The guild receptionist frowned at our group, looking most displeased. "You'd better not be intending to mistreat him," she warned.

  "Pardon?" asked Daniel, looking genuinely confused.

  I sighed, knowing exactly what the honest-but-misguided receptionist was thinking. "You're all C-rank, right? And childhood friends, to boot, so your party composition may very well not have changed since you formed it. And now you suddenly turn up asking about bonus rooms that are way above the local dungeon's base difficulty, with a kid in tow, asking to add him to your party. She probably thinks you intend to use me as a sacrifice in the event you need to retreat, or something equally nefarious."

  The receptionist transferred her suspicious gaze to me, while Daniel looked somewhat incredulous. "I'm fairly sure you're faster than any of us," he pointed out. "Trying to leave you behind wouldn't work very well."

  I carefully refrained from clarifying that in such a situation, he'd break one of my legs as he passed. I'd feel bad about spoiling his pleasant naivety.

  "She doesn't know that," said Felicity. "She just sees his guild tag, which says D-rank."

  She'd also see the way that I'd only ever completed six jobs, but I had no intention of mentioning that bit out loud, either.

  "If it assuages your concerns, we discovered the existence of the conqueror Marks when Robin here earned one," said Ryan. "Solo."

  The suspicion of the receptionist took on a more incredulous tint.

  "As if she's going to believe that," sighed Lee.

  "He simply needs to unclip his breastplate to display the evidence," shrugged Ryan.

  "It's all above board, I promise," I said. "I have a Mark that makes me stronger than my level would imply."

  "If you insist. Fine, Daniel and Robin, please touch the orb."

  Daniel added his hand atop my own.

  "Well, that's some inventive naming, right there," I commented.

  "Pardon?" asked Daniel.

  "Your party name!"

  "What party name? We don't have one. Not famous enough to bother with something like that, nor do we want to be."

  "By default, the System just uses the name of the leader," supplied the receptionist.

  "Fair enough."

  It seemed a wasted opportunity to me. Who would set up a party and not give it a cool name? At least it explained why they'd never introduced themselves by their party name. 'Golden Avengers' might be just a touch on the ostentatious side, while 'Brown Wolf' was too far in the other direction, being a touch too pedestrian, but there should be some happy middle ground somewhere.

  "So, now that that's taken care of, how can we find out about any bonus rooms?" asked Daniel.

  "It's true that each dungeon seems to have an additional task that, if cleared, grants a higher tier of reward," answered the receptionist.

  "Seems to?" I asked, interrupting.

  "It's not always obvious what it is and, given the difficulties of conducting extensive research inside a high-rank dungeon, there are several dungeons for which such a task has never been discovered. One is known for every E and D-rank dungeon, though, so it seems likely that all dungeons have one."

  So I had missed something in the Fluffy Meadow, the Fungal Garden and the Slime Pit. The Fluffy Meadow I could imagine being as simple as continuing to kill monsters after the first boss. There was even a possibility that John's two-hundred-and-fifty figure hadn't been pulled out of his arse, but was the quantity required for a second boss. I couldn't imagine what it would be in the Fungal Garden, though. Maybe wiping out the monsters of every clearing?

  The Slime Pit could easily have secret doors and passages locked behind hidden switches and levers. With all the sconces on the walls, if pulling one of them caused a door to open, finding it without prior knowledge of its location could take days.

  "What's the secret task for the Meandering Warren, then?" asked Daniel.

  "Beat the dungeon without a light source," answered the receptionist. "And that includes the use of fire magic, or other Skills for which light production is a by-product."

  "Uh... but it has no lighting of its own. We'd be stuck in pitch darkness," I said, remembering what I'd read about this dungeon.

  "Yes, that's the entire point," agreed the receptionist.

  "How the heck are we supposed to do that?" asked Daniel.

  "There are Skills that let you see in the dark, or 'see' things that aren't usually visible, like vitality. Then there are Skills that sense danger or monsters. You also have the option of fighting blind without Skills, relying on other senses. There are several options, but remember, these extra tasks aren't supposed to be easy."

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  "I don't suppose you have any useful perception Skills?" Daniel asked me.

  "Nope."

  The biggest thing we'd learnt here was that these bonus tasks weren't always of the fight-a-harder-battle variety—a false assumption we'd made based on a single example. Here, we had to win exactly the same fight, but with a rather harsh handicap. In that case, the Fungal Garden could have been something like waltzing in without any protection from the spores.

  This dungeon was filled with centipedes, and the thought of fighting them in the dark really wasn't appealing. But, even if it wasn't appealing, was it possible?

  I closed my eyes and listened.

  Stats enhanced everything, and Mum had proven her hearing was far better than mine back on my unlock day. My Stats probably still didn't reach hers, but they nevertheless greatly exceeded what I'd had back then. When was the last time I'd stopped to simply listen? To see what I could hear around me, instead of relying on my sight.

  I could hear all five of my new party members breathing. I could even tell a few of them apart—Stacy had her odd metallic echo, for example. Daniel was gnashing his teeth in frustration, presumably unable to see any way we could continue. Ryan was impatiently tapping his staff on the floor.

  I heard Lee swallow.

  Was it enough to fight? It wasn't as if I'd seen a centipede monster before, so I had no idea how loud they'd be. If every foot clicked, rather than give them away, the quantity of overlapping sounds may well leave me unable to pick out a single one.

  "We should complete this dungeon normally and move on," opined Felicity. "Or at the least, complete it normally once and then rerun it in the dark, so we have first-hand experience. Not only do we have no way of fighting blind, but I won't be able to use [Heal]."

