Christopher slithered through the deep, long hallway. He felt sluggish and slow. The floor felt like a flat, smooth surface of ice that he was trying to move forward on.

  He approached the large door in front of him. Two men stood in front of it, wearing pitch black suits.

  "What business do you have?" One of them asked.

  Christopher, trying to force out a reply, slowly answered, "I'm here to see my brother. What else?"

  "... Name?" the other of the two asked.

  Grinding his teeth together, the Lamia replied, "Christopher. Blanchard."

  They looked at each other for a moment, uncertain, when a voice came from the other side of the door.

  "It's fine, just let him in."

  The voice belonged to a young man. A child. But somehow, it evoked an authority like none other Christopher knew.

  The doors were opened and he slithered inside.

  "... Vasix."

  "What do you want, brother? Do you need more money for one of your ventures? If so, just take it, I have no need for it."

  The boy spoke with his back turned to Christopher, seated on a large silken pillow. His body was smaller than that of other boys his age, and completely white as if all his colour had been drained. His long tail coiled around the base of his seat, making it appear like some kind of mountain. He held a book in his hands, not lifting his gaze from it for a moment.

  "My 'ventures' are very successful, I'll let you know. But no, that's not what I'm here for," Christopher sighed, "I'm here to talk about someone that would like to meet you. He's a skilled technomancer, who was enhanced through-"

  "So you are coming to me for business related to the society, I see?"

  Christopher's body shook. He was startled, and panicked as if he had made a grave mistake. Immediately, he prostrated himself, lowering his head as Vasix slowly turned around. He snapped his fingers, and three large flames were lit behind him.

  A large shadow was thrown. It was almost invisible on his already white body, but the shadow wasn't black as it usually should be - it was white.

  Vasix looked like a mistake. Like a splatter of white paint on a black page, or a brilliant diamond on a mountain of coals.

  "I greet the Child of the White Curse," Christopher spoke, in a loud and clear voice. His disdain for his brother was still obvious, but Vasix paid it no mind. Despite being just a child, barely 10, he exuded the air of someone that lived many lifetimes over.

  "Much better. Now, why are you telling me about a mere... Technomancer?"

  "He... He is not just a technomancer. He has formed a proper bond with the corruption. I believe that he would be a proper tool in the defeat of the 'Touched'."

  Though his face was veiled in bright shadow, his anger at that statement was obvious.

  "Explain. From the beginning. How, and why has he formed a bond with something like... Corruption?"

  "We've got an emergency. Richie is here," Ryan ran up to his friends, already panicking and unsure what exactly was going on. How did they even get in here? This place was supposed to be totally locked up and inaccessible unless you had proof you belonged to the Aglecard family somehow.

  Both Modak and Silvia stared at Ryan as if he were crazy, "What do you mean, 'Richie is here'? Did you see him?"

  Ryan looked at Modak and shook his head, holding forward his hand and showing the small metal mouse, "No, but this thing was scurrying around."

  The orc quickly took a look, slowly pulling apart the destroyed chassis and wires. The more he looked, the more nervous he became as well. He didn't want to admit it, but he couldn't deny it either at this point in time.

  "You're right, this is definitely Richie's work," Modak started biting his nails, "What does he want in here? Is he trying to corrupt this dungeon?"

  "I have no idea, but why would he even do that? It's not like this place is public knowledge in the first place, so-"

  "What if that's the point..?" Silvia suggested. Ryan and Modak both stared at her.

  Ryan anxiously asked, "What do you mean?"

  "Well, what if, now that they've planted the seeds of distrust for spirits and magical folk, they're trying to mess with the Aglecards directly? Like..." she thought for a moment, "Maybe they're trying to corrupt this dungeon and make it go haywire. You said this place was tied down with special blockers, right? So if they can overwhelm those blockers and make the dungeon suddenly detectable, or maybe even make it explode outward, then they can cause chaos and maybe push blame onto the Aglecards. That way, even if they keep messing with the hidden people, the Aglecards won't be able to defend them as well."

