A lonely, round source of bright white light illuminated a dark gray, shadowed land.

Seconds later, a man with horns fell out of a rift in the air. The bright light was lonely no more. But the man had fallen on his knees, his whole body covered in bright cyan fire.

And his loud voice broke the suffocating silence.

———

Level 81, Damian.

"AGGGHHHH!!" Damian screamed.

The damned flames burned too unnaturally hot, as if someone had taken his time to specifically design flames that left maximum pain. Still, Damian held on to the coat of seven; the pain was fucking with his focus. He immediately let his three sacrium cubes out and started generating mana.

Then created a big sphere of water and jumped into it; the unnatural fire took its sweet time to leave, but it finally stopped. The pain had remained though. But it was endurable.

In one hurried glance at his surroundings, Damian noticed that level 8 was a dark, shadowed place. Dim white sun was blurred high above by a similar-sized black moon. All around him were only gray dust clouds passing by, and awfully silent gray ash-like ridges. He couldn't sense a single monster anywhere in the whole dungeon floor.

The biggest relief, however, was the low temperature. It was way too low though, like a cool winter night. Barely 10 Celsius. Not at all matching his expectation for level 81 of the fire theme dungeon.

The golden liquid mana was generated enough to open a waygate, so Damian did that without a second's thought. The odd dungeon floor could be dealt with later.

The waygate connected with Sulthar and Damian breathed in relief, he threw in a square earth slab, his signal that it's safe to enter. He half expected the guy to die. Sam and Lucian both could use their own waygates if their life were in danger, Damian had warned them to do so. But T'korran and Sulthar needed to be rescued.

The plan was for T'korran to be saved by Sam after he did his part in distracting the enemy. Sulthar was supposed to make his way near Lucian and use the waygate along with her to get back to Miindseer and others. Lucian, with her unique ice skills, could handle the temperature slightly better than Sam, which was why she was chosen to hold on and wait for Sulthar as long as she could.

Damian ignored the weird ball of energy circling him and the open waygate and prepared himself to face whatever stepped out of the waygate first.

But fortunately, it was Sulthar's humanoid form in tattered clothes. The guy was covered in ice here and there. Even T'korran, Lucian, and Sam followed behind. And after them, the two pigmen transcendents, Mindseer, and the other two legendary beasts of their small party.

Sam also had remnants of ice covering the back of his arm and knee. T'korran's lava volume had greatly reduced; he was now just a 3-foot toddler. Looked unexpectedly cute for some reason.

"The knight?" Damian asked.

"Most likely still alive," Sulthar replied.

"You did well, all of you." Damian praised them for not dying and weighing on his conscience.

"It was that weird obsidian thing; without it, I would have serious burns," Sam confessed.

"It was the same thing as the monster skin in earlier levels." Lucian guessed. "Mimicry thing?"

Damian nodded.

"I will fight any guy who says it's a mediocre spell any longer!" Sam swore an oath.

"It is," Lucian trampled on his oath. "No one can use it to get this level of abnormal traits. The castor is weird, not the spell."

"I am right here," Damian reminded.

Lucian eyed him, then shrugged with her deadpan face.

'This brat!'

"Is this really the level 81?" Mindseer asked, looking around and noticing nothing of importance.

"It's.. cool?" Droquar, the titan gorilla, asked.

"Where are the monsters?" Mindseer asked, unable to sense any.

"I can't sense any," Damian replied.

"The key point?" Sam asked.

He extended his mana sense, but it was for nothing: "Can't sense that as well."

"That's not normal," Veltrax added.

Sam started walking up the ridge for a better view, "If this is one of those trap floo—"

Suddenly, he vanished right before our eyes! Damian could neither hear his voice nor sense the mana!

"SAM!!" Damian shouted, but no reply came.

"SAAAAAMMM!" The others followed behind him, realizing something seriously messed up had just transpired.

"Do not move from your position!" Sulthar shouted in between.

Damian immediately used the floating liquid mana to conjure another waygate connecting Sam, and seconds later, the man stepped out of it, and they all breathed in relief.

Not unheard of, but it was indeed rare for dungeons to have such trap floors in between. Usually, there was at least some way to get out; a challenger was not completely trapped. But with levels, the traps get more and more intense. A dungeon with 25 or 50 levels wouldn't have such fucked up space distortion floor that even mana could not pass through.

Every ten meters, the physical plane completely changed. It was like getting teleported to a separate parallel dimension or something. Sam said it was the same ridge as this one, and the surroundings were the exact same as well, just no one was around him anymore. Damian created a bunch of green vines, and they all bound each other, becoming a human chain. But that did nothing to keep them connected; people still went missing.

Fortunately, the waygates to lower levels worked, or they would be completely screwed here.

"What if the commander and others get stuck here?" Mindseer asked suddenly after several minutes of everyone trying to figure out what to do.

"If they reach this far," Lucian commented.

"I doubt a single fourth ranker, even in a party of transcendents, could fight that thing we just left behind," Sulthar added.

"Not to mention the runic suits wouldn't be very effective after mid-70s levels, even for Landbreaker," Sam said.

That guy could survive in space for a while; he could endure if needed. Damian had even given Landbreaker other tools to fight off the rising temperature. But Damian wasn't worried. In the tools he gave Landbreaker, there was also a sacrium sword with the waygate spell and the giant replica spell. So Landbreaker could fight giant creatures without getting too close and leave the dungeon floor if it proves to be too dangerous.

Landbreaker's party had other Highsword second-ranker knights as well. They were specially taken to remain behind in starting levels as anchors for the waygate spell.

"He will be fine," Damian consoled Mindseer.

He could not reveal the existence of an unlocked Waygate tool in Landbreaker's hands in case the gods could somehow read memories or something.

Damian fake coughed to get everyone's attention, then said to all,

"It is better if only a few of us who can fight inside a ten-meter square box with back to back remain here to find a key point. The monsters will come sooner or later. The others should wait behind."

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