Onward into the Dungeon!

With slow and deliberate movements, the party of adventurers stepped off the enchanted, moonlit grass of the strange clearing and past the threshold of the Dungeon's grand archway. Each stood ready for something to jump out at them. For a trap to spring. For a monster to attack. For the world to come crashing down on them in punishment for their entry into this place, yet none came.

While no ambush halted their progress, the difference was immediate.

Stepping onto the plush red carpet, surrounded by high marble walls and ceilings, the air of the Dungeon felt different compared to what was outside. It seemed fresher. Cooler. A stale warmth filled the Green Hills Dungeon that reminded one of a crypt: ancient and forgotten, not breathed by any being for eons. But Demi's Dungeon was fresh, and a gentle breeze blew freely. You might turn a corner and step out into a sunlit topiary garden or perhaps find the windows left open just down the hall on a bright summer's day. It gave no impression that it was buried hundreds of feet underground.

That point alone made it stand out that there were, in fact, windows. The first pair, adorning either side of the hall, rested halfway up the room's height. Crystal clear glass encased elegant, flowing ironwork that reminded Roland of creeping vines crawling up the side of a building. He could make out the glint of the sun and a few wisps of clouds drifting lazily in an azure-blue sky beyond. Roland didn't doubt that it was an illusion, but the sight of what appeared to be a warm summer's day outside the hall they stood in did wonders to ease his nerves.

Still, training kept a firm grip on him, and Roland held his greatsword tightly. His eyes scanned the entry hall as they moved with measured, cautious steps ever onward. The deeper they moved, the more he saw.

Aside from the lovely carpeting, marble architecture, and high windows, small display cabinets of redwood and glass filled with unknown trinkets dotted the hall. Above them hung paintings, detailed and beautiful renditions of serene landscapes filled with various subjects. Men, beasts, and even monsters, much as they had in the etchings on the door, lounged and played, seemingly at rest. It was unerringly odd to the seasoned adventurers, both in one's expectations of a dungeon and the ordinary artwork featuring beasts and monsters.

"This is fuckin' weird," Gorin remarked, grip firm on his handle.

"I couldn't agree more," Roland answered, still eyeing the hall nervously as they walked its length.

"I don't know, I find it rather nice," Trixa considered. "It's not often we can normally enjoy a place like this."

Being the only one without a formal weapon, the smallfolk strolled casually behind the two men as her mastery of the arcane and divine were her weapons. Were things to get dicey, Trixa was not the first line of defense but rather the one that kept everyone else alive when conventional means of combat failed. The serene nature of the entry hall left her at liberty to enjoy the scenery, and Roland caught glimpses of a gentle smile playing at the edges of her lips.

On the other hand, Ivy didn't care much about marching order.

"I saw a thing!" Ivy shouted, rushing past the other three, her eyes wide with excitement.

"Ives! Wait!" Gorin shouted after her, his hand instinctively tightening around his weapon. "What are you doin'?"

Ivy veered off to a display cabinet between two high windows and directly beneath a landscape painting of what seemed to be farmland. The picture showed an open field with a man and a woman, both human, standing under the hot sun. Their attention was on the open hayloft, where a bird woman, a harpy, sat comfortably, calling down to them. They all looked happy as if they were taking a break from their work and chatting about nothing. It reminded Roland of his home back in Coldwater Creek.

"Look at this!" Ivy shouted again, popping open the top of the display cabinet.

"Wait, be careful. It could be trapped!" Roland shouted, wincing at the lackadaisical approach. He was thankful that the cabinet hadn't blown up in her face. Everything about this place seemed so quiet, as though they'd broken into a nobleman's house while everyone was outside having a lawn party; it was setting him on edge.

"It's not, though," Ivy responded matter-of-factly.

"We see that, lass," Gorin said, waving her off.

"Please, we don't know what's waiting for us in here," Roland chided her. "Could you please hang back before you touch something that blows up in your face?"

"I'll try," Ivy agreed, though it sounded to Roland as though she hadn't even registered what he'd said. Instead, she held a tiny metal statuette in her palm as she rushed back to the group. "See?"

A small rabbit, constructed entirely of silver, with an open belly revealing clockwork cogs and gears, rested in her hand. The automaton's machinery was idle, showing no sign of life, but a key on its back suggested that it could be brought to life with a simple twist. Roland was surprised that he was just as enamored by the little contraption as Ivy seemed.

"It's beautiful," Trixa observed, getting closer to give it a better look.

"Ought to be worth a pretty coin in the right place," Gorin said, nodding. "Should make sure to take it with us."

Roland looked away from the little rabbit to display cabinets they'd passed. He'd registered them earlier but had yet to consider them anything more than furniture—a place for traps or monsters to hide behind. Stepping away from the rest of the group, Roland eyed the next closest one. What he saw made him gasp.

Glittering silver, gold, gems, and jewels.

