There is no Epic Loot here, Only Puns.

The Free Heal Hall was in full swing as the victorious party dug into the food. Delta hovered over them all as Alpha tried to keep to himself, but had trouble since Kemy and Deo stuck to him like glitter.

Delta smiled as she watched the room serve its first guests since Quiss and Ruli. This was it’s first true service in the name of adventurers.

Pork sausages, bacon rashers, gleaming piles of what looked like mashed potatoes, an impressive collection of fruits and decorative veggies from the previous two floors, a fountain of various drinks from Fera’s bar gurgling in choir against one wall, desserts made from chocolate and gelatin sitting tempting to the eye, and other foods appeared as if by magic.

However... the jelly was made from the slime she had defeated, their goops being refined with so much sugar that it was both safe and edible, the mashed potatoes were actually mashed mushrooms that looked creamy enough...and the veggies were mostly mushrooms of different types to give variety.

Everything but the Gutrot, of course.

The Starlight mushrooms, for example, if fried, gave off the feeling of chewing on something fluffy like pancakes!

The best thing was that Delta didn’t need to research this. Fera and Jeb the troll chef had taken the initiative to cook and experiment on their own. Delta hadn’t really had time to upgrade anything since the invasion of the dead... the lab... Deo’s team, and other things like Alpha dropping in.

It felt like ages since she had done anything ‘dungeon-like’.

She smiled as the kids all joked and celebrated. Poppy was teasing Tom the talking tome by placing very greasy items close to him. The tome was screeching about grease stains and it made Poppy grin... but there was no heat between them.

Delta had a very strong feeling about Tom the Tome... he was old and even if he was by himself, she didn’t think she could just absorb him. He has too much of a core... a sense of being. Not that Delta needed more books... her library contained books on everything from how to rear bull-chickens to ripping time in a location to increase the rate in which it passed.

The issue with the time thing was that it required things like a thousand screaming souls, those of young and old, a mage of chronomancy, three antique clocks, and a well-used diary planner with exactly 45 pages. Delta knew the Silence Cultists were a little... crazy, but this was just one more example of exactly how insane.

Besides, with Dungeon Points... Delta could bend reality around her of her own volition. How many points it would take to break time could number between 5 and 5 million. Delta supposed it depended on how badly she broke the rules to suit her needs.

Amenstar was both eating ribs with his bare hands and cleaning the bones afterwards, claiming them with a burst of his mana. The bones were still ‘Delta’ in source, but now they were weirdly detached. Like a fruit cut from a tree.

Vas was standing in line with the fountains, seemingly quite happy to hang out with the decor, spiritually communicating with them through prolonged posing. The golem still gave Delta a weird feeling of... something that set her teeth on edge, but he was polite enough.

Alpha, the dear strange boy that Delta was so... he touched her heart which beat with a warmth that she held only for her dungeon family, Nu, and Sis before. Ruli, Deo, and Kemy were dear to her as well, but Alpha...

There was a bond that was tangible there. Not romantic, far from it, but... a deep sense to covet Alpha was rising in her like Delta was some sort of M-

A sister.

The idea made her pause. How funny, the denial made her feel funny.

Delta wondered wh-

---

“I am not your mother, stop making me act like it,”she warned. The sounds of traffic rushing by resounded as silence fell around them.

“You sure act like it. Maybe you can’t help it? Sucks to be old...”the voice replied sarcastically. She felt her cheeks flush... she was not old! It took a moment for her to inhale once deeply, calming herself before she could reply sarcastically.

“Hey, hey... don’t make her turn the car around. Momma bear can get grumpy,”a void in the image rebuked. Were they missing or blocked?...

“We should have taken the bus with the others.”someone added.

“We would have if we could all stop arguing long enough to get anything done. It’s all we do. Argue.”Delta’s voice said into the space before she reached for the radio.

“Well the others already know we’ll be late, so who wants to take a detour past that little fastfood place and get some milkshakes?”she asked, voice bright. There was a silence then an outburst of noise.

“Hell yea-”

“Don’t swear!”

“What are we? Five? I want a cheeseburger as well.”

“I want vanilla, not strawberry, Miss D-

---

“Delta?” Alpha said quietly and Delta floated back with a startled expression. The others were all looking where Alpha was... missing Delta’s location easily by feet.

“Sorry, just-” she cut herself off and Alpha nodded slowly.

“They’re coming faster and faster,” he said, tone knowing. The certainty in his voice made Delta swallow once aloud. Her memory was returning and that was fantastic! She could remember who she was and what happened... find a way back maybe and...

Leave... this all behind.

