The portal Aaron chose was supposed to be A rank.
He had picked it specifically because it was A rank, though Manageable, The same dungeon that let him test his new level without committing to something that ate his entire night and left him explaining himself to Rei at midnight again.
He stepped through and the air hit him differently from any A rank dungeon he had ever cleared.
Denser. Older. The specific feeling of a place that had been sealed for a very long time building pressure with nowhere to put it.
Aaron looked at his screen.
[Portal Class : A Rank –– Reclassifying]
[Reclassifying]
[Portal Class : S Rank –– SEALED DUNGEON]
[WARNING : This dungeon has been inactive since the First Opening]
Aaron looked at that last line for a moment.
"Figures what's worng with this," he said.
The dungeon opened ahead of him into something that had no business being inside a portal. A forest. Real trees, or something close enough to real that the difference didn't matter, too tall and too dark with light coming from somewhere between the branches that wasn't the ceiling and wasn't doing what light was supposed to do.
The magic beasts in here were not the standard type.
The first one stepped out from between two trees thirty meters ahead and Aaron looked at it and understood immediately that this was something that had been alive since before the Second Opening. Something that had adapted to eighteen years of sealed isolation and come out the other side bigger and slower and more dangerous for it.
It looked at Aaron the way old things looked at new things that had wandered somewhere they didn't belong.
Aaron reached.
The shadows rose behind him. The full army. The forest felt them before it saw them, the trees going still, the light between the branches pulling back slightly like it wanted distance from what had just appeared.
The beast at thirty meters looked at the shadow army.
Then looked at Aaron.
Then made a decision and charged anyway because eighteen years of isolation had apparently made it either very brave or very stupid and Aaron honestly respected it either way.
BOOM.
The Mountain King stepped forward and the forest floor cracked under its weight and the beast that had been charging found something considerably larger than Aaron coming at it instead and the exchange was brief.
More came from deeper in the trees.
Not charging. Circling. Moving between the trunks with the specific patience of creatures that had learned over eighteen years that patience was the thing that kept you alive in a sealed dungeon. They spread wide, cutting off angles, and Aaron watched them do it and thought *coordinated again* and felt something cold move through him that had nothing to do with the temperature.
*The ones in the north of Lemurian were coordinated too*, he thought. *The magic beasts at the combined portal. The ones that cut off exits and cornered hunters. These are moving the same way.*
*Something is teaching them.*
The Void Serpent moved through the left flank before the beasts there finished their approach and the acid hit the ground between them and they scattered and the Stone Titan came through the gap they left.
The mana beast shadow moved through the right flank fast and the beasts on that side found out quickly that the shadow of something that had beaten an entire S rank team was considerably more dangerous than the original.
CRACK. BOOM. CRACK.
Aaron moved through the center with both daggers drawn and the venom running along the edges and found that at fourth stage the gap between him and these beasts was not as small as it would have been two weeks ago. He hit faster. He saw openings earlier. The healing factor worked on the hits that landed before he finished processing they had happened.
*So this is what fourth stage feels like*, he thought, driving both daggers into the largest beast that had come at him from the right. *Less like power and more like everything just... working properly.*
The beast dropped.
The forest went quiet.
Aaron stood in the middle of it with the shadow army around him and looked deeper into the trees where the light was doing that wrong thing more intensely and where something he couldn't see yet was sitting at the center of an eighteen-year-old sealed dungeon waiting to find out what had just walked through its door.
His screen showed the quest marker pointing straight ahead.
[DUNGEON BOSS : LOCATION UNKNOWN]
[Estimated Distance : Deep Forest]
[WARNING : Boss class exceeds standard classification parameters]
Aaron looked at that last line.
*Of course it does*, he thought.
He looked at the shadow army.
"Stay close," he said. "Something in there has been training these beasts. Whatever it is, it knows we're here."
The shadows moved around him as he walked deeper into the forest and the trees closed over them and the light between the branches got stranger the further in they went and somewhere ahead in the dark something old and patient was waiting for him.
A random alert notification popped out from nowhere and someone and this time Aaron wasn't afraid of anything.
[ NOTIFICATION! ]
[ QUEST: KILL THE ENEMIES ]