The Roxie unit stopped walking, staring into a particular direction.

  "Hm? What is it?" Richard looked over at the robot, and a spark of magic flew through the air between them as a message was sent to the gnome, "There's other people in here? Tough luck for them, I guess."

  He pushed his hand into his chest pocket, grabbing a small metal box filled with cigarettes. Placing one onto his lips, he glanced over at the soldier following him. Already knowing what he had to do, he quickly pulled out a lighter and lit Richard's cigarette.

  The gnome's eyes lit up a moment later, turning a deep, sinister black. At the same time, one of the Roxie units released something onto the road. A small metallic mouse that quickly ran off into the direction of the others inside of the dungeon.

  Richard kept staring at the mouse for a few moments, until he flinched and stared at the soldier, who had just shot one of his guns. It was silenced, of course, but when right next to him, it was still quite loud especially when you didn't expect it, "Can't you give me some kind of warning next time?"

  "... I apologise," the soldier replied.

  Richard let out a deep, long sigh, "You're really fucking boring, you know that? Certainly, my improvements did have to take away some of your emotional processing, but at least banter a little bit. You're more of a pain to be around than Christopher."

  Just glancing over at Richard, a slightly mechanical clicking accompanying the brief motion, the soldier responded, "I will attempt to be more... 'fun'."

  "Urgh, don't bother trying. Seriously, though, Christopher just keeps picking the most annoying dumbfucks imaginable. Where'd he get you, some kind of dumbfuck farm? What's your name, Dumbfuck McDumbfuckerson?"

  "... I do not have a name."

  "What? You don't have a name? I guess I never bothered asking, but what the hell do you mean you don't have a name?"

  "We were not given a true name. Everyone in my unit went by their mission designations, which changed every mission."

  Richard let out a long groan, "I didn't ask for a sob-story. Fine, then while you're with me, I'm going to give you another 'mission designation'. Let's go with... DF-02. Christopher being DF-01, obviously."

  The soldier nodded just once. He had no reason to complain. Rather, he wasn't able to complain. Not anymore.

  Seeing that there were no complaints, Richard let out a long, annoyed sigh and looked down at the map in his hands. There was a small building in the distance, and according to the map, this was the destination.

  They approached and soon entered the inconspicuous small structure. Inside it were nothing but a few small offices, all in shambles as though someone had ransacked this place already. While there were monsters inside, it was just a couple of zombies sitting in front of those desks, staring up at the ceiling. They didn't even react until their heads were caved in by the soldier and the Roxie units. Just in case.

  There was a smaller, single-desk office at the far side of the building. In there, a large, bulbous man was sitting behind the desk. He not only looked, but also smelled like he was a man that died in a body of water, pulling in water to the point where his single large eye was completely swollen over.

  "... That's this dungeon's guardian? Seriously? Pathetic," Richard sighed, snapping his finger. Immediately, the soldier shot the man, straight into where the 'undead' cyclops' eye should be. Brown, dirty water flowed out from the wound, soon covering the ground in an ever-growing puddle. Richard pulled out his cigarette and pulled out a handkerchief out of his chest pocket, quickly pressing it against his mouth and nose that he didn't have to breathe in whatever this smell was.

  "... Just find the core already," he said in a commanding voice, and the Roxie units and the soldier quickly got started. Meanwhile, Richard walked up to the corpse of the presumed guardian. It had fallen off its chair by now, and to avoid stepping into the puddle, Richard stepped onto a tipped-over filing cabinet and squatted down. He pushed the lit cigarette butt into the side of the corpse's head to put it out.

  As he did, he noticed something. The disgusting water that was gushing out of the corpse was flowing toward one spot in the floor, as if trickling through something under the desk.

  "Push this thing away."

  The Roxie units did as told immediately. The floor was sort of bulging there, like something had been pressing up on the floor from underneath for a while. The soldier leaned down, pushing his fingers into the rotten floorboards and tore them away. There was a deep hole underneath. It looked like something had burrowed its way through the ground. From the way that floor bulged... something was trying to get inside of this office from underneath.

  "Interesting. Let's go take a look, shall we?"

  "This is the funhouse?" Silvia looked up at the massive structure in front of her. This was bigger than any other single building they had seen in this park. The entire funhouse took up as much space as any one of the other areas.