  Ryan's mind started racing intensely. He had no idea what to say, and he couldn't tell if that sounded 'right' or not either. Instead, Ryan was just growing panicked, and angry. Extremely, extremely angry. He was so close to saving Violette and hopefully Morgana as well, and he wouldn't let them fuck him over like that.

  "We need to get out of here and call Runar," Modak packed up his things, noticing that Ryan's mind was racing too much to make an actual decision. He was like paralysed.

  "Right, right, yeah, let's do that," Ryan slowly nodded, and with shaking hands, pulled out the park's map from his pocket. He tried to find the fastest route back to the entrance, but something was weird. The edges of the map were blurry. Like the ink used to print this pamphlet was floating around on the paper.

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  "What's going on..?" he stared at the map, but not for long. Just a few moments later, something else happened. The speakers that were scattered throughout the park, and were usually completely silent, started blaring some kind of emergency siren. Suddenly, a voice started speaking through it. It was distorted. Wrong. Like someone was scattering each possible sound, just as the words had been scattered. Though it didn't seem like it was necessary for them to even understand it in the first place. A system message appeared in front of Ryan's eyes, and from how Silvia jolted, the same appeared in front of her as well.

  [Warning! The Dungeon -Abandoned Amusement Park- has gone on lockdown!]

  "Lockdown? Ryan, what does this mean? What's 'Lockdown'?"

  But Ryan didn't answer. It was like his mind had gone completely blank for a few moments as he stared at that word. He only spoke up when he saw Jester in front of his eyes, hanging from the edges of Ryan's hood, staring deep into his eyes. Somehow, that pulled him out of it.

  "Lockdown is, uhm... It's probably this dungeon's final defence mechanism. Usually only super advanced dungeons have this kind of thing, but with how all the mana was trapped inside of this space, I think this place developed special abilities like that more easily. Uhm..." Ryan looked at the map in his hand. He turned around, trying to look into the distance. The tallest rollercoaster was a good reference point here. In the distance, he could see it periodically pop up again and again and again. This dungeon didn't have to follow regular laws of science, so it had no curvature... you could see infinitely far into the distance. Usually, you could see the wall of mist that acted as the barrier between the dungeon and outside world at some point, but not here. Not now.

  "The dungeon's edges are connected now... 'Lockdown' means just that. We can't leave anymore," Ryan's breathing became heavier as he looked at the map. The area marked 'entrance' wasn't there anymore either.

  Silvia and Modak rushed at their friend, "What do you mean, we can't leave?" Silvia asked in a panic, "We don't have any food here, and the food stalls don't sell any either, so-"

  "Calm down, it's fine. We've got infinite water at least," Ryan held up the horn of shapeless water, "So either way, we'll last for a while. But even then, there's no reason to panic. This is actually good, alright?" he took a few deep breaths.

  "Good? What do you mean, good? We're trapped here!" Modak yelled out, starting to panic just as Ryan was managing to calm himself down a bit.

  "In terms of defence mechanisms, this is good. Other dungeons do monster floods, or strengthen the monsters within, that kind of thing. But instead, we just can't leave. The rules of the dungeon should otherwise be the same," he explained, slowly pushing breaths out of tightened lips, "But this is the equivalent of a 'skill', okay? So, to stop the skill, we just need to cut off the mana supply. Basically, we just need to find the core room and destroy the core. That way, the dungeon will basically fall asleep while it's trying to recover, and is going to stop the lockdown. We'll be able to leave right away, and can even cut through different parts of the dungeon because the monsters will be dormant."

  "And how are we supposed to find the core room all of a sudden?" Silvia asked, her breathing growing faster. Ryan quickly filled the horn of shapeless water and gave it to both of his friends so that they could calm down with a sip of water while he explained.

  "This dungeon gives us a map right to it. Core rooms are completely unique, okay? While every other part of the dungeon cascades and repeats, the core room will only appear once. In this case, the only space that appears once is the administrative building, right here," Ryan pointed at the map, "My family knew this as well. Runar said that they completely left that place alone to make the dungeon think that the core is safe, exactly so that it would be easy to access in case of an emergency. We just need to go in there, find the core, smash it up, and then get the hell out of here."

