Dungeon Raider System

After crossing the bridge, Luna asked Chiara to bring it dow as it was too dangerous to leave the way open for cryptids to follow them. Besides, the island they were now in was relatively small and both Uriel and Jon Hunter agreed on the fact that it was completely free of cryptids and she trusted both of their judgements, in spites of doubting both their characters.

Through her eyes, they were both womanizers and her sister Cassandra had warned her many times about that kind of man. Although, Uriel was also her favorite person in the world despite his flaws.

"This is... quite interesting," Lamar adjusted his glasses with trembling hands trying to hide his excitement.

"What is it?" Miss Dragonfang drew closer to the man who couldn't get a hold of himself until after greedily drinking from his flask.

"I don't know any of these plants. Miss Dolminico, you may proceed with the identification process." He said, not realizing that something was wrong with the young girl.

"I don't have any flux energy left." She said before sitting on the ground. Creating and breaking a bridge of that size left her completely spent and she was barely awake.

"We should, uhm... collect samples." Luna spoke without any of her disappointment leaking through her monotone.

"Make sure to collect the seeds, with them I'll be able to grow them back on the islands." Chiara muttered before falling asleep.

Luna and Lamar didn't show any concern for the girl, leaving Miss Dragonfang to wonder if they were even human. Of course she knew about Luna's lycanthropy, but up to that point she thought it was more similar to her trait than Luna belonging to another species.

Due to her companions being so careless, Miss Dragonfang was forced to set the camp, something she wasn't used to since she was accustomed to being in charge. That kind of duty was rarely assigned to ascended hunters and since Dragonfang was so used to being with Phlox, she never cared to learn how to do it.

After several failed attempts to ensamble the tent, Miss Dragonfang gave up simply placed a rolled sleepingbag beneath Chiara's head.

In the meantime, Lamar and Luna silently collected samples from different plant specimens, making sure to also grab the seeds as Chiara suggested. Since both of them were experts in the biology field, handling the samples and labeling them required no communication, though Luna sometimes broke the silence.

"Uhm... taxonomy?"

"Pteridophyte." Lamar replied after taking a short glance at the fern Luna was holding.

"Uhm, where are the seeds?" Luna insisted, looking up and down the small plant.

"They don't have any, they reproduce through spores."

"Seeds... where?" She asked once more.

"Just bag the damned thing!" Lamar angrily shouted, his voice and demeanor completely different from the kind and serious professor he had always been.

"You should drink more juice." Was all Luna replied and Lamar seemingly agreed as he took another sip from his flask, then proceeded to act as though nothing happened.

"It seems this place acts as some sort of repository for ancient plants that are extinct in the outside world."

"Uhm... what?" Luna asked with honest curiosity as botany was never of any interest to her and she barely knew how to handle the samples due to her knowledge in biology.

"Take the tree in the back, the one that stands out from the others... can you see it? It's a Lepidodendron, an extinct tree of course. We only know about it because of fossil remains from the devonic era."

"Lepidodendron, huh... I've heard about them. It's been reported that people who go out on hikes sometimes see it in the distance and it's advised to not ever walk towards them as they're a sign of a backroom opening."

"What's a backroom?" Asked Miss Dragonfang with a pensive finger on her lips. As usual, instead of focusing on her task she hovered around watching the professionals work.

"Throughout the years, a lot of people have claimed they've been to impossible places. There are many different stories, some people claim they're parallel dimensions while others believe they're mystical places."

"How can they not know?" Miss Dragonfang asked, more out of boredome than curiosity.

"It's because they're so different from each other, it's impossible to know what their origin is. Some are infinite office buildings, others are prehistoric worlds and some even are liminal experiences people can't describe."

"Oh! Like dungeons!" Miss Dragonfang nodded as she seemed to grasp what Luna was saying, only the tiny huntress had never considered that possibility.

"Uhm... Yes. The laws of physics don't apply in the same way, that's why," Luna spoke trying to hide her embarrassment of not being the one who figured it out, but then fell silent as she made a realization. "We need to investigate the lepi... the weird tree."

"Agreed." Lamar stood up and patted his business attire, but Miss Dragonfang blocked the way.

"Aren't you forgetting something?" She pointed at the passed out student.

"Aren't you?" Luna pointed at the mess that couldn't even be called a camp as two of the tents Dragonfang set up were already falling apart.

"But it might be dangerous to go alone... why don't you?"

"There's no cryptids in here, I'm sure. Besides, this place is relatively small, getting lost is... unlikely." Luna said before turning to leave with Professor Lamar.

Following the tall tree that stood out from the others, Luna and Lamar followed more or less the same path Luna did when she first explored the island and soon they stumbled upon the same pond they did before, where the book of the dead was found by Uriel.

"Wow..." Lamar let out a gasp when he saw the statue of the impossibly beautiful woman that seemingly floated on the pond.

"I know, she's... pretty." Luna replied, relieved that Lamar didn't fall under whatever enthrallment affected Uriel when he saw the statue.

"It's not that. I think I've seen this person before, or at least someone very similar."

"Uhm... One of my friends recognized her too." Luna muttered.

Although they were both scientists, they both deemed it as one of the very unlikely but slimly probable coincidences and focused instead on the plants that surrounded the pond. For some odd reason, they weren't overgrown despite the healthy environment produced by the constant supply of water and the eternal daylight that glowed over them.

After finishing bagging the samples, they continued on their way towards the tree, though no matter how much they walked it didn't seem to get any closer. Lamar took notice of this, but Luna didn't seem worried at all. It was only after a two hour walk that Lamar finally decided to speak.

"I know for a fact that we haven't been walking in circles, this island is deceivingly large."

"Then it's confirmed, backrooms and dungeons are, if not the same, very similar."

"Is that how you explain the laws of physics being strange in this place?" Lamar asked.

"No, the laws of physics apply just fine. If you drop a stone, it will fall 100% of the times and yet, no matter how much we walk, we're never going to reach that tree. That's because it doesn't exist, it's just a time mirage. We can see it, but we can't reach it. It follows the laws of physics, just not the ones we're used to."

"Then it seems we've reached the end of our current investigation and we should head back."

"Yes." Luna nodded in agreement and turned back, only instead of having to walk back she appeared back on the pond. A faint smiled formed on her face as the paranormal event she just experienced was not only welcomed, but expected. What she didn't expect, though, was how long it took Lamar to appear back.

Without a watch, she didn't have any way to tell the exact time that transpired, but she was certain it was over half an hour.

"What is the meaning of this!?" Lamar adjusted not only his glasses, but also his tie.

"It seems time flows at a different rate here than... oh-oh." Her monotone wouldn't serve as a warning to anyone, but Lamar knew better than to disregard her seemingly emotionless exclamation.

"How bad is it? How long did you wait."

"There's no way to tell how much time passed while we were in the time anomaly, it could be a day or it could be millennia." Luna's voice fell to a level Lamar could barely hear and she darted back to the camp. Much to her relief, Miss Dragonfang and Chiara were cooking over the campfire and other than well rested, they didn't seem any different to the last time she saw them.

However, things changed when Miss Dragonfang turned to see Luna with a worried expression and screamed to the top of her lungs.

"Who are you!?"

Luna's eyes started to water uncontrollably and she could feel the familiar surge in emotions that would eventually lead her to shift into her werewolf form, but all that stopped when Chiara nudged on Miss Dragonfang's side.

"Stop it! You're scaring her for real!"

"My bad," Miss Dragonfang apologized shallowly in between laughter. "But it's also your fault for leaving us stranded here for over a week."

"A... week."