The six of us stood on the stairs up to the third floor, all decked out in our new test equipment. After a quick check, we knew the full moon would be up there soon, so we were doing a lookover of all our new stuff before we went out to test it at the start of the most dangerous part of the cycle. We didn't really need to worry about harvesting as much this time, since our goal was to see how helpful the new equipment was.

  Maxwell was wearing his new forearm cuffs. He had two different ones to test. One was a design similar to the original version that used a charged gem as a battery, and the second was partially designed by Kell'kit, who added a gathering array into it that would hopefully keep it charged enough to use indefinitely. Both of the cuffs were a bit fragile. They wouldn't be suitable for long-term use, but if the designs worked well, he would be getting new ones that were reinforced enough to use as armguards.

  Aria was testing a slightly different design from Maxwell, but also designed by Kell'kit. Rather than a cuff like Maxwell, she would be using a crossbow enchanted to empower the bolts with electricity from the lightning shards. Aria didn't typically use a crossbow, but after a conversation with Kell'kit about the practicality of gem enchanting, the two of them settled on this design. It looked a bit bulky in her arms, but Aria didn't have any trouble lugging it around with her empowered body despite the mismatch in size. It looked a bit awkward for her to maneuver at worst, but she was confident it wouldn't be an issue. The crossbow was tuned so that it shouldn't use more mana than it expended during a reload cycle, so theoretically, the limiting factor will be the bolts rather than the enchantment. The bolts she was using were made of a special conductive glass that would explode into shrapnel on impact, hopefully giving her a way to deal with groups of enemies. It seemed like an interesting weapon.

  Luna had gotten a new staff since we last came in with several of the lightning shards and other fire-oriented gems embedded into it. Her weapon was more traditional than everyone else's new stuff, so this was less of a test run and more of a breaking in for her new weapon. It was well matched to her magic and should amplify anything cast through it. She intended to use this new staff while refining her new Tesla field spell.

  Unfortunately for Piper, she wasn't testing anything new. If Maxwell's new weapons worked, she would be getting something similar, but for now, she was just here as a healer, much to her chagrin. She didn't complain, but it was a bit obvious she was nonplussed to not get any new toys.

  I had a few things to test, but I wasn't exactly happy with the idea either. I had a ring and a bangle to test. The ring created a kind of barrier that would hopefully prevent the swarming beetles from eating me alive. The other was a bangle that created a full-spectrum barrier that would hopefully protect against any kind of magic. It was pretty heavy, and the entire thing was lined with gems in a way that made the thing look gaudy. It was apparently as strong as Nevan could make it, and he still wasn't very confident in its ability to protect from much. I was basically going in with these two enchanted items to be a crash test dummy. My entire role on this trip was to wade into the beetles and see if they could eat me, and once I was done with that, tank a direct hit from a few spells once things started to get crazy. I was obviously selected for this job since I should be able to regenerate from any wounds if things went wrong. Nevan had been hesitant for me to actively test them since he didn't know that I could regenerate, but I assured him I would be fine, even if the idea still made my stomach twist in anxiety a little.

  Iris, on the other hand, had been decked out. Aven'ket had been especially impressed with her use of that bangle at the workshop, so she worked out a design that would fit her better. In addition, Torlin had given her a backup weapon. The short knife had been heavily inscribed to help her cast offensive wind magic through it more easily, and the red gem set into the pommel would allow her one use of a fireball spell before it would need to be recharged. Nevan had given her a ring with a strong fire resistance effect, which should help against any accidental blowback from her or Luna's fire, as well as a separate ring with a physical defensive enchantment on it. It wouldn't be useful against the beetles, but it would protect her from at least one direct physical attack or dissipate the energy that would be caused by a fall, in case she was forced to jump away from something using wind magic. She was also given a staff sized to her shorter body that would help her efficiency when controlling wind magic, which was where most of her magic usually went when working with Luna. With nearly unlimited gems, everyone seemed to want to dote on the young delver, and Celeste allowed it without argument.

  "I'm not looking forward to this," I said with a sigh.

  Aria laughed. "Not ready to be a punching bag?"

  ("You'll probably be fine. Give the crafters a little bit of trust,") Luna said before kissing me on the cheek.

  I blushed and cleared my throat. "Nevan wasn't even confident in the bangle he gave me." I thumbed the silver band around my wrist. "As much as I'm sure I could withstand taking a spell to the chest, I still won't like it very much."

  Luna giggled. ("You'll be fine, you're strong enough to handle it.")

  Maxwell adjusted one of his cuffs. "We should get going soon. It shouldn't be too much longer before the quaking starts."

  I nodded. "Let's go up, then."

  The six of us reached the top of the stairs just as the floor began to rumble. If the timing was the same as the last few delves, there would be maybe twenty minutes before the giants breached the ground and began to fight. Already, the bugs were swarming out of their hives and beginning to attack each other. It would be best to test the ring that would stop the bites now, before they started slinging magic at each other too. I would be running into the same problem that Maxwell and Piper did though. The best I could do was stomp and kick them, since I still didn't have an effective weapon to fight them off.

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  "Alright, here I go," I said with a huff.

  I dashed forward into one of the crowds of beetles as my body shifted to its umber hound form. From the few times I've been close enough to get eaten up, the ants were much worse with their bites than the beetles were, so if this dumb ring didn't work, I'd like to test it with the beetles first. I shivered as I felt them crawling over me, but each time they tried to bite me, nothing happened. A faint and wispy looking shield shimmered around me at each of their positions. I laughed as I realized that none of them were getting through, so I waded further into the crowd of beetles while they began to cover me. Don't get me wrong, it was still icky to be covered in bugs, but the fact that they couldn't hurt me was kind of neat. I felt like I was someone doing a prank on a video site for views. Every now and then, one of the bites would get through. Apparently, the 'bite exactly in the same place' happened occasionally, but I'm pretty sure most people wouldn't be practically rolling in them like I was right now. Satisfied that the ring was working fine, I returned to where my friends were gathered.

  ("Is it working?") Luna asked.

  ("It is. An occasional bite slips through, but it's not that bad. As long as no one tries to swim in the bugs like I did, they should be fine,") I replied.

  I locked my legs in place when Iris yanked at me with her wind magic, pulling a majority of the bugs off of me before flash frying the insects with fire magic from her bangles. As soon as the dead bugs hit the ground, the others began to gather up the gem-covered beetles.

  "I'm going to test it with the ants next," I told them.

  "You sure? You said those ones hurt a lot," Aria asked.

  I nodded. "It should be fine. I just want to make sure it stands up to the ants too."

  Aria nodded. "I'm going to test out my crossbow on the beetles while you're doing that, then."

  "Sounds good." I turned away and ran into the pile of ants this time.

  That creepy crawly feeling was even worse with the ants, since they were a bit smaller and faster, but unlike the beetles, none of their bites were going through. It seemed that even when they were practically overlaying each other, their bites couldn't penetrate the barrier at all. Once I felt comfortable that nothing was going to get through, I sat down in the ants and turned to watch Aria shooting her new crossbow into the crowd of beetles.

  Each shot sent a crackling glass rod into the crowd and exploded out in all directions. The weapon certainly looked effective. I wouldn't want to be hit by one of those. When the glass shattered, lightning magic shot out and hit things even outside of the immediate range of the physical component. Aria was so physically strong that she was able to reload the crossbow with her off hand without even using the ground for support. It was a glaring reminder that even someone as lithe and dainty as Aria was, she was still in an entirely different league of strength than the people back home. I had never seen her attempt anything of the sort, but I could imagine her smashing her way through solid bricks if she was forced to. Despite her superhuman strength reloading the crossbow, her fire rate was still significantly slower than with her regular bow. All in all, it still looked less impressive than what Talia had been able to achieve using a similar strategy with her lightning shard. It was unfortunate that Aria didn't seem to have any affinity with magic.

  I came back out of the nest of ants absolutely covered in them, but luckily, Iris noticed right away and knocked all of the ants off of me with a gust of wind. Just like before, she was able to flash fry them with the new combination of her enchanted fire bangles and wind magic. Piper was dutifully scooping up our spoils while Maxwell tested out his flamethrowing arm cuffs as well.

  Maxwell seemed to be enjoying himself as he sprayed the crowds of nearby insects with the spouts of fire. There was a twinkle in his eye that made me wonder how things might have been different for him had his empowerment leaned more toward magic than fighting physically. Either way, it seemed that the cuffs were effective up until a point. With constant use of the cuffs, they both ran out fairly quickly. The left one died first, but he would occasionally reactivate it after it had charged itself back up a little, and the right one lasted a lot longer, but completely died once he had drained all of the mana from it. The moment he finished, he backed off and let Iris pull the pile of dead insects toward us before giving it another flash frying to kill anything still crawling among the pile. It was pretty clear to everyone that of all of the experimental equipment we had received, Iris's had been the most effective of the lot.

  We were wrapping up soon, but I watched Luna working her own magic. Her new staff seemed to be helping her out quite a lot, because she was throwing more lightning than she usually would. On top of the Tesla field she was maintaining, she was also shooting additional lightning bolts around, likely to test her maximum throughput. It looked incredibly impressive. I felt a bit of heat in my chest as I watched her excitedly throw dangerous lightning bolts and revel in the sheer power she was able to exert. Eventually, the display began to wane, and I could tell that she slowed down so she wouldn't completely burn through all of her mana.

  Iris yanked the last pile of dead insects toward us, and I helped Piper quickly gather them as we backed up and prepared to return to the stairs. The shaking of the earthquake was intensifying now, so we knew we wouldn't have much time left before the monster-sized insects burst through the ground. It was a bit strange to consider how these two groups of monsters were seemingly locked into an endless cycle of combat with each other. For that matter, the snake had also been fighting with the crabs on the first floor. Was any of this normal for a dungeon? While this one had more valuable resources than a typical dungeon, it also seemed incredibly atypical in how it tried to lure people in. It was almost as if this dungeon operated under an entirely different set of rules. It acted like it didn't care that people were entering it. It didn't even break down the barricades and corrals the soldiers constructed on the first floor.

  Why was this dungeon so strange?

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