It had all begun simply. Damian and Darrow had been on their way back to Principal City. The meeting with Rellina had not gone as they had expected, but they had gotten through it and were thinking about what they had to do next when it happened.

  Damian collapsed to the ground. His knees sank to the ground, and he heaved for breath. His chest rose and fell as he tried to breathe deeply. Darrow wasn’t too far behind. He collapsed beside him, and he gasped just as much as Damian. That was something he never wanted to do again.

  That dungeon gate had appeared out of nowhere. Even worse, a monster had just broken through reality, jumped out, and started attacking them, which was not supposed to happen. Monsters were not supposed to leave the dungeon, not immediately. They had to remain unattended for at least a week. Dungeon gates weren’t supposed to work like that.

  They turned, and they watched the fog quiver around them. Then the barrier surrounding the castle shimmered and rippled as the creature slammed into it. The barrier flashed, and Darrow flinched back in hesitation. Any slower, and they would have been dead. It slammed into the wall again and again. It snarled in frustration, then used its claws to try to scrape uselessly, all in an effort to get at them, but the barrier didn’t give.

  They felt the vibration travel through the dome, and Darrow couldn’t help but gulp. Whatever the creature was, it clearly wanted them.

  Damian rose to his feet to observe the creature clearly. If he had to describe it, it was a mix of an arthropod and some sort of lizard. It was clearly an abomination, and even now, he could tell that the creature was looking squarely at them.

  Why did it have to be that? Darrow was convinced they had just finished dealing with the young noble’s threat to expose them. Then the large bastard had appeared, and even he was starting to realize that the creature was there for them, and he swallowed hard.

  The large abomination ignored everything else and pressed its head against the castle barrier. Its master had sensed these two and knew it had been sent here to devour them and take their souls back to the realm of Yandres.

  The castle doors opened, and footsteps echoed from behind them as Rellina emerged from the castle and into her courtyard. Her footsteps were brisk but controlled, and the great guardian lynx followed behind her. It stepped out of the castle, the magic along its white fur seeming to glimmer, and its body seemed to shrink a bit.

  Rellina was not just a noble lady. Well, she was, but her class wasn't that of the wealth [merchant lord]s or any sort of [high administrator]. She was an old-world noble, and she had the class to prove it. She wasn’t like the [Lord Gardner] or the [Administrator] of the Bi'Frost Bridge City. She was a noble—not a queen or duchess—just a [Noble].

  Rellina saw the twins. She frowned at the chaos happening around them, and feeling like she needed to get to the bottom of what was going on, she approached the two pale-looking and shaken-up brothers.

  “What happened?” she asked when she came to a stop in front of them.

  Damian pointed behind him to the barrier surrounding the gate. “We… were attacked by that,” he heaved, breathed, then tried to catch his breath.

  Rellina looked up, then she froze. She looked over at the barrier, then beyond it, and she saw the fog shift and mist move around a creature’s silhouette.

  “What is that thing?” she asked.

  “That is… a dungeon monster… it jumped straight out of the portal.” Darrow said. And just as he spoke it, whatever it was, slid back.

  Rellina scanned the fog. She looked for any signs of the gateway, but she saw nothing.

  “Where is it?” she peered out into the wind.

  “It’s gone. It’s not supposed to happen like that,” Damian said, his brows knitting.

  A deep tremor shook the castle. It ran through the barrier, and the monster outside moved again, but still she couldn’t see it.

  Damian and Darrow stepped back.

  “Are we safe in here?” Darrow looked back at her.

  Rellina nodded her head. “Yes. If we stay in the barrier, it won’t be able to get in.”

  “Are you sure?” Damian asked.

  The barrier. As far as she could remember, this was one of the oldest artifacts set up by her ancestors. Its working was even unknown to her; it rarely came up except in times of danger, and it was also the reason why the castle had lasted so long.

  “I am sure. If we stay in here, sooner or later it will leave.” She looked at her knight.

  “I do not know, my lady.” The old goliath nodded toward her.

  Damian, on the other hand, exchanged a grim look with Darrow.

  “It’s here for us,” Damian muttered.

  “We think,” Darrow added rather loudly.

  Her brows furrowed. Feeling her uncertainty, the lynx growled, and its fur bristled as it caught sight of the monster in the mist.

  Rellina turned to them, then back to the walls that produced the barrier. If they wanted her to protect them, this would only go in her favor in the future, the way she saw it.

