Matthew briefly wondered if he had become color blind, because these two were all wrong.

  No one truly understood why some Dungeon victims developed a Key and others didn’t. The Doc and other researchers figured that the process involved prolonged exposure to Flux, and little more than that. A few less than reputable Crawler groups in other countries had tried to artificially create more of them by shoving civilians into carefully cleaned Dungeons. They had tried on hundreds of unwilling test subjects and could count the number of successes on one hand.

  However, there was one law about Keys that researchers agreed on over the years: a person’s core color was determined by that of the Dungeon in which they first awakened. Matthew himself was a Yellow Crawler because the one he found in his closet all those years ago had been super weird.

  Hence his confusion about these Petro and Amélia. They’d both gained a Key in a Dungeon attuned to Yellow and Violet, concepts and spacetime; yet they showed Orange and Green auras respectively, which covered matter and life. They didn’t look like the kind of people who’d visited another Dungeon before either, so it couldn’t be that.

  “You’ve noticed it too, Matthew?” the Doc asked after he finished treating Amélia. She continued to shiver on the ground in a fetal position in spite of Kari’s best efforts to console her.

  “Their colors are wrong,” Matthew said. “What’s going on here?”

  “I have a plausible hypothesis in mind.” The Doc stroked his chin. “I’ve been considering just how this Dungeon could manifest a new floor so quickly. Efficient use of its Flux resources and its current victim count shouldn’t have been enough, especially with Miss Powells besieging its core.”

  Maggie scowled at the mention of her last name—she scowled at everything in general—but didn’t say a word.

  “Dungeons that grow large enough start connecting with others located near their main entrance, with the stronger Dungeons cannibalizing the smaller ones,” the Doc continued. “This usually happens once a Dungeon reaches the second step of their development, but it can take place earlier should cell-stages spawn in close proximity. It is possible that this church originally hosted a set of twins.”

  Matthew raised an eyebrow as he put two and two together. “This Dungeon ate another?”

  “An Orange and Green one, in all likelihood,” the Doc confirmed. “The main Dungeon must have repurposed its assimilated sibling into its second floor. We can likely expect a very different experience down there.”

  The Doc’s hypothesis was frighteningly plausible. Though Dungeons acted as pocket dimensions, their influence slowly expanded outward from their origin point once they accumulated enough victims. Large ones eventually opened new doors in adjacent locations; and if they encountered another Dungeon’s entrance in their sphere of influence, one inevitably assimilated the other.

  Matthew didn’t like that possibility in the slightest. A Dungeon cannibalizing others grew stronger and more complex with each color it added to its own.

  That was how the Mall came to be.

  Petro, who had been listening in silence so far, scowled in confusion. “What are you guys talking about? What do colors have to do with this…” He looked around in distress. “This madness?”

  “We will explain everything once we evacuate you to a safe place,” the Doc promised before turning his attention to Maggie. “Do you remember me, Miss Powells?”

  Maggie bristled. “Yeah, I do.”

  “I see.” The Doc coughed in embarrassment. Ever the people person, he quickly decided to move on with the subject. “May I request your assistance today?”

  “I’m not joining your organization.”

  “I assumed as much,” the Doc replied with a hint of sorrow. Unlike Matthew, he still held onto the hope that Maggie would join the Association one day. “Nonetheless, would you mind evacuating these people outside and bar the door? This place isn’t safe for them, and we must prevent the Dungeon from replenishing its strength by claiming more victims.”

  Maggie tensed up, her jaw clenching in anger. Matthew immediately understood that the Doc had made a mistake. His former friend loathed weakness—especially her own—and reminding her of it caused her to close off to reason.

  “How about you evacuate them and I stay there?” Maggie said while pointing a finger at the Doc. “I can take care of the core myself.”

  John snorted. “Why haven’t you yet then?”

  “You shut up, asshole,” Maggie replied with a venomous glare. “You haven’t reached the core either.”