  Silvia and Modak seemed to slowly calm down, "And that's going to work? Are you sure?" the elf wondered, looking at Ryan while nervously biting her lip.

  "Yes, I'm absolutely sure." This was something that he was certain about. It was actually part of the test for the dungeoneer's license. It was basically just a test to make sure that people knew what to do under what circumstances, similar to the written portion of a driver's test. It was simply a fact that all special effects observed within a dungeon would cease the moment the core became dormant, and in the case of becoming trapped in the dungeon, one should either wait for a rescue team or, if possible, destroy the dungeon core, though the former should be one's priority.

  But Ryan didn't want to take that risk. Sometimes, nobody came to this place for months at a time, apparently. Runar would probably notice at some point if Ryan didn't show up for work or to hang out with Liam, but he didn't want to rely on that.

  Plus, considering that this effect was called 'Lockdown', it was possible that it was impossible to enter from the outside in the first place, even if they did realise what was going on at some point. So, for the time being, they had to just try and get to the core room to destroy the core.

  "But we need to be careful - extremely, extremely careful. Who knows where Richie is lurking around?" Ryan said as he started walking, the map in both of his hands. The route to the offices should be pretty simple, but Ryan wanted to take it slow anyway.

  Modak and Silvia followed behind him as the group snuck around. To make moving like this easier, Ryan had unsummoned Gaia and was now wearing the backpack himself. However, before long, Ryan could spot the office building. It really wasn't hard to see, here in this ever-dark amusement park.

  It was burning. And it wasn't just any boring old fire, but magical flames that seemed to eat through the building's wooden beams like it was just made from a pile of leaves.

  "What the hell?" Silvia let out, looking over at Ryan, "I doubt it's supposed to look like this... right?"

  Ryan shook his head. Of course it wasn't supposed to look like this. He just stood there for a while, watching as the small office building collapsed in on itself. Why was this happening? Was Richard trying to block the way into the building? No, that was absolutely stupid, there was no reason for this. A dungeon effect like this could go on for months or years if left unchecked, so if they destroyed this place, Richard was basically just trapping himself in here as well. That was, of course, unless he was trying to trap Ryan, Modak, and Silvia in here somehow. This could have been a remote activation or something.

  "But..." Ryan looked down at his arm. He slowly pulled up the puffy sleeves of his hoodie, seeing that Tiar was going absolutely haywire.

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  They were just spouting complete nonsense, like they did when they were anxious or confused. Tiar communicated with Ryan by manipulating their own body to form these specific patterns on the back of his palm. To a degree, it was subconscious, which was why, when they were nervous, Ryan was just greeted with a random array of symbols without much meaning behind it. But in this case, he could figure out pretty clearly what this meant.

  Tiar always acted like this when powerful corruption was nearby. In particular, they reacted very strongly to Richard's corruption. That was enough to guide Ryan's gut-feelings to a particular conclusion.

  "Richie is still in here, so... this is a distraction."

  "Distraction? What do you mean? Are they about to jump out and stab us or something?" Modak asked, nervously looking around while holding his arms in front of his stomach. But Ryan shook his head.

  "No. This office building is a distraction by the dungeon. This isn't the core room; it was a trap. Richie went in here, trying to get to the core room, but he accidentally activated the lockdown. I don't know why he burnt the place down, though. Maybe he was pissed, maybe he was trying to stop us from figuring out what exactly happened here. Either way... this isn't the core room."

  "How... how do you know? I know you've got all your gut-feelings and stuff, but... you could be wrong this time, right?" Silvia asked, grabbing her friend's arm nervously. She was clearly getting extremely freaked out right now.

  "I fucking hope so."

  Modak slowly spoke up, "If this is magic fire... we should just wait for a bit. It can destroy everything in its way, so if the dungeon core is in there, it would break it before the fire goes out. If, by the time the fire is out, we're still stuck in here, then Ryan is right."

  "But what will we do then? If your family was tricked, then where else could the core room be?" Silvia asked, trying to steady her breathing.

  Ryan closed his eyes and took a deep breath, squatting down annoyed. He wanted to prepare a lot more before heading down there, "It's in the one place the Aglecards haven't been to yet. Underground, in the labs below the food court."

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