"...and that's how an infux mana converter functions," Inkaro explained astutely as he walked at the front of the group, serving both roles of vanguard and navigator. With Lizu and Enetha in the centre as the sentries, and Noaskou as the rearguard, the quadro of classmates strolled and patrolled the empty halls of Aunovile's Golemstein Shrine Dungeon: a dungeon with metalic, dark oak-looking panels for walls and dark marble brick floor, and chandeliers carved out of hollowed out moonstone that resembled New Year's lanterns and hung from the thirty-foot-high ceilings.

  "Could... you simplify it, for me?" Enetha murmured lostly as she felt her head spinning, and already succumbed to a head-splitting headache, all from trying to comprehend the monstrously dense explanation Inkaro had verbally pounded into her head.

  "I can help with that," Lizu remarked eagerly and protectively as she peered back at Enetha, presently lying flat on the dragolyte's chonky tail while having her cloth-like limbs wrapped around it and herself for support. Following multiple attempts to clear her throat, Lizu put on a serious demeanour before speaking. "Ahem, mana goes into device, power for cities and facilities comes out. SImple right?"

  "Ah, I see," Enetha said bluntly, feeling no ill-will for Lizu's dumbed-down, to the point of it being patronising, comment. If anything, the little princess much preferred being treated like a child by Lizu, if it meant keeping her head on her shoulders from listening to Inkaro explain it to her.

  Watching the various dots on the light cream white mana construct that resembles a floating map with a grid-like texture overlaying the construct, and the three-dimensional map is being projected from his hood, Inkaro eyed the map for any signs of monsters, that being purple spheres.

  "Did she change the colours again?" Noaskou asked calmly as the paw pads of his bare feet clicked against the floor, and lightly swished his fluffy tail back and forth. Enetha watched the fluffy mass of fur swiping about and peeking at her from each side of the srulanoue guy, doing so like a hawk. Perhaps using that turn of phrase was underselling it. If anything, saying that Enetha was staring right through the guy's soul to look upon the fluffy spectacle was a much more appropriate term to use. "Is something behind me, Princess?"

  Enetha jumped, well, tried to, but went nowhere with her self-imposed bound state, at the sudden call out while remaining poker-faced. That was about all the reaction the little princess gave before answering said call out.

  "Bored," Enetha replied bluntly and extremely emotionlessly, too.

  Hearing the response, Noaskou shifted his eyes from side to side, allowing himself to mull Enetha's words over before responding: "Fair enough."

  Popping into existence beside the srulanoue and floating with a matching pace of motion to him, Morilore planted her fists on her hips, displaying a pride that could only have been inherited from Lizu and Yuuvia in the middle of a heated duel. Morilore artifically clicked her tongue, much like Nuenala when losing a tactical team game because her teammates got ganged up on, or those same teammates were simply below her rank.

  "The meaning behind the mana sphere colours is as follows: the team is deep pink, enemy people are dark red, purple are monsters, and neutral people are yellow," Morilore proclaimed proudly, like how Lizu would. As she pointed to the projected recreation of the dungeon's layout, swinging her arms about with reckless pride, acting like she'd discovered the perfect set of colours anyone could have possibly concocted, the sentient grimoire wanted some expression of praise from the wolfy guy to give her father. Noaskou nodded. With his nonverbal answer, the guy went right back to his role of rearguard and paying more attention to his surroundings, much to the disappointment of a pouting Morilore before she dispersed her form.

  "Can you believe that guy, Creator? He's so uptight," G.Galore whispered to Inkaro in a series of beeps and boops, knowing that mere whispering wouldn't suffice to conceal her words from the guy with superior senses. Inkaro took in the coded message, whilst he adjusted his raised finger to scroll through the projected map (All-Purpose Interlocking Navigation Organiser(A.I.N.O) Map) in search of any golems.

  "Nothing wrong with that, variety is the key to new magic flourishing," Inkaro stated pragmatically, getting faint beeps of reluctant computations out of the sentient grimoire as she fully reburied herself back in Inkaro's hood. "But I must say, the lack of any golems on the lower floors is certainly peculiar, fascinating even."

  "Perhaps there is an adventurer group ahead of us wiping out all the golems," Enetha suggested as her eyes were still locked on the swishing mass of purple tail fur. Her brain was only running at five percent, with the rest busy scheming away on how to ask Noaskou to let her feel his fur without her coming off as weird or overstepping.

  "Or it's the thing my old man forced me to investigate, more likely," Noaskou stated coldly. His mood soured, like the tiniest indication of him doing anything for the guy was a crime, but it was simply pettiness for getting his off-day snatched away from him. Such a mindset had Lizu's approval, undoubtedly so.

  Puffing up her hoodie flattened chest, Lizu wore a truly conspicuous, ear-to-ear smile as she found herself in the perfect position to tease Enetha again: "Well, it certainly isn't anyone else's doing, there isn't a single yellow or red dot anywh-"

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Having her teasing comment cut off in the most satisfying way for her, by in the way of her bumping face-first into Inkaro's back, Lizu took a quick sniff of the air, noticing a much fresher quality was just up ahead. She knew it had to be the dungeon's third boss room. Readily grinning as she imagined how Inkaro would react to a boss this time, Lizu wiggled her fingers in anticipation that simply couldn't be contained, and even considered tickling Inkaro on the sides to pacify her wild grippers.

