“What do you think is after this?” James asked. “Water, or air?”

  Inara gave him an odd look. “Certainly water.”

  “Ooh, mom, what do you think an air level would look like? Do you think we could fly? Do you think we could be birds?!”

  James laughed. “I forgot about the birds. You really don’t have those here?”

  “Of course not! How do they even fly? It would have to have enormous wings just to get its body off the ground!”

  “No, the way it works is that their bones are hollow—”

  Virgil interrupted by throwing the Grimoire of the Last Archivist onto the floor by James’s feet. It landed with a heavy thunk, and all eyes turned to him

  The scholar waved a page full of notes and angry scratch-outs.

  James eyed the page warily. There were a lot of notes.

  With the most disgusted look on his face, Virgil kicked the journal. “You can keep this if you want, but it’s mostly garbage.”

  James stared. “Are you sure? Wasn’t that guy like, your mentor or something?”

  Virgil winced, then straightened his spine. “He didn’t seem to like me much, and it’s not like I really remember him…” He trailed off. Shook himself. “Anyway. It looks like the Librarian was keeping an eye on the emergence of the First Demon King, but even though he was writing things down that were technically true, his conclusions are completely wrong.”

  James cocked his head. “That’s interesting. How so?”

  “The Librarian writes that the First Demon King— me, I guess — went on a killing spree not long after Ren died. Not too far off from Desiree’s version of the story, except Ren was just a friend. The problem is, the rest of his story is too similar to Desiree’s. It doesn’t match up with what I’ve been remembering.”

  “Okay. What are the differences?”

  “For one, the Librarian thought I made the summoning circles so I could bring the demons into Grimora. But the first demon I encountered came through before the circles existed.”

  “What?!” Inara burst out. “That isn’t possible. Demons have always been limited to the summoning circles, it’s the only way they can get through to Grimora from the Infernal realm!”

  Oddly, Virgil looked pleased by her outburst. “Have they? Or is that how it’s been for long enough that people don’t remember anything different?”

  She pursed her lips. Even though she was silent, it was clear that the information upset her.

  James felt a surge of satisfaction at that. Maybe her Hero hadn’t gotten everything right, after all.

  Well. Obviously, he didn’t get everything right, since he turned evil in the end.

  “Why would those accounts be so wrong? And if they are, why would the dungeon feed us misinformation?”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “It’s not necessarily the accounts that are wrong,” said Inara.

  Virgil winced, but then he nodded. “She’s right. There are several possibilities. The first is that the accounts are correct, and my memories are false, somehow planted in my mind. That would be my preference, since it would absolve me of several war crimes.” He chuckled. “Second is that my memories are true, and the Librarian’s account is wrong simply because he himself was mistaken. It’s not uncommon for news to become warped and facts misunderstood. As for Desiree’s recounting, every history runs the risk of growing exaggerated over time.

  “If my memories are true, then it would at least partially explain how the previous Hero succumbed to infernal temptation. You said that he killed Gregor when he went through the dungeon. In that case, Gregor never regained his memories, and all the information the Hero had to go on was from this misleading grimoire.”

  The more Virgil spoke, the more James believed that it was Virgil’s memories which were correct, and the grimoire which was wrong. What the previous Hero had done by killing Gregor was at worst murder or, at best, akin to skipping the dialogue in a video game and missing key context in the world-building.

  James shook his head. “We’ll keep thinking about it, but right now we’re just guessing. Let’s keep moving. Each floor boss has given us a little more information, so we just have to keep going and keep paying attention.”

  “Desiree!” Inara called. “Time to go!”

  The girl was sliding around the floor with her four dodge skills, whizzing faster and faster with every turn. “Finally!” she called back, then came rushing over to grab her boots. “I found the exit ages ago, it’s in this wardrobe in the back.”

  **

  James stepped through the wardrobe and was immensely grateful to find the rest of his party ready and waiting. It was cruel, he thought, that the first floor had split them all up. It made him nervous every time that that was going to happen again, no matter how many times Inara reassured him that it only happened on the first floor.

  He wanted to make a joke about lions and witches, but he knew nobody would get it. Making a cultural reference that nobody understood got old pretty quickly, he’d discovered. Nobody laughed, and then he had to explain the whole thing, and the explanation inevitably included something else that needed explaining… It just wasn’t worth it.

  So instead, he planted his hands on his hips and looked around what looked like an ocean-sized, hopefully shallow, infinity pool.

  “So this is our water level, huh? Does everyone know how to swim?”

  “I do!” Desiree’s hand shot into the air. “Mom used to take me to the lake sometimes, and I could swim all the way across it if she would let me.”

  Inara held back a smile. “I can swim.”

  Virgil had an expression of undisguised disgust on his face. They were all standing in two inches of clear water, and he lifted his feet, one after the other, to glare at the soles.

  James winced. “I take it your shoes aren’t waterproof?”

  “No.” Virgil shook one foot, sending water flying off in droplets— only to plop it back into the water.

  James cleared his throat. That wasn’t a problem he knew how to solve. “Well, uh. What do we expect from this floor? Any guesses?”

  “Mermaids!” Desiree called out. “Big fish that swallow you up! Sirens!”

  Inara shrugged. “Could be anything. Typically, the creatures get more dangerous as the water deepens, but that’s more of a generalization than a rule.”

  James looked around at the flat expanse of water. It glinted softly blue, and there was an unreal quality to the sky. If someone told him it was less of a sky and more of a very tall ceiling, he’d be inclined to believe them.

  “What do you think is the objective of this floor?”

  “If I had to guess,” Virgil answered, “Our exit will be somewhere deep underwater.”

  “There should be some weak monsters in the shallows that will drop items that make it easier to breathe and dive underwater,” Inara added. “Our first step should be to seek them out and kill enough of them to get gear for all four of us.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” James replied. His mouth twisted as he thought. His fireball spell would be completely useless on this floor, since all the water would instantly cause it to sizzle out. Not to mention, his axe would be impossible to swing underwater. Unless his STR was enough to make up the difference? That idea intrigued him. He hadn’t tested the limit of his supernatural strength in a while.

  Either way, the only way to find out was to move forward.

  “Let’s go find some shallow monsters.”