The entire dungeon paused for a moment as the drawbridge struck stone with a resounding reverberation. Cromwell slowly turned towards it, his hands raised defensively, mana swirling through the air around him. Ready to drunkenly bend the elemental forces of this world to his whims.

  The loot bugs assembled all along the edges of the pit, looking down at him like he was a sacrifice. Then Contempt began a low chanting hiss that echoed unnaturally throughout the dungeon. One after another, the other creatures joined in until the hiss melded together, forming a wordless Gregorian chant that thundered throughout Egbert's halls. Should I be concerned? I feel like I should be more concerned about this…

  Egbert shrugged away his concern; he was enjoying the impromptu ritual too much and just how much it was completely freaking Cromwell out. He had motes of fire sputtering from his fingertips and a wild look in his eyes. The chant reached an almost impossibly deep and long final note that sent a shiver up Egbert's spine. Don’t have a spine, definitely shouldn’t be able to get the chills; will add holy countermeasures to deal with Contempt to the shopping list.

  “HUU, HUUU, HU…,” echoed from inside the skull-embellished castle as the Bully slowly sauntered out from his stronghold. His shell was adorned in a wicked mishmash of fishing hooks that madly draped over him like flesh hooks in a butcher's rack. Cromwell’s face screwed up into an expression Egbert couldn’t even begin to decipher, and he sprinted for the nearest ladder, throwing an honestly impressive wave of fire at Bully at the same time. The wave crested over him and heated the stone in the pit to a simmering red.

  Cromwell hit the ladder face first in his haste, cursing the whole time, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, those aren’t loot bugs. I don’t know what they are!” He fumbled with his coin purse, desperately getting a gold coin of all things in hand. He never got it into the coin slot. He froze as something very heavy for its size crept onto his foot and looked up almost expectantly towards the coin… He lunged for the coin slot.

  Crowmwell screeched as he was bodily dragged by his boot away from the sweet safety promised by the ladder, his coin clattering to the ground. Oh dear lords, yes, someone scoop up that gold and slap it into a coin slot, please! “AAAGGGHHHHH DEAR SWEET MOTHER OF MAGIC ANYONE!” Cromwell shrilly screamed. Bully was currently letting out a very unkind laugh while doing zoomies around the perimeter of his pit. The very unwilling Cromwell was dragged behind mercilessly; it wouldn’t have been too bad on the smooth floor if he hadn’t superheated part of it.

  Alright…carry on. I suppose there's not much I could do to intervene anyway. If he dies, he dies; I won’t feel too bad about it anyhow….What are the rich bearded glories up to! Egbert zoomed away from the screaming in the pit and paused briefly next to Buyer’s Remorse.

  Oh well, aren’t you proud of yourself? You finally did it; you’re practically a god of war now. Buyer's Remorse was purring to himself happily, slumped against the wall, coated from doorframe to foot in blood. A tattered wizard's hat hung from his maw. His whole frame was distended with what was once an apprentice mage. I dub thee, sire, mage slayer, first of his name, hungriest of doors! I really need to talk to more actual people...

  Ehh…just to be sure… Egbert activated [Gimme The Gold!] on his mimic and hoped it would steal whatever goodies were currently in his belly. His total started ticking up, probably melting down the man's coin purse. Carry on, Sir Magesbane. Remorse let out a belch that sent a single foot spiraling across the floor; he weakly reached for it a few times but gave up and just lay back to enjoy the food coma.

  The dwarves were currently standing in front of a flaming hell pit, regretting their life choices. The apprentice Curt looked at Brom with a wide-eyed “what now” expression as balls of fire lazily cascaded from the ceiling every few seconds with absolutely no rhyme or reason to where they landed. Brom grumbled deeply to himself, suddenly raising a small handheld shield that slowed an incoming fireball mid-flight to a standstill before it hit them. “Aight, we might want ter go change the difficulty.” He said just as the pit once again exploded into a seething waterfall of fire from a direct fireball hit.

  Egbert looked at the catastrophically chaotic firestorm that his loot pit turned into at random. If he could have had an aghast expression mixed with pride, he would have had one. That...is sooooo much worse than I thought it would be… He felt a good deal of smugness seeping through him as the dwarves retreated back to the difficulty booth and paid a rather exorbitant sum to turn the hell-storm off.

  [5 Silver] [1 Gold]

  Curt looked at the slowly waning fires in relief before turning to a slightly singed Brom. “Are all mages’ trials like this, forge master?” Brom huffed for a moment, lost in his own thought, before shaking himself back to the present to answer the question.

  “Hmm, no laddie, this ain’t got nothing to do with the feking wizards; I was just enjoying watching the prick make shite up!” He pulled a small device from inside a pocket; it was a square hunk of metal with a tiny glass window. A needle sat inside it. The needle was flailing back and forth so spasmodically Egbert was amazed the thing hadn’t broken. “Tis a dungeon, laddie.” Oh, come on! How does the dwarf figure it out before the actual mage?

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  Brom gave a self-impressed smile before gesturing to his device again. “Tis been going a bit wild since we got here; I thought it was gonna splode when we were going up the stairs. Dungeons have a unique way about em too; that stonework them buggies live in either came from a dwarven stoneshaper or…” Curt interrupted rather rudely.

  “Or a dungeon because they shape the world around them however they please!” he said excitedly.