  "Oooo, is it something good?" Lizu inquired as she poked her head around Inkaro, only for her smug grin to morph into a moppy frown. That mood killer also killed any chances of her tickling Inkaro in the dungeon, so it wasn't all bad in the dragolyte's opinion.

  Entering the large boss room, adorned with towering pillars of crack moonstone haphazardly scattered about, the group took in the sights, the main sight being the colossal golem constructed from moonstone and bearing a silhouette that resembled a top-heavy bodybuilder with a lantern-shaped head whose flame had long dimmed out.

  It would've been an impressive spectacle on scale alone, had it not been for one itsy-bitsy detail.

  "Isn't this boss identical to the one from before... wait, did we somehow walk down the same set of dungeon floors without noticing?!" Lizu blurted out in a type of shock that perfectly blended her anger and respect for whatever had managed to pull the wool over her eyes.

  With that comment from Lizu lingering in the open air of the boss room, it got the gears in Noaskou's head turning, having finally put the pieces together that he'd simply overlooked in favour of keeping watch for threats: "Now that you mention it, the path we took was oddly familiar."

  Inkaro concurred with the others on a principle only. With his A.I.N.O map in hand, he could see that the floors they had just retreaded were indeed identical to the ones they'd treaded earlier. However, it wasn't because they were one and the same; no, given the appearance of two identical sets of dungeon floors being placed next to each other and not on top of each other, Inkaro could only conclude that some sort of outside force had modified the dungeon, which meant stigmai antics were afoot. He couldn't help but get a little giddy.

  "All in favour of agreeing we've encountered the anomaly?" Inkaro inquired as he turned back to the others, only to see a puzzling sight

  Even with his repertoire of knowledge, Inkaro could only draw a single digit's worth of explanations for how the environment changed without him noticing. Although puzzled, the guy couldn't keep himself from subtly exhaling in amusement. Raising an eyebrow at him, Lizu found her fiancé's reaction to facing her direction odd, before turning her own head to see what had captured Inkaro's attention, only for her to be equally confused by the flush wall where the hallway had previously been.

  Having unwrapped herself from Lizu's tail, Enetha tentatively raised a hand to the wall, only for it to go right through the wall like its collision had been momentarily disabled for the sole purpose of catching the little princess off guard. She mentally hummed as she pulled her hand back, to nothing out of the ordinary had happened to it.

  [{How nice of you to break the illusion, Little Tiara~]}

  Enetha almost jumped out of her skin at hearing the newfound voice popping, if it hadn't been overtaken by a deep-seated rage from being referred to by such a personally-decided demeaning nickname. abruptly halted as a thought occurred to her. She'd only heard that nickname from that creature in Lizu's dreamscape. So maybe Lizu was messing with her? But that didn't make any lick of sense to the little princess; after all, none of them were presently asleep... right?

  [{So our second encounter has already commenced, Tiny Tiara, Bready. It truly is a joy, and what a treat it is to see two other members of your class. Oh, how amusing it would've been for those two bearing the stigma of my harbingers, but for shame, this wasn't like your mansion adventure where all twelve of you lot were present]}

  Pin-pointing the origin of the voice, Noaskou snapped his gaze upwards, glaring upon the space right above the colossal golem's craned lantern head. Confined to the section of space alone, a swirling mass of shadows and purple sparkle-like energy. Taking in the appearance of the non-shadowy parts of the talking energy, Lizu shuddered upon recognising the purple parts as a type of memoria: nightmare memoria. Despite how much she wanted to deny it, the dragolyte knew the presence of such a type of memoria could only mean the voice, that she somewhat recognised as being familiar, in all its teasing splendour, belonged to none other than the Stigmai of Nightmares.

  [{And to answer your question, Tiny Tiara. When memoria isn't able to dissipate fast enough within mana-dense locations to inhibit my physical manifestation]}

  Lizu flinched at Nightmare's statement, which basically implied their appearance was her fault, that the Stigmai of Nightmare being here at all was also her fault. Her second reasoning for blame came solely from the fact that if she had just stayed in bed, then Nightmare wouldn't be the group now. But none of that was true, in the sense that Nightmare was in the dungeon because Lizu was there, the stigmai was there either way, he just appeared sooner because she was there. So in truth, she was only half at fault, or so she reasoned after all those mental gymnastics.

  She wasn't sure if she should be mad at the insinuation from the stigmai, or feel guiltily excited that this was the first time she was physically meeting the father of her favourite person from history.

  And yet again, Lizu found herself looking to Inkaro, wondering how he might react to a stigmai of legends being presented before him. Inkaro was scowling. Which in itself wasn't an unseen expression for the guy, but Lizu could tell this time was different. If she had to describe it in simple terms, Inkaro was expressing genuine animosity, the kind of hatred that would compel someone to seek revenge. Now that, that was something she'd never seen from Inkaro in all her years knowing him.