  "That's not quite true," I said, pondering.

  "It glows quite brightly. If we aren't allowed Skills that produce light as a side-effect, [Heal] is definitely banned."

  "That's not what I meant. In one important aspect, this challenge differs greatly from the Goblin Den: we can give up."

  "Oh, I see what you mean," nodded Daniel. "If we were fighting that huge group of goblins and suddenly had second thoughts, there wasn't anything we could do. In this dungeon, if we change our minds, we just light a torch. Nothing stops Felicity using [Heal] in the case of an emergency. It'll cost us the better Mark, but nothing more. It won't even stop us clearing the dungeon."

  Lee, ever the pessimist, looked dubious. Not that his concerns were unfounded.

  "Does this guild have anywhere we can spar?" I asked. "We could make a much better informed decision if we tried fighting blind first."

  Running it normally once and then making the decision was a very sensible suggestion, but we didn't have the time to run the dungeon twice today. We wanted to clear every dungeon in the canton as quickly as possible, not just for efficiency of experience gain, but because the incentives offered to join the adventurers' guild and for delving dungeons meant that the lower rank dungeons would quickly grow busier.

  "There's not really much call for sparring, given that it doesn't give experience, but yes, we have a small area for testing out new Skills. Through that door, then second door on your left."

  We followed the instructions and came out in a room with some padding installed on the floor and walls—thick leather packed with something soft—and some simple wooden weapons hanging from hooks on the walls. There was only a single dagger, so I took it.

  "Anyone want to try?" I asked.

  "I can't fight with my eyes open, let alone closed," pointed out Felicity.

  "Don't look at me," said Ryan. "My spells don't come in wooden training versions, and I'd rather not accidentally demolish the guildhall."

  Daniel and Lee looked at each other. "You're the leader. You should go first," said Lee.

  "Your short sword is more suited to this training. You should go first, to give the rest of us an idea of what to do," countered Daniel.

  "Why is my short sword more suited? If you had a simple spear, then maybe, but you don't. You have a pole-axe. You can sweep with it, and the greater range..."

  "Ready?" I asked Stacy, who'd taken up position opposite me while the boys were debating.

  She nodded.

  I closed my eyes, listening to her breath. The clanking of her armour as she moved. I could form a picture of where she was standing, so I charged it, dagger in hand.

  She struck out with a palm, catching me in the centre of my breastplate and sending me flying backward into the padded wall, which I struck with a thump.

  "I was wondering why the walls were padded," I muttered as I climbed back to my feet.

  "Hey, did you just have your eyes open or closed?" asked Lee.

  Stacy didn't answer, simply retaking her position in the centre of the room.

  "One easy way to find out," I said, engaging [Expert Stealth] and then charging for a second time. This attempt went better, and she didn't react at all until I tapped her with my dagger. I had little idea which part of her I'd tapped, but the sound of wood against metal was recognisable, eliciting a frustrated click of her tongue.

  "Wow. So that's a stealth Skill? I couldn't hear a thing," said Daniel.

  "Better hope the monsters in this dungeon don't have similar abilities," added Lee.

  "The receptionist would hardly have suggested fighting in the dark if the monsters could hide from other senses," pointed out Daniel.

  "Never mind this. We should all practise," said Felicity. "Even us non-combatants, because we still need to dodge. We should all do it together, too, because dungeon battles aren't going to be one on one, and other noises could confuse."

  The next hour consisted of quite a lot of tripping over each other, poking ourselves with our own weapons, and zero successful parrying. There was successful dodging, though, and given that the E-rank monsters were weak enough to die in single blows, that would hopefully be enough.

  The boss would be interesting, but there was also only one of it. That removed a lot of the complexity of dodging, compared to the mobs.

  "So, is everyone up to this?" asked Daniel.

  "Are you really going to abandon the idea if we say no?" asked Lee.

  "I will, as ever, consider the opinions of my party members."

  "We don't have much to lose from trying," I said. "I don't think any of us has Constitution low enough for an E-rank mob to kill us faster than Felicity can step in and heal."

  "I think you're overestimating [Heal]," said Felicity. "Even at its maximum stage, it can't regenerate missing body parts. If someone loses an eye in there, we'll need to pay for a higher rank healer."

  "Good job we're wearing helmets, then," said Daniel.

  "Helmets that don't fully cover our eyes, other than Stacy," pointed out Lee.

  "Oh, come on," said Ryan. "It's not like our job is safe at the best of times. I think we're all proficient enough at dodging blind that we can at least make sure we defend our soft spots, and if we screw up... Well, you could just as easily have tripped over in our goblin fight this morning."

  "Fine," sighed Lee. "Let's give it a go."

  And so the six of us made our way to the dungeon, marked by a rather grotesque white statue in the middle of town. A collection of a dozen centipedes, climbing over each other and intertwining themselves to form a sort of arthropodic pillar five metres tall.

  I did note the white stone was the same as that as the Slime Pit's entrance arch, or the top of the Goblin Den's staircase. That was kinda interesting, but there hadn't been any around the Fungal Garden, so it obviously wasn't a universal feature.

  "Anyone else in there?" asked Daniel as the guard at the entrance—another white staircase that led down into the ground—spotted us and looked up.

  "There was another group earlier, but there's no-one in there at the moment. Not the most popular dungeon, this."

  "I can't imagine why," muttered Felicity.

  "If that's your opinion of centipedes, perhaps you're better off fighting them in the dark," laughed Ryan, before heading down the steps.

  The rest of us followed.

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