  Pipes and ropes and fences and anything else you could think of seemed like they were loosely stacked on top of each other, creating the funhouse. You could tell that it used to be extremely colourful once upon a time, but now, all the colour was just washed out and muddied.

  And worst of all, just as Runar had said... This place was alive. It was bulging and creaking and cracking as it's walls contorted like it was breathing. As if this place was a giant, sleeping beast.

  "It's incredible, isn't it?" A broad grin was on Ryan's face as he looked at the funhouse, "I've been waiting to get into this place?"

  "Uhm... Is it... Safe?" Modak asked, and Ryan shrugged.

  "Not super safe, but safe enough. Some bruises, a broken bone or two at worst, but not life-threatening. This place just ejects you if you can't get to the end."

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  "Then is it safe enough for Silvia and I? More importantly, for me? I'm still not fully healed up..."

  "Oh, yeah, no. Not at all, sorry. I'm also not planning on bringing you guys inside, I just want your opinion on this place," Ryan said, "There are a few things you guys can look into even from down here."

  He quickly guided the two around the funhouse, until they reached a fenced area. While the funhouse always had a slightly different structure, there were a few points that tended to be the same, just like this area down here that people could look into from outside.

  There were Polstered pillars moving around in circles and twisting and turning, fast enough that it seemed almost impossible to get through. In different parts of the room, a number of buttons were set up, and the walls were covered in different patterns.

  And those patterns were quite familiar, "Are those the same ones from the codes?"

  "I think so," Ryan quickly walked up to Gaia and opened the backpack, grabbing a few sheets of paper from it before giving them to Modak, "Here, take a look."

  "... It's paper? Why did you print it?"

  "It's how Runar gave it to me, you know how he's with tech."

  The orc sighed and flipped through the paper while Silvia glanced at it from over his shoulder. It was just massive lists of different combinations of symbols.

  "This is for all the rooms with these symbol-based puzzles. They haven't been able to decipher it yet, but sometimes they repeat, so they've been written down whenever possible. If you guys see any sort of patterns, let me know, I don't really get anything from this."

  Modak looked up from the page, "Not even with your intuition stuff?"

  "Yup, not even with that." Ryan was actually pretty annoyed about that. He would have loved it if it were that simple. His intuition worked best when he was in an active situation - he might figure out a solution more easily when trying to solve the actual puzzle, but right now he didn't have the slightest clue.

  "I think... I might be able to... Okay, I've got an idea. While I was trying to improve the unscrambler, I was looking a bit more into these special symbols that kept showing up. If there's some kind of correlation between these symbols, this should be pretty good base data..." Modak squatted down onto the ground and pulled off his 'backpack', the speaker that he was wearing on his back. Tucked into a small drawer at the back of the speaker was his laptop, which he quickly took out and opened up. Meanwhile, however, Silvia hooked her arm into Ryan's.

  She shot him a broad grin, "And while he's doing that, I'm gonna show you my surprise for you~!"

  Ryan raised his brow, "Uh, okay? I'm not sure if I want to know anymore, you guys keep being super shady about it."

  "No, no, it's good, don't worry!" Silvia held forward her hand. Her eyes lit up with shifting red, purple and blue, and soon, something appeared hanging over her arm, being put together from jagged boxes of magic, like some kind of low-poly model that was becoming more detailed over the course of a few seconds.

  "That's the texture of your magic? Neat," Ryan raised a brow, and Silvia grinned broadly.

  "It's actually cooler than that, it keeps changing over time. It's either this or some kind of mist."

  "Wait, what?" Modak lifted his head and stared at her, "Shifting colours of mana are one thing, but shifting textures are pretty damn rare."

  "Heh, I guess that just means I'm that special, huh?" Silvia laughed, as she pushed what she had just pulled out at Ryan.

  "... What is this?" Ryan grabbed it with both of his hands and unfolded the cloth. It was... clothes. Immediately, he could tell that they were inspired by Jester, but somehow modernised. Some colourful joggers, as well as a hoodie with a pointed hood, and even some painted sneakers. There were some small bells attached to the end of the hood like on Jester's hat. And on top of the clothes sat a thin, white wooden mask that would cover Ryan's whole face.

  This was a 'boost' outfit, just like the one that Silvia had made to match Maximus' style. It was a mixture of streetwear and Jester's clown-style.