  “That may be true,” the Doc said diplomatically. “However, we need someone on the outside to bar the Dungeon’s entrance. The church staff is unlikely to listen to us, but you are a regular and thus they should lend you an ear. This strategy would save the most lives.”

  Maggie frowned as she pondered the Doc’s offer. She was no fool, nor heartless. She understood that the plan had merits, even if she loathed standing on the sidelines; and though she tried to hide it, Matthew didn’t fail to notice the worried glances she sent to the scared Amélia now and then.

  She had been in her situation once.

  “Come on, Maggie,” Matthew pleaded with her. “It’s not about us.”

  Maggie scowled, but conceded. “Fine,” she finally said. “But if you’re not out in half an hour, I’ll assume you were all killed and jump in.”

  “Thank you very much,” the Doc said while Matthew allowed himself a sigh of relief. “Mister Petro, if you would kindly follow her?”

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  The gunman nodded slowly. Though he had clearly no idea what was going on, he trusted their group’s apparent expertise on the matter. Maggie roughly grabbed the cowering Amélia in her arms, bridal style, then left with her charges without looking back.

  “Good call, Doctor O’Connor,” John commented once they were all out of earshot. “She would have slowed us down."

  “If the two of you ever fight, I’ll bet on her,” Matthew replied.

  John raised an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”

  “All my money,” Matthew confirmed. Maggie had her issues and wasn’t much of a team player, but she was tough. She’d faced far stronger creatures than anything John went up against and survived where… where others didn’t.

  “She’s strong, but not a team player,” Kari confirmed. “What do we do now? Any idea how to reach the Dungeon’s lower floor?”

  “My spells can’t detect the door, so it could be anywhere,” the Doc said. “Did you encounter any suspicious rooms on your way here?”

  “Suspicious?” Kari scratched her cheek in embarrassment. “Every room in this horrible place gives me the creeps…”

  Matthew crossed his arms and pondered their situation. Dungeons had a strange obsession with hiding entry points to their lower floors behind either puzzles or powerful monsters. Very few of them hid them in unremarkable areas. This one was clever, but its second floor’s creation had been a rush job.

  Violet and Yellow, Matthew thought. The Dungeon’s aesthetics combined concepts—in this specific case, religion—and spacetime. That was why its stained windows acted as spawning points and cosmically-challenged priests served as its guards. This place reasoned in terms of symbolism and transportation. What room would associate both?

  The answer came to him in a flash.

  “The miniboss’ room!” Matthew snapped his fingers. “The bells! They’re hiding the door to the next floor!”

  John squinted at him in skepticism. “Bells?”

  “Don’t you see, you uncultured bore?” Matthew wagged his finger. It was so typical of Red Crawlers to miss the hidden meaning in all things! “What were bells used for in churches? To issue a warning, announce someone’s arrival, and offer sanctuary!”

  “I think Matt is onto something,” Kari replied. “It would explain why the Dungeon manifested such a strong monster there besides intercepting Maggie. I would expect something so strong to protect a valuable chokepoint.”

  “We lose nothing but time in checking out that room,” the Doc decided. John shrugged his shoulders and went along with the decision. The group quickly retraced their steps back to the belfry area.

  Returning to the miniboss room caused Matthew to ponder what happened during the fight. The subject had been bothering him, and while he wasn’t sure if now was the best time to broach it, it might give them an edge in the battle to come.

  “Doc,” Matthew said after reaching a decision. “Can spells fuse together?”

  “Interesting question,” the Doc replied. “What makes you think that?”

  “Well, I used my Doom Sense and Peak passive spells during this morning’s soccer match,” Matthew explained. He had mostly brushed it off as a fluke back then, but the fact that it happened again during the miniboss encounter made him believe that it was no coincidence. “I think they began to act in concert at one point.”

  The Doc gave him a look of disappointment. “You used spells to cheat at a soccer game, Matthew?”

  “It was more of a self-imposed handicap in his case,” Kari complained. “Which he won’t try ever again.”

  “I’ve learned my lesson, Mom,” Matthew protested. He should stick to using Lucky Star when playing video games rather than in dangerous ball-hunting death matches. “Anyway, it happened again when we fought the miniboss. My body acted on its own to dodge attacks.”

