The gates of the dungeon loomed high, ancient stone carved with swirling glyphs that pulsed with a faint, eerie blue. Mist curled along the moss-covered ground. A cold wind howled from within the shadowy maw of the entrance—ominous, mysterious, and completely terrifying.
Naturally, Thorne was practically vibrating with excitement.
"THIS! THIS IS IT!" Thorne shouted, jabbing his divine spear toward the gate like a man possessed. "Our first real dungeon! Do you all smell that?! It smells like danger and destiny!"
"It smells like mildew and bat poop," Cael muttered, clutching his glowing sigil close to his chest and scanning every rock, pebble, and mildly suspicious leaf in a 10-meter radius. "We shouldn't even be here. We're not ready. I mean—what if there's a dungeon boss? What if it's undead? What if it's sentient slime again but with fire magic—"
"Bro, breathe," Lys said calmly, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Cael did not breathe.
Renna, who had been testing her dagger by poking her own shadow, looked up and grinned. "Honestly, this is giving off serious 'bad idea, but fun' energy. I'm into it."
"You were into breaking into the priest's room too," Alaric said, adjusting the straps on his armor, which now had an unnecessary amount of belts. "We are literally one chaotic decision away from being smote."
Lys opened her mouth to reply—only for Thorne to scream again.
"I CALLED DIBS ON THE FIRST BOSS DROP! AND THE RARE LOOT ROOM! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, COWARDS!"
He took three dramatic steps forward, posed like an anime protagonist, then tripped over a vine and faceplanted into the dirt.
"…He's okay," Renna said casually as the others stared.
"His pride isn't," Cael noted, still not blinking.
Alaric leaned forward and whispered, "Should we, like… do a strategy? Maybe talk formation?"
"I vote we just follow Thorne," Lys shrugged, flipping a page of her notes mid-step. "He seems determined to trigger all the traps for us."
"I AM A GOD-SPEAR-WIELDING WARLORD OF LIGHT!" Thorne screamed into the ground, spitting moss. "THIS IS BUT A MINOR SETBACK!"
The dungeon groaned.
Literally.
Like something inside just sighed in disappointment.
Cael took a trembling step back. "Nope. Nope. That was the boss sighing. We're all going to die."
"Yay!" Renna chirped.
And with absolutely no coordination, no plan, and no grasp on the concept of "caution," the group of five stepped foot into their very first dungeon.
Naturally, it would go terribly.
But gloriously.
Little did they know...
Far beneath the earth, past the twisting halls of the dungeon's deeper layers, sat a throne carved from bones and obsidian. The air shimmered with crimson mist. Torches burned purple. A single rose wilted dramatically in a vase that hadn't been watered in years. At the center of this theatrically evil room, lounging like a bored queen, was her.
The Demon General of Temptation.
The Mistress of Shadows and Silk.
The one and only—Lady Verilith, the Crimson Thorn.
She lounged on her throne, sipping wine that definitely wasn't wine and swirling it with the kind of elegance that could make entire kingdoms collapse.
"So… the heroes have finally entered my dungeon," she purred, smiling to herself. "Excellent. Soon, their hopes will shatter. Their unity will break. And their spirits shall crumble like stale cookies. I will exploit their weaknesses, one by one."
She stood, dramatic cape fluttering even though there was no wind indoors.
"The coward. The flirt. The fool. The broken one. And the spear guy who's definitely overcompensating. Hah!"
She threw back her head in a villainous laugh that echoed through the stone walls like thunder.
"They will never survive my trials."
But she paused.
Because her dungeon sensors—the ancient magical relics monitoring the invaders—began to flash red.
Warning: Unpredictable Spell Discharge Detected
Warning: Sewer Rat Population: 0
Warning: Entrance Gate — Screamed At Repeatedly
"...what?" she blinked.
Another alert.
One Hero Attempting To Befriend Dungeon Slime
Another Hero Performing Karaoke in Trap Room
Divine Lance Used as a Battering Ram (Improper Usage)
Verilith's eye twitched.
She sprinted to the scrying orb, and what she saw nearly made her drop her chalice.
The five "heroes" were not just alive—they were thriving in the chaos. One had tied his cloak around his head like a bandana. Another was skateboarding on a giant rat corpse. One was doing backflips for absolutely no reason.
And somehow—the dungeon was actually cleaner now.
"They—they're not falling apart," Verilith gasped. "They're just… absolute morons! The purest chaos gremlins I've ever seen!"
She clutched her chest dramatically. "What kind of unholy force have I invited into my lair!?"
The scrying orb flickered again. She saw one of them licking a wall for "science."
Verilith stared blankly for several seconds. Then she sat back down on her throne, drained her chalice in one gulp, and muttered:
"…I'm going to need stronger wine."
Meanwhile…
In the first layer of the dungeon, which had once been carefully designed with elegant death traps and ominous ambiance, something unholy was happening.
It was called: Tomfoolery.
"GUYS. WATCH THIS."
Thorne stood proudly on a cracked statue of a long-forgotten warlord, spinning his spear like he was in a circus.
"Thorne, no—" Cael began, but it was too late.
Thorne did a full triple backflip, landed in a crouch, and immediately set off three floor traps at once. Spikes shot from the walls, a fireball flew from a skull-shaped sconce, and a pit opened in the floor…
…only for Renna to shout "YEET!" and casually hurl her divine dagger into the fireball. The explosion somehow snuffed itself out, pinged the spikes back into their holes, and the pit trap—bizarrely—closed.
"I think I fixed it?" she said with a nervous grin.
"No, you broke it better," Lys muttered, flipping through a dungeon guide she definitely stole from the guild.
"Why are we like this," Cael whispered, staring into the metaphorical camera of his mind.
Alaric, meanwhile, was poking a skeleton with the blunt end of his sword. "Do you think these were real people once?"
"Yes," said Lys.
"Cool," said Alaric, now wearing the skull like a hat. "I shall name him... Bonejamin."
Cael was slowly losing his sanity. "Can we please—just this once—take things seriously? We're in a dungeon. A dungeon! You know? Danger! Death! DOOM?"
"Cael," Lys said gently, placing a book titled Totally Not Cursed Dungeon Diaries back into her satchel. "Look around."
They did.
Thorne was arm-wrestling a mimic.
Renna was skipping traps like hopscotch.
Alaric was offering a slime a fruit snack.
"...We are the doom," Cael concluded, sitting down with a sigh.
And then—BOOM!
Another hallway exploded. A flood of blue goo burst forth as the giant dungeon slime barreled through, panicked from all the chaos the group had caused in its habitat. It bounced over traps, around columns, and right toward them.
"Group meeting!" Lys shouted, flipping open a map that may or may not have been upside down. "Option A: Fight it. Option B: Ride it."
They all stared at her.
"Option B, obviously," said Thorne.
"I'M ALREADY ON IT!" Alaric yelled, now surfing the slime like a fantasy Tony Hawk.
Somewhere in the depths, the demon general Verilith watched it all unfold through her scrying orb, utterly speechless.
"…What in the Nine Hells are these idiots?"
The slime crashed through another wall. Screams echoed. A golden spear got stuck in the ceiling.
Verilith reached for her pillow and screamed into it.
Still inside the dungeon…
One might assume that, after several "accidental" explosions, a slime surfing session, and the systematic unraveling of the dungeon's entire first floor, the group of summoned heroes would… calm down. Reflect. Maybe strategize.
But no.
They only grew stronger.
"WHO TOOK MY SPEAR?!"
Thorne was now dangling upside-down from a chandelier made of bones, swinging like a war-hungry piñata.
"I needed it to roast marshmallows!" Renna called from a corner, where she had somehow set up a campfire on top of a pressure plate.
"GUYS STOP—WAIT—DON'T—"
BOOM.
Another trap gone. Cael's eyebrows: singed. His trust in humanity: deteriorating.
Meanwhile, Lys had discovered a secret side room. One that held rare dungeon loot. Possibly a sacred artifact. Possibly cursed.
"Should we… open this?" she asked Alaric.
Alaric, currently trying to teach a slime how to do a trending dance despite no phones existing in this world, shrugged.
"If it glows, we go."
Lys opened it.
A torrent of enchanted scarves exploded from the chest. Just… thousands.
"I AM THE THREAD KING!" Thorne screamed, landing dramatically in the pile. He then struck a pose like he was modeling for Dungeon Vogue.
Renna casually braided a few into her hair.
"Honestly? Not a bad color."
The dungeon itself began groaning, like it had feelings and those feelings were "why did I even open today."
Cael, clinging to a crumbling pillar, whispered to the void, "This was supposed to be a team-building quest."
At that moment, the enchanted scarf-chest exploded again—this time launching a ghost out of it. A real, actually scary ghost.
"WHO DARES DISTURB MY—"
"Want a fruit snack?" Alaric offered.
"…Yes."
Five minutes later, the ghost was sharing dungeon tea with the group and gossiping about which traps were the worst.
"Honestly," she sighed, sipping ectoplasm tea, "the ceiling spikes are so tacky. No one appreciates the classics anymore."
In the scrying orb far away, Verilith the Demon General had given up trying to understand this band of chaos. She just put on sunglasses, laid back, and muttered,
"If you can't beat 'em… drink through it."
Meanwhile, deep in the underworld—
A massive obsidian chamber pulsed with ominous energy. Dark flames flickered along the walls, and twisted shadows danced around a grand throne made of bone, despair, and maybe… Ikea parts?
Atop the throne sat Verilith, the seductive and terrifying Demon General of the South. She lounged lazily, sipping a goblet of liquified nightmares and watching a floating scrying orb.
The image on the orb shimmered, twisted… then snapped into focus with a ding.
[Dungeon Feed Active – Second Floor Reached]
Her eyes narrowed. "Oh? They made it to the second floor?"
A lower demon servant cackled. "Shall I prepare the doom fanfare, General?"
"Hold," Verilith smirked. "Let's see how long they last."
—
Inside the Boss Room – 2nd Floor
A towering, armored Bone Minotaur, twice the size of Thorne and five times as loud, let out a deafening roar.
"TREMBLE, HEROES! FOR YOU FACE—"
"Yoo-hoo!" Renna waved.
The Minotaur paused.
"Do you… eat soup? Or just drink through your nose holes?" she asked innocently.
"…WHAT?"
Alaric pointed. "Wait, are your horns uneven? That one's, like, super crooked."
"NO IT'S NOT!!"
Lys was whispering arcane nonsense into a magical mirror. "According to the monster lore book, if we emotionally destabilize him, we don't have to fight him."
"THAT IS NOT IN THE RULES!"
"I think it is now!" Cael shouted from behind a boulder.
Thorne hurled a scarf at the Minotaur. It landed perfectly on one horn, fashionably twisted.
"GORGEOUS," Thorne declared. "You're a fall season beast now."
The Minotaur stared at his reflection in a puddle.
"…Do I… look fabulous?"
"Absolutely," Renna nodded.
CRACK. Something broke in the Minotaur's psyche.
"WHAT IS FASHION? WHAT IS PURPOSE? WHO AM I IF NOT A TOOL OF DESTRUCTION?!"
And with that, the boss monster spun in an existential spiral… until he headbutted a wall and knocked himself out cold.
—
Back in Verilith's chamber…
The scrying orb blared with dungeon alerts:
[Boss Room Cleared – Hero Party Victorious]
[EXP Earned: 0]
[Morale Damage Inflicted: 9999]
Verilith blinked. "What… what just happened?"
"They defeated the boss, General," the demon minion said slowly.
"No, they… they broke him. They turned my eldritch beast into an insecure model."
She stood, pacing, her tail twitching. "How do you even counter this?! They're not following any laws of nature, physics, or comedy!"
The orb pulsed again.
[Hero Party Now Having Snack Time in Boss Room]
Verilith collapsed back into her throne, rubbing her temples.