  “This castle is impregnable, and it has stood for over six hundred years.”

  The assassin, who had been nowhere to be seen, silently appeared beside her, and the old knight stepped in behind her.

  “My lady, give me your blessing, and I will cut it down,” the goliath half-giant Knight Thovak said, his eyes leaving the monster’s silhouette for the first time. “I can go with him. We are strong enough to take it down,” the red-eyed assassin said.

  Thovak was old. How old, she didn’t know. All she knew was that the old knight was strong. She had seen him go into gold-rank dungeons before with his grandfather, and she knew he had the skills to match. She couldn’t say no to him, especially if the knight thought she was in danger.

  Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

  Rellina nodded at both of them. “See what you can do. If it’s too dangerous, come back.”

  “We will, my lady,” Thovak said and drew his sword.

  The two stepped beyond the boundary together, and when they did, the creature reacted. It reacted, but not in the way they expected. The reptilian centipede turned its head down toward them.

  The assassin drew her blade, and in the same motion, Thovak raised his shield. They took another step forward.

  The creature froze, then it shifted. The ground beneath their feet rumbled as it tilted its weight. Its glowing eyes focused on the two gold ranks, and Thovak’s danger sense skill spiked.

  It let out a low, rattling, chittering, threatening warning noise, and he acted first.

  “Hold,” Thovak said, stopping and raising his hand to stop the assassin.

  The assassin’s step halted mid-step, and she turned to him.

  The creature studied them, realizing they weren’t the twins, then it withdrew away from the magical barrier. It withdrew. Its movements were so uncanny, and even worse, they were silent.

  It circled around in front of them, sniffed the air, then it looked past the knight and past the assassin as it stared directly at the twins again.

  It was here for them. They knew it, and it knew it. Why!? Damian and Darrow didn’t have the faintest idea, but judging from the creature’s fixated posture, it had only eyes for them.

  The monster slowly backed away from the two, even though they knew it was strong enough to fight them, and its monstrous body slowly disappeared back into the thick mist.

  The guardian lynx, checking if the monster was gone, prowled forward cautiously. It sniffed the ground it called home near the barrier, and its hackles raised as it looked into the mist directly at something.

  Rellina watched its behavior, and she knew even if the creature had let her assassin and knight back into the barrier, the creature was still out there. She had to get help. She had watched the way the two had stopped and hesitated to attack the creature.

  Rellina turned to the castle entrance. She was going to have to use her scrying mirror.

  Damian and Darrow began to follow her, but she suddenly raised her hand, and they stopped.

  “Stay here. I will deal with this,” she commanded. There was no room for argument in her tone, and the brothers glanced at each other and stopped where they were.

  As the door closed behind her, the lynx settled itself down in front of the castle doors and glanced back at them. There was no way they were getting past the overgrown magical cat. Even the assassin remained outside with them, and the knight remained silent as well as they watched her go.

  The air was filled with a heavy tension. A distant rumble echoed in the mist, and the lynx’s ears twitched at the sound. They all instinctively looked to catch sight of the creature, but they saw nothing. The barrier surface glowed faintly, but all they could do was wait now.

  The assassin folded her arms, and the knight did what a knight did. He looked out into the fog and stood there waiting.

  Rellina walked into one of the most used rooms in the castle, and the only reason she thought of this room this way was that it was one of the few rooms that still had a purpose in the massive and ancient castle. She walked over to the large enchanted mirror planted into a wall. She looked at herself in the mirror, pushed her hair to the side, and straightened her silk dress.

  The mirror, enchanted with the scrying and message spell, had the very old and intricate lines that made it up. It moved to face her and took up half a wall as it glowed. It glowed as the enchantments drained the mana crystals. Then an image started appearing on its surface.

  “Guild Mistress Magda, I have an urgent matter we must discuss.”

  The dwarf looked up in surprise. Magda wasn’t expecting a message from anyone today, especially not one of this level. Most message spells didn’t even reach her. They were picked up by the mirrors of the clerks and then later relayed to her. Only powerful magical items, spells, and enchantments could connect to her mirror directly.

  “Lady Rellina, to what do I owe the pleasure?” she said and looked back down at her papers.

  Inside, Rellina stood beneath a hanging lantern. Her expression was tight with concern, but the dwarf didn’t care.

