Smugglers and Dungeons!

Icarus was bandaging his hands. It was hard. His knuckles were bloody.

If this was what a single skill point did, what a skill moving up from 3 to 4 did, then he needed to increase his strength!

He opened the system screen once more.

Then he saw it! Another yellow message.

 Icarus sighed and waved his fingers, making it bigger.

"Strength buff will end in: 30 minutes! The strength buff activates after every level up! It can also be used once per day for 30 minutes! Unless set otherwise, it activates automatically when the system resets!"

Icarus looked at the message, then at the timer.

He flipped the system screen the bird.

"Retarded System, retarded rules!" He yelled, but the next second he was rushing down the hall!

If he only had 30 minutes, even with his hands so broken up, then he needed to face what there was to face now!

Before the buff ran out and he ended up hurt and weak. Forced to hide in a dark corner…

The first monster that came his way looked like a mole. Icarus slammed his foot in its head, making it fly back. He didn't wait to see if the monster was still alive.

Something big and furry jumped down from the ceiling! Just as Icarus was about to kick at it as well, vines wrapped around his feet!

"Darn it!" Icarus began to unravel the vines. Well, the one who took out the knife died from the knife! "Let's see how you like it!"

The vines stuck up the monster's throat, up its nose, got in its eyes.

The monster let Icarus go with a roar.

He began to run once more.

The Horselord knew that 30 minutes weren't enough for him to get out of this killing field. He knew it as he jumped over a stone, only to get caught in a spider's web!

"Darn it!" The dungeons of legends didn't sound like this! This sounded like the Dark Realm of the Bloody Souls!

"Icarus? Is that you, Icarus?" He had never been happier to hear Basila's voice in his entire life! He began to trash in the webs. Trying to unravel them.

Something was coming his way! He could feel the vibrations!

"Firestorm!" he heard her sweet chirping, and soon, a bit steaming, he was down.

It didn't occur to him that she had never used the spell around him before.

No, as she marched to the charred giant spider and broke off a leg, beginning to eat it, Icarus knew only one thing:

He was in love!

0000

Basila looked at the two of them. The dungeon core and Icarus, who were walking down the corridors.

The blood elf didn't know what the game's rules were. She didn't know why the dungeon core was playing this game at all.

They had challenged it. It should want them dead and that was that.

"And you can't believe how stupid that system is!" Icarus was whining between bites. The fake Basila had grilled more than one monster for the bottomless pit that should get himself a horse.

Basila, the real one, snorted.

As if that boy could ever ride a horse with how much he ate! It was animal cruelty!

Even if Icarus wasn't fat.

She pouted.

It wasn't fair! She drank water, and then she needed to walk it off! And he was stuffing himself with mana rich meat, and he was still keeping pace with the fake Basila!

"Icarus!" The real Basila yelled his name from time to time. She hoped that he could hear her. That he could see through the lie.

That Icarus could look at her like that. Not just at her body, but at the real her.

When her soul was in its shell.

"Oh? How stupid?" The dungeon core asked, looking about a couple of seconds away from going to sleep.

"It forces me to use my strength buff at reset time! And it doesn't want to tell me how to set it!" Icarus stuffed the last of the leg of something which had been three times his own size into his mouth.

It crunched.

Basila looked at a pebble on the ground. Oh, if only she could throw it at the glutton!

As soon as she thought that, the pebble twitched!

"That's easy," the dungeon core said, a smile on its stolen lips. "Just go to the Settings."

Icarus stopped walking. He was blinking. He was looking into Basila's eyes, which were no longer a window to her soul.

"And how do I do that?" He asked, as he scratched himself behind the head.

"You horselord!" the real Basila meant it as an insult.

At the same time, the dungeon core smiled wider. It almost looked like a wendigo!

 How it managed to make a pretty girl like Basila look like a cursed cannibal was beyond the princess, but Icarus was still looking lovesick at her shell!

"You liar!" She yelled, as the pebble began to shake some more. "You said we were married!"

The pebble rose in the air.

Basila didn't care about the consequences of her action.

She aimed.

The pebble hit Icarus on the head, knocking him out.

"That's what you get for cheating!" Basila roared, as she looked at a different pebble.

Now, for the darn thief!

"You bothersome little thing!" The dungeon core chuckled, as Basila found her ghost form in chains. "I thought that seeing him under the effects of a love potion was going to break your spirit, but, no…"

Basila snarled.

"Well, then, you brain-dead Lich!" there was no mistaking the mana now! She knew what she was facing against! "You shouldn't have made it so obvious!"

The stolen eyes rolled.

The pebble struck true.

Basila blinked as her body fell on the ground. She dived! Hoping to get back inside.

But she just fell through her own flesh and down.

Through darkness and cold. Through stone and lava.

Until she saw it:

The floor was lava, the columns were made from black bones, and tar was dripping from them so, as if it were blood.

And there, in the center, was a crystal!

Basila ran towards it.

But try as she might, she could not grasp it. Her fingers passed through it time and time again.

She continued to try. Refusing to give up.

Even as the realization that she might be dead began to creep on her…