A sudden tightness in her stomach made her push that kettle of fish to the side for the moment. First, she would deal with the here and now. One day at a time and as a Dungeon Core, she had to cut that down even further and go one hour at a time.

It was hard to measure things in days when you didn’t sleep.

“Alpha, when everyone is done eating here. I want you to do me a favour before they leave. I’ll also need you to translate for me,” she said softly, brushing what she thought was fluff off his shoulders, her hand doing nothing as it phased through him.

Alpha didn’t even hesitate.

“Whatever you need, Miss,” he promised and looked startled at his own slip of the tongue.

The word made her feel old.

“Delta,” she mumbled but smiled when she thought about what was to come. She clapped her hands once in excitement.

---

Deo loved Delta.

He loved the way she made every room special. How she made every monster so amazing and funny... but Deo supposed the thing he loved most of all was the feeling that seemed to fill the very air.

A silent promise of affection and a promise of company. A friend with every step he took and someone cheering him on even if he couldn’t see her. Delta, he had watched so many people say the name he was almost sure he was pronouncing each sound correctly.

‘De’ as in ‘definitely awesome’.

Longish ‘L’ as in like ‘laugh’!

‘Ta’ on ‘tada’!

So, Delta was like a laugh that was so sudden that it comes in with a tada and made you feel definitely awesome.

That was how Deo remembered her name.

The massive garden was beautiful to Deo with many different doors, but the others looked unsettled. Ahead, Deo saw Grim was sitting down. He had wondered why his friend hadn’t been at the feast.

Grim had been very quiet since he, Kemy, and Alpha had returned from the Core room. He raised a hand then dropped it by way of greeting.

He turned to see that Amenstar was commenting on how quiet the room was. No insects or birdsongs.

It was as silent as a grave, he told Poppy.

Deo didn’t think Delta would have a weird place like that so he presumed it was more like those sacred places in his adventure books. The places where you wanted to be quiet... where the noise wasn’t needed.

Usually, a plot-relevant character lived in those places. Deo would keep his eyes open for an elven maiden or a Dwarven king or an Elvish King and a Dwarven Maiden!

Before they got too far in, something crashed down before them. Alpha didn’t jump, having been warned it seemed, but the rest did. The thing that stood was massive, a set of folded over wings that a head with long dark hair barely peaked over.

The wings looked grey and covered from head to toe before they slowly unfolded themselves to reveal a man... sort of. He had powerful muscles like Deo’s dad, but they were compact, flexing without much movement. His arms were covered in wrappings that lead to a torso piece of thin leather straps. A kilt of some material fell to his knees and for a second, Deo thought he had a big grey belt on before it uncurled to show a massive tail.

The monster’s face was angled like someone with nobility and cheekbones that were usually only found in the most royal of paintings. Deo had seen faces like that in some old paintings in the many books Amenstar brought to class.

Angelic, but indifferent.

His mouth, while having an impressive set of fangs when he spoke, Deo could understand what he said when spoke.

“I am Vanguard. Your...” he slowed and picked his words carefully as if seeing them all as interlopers, “presence has been allowed here as guest status. Delta insists that you keep to the garden. Please don’t show disrespect by ignoring her request,” he said finally. Deo couldn’t know this for sure, but he bet the creature’s tone was deep and cold.

Deo knew he must be worried about Delta. People must make Dungeon Monsters nervous.

Alpha stepped forward as well as they both listened to something. Deo looked back to see Grim frowning.

“Gargoyle,” he told Deo absent-mindedly with a nod to Vanguard, the handsome man with wings.

“There’s never just one,” Grim added. Deo felt excitement again at the thought of more amazing things to see but was distracted when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Alpha, trying to smile but coming off as nervous.

He spoke and Grim, looking like he wasn’t aware of it, began to speak at the same time, causing Deo to look back and forth like some sort of ball game was going on.

“Deo, Delta/I wants/want to offer you a chance to heal the damage inside you. Only if you agree, She/I doesn’t/don’t want to cause you any discomfort,” they said in a confusing mix before Grim noticed his own mouth was moving without his say so.

He covered it with both hands and retreated to the safety of a door arch. Deo shot him a worried glance but didn’t resist when Alpha led him to a giant statue of a window with words on it. The thing looked covered in moss and old.

“There is a secret here that Delta doesn’t want to be shared, but she thinks you really deserve this and from the short time I’ve known you,” Alpha said and Deo’s smile widened, “I haven’t found any issues with you as a person,” he finished. Deo would take the compliment.

Alpha really needed to learn smaller ways of saying ‘friend’.

“Sure, I don’t mind. If Delta wants to try something and she thinks it’s good then I don’t mind,” Deo said and Alpha winced before he looked at something.