  “There is a monster running loose in my city.”

  “Mistwall...? Is it the Mistcurvers’ guild? yes, they're the guild of the city. Why haven’t they gotten a handle on it?” she asked, then she went ahead to answer her question right before she asked another question.

  “The problem is not with the Mistcurvers. It’s with the monster.” Rellina said, and Magda looked up and into the scrying mirror.

  “A monster? A single monster? Then surely it should not be a problem.” The dwarven guild mistress lowered her head and started to note some documents down with her quill again.

  “Yes. A single monster jumped out of the portal before it closed.” Rellina explained.

  Guild Mistress Magda’s quill slid across the paper, and she froze. She looked up.

  “Could you repeat that?”

  “It escaped the dungeon, and the portal gate closed,” Rellina said and tried to look dignified.

  “That’s impossible."

  "Do you know why it did that?” Rellina asked.

  “No, but isn’t your city protected by the mist from dungeon portals?” Magda asked, frowning, her eyes darting to the door where a scribe frantically opened a map of the Mistwall district city.

  Rellina paused. She pursed her lips. Out of all the cities of New Calvessan, Mistwall was one of the very rare cities that received a low number of dungeon incursions thanks to the mist. It was another protection left by her ancestors. It was also a secret she thought none outside her immediate family knew about.

  "How..." she started, but Magda raised her hand to stop her through the mirror.

  "All the people who need to know. know." she said and met her gaze steadily, but the young woman was a noble. She straightened and composed herself.

  “ then I’m requesting a bounty notice.”

  At this point, the situation was odd. The monster was gone, and the portal—portals didn’t work like that. Magda straightened in her chair. She had a frown on her face, and it seemed like dungeon issues just kept getting worse.

  “Yes. ahh... Can you describe this creature?" she agreed, and grabbed another piece of parchment from her senior guild clerk.

  "Is it normal for a creature to attack individuals?”

  “No. Not unless they have been told to, like the abominations and demons of the demon gate. Is this monster acting oddly as well?”

  “Yes. It’s after someone.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  This was exactly the reason she had been put in charge of the guild that oversaw all the smaller guilds. Such unique cases were dangerous, and the only thing that even came close to this was maybe the demon gate she had thought of, the canyon, the storm, and that abandoned city somewhere to the west.

  Rellina hesitated. She glanced back behind her, and Magda narrowed her eyes at her through the scrying mirror.

  “Your concern should be the presence of this monster. As guild mistress, this odd monster must take priority, not just individuals but the citizens of the great cities as a whole.”

  She didn’t answer the question, and the guild mistress narrowed her eyes at the young woman.

  Rellina lifted her chin in the air.

  “This is concerning. Even then, are you still not willing to give the information about who this creature is after?”

  Guild Mistress Magda’s voice was efficient and professional, but Rellina remained calm. Since this wasn’t a friendly chat, the guild mistress filed the oddity of the creature’s behavior away in the back of her head. She allowed Rellina to explain the details, or whatever she thought, succinctly.

  “Portals do not normally target individuals. Are you sure?” She tried to bring the topic up again after they discussed the issue.

  Rellina narrowed her eyes. Did the guild mistress think she was that easy, that she would let her tongue slip?

  “Lets focus on the matter? Surely you know why the portal released the monster, then disappeared.” Rellina said, driving her back to the main topic. much to the dwarf's disappointment.

  “Yes. That’s even more concerning,” she hesitated, then looked up at Rellina. “Mistwall’s fog. Is there a problem with the artifact that produces it?”

  Rellina’s face grew into a frown, and she didn't answer that either. Magda continued on.

  “I am asking to understand this thing. Otherwise, you may have a unique, found creature sieging your city.”

  Rellina shook her head. There was nothing wrong with the mists. More importantly, she didn’t know what caused the mists.

  Magda didn’t know what to take from the girl’s head gesture, but she continued.

  “It’s only a theory,” Magda said and nearly rolled her eyes. Nobles and their hordes.

  “Then will you be sending help in accordance with guild law?”

  Magda nodded. She hoped that this would not get any larger and filed the paperwork and sent it to the lower floor. This notice was going to draw a lot of attention, and she didn’t like it, but as long as it was taken care of, it would just go down as another anomaly.

  She knew it was going to cause a buzz among the adventurers. After all, not many of them fought monsters that escaped their dungeons.