  "Oh holy shit, seriously?" Ryan smiled broadly. With this, if he linked with Jester, he should be able to move in a whole new way, "This is awesome, thank you so much! Wait, you can store an entire outfit in your gallery?"

  "Yeah, I mean, I can make anything I fully make myself! I even made the sneakers myself, you know?" With a smug grin on her face, Silvia crossed her arms, "The outfit took up a ton of space, but... it was worth it!"

  "Hell yeah it was," Ryan took a closer look at the entire outfit. The mask in particular was pretty neat. Somehow, though you weren't able to see the glass at all from the outside, there were two perfectly clear lenses perfectly around the eyes, "How did you make this?"

  "Oh! That was super cool, it's this specific type of glass I learned about from some craftsmen employed by your family, it's called 'Pixie Glass'! Basically, you take this already pretty special mixture of glass that's made from this super rare, fine green sand. And then, you have the other half, which is this paint made with this really neat crystallized pigment that's literally invisible when seen through the glass. So when I put it outside on this mask, it's perfectly opaque, but when you look through the inside, you wouldn't even know it's there!"

  "Huh," Ryan carefully put on the mask. It was a perfect fit for his face. Frankly, if he didn't love Silvia like a sister, he would be creeped out by the fact she knew all of his sized perfectly well enough to be able to just make this kind of thing as a surprise. Though... it was still a little creepy, "Well, no matter. I'll change into that."

  Without a moment's hesitation, he quickly stripped right here in the middle of the park. Not like there was anyone else around beside Silvia and Modak, and now that they had seen his scars, he wouldn't care if they saw him naked. Ryan didn't have anything to hide. Of course, he did wear underwear, so they didn't see him naked.

  He swapped out the 'Urban Knight' outfit over to the 'Urban Harlequin' outfit, smiling as he looked down at himself while Silvia put away the Urban Knight clothes.

  "For your information, I'm also designing some outfits for you to match with Gregor and Gaia. With Gregor, I'm sort of holding back a bit, because all the ideas I have need a ton of super intricate pieces of metal, which is not only heavy but also really hard for me to make myself, so I want to either get some more inspiration or wait for you to get a bit stronger and me to learn metalwork," she started, "And the Gaia outfit would be, like... a gardening outfit. I'm putting it together for now, but it should be ready in a week or two."

  "Dude, you're totally fine," Ryan laughed, giving Silvia a hug to thank her, "So what were you laughing about earlier? This outfit is sick."

  Modak let out a long groan, "Urgh, fine... I'll pay you later."

  "Hah, as if you would be able to top me in stylistic sense," the elf crossed her arms smugly.

  Ryan looked back and forth between them, "Did... did you guys bet on whether or not I would like this?"

  "Yup," Silvia replied, "I mean, it's a bit whacky and weird, plus super colourful which isn't exactly your vibe."

  "It's not not my vibe, I just don't have a ton of colourful clothes."

  "Oh? Why that?"

  Looking at the surprised Modak, Ryan shrugged, "Well... it's easier to find really cheap black hoodies and shirts. Plus, you can't see blood that well on black fabric," he replied as though it were obvious, before starting to stretch again, "Anyway, I'll give the first room a shot. I think it was a simple obstacle course this time around. You can attempt it as often as you like, anyway."

  Quickly, he jogged over toward the funhouse's entrance, putting the mask on his face as he moved. He was about to step inside, but just before he did, Ryan saw something. At first, he thought it was some kind of mirage because of the mask's lenses, that 'Pixie Glass', but no. There was something moving in the corner of his eye, in the distance.

  Running away from the funhouse, Ryan just sprinted at that small blur of motion in-between the pieces of trash, quickly kicking an old soda can to the side. It was heavier than it should be.

  As the can flew through the air, a tiny, metallic mouse fell out of it. That wasn't possible. Animals, especially ones like mice or rats, avoided dungeons like the pest. They hated the sensation of mana air.

  And of course, mice weren't that smooth and shiny, either. It was a machine.

  Ryan grabbed the horn of shapeless water and turned it into a bat. Before the mouse could hit the ground, he swung the ice bat and shattered the robotic mouse. He didn't have to investigate further. Ryan already knew what this meant.

  "Richie..."

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