“My sonic resistance just went up...” he muttered causing Deo to flush a little. Indoor voice! He forgot!

Even if it looked like he was outside!

“Sorry,” he aimed for ‘quiet as a mouse’. Alpha didn’t wince so he guessed he was close!

Alpha touched the statue.

“Normally, the code to open this secret can only be learned by taking on the four roaming Guardgoyles. Their defeat would each give you one part of the needed code which Delta promises changes every time it’s used. However, they can also be studied under or aided in some task, winning the words that way. For this... they will willingly surrender the word,” he announced and the room shook.

Not an earthquake, but the sounds of beings able to project their voices into the very stone and ground around them.

Deo could feel the words.

‘I’

‘Love’

‘Deo’

Deo felt Vanguard put a hand on Deo’s shoulder, giving the final word. It made his eyes fill as the statue before them glowed.

“Too,” Vanguard said, less cold as his claw let go of Deo’s shoulder.

The statue broke apart, sliding away from the platform, suspended in the air by sheer magic as a powerful orange light lit up the garden like a rising sun. The smell of home... Deo’s favourite soup... his Mom’s hair... the sight of his Dad laughing.

The light brought all this to the surface as something rose up from the ground, the centrepiece of the floating stone walls and statue pieces.

A cheerful well with a drinking cup attached by a chain.

Deo stepped forward, the mana so thick, but it didn’t enter him like the rest of the Dungeon. It was waiting for him... to come to it.

To Delta.

Alpha dipped the wooden cup into the well, the surface like glass until the cup touched it, rippling with a sweet laugh. Alpha turned and held it out, looking a little envious before he smiled.

“All at once,” he said and stepped back as Deo held the mug, the wood already warm as if the liquid inside was kept hot for people. He sniffed it and he smelled...

Old books, a cat... the smell of a warm classroom. A light perfume of oranges. The fruit’s citrus scent tickling but not overpowering. It wasn’t a drink so much a glimpse into someone’s life that he had been allowed to see.

Deo closed his eyes.

“Thank you. Always be grateful for free food and drink, a warm bed, and good friends,” Deo said, a smile on his face as he breathed in the scent again.

“I haven’t slept here yet, but-” he said and downed the drink before he spoke again.

“-you have the best drinks and you’re a good friend!” he announced as loudly as he could and he didn’t remember dropping the mug... or falling to the ground...

He didn’t remember Grim’s face appearing looking worried before Poppy appeared, calling his name.

What Deo remembered was the universe... his world... his village... his dungeon... his body... his soul... his very tiny pieces all buzzing together like an instrument being strummed for the first time since he had been born.

Deo closed his eyes and he was moving, yet staying perfectly still.

Then discomfort as something hated the sensations. In his heart, pulsing through his body, something spiky that he had never noticed before boiled and expanded as if to purge Deo of Delta’s gift.

Deo could only exist as they clashed.

Exist and trust Delta.

He had to... because when Deo looked at the spike lancing through his heart... he felt afraid.

Deo was so afraid of that darkness.

---

Delta had to focus, the feeling of her mana not only filling Deo, but overflowing would normally kill someone who wasn’t used to such Mana, but as it flowed, it soaked in, removing spots of black as it went.

Delta was both in the core, floating as an avatar in the garden, and now... inside the soul of Deo. Under the gleaming castles of his courage, his flowing rivers of love... under the very sun that was his nature... a poison grew fat off his efforts, gorging itself on his experiences, robbing each flower that grew in his soul of sustenance.

Her chest ignited and her own core pulsed dangerously in the dungeon. A feeling like she had never quite experienced before rose up in her like a wave of emotions. Delta despised it. Delta absolutely despised the sight of it more than the Spider Queen, more than the Princess of Bone... more than her despair at being a core.

Delta despised this thing living in Deo, nibbling where his wonderful soul had been eroded at the edges, melted by something cruel. She rushed at it and it rose like a behemoth, cracking the ground, intending to destroy as much as it could simply to show that it was able to.

It was like a giant black worm with boney-thorns erupting out of its slime-soaked flesh at every angle. It was like its mouth was inside out and it rolled, causing Deo’s soul to bleed.

“Get out of him,” she warned, eyes blazing. The thing merely dug deeper, fortifying itself and drinking up her anger as if it were entertainment. Delta’s skin began to glow orange, her aura eclipsing her skin.

She kept it close, not wanting to scour Deo’s soul in thoughtless anger. The worm moved first, firing its bone-thorns at her with tendrils still attached. It was attempting to hook her, bleed her, wound her... make her suffer.