  “Fascinating…” The Doc stroked his chin, as he always did when pondering over an interesting subject. “We know for a fact that Dungeons can use multiple Flux colors at once to generate unique effects, so it shouldn’t be impossible for a human to do the same under certain circumstances.”

  John, the killjoy, remained skeptical. “You would think someone more talented would have done it before if such a thing was possible.”

  “Both Peak and Doom Sense are passive spells,” Kari pointed out. “Very few sorcerers have the reserves to stack them both at once like Matthew can.”

  “What she said,” Matthew taunted John. “You just don’t have the mojo to graduate from pull-ups.”

  “Says the guy who nearly got killed by a soccer ball,” John replied. They soon reached the miniboss’ room. Its corpse was long gone and some of the five golden bells showed burn marks, but they were otherwise mostly intact. “This place does seem suspicious.”

  The Doc joined his hands and unleashed a blue-colored pulse of Flux. “Good call, Matthew,” he complimented. “The entrance to the second floor is definitively hidden somewhere in this room.”

  “Of course, I’m sure the bells have nothing to do with revealing it,” John deadpanned. “Any insights, Maruki?”

  Matthew scratched his head. Puzzles like this one in video games always had two solutions. “I say we must either strike them in a specific order, or all at once.”

  “Let’s try both options,” the Doc decided. The group quickly took their positions around the room and struck one of the five bells each, with John’s exception; he shot the last one with his gun at the same time he struck his own with his fist. The bells rang in a commotion loud enough to wake the dead, aaaaand….

  Nothing happened.

  “Well that’s a bust,” the Doc said in disappointment. “Assuming we must strike each bell once in a specific order, that leaves a minimum of one hundred twenty combinations; and that’s if we exclude more complex options like ringing a specific bell more than once.”

  “I’m not spending a year stuck on a riddle,” John replied before glancing in Matthew’s direction. “Can’t you open the door by force, Maruki?”

  Matthew shook his head. A floor’s access was much better protected than the main entrance, since the Dungeon didn’t actually want people to wander in there.

  “It’s a Christian church,” Matthew muttered under his breath as he tried to find a solution and utterly failed. Why did he have to pay now for his complete and utter disinterest in religious matters? “Doesn’t the number five have a specific significance for them?”

  “The five holy wounds of Christ maybe?” the Doc pondered. “According to the Bible, Jesus Christ received five wounds during his crucifixion.”

  Kari observed the bells and quickly noticed that one faced the exit, with two more on each side. “The bells form a pentagram shape,” she noted. “If that one represents the head, then those on the sides must represent the hands and feet.”

  “I suspect the head bell might be a red herring,” the Doc guessed. “Christ’s fifth wound was on the chest where the centurion Longinus struck him with a spear. If this Dungeon works in terms of religious symbolism, then it could liken a wound to a door between a body and the outside world…”

  Matthew smiled ear to ear. “So if we open the four wounds, the fifth will show up in response.”

  Since they had nothing to lose by trying, the four of them lined up in front of the appropriate bells and struck them at the same time. The bell toll echoed in the room once more. Their song resonated with a surge of Flux this time, and a small rift surging with golden and purple particles soon opened on the hall’s left side.

  “Complete success!” Kari rejoiced.

  “We can expect a tough welcome on the other side, so beware,” the Doc warned his students. “Matthew, if you would kindly open the door?”

  He didn’t need to ask Matthew twice. He immediately grabbed the rift with his hands and Key ability at once, his power quickly widening the gap. He sensed the Dungeon’s last-ditch resistance against the intrusion and easily disregarded it. The whole place was running on fumes now.

  Only one obstacle stood between the core and them.

  “Forgive me, Lord, for I am forcing my way in,” Matthew quipped as a violet whirlpool swallowed his team whole. Space bent around them, the cathedral’s marble floor quickly twisting into thick brown wood.

  The Boss attacked the moment they teleported in.

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