  Brom gave a long-suffering sigh before heading back towards the still hot but tolerable loot pit.“That is not at all accurate, laddie; no one knows how dey work exactly. The few that talk ain’t too forthcoming. Now climb down in der and grab that chest. I’ll deal with the ghost.” Curt looked at him, horrified. Sighhhh, maybe I can sweet-talk them into not blabbing about me on their way out.

  Brom ignored his student and fished out a small sack from his apparently endless pockets. “Alms, alms for the poor…” The ancient weathered figure moaned as he shuffled towards Brom.

  “Bah…gonna have ta do better than that dungeon.” He hadn’t even finished the sentence before the first claw hit his apprentice squarely across the face and hauled him screaming into the pit. “Dammit! I had ta say it!” Brom grumbled, almost haphazardly throwing a handful of shimmering silver particles into the air in the general direction of Mr. Stealy. The ghost walked into them and instantly burst into a sheet of blue flames; he melted away into a blue smoke drifting back towards his cursed object. Uhh, Brom, what the hell was that "ghost be gone" bullshit? That seemed a bit cheap.

  Brom wasn’t done being an overprepared overachiever. He reached back into his sack much farther than should have been possible. Ha, of course the artificer has a damned spatial bag, probably utterly stuffed with cheats! Should have actually checked what his level is… [Brom Deepcopper Tier-2] (lvl 46)[ Physicist of Artifice]. Oh well, alright then…he's Tier-2 with forty-six levels...that means he is level one hundred and forty-six. I should be thankful he hasn’t just blown me up at this point. Gods know what he has in that bag.

  Brom fished out something concerning-looking, an orb made of interlocking circular metal plates that orbited at random. It had handles on either side and a series of runes etched into it like buttons. He grumbled through his beard at it for a moment and pressed one of the runes decisively. The entire contraption, other than the handles and buttons, unfurled itself over the pit as a series of lightning-like arcs of electricity bound together the fragmented pieces of metal. Umm, what? No seriously, what is that?

  Egbert had seen some rather ingenious magical devices in his travels; this thing was so odd he didn’t even have a good point of reference for it. It just hovered above the pit like shards of spinning metal bound by strings of electricity. Brom didn’t leave him wondering for long, pressing another series of runes on the handles. There was the horrible sound of tearing stone and metal as both man grabbers and the captive apprentice were wrenched from the pit. Arcs of blue-white energy struck from the floating devices and told gravity to piss off; we are going up now.

  Does this man have a personal vendetta against gravity? Good lord, did you fall off a cliff as a youth and just never get over it? Wait, he's a dwarf, probably down a mine shaft somewhere…

  The sheer forces exerted were, to put it mildly, concerning. Stone shattered as the Man Grabbers were literally torn from the loot pit's stone floor; Curt was bobbing between them, suspended by competing grabby claws that were having a tug of war over him. He made awkward eye contact with Brom as he bobbed up and down on the yanking lines, one grabber over his head, leaving his eyes peeking out; the other had him squarely around the thigh.

  Well, great. I was worried about the mages; apparently I should be worried about the dwarves, though. So far they haven’t been dicks, other than just brute-forcing past my damn traps worse than even Thrognar did. At least he got in the pit with the things he broke…

  Brom kept fiddling with the controls to his absolutely unfair device, and the streams of energy snapped hither and dither across the entire room. His apprentice was freed and stuck safely to one side of the pit. A few beams of energy hauled the chest straight out of the pit and hovered it right over to the key; it opened with a resounding click. Then the damn beams of gravity-bending lightning just scooped out the entire contents of the chest and dumped them into the dwarf's apparently infinite pockets with the tinkle of lost profits.

  Egbert grumbled to himself; this wasn’t how people were supposed to beat this room. There needed to be more blunt force trauma, and at least one person HAD to slide down the stairs; it was practically required. Oh dammit, Contempt, where are you when I actually need an assist? A hole in the ground doesn’t do a damn thing to an upjumped gravity mage with a fancy class name.

  Egbert went to check on the sacrificial ritual happening to Cromwell while the dwarves settled in to...apparently dissemble his damn man grabbers…

  Things had escalated even further at this point. Cromwell had somehow gotten away from the bully; he was a singed, scraped-up mess. He was next to one of the ladders, waving his hands around like his life depended on it; honestly, it probably did. Each gesture added to a slowly thickening wall of bluish ice that he had managed to stretch across the pit. The bully was stuck on the other side and not happy about it, smashing into it over and over, a deep grumble emanating from him, and hunks of ice exploding around him.

  Cromwell slapped a coin into the ladder finally. It snapped upwards, offering him blessed escape. He fled upwards, screaming the whole time about buying an item that lets him fly. Ha, well, it looks like he might survive if contempt doesn’t decide to toss him back in. Wait, where did the third apprentice go?...There were three mages very specifically; I remember three…

  With a sinking feeling, Egbert began scouring his own domain for the wayward apprentice; he had lost track of him in the midst of the sudden carnage. He almost missed him and certainly would have if he wasn’t leaving footprints across the now sooty floor of the loot pit room.

  The bastard was invisible and appeared to be walking in a slowly closing circle directly around the rocks his dungeon core was hidden under. Oh shit...uhhh...I'm going to regret this so badly...but it's better than being enslaved. Buyer’s Remorse… Want to eat another mage? I think I can upgrade you...at least it should be cheap; you only cost me like four coppers.