Delta’s skin blazed and the first dozen thorns simply turned to ash.

Her hair was dancing wildly now, her form a burning sun that was slowly gaining shape. Delta would need to be more precise in her means of attack so she coiled inwards and called out to the power that flowed through her.

She was answered and she was swallowed by a pillar of orange light, forming rapidly inside Deo’s soul. The world around them existing for them only and no others.

Those watching would see mana clashing with infection... nothing more. Delta refused to see this battle as so mundane... she refused to reduce Deo’s curse to such... levels.

She looked down at the now hesitating worm.

“Well... well... the things you invite me to,” Wyin said, her massive form a true world tree in size. Her thousands upon thousands of branches all barbed as Delta sat at the top, like a burning phoenix.

“Wyin? You know how I said killing...destroying things until they screamed for an end, pathetically grovelling for a death that’s too good for them is barbaric and below us?” Delta asked, voice thin like razor wire. Wyin’s face formed on a branch nearby, looking unsure.

“I remember words of a sort,” she admitted. Delta locked eyes with the countless beady red eyes of the worm spore.

“For that... thing?” she said and the world around them went quiet as Delta spoke her next words.

“That conversation never happened,” Delta said, hands clenched.

Wyin’s face was serene, angelic, and in love when she heard this.

“Beautiful,” she said, sounding breathless then her face vanished and the worm screamed as roots impaled it from below, lifting into the sky. Wyin’s voice now booming, the true giant that she was.

“I don’t know you or what you did to Delta,” Wyin began as all her green leaves turned a dark scarlet red in the orange light. The worm tried to use some magic or skill to melt into slime, but Wyin’s roots seemed to cause vines and parasitic seeds to grow rapidly, pinning it together.

“I only know I won’t ever mess up as badly as you,” Wyin said simply then the world was filled with a storm of petals, orange, and thorns.

The edges of this world flowed into the ground, freed from the creature. They poured into the world and the edges began to smooth over... extending... flowing like rivers over arid lands. Trees grew, the sky extended, and Delta saw pieces connecting together.

Mountains where winds blew majestically, forests where animals and insects sang, rivers that sang with mirth, storms that howled with fury... all of it coming back to this world and free.

Free.

Deo was-

---

“-free!”

Deo frowned as he wrinkled his nose at the weird sensations. A sort of vibrations that was too intense.

“Grim, you can’t get free loot because Deo willingly drank a weird orange fountain and passed out,” came a different mix of sensations and oddities. Vibrations hitting the side of his face with clear different pitches and warbles.

He touched the side of his head in confusion, only for his hand to hit something strange. A spongy thing.

He sat up so abruptly that Poppy sat back with her mouth making a-

“Eh! Deo, you surprised me,” her mouth moved and those sensations bounced with them. Deo, confused, stumbled to the garden pond where he looked into the reflection. He looked tired... and weirdly, a little ill.

His fiery red hair was brushed aside and Deo stared at the two glowing veins running through his ears, little orange nodes running over the back of his ears. He touched them slowly and they jiggled before settling back into place.

“You’ll need to turn them off soon, your mana is quite low. Your own soul won’t be perfectly aligned with your sense of hearing for a long time, but Delta promises her blessing and own mana will bridge the gap until they’re done healing,” a soft voice said and Deo looked up at Alpha.

“Alpha!” he started, thinking he was being too loud until his voice just... evened out.

“Yes... and I see Delta snuck in noise-cancelling benefits to your new gift,” he announced, sounding a little pained. Deo fell to his knees before letting out a massive yell. The sound was amazing.

He yelled and yelled until he began to cry.

Who knew crying was so noisy?

Deo did...

Deo knew. Deo knew what laboured breathing felt like to others. What his name sounded like in other’s voices. What grass sounded like when rustled... what cloth rustling was... he knew it all.

Deo... finally knew what life sounded like and he wept.

Even as his new gift ran out of mana and the silence returned... Deo’s heartbeat was light as he knew it wasn’t forever now. Just for a little while.

Deo loved Delta.

He would love her until the day he died.

Deo Brawndo would not let anyone harm Delta, his friend. A kind dungeon who would help nobody special like Deo because she could. Deo would protect that.

He wouldn’t let anyone make Delta cry.

No one.

---

Wyin laid in her dungeon room, bowed like a strong wind had knocked her over. Her branches were wild and she had a delirious look on her face.

“I really must do that again,” she announced, unable to stop herself smiling like a loon.

All she knew was that when they went to the third floor... Delta became a goddess.

People. Third floor.

Wyin wouldn’t kill adventurers ever again. She needed the idiots alive to experience that again!