as mine while trying to slow them down. The mucus itself wasn't particularly dangerous to them, but it did slow their advance, and that was my main goal.

  Iris took the initiative in shoving the entire group of enemies into one clump with her wind magic, and Luna began to channel one of her field fire spells. The spell had once taken more than half a minute for her to power, but with her speed casting ring, and the work she had done with silent casting, it had taken only ten seconds for her magic to activate into a violent blaze. With fire now on the field, Iris was able to sweep the entire group of monsters into a fiery tornado, killing any that hadn't been dead in the initial explosion.

  Once we had finished off the immediate enemies, we looked around warily for any more added monsters, but it seemed like the danger had passed. There were others nearby, both beetles and ants, but since they were not directly hit by any attacks, they were more interested in whatever it was they were already doing.

  After waiting a short while, we decided to go and collect all of the dead monsters before any of the other ones nearby decided they would rather collect their dead than whatever they were focused on. We had maybe gotten more of the dead beetles earlier, before we retreated from the giants fighting, but this time about a third of the monsters were glowing in different hues and intensities. The insects were still at their most intense during the full moon and just after, but these ones weren't exactly weak, and a lot safer to harvest.

  Now that we didn't have any hostile monsters nearby, I decided to peek into the crack to see if I could figure out what the monsters are so focused on. I could see a subtle glow coming through the gaps between the scaffolding that hung between the two chunks of ground we were sitting on. Each of the little ants in the area was going up to the walls and creating the stone as if it were made from an organic part of their biology. Occasionally, there would be a snap of random chaotic mana, and a different colored rock would appear that one of the nearby ants would quickly move to claim and attach to its carapace. The entire marble stone ground covering this dungeon floor was made by the ants and beetles, as if it were a gigantic beehive with a hard shell on the outside.

  Aria's lip rose in disgust. "Ew, this whole floor is made from bug vomit?"

  "What do you think Honey is?" Iris asked.

  Aria frowned. "Well... I knew that, but honey is like goo. This ground is like dried vomit."

  Iris looked at her flatly. "What? Why does that matter? It doesn't smell like anything."

  Aria groaned and walked away to Iris's amusement. She shared a look with me, and we both laughed before backing away from the edge.

  All of us froze when the ground began to rumble again. Suddenly, the entire floor beneath us began to shift and feel strange, which almost made us panic, until it collided with a different nearby slab and came to a stop. The ground was slowly knitting itself back together under the ministrations of the ants and beetles.

  "All of this is reasonable danger if you know what to expect," Piper noted.

  "I feel like this dungeon would take a long time to clear if you were forced to wait out all of these moon events," Maxwell said in response.

  "At least you can wait them out if you want to. We can travel the first floor in relative peace as long as we wait for the rain to stop, and this floor seems the same until you get close to the full moon," Piper replied.

  "I wonder how much the pattern will hold as we go deeper. Will every odd floor have something to do with the moons?" I asked.

  Luna nodded. ("That seems likely. Many dungeons have thematic connections between the dungeon floors. This is a novel one, if nothing else.")

  "I just hope the next floor is something less irritating than the changeling floor," I said with a sigh.

  Hello! I really enjoy writing the bickering and teasing between Iris and Aria. Not much else to say about this one, I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for reading!

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