The display cabinet was filled with jewelry of all sorts. Wealth, as one might find in a dragon's hoard, was just openly displayed in the entryway of the Dungeon. And, if they were like Ivy's, they could pop it open, take their fill, and leave. They could be rich without ever stepping foot into danger.

"Damn," he muttered, at a loss for words.

"What is it?" Gorin called."

Roland nodded to the case he was in front of, but curiosity got the better. Moving to the cabinet Ivy had retrieved the rabbit from, he found it was equally impressive. The rabbit had caught the elf's eye, but it was one of the dozens, maybe even hundreds, of small silver and gold automatons—wolves, birds, bears, beavers, cows, horses, and more. Every animal Roland could think of, and plenty he hadn't seen before, rested quietly beneath glass and protected by hardwood.

A master artificer's collection, their life's work, all in a single display cabinet.

"Gods!" he heard Gorin exclaim, the dwarf having wandered over to the first one he'd examined. "Did you see-?"

"Yes, yes, I did.

"We could just-"

"Yes. We could."

Roland moved onto a new cabinet and found it chock full of even more riches. This one held a collection of illuminated manuscripts, carefully curated and displayed in a language he could not read. Even without the knowledge to understand the words, each page was a work of art, and based on the soft buzz he felt in his teeth when he got too close, he suspected each one was magical.

The group spent the next few minutes moving up and down the entry hall, admiring the display cabinets and the paintings that hung above them. Each was a work of art or filled with works of art, and every piece was easily worth its weight in gold. Roland considered stuffing his pockets more than once, particularly given Ivy's success earlier in not having the display cabinet blow up in his face. Still, he figured anything they tried to open should be thoroughly checked first. That didn't stop Ivy, though, who Roland saw slipping under the glass of another cabinet again to palm another trinket. He couldn't blame her.

The luxury.

The wealth.

It was overwhelming.

They had only ever found something vaguely like this twice before, and both were at the end of Dungeons and under ****-defying odds. The first was in battle against a dragon, and its horde was their reward. The second was in the Tomb of the Earthen King, where a Royal Golem and his entourage guarded a hall of similar scope but only half the size.

If this was just the front door, what was waiting inside?

Roland looked to the far end of the hall, where a grand tree seemed to be growing directly through the marble. Great gnarled roots jutted up at odd angles through the floor as though they passed through the hard stone as easily as a ghost might. Above, the branches and the tree's canopy were invisible, disappearing directly through the high ceiling. To either side of the tree were doors leading off to where he knew not.

"Ok, I guess I'll be the first to ask the obvious question," Roland began as the group rejoined at the center of the entry hall. "Should we just pack up what we can from here and leave?"

"We'd make a fortune on all this stuff alone," Gorin added, waving his hand toward the displayed wealth.

"I don't know," Trixa began, her expression confused. "It would be nice to make some coin without a fight."

"I agree, but also-" Roland began but was cut off.

"It feels wrong?" Trixa offered.

"No, it makes me wonder what's deeper inside."

Trixa shrugged, but Ivy spoke up.

"If they've got all this right out here, I bet they've got ten times all this cool stuff in there," the elf said, pointing toward the tree and the branching hallways. "Remember that Earth Tomb place?"

"I do," Roland confirmed, looking back to Gorin.

"Well, if you ask me, we ought to pack the whole place up, sell it, bank it, and come back for more," the dwarf offered.

"Not a terrible idea," Trixa agreed with a nod.

"Except that we don't know if it'll be here when we return," Roland considered. "Green Hills was cleaned out. What if that guy back at the guild is still selling maps and sends other groups here? We might have a lot of competition if we double back."

"Well, I'm not for splitting the loot," Gorin said. "We've all got Endless Bags. We can pack up and go deeper."

Roland thought about that and touched the magic bag at his side. It was enchanted to hold an excessive amount while weighing only what it did now. Everyone had one as they served precisely that purpose: carrying a lot of treasure.

"Still, we don't know what kind of fight we'd be walking into," Roland considered. "This much loot, there may be a hoard of beholders just in the next room. We have to survive to spend the loot."

"I mean, we could just go check," Ivy offered.

"I'd rather we figure this out now," Roland countered before looking to Trixa, "Do you know anything about this Demi goddess? You said she was about rebirth and fertility. Why does she have all this loot?"

"Well, if I were to hazard a guess, it's because her dungeon was hidden," Trixa offered, "Don't have adventurers looting your Dungeon; you still have loot in your Dungeon. Many of the dungeons we've been to have been hotspots for decades or even centuries, Green Hills included. As for Demi, besides the dirty stuff I mentioned, I don't know much about her or why she'd have anything like this."

"That she fucks goats or whatnot," Gorin offered.

"That she's the Mother of Monsters, yes," Trixa countered.

"Just a thought," Ivy said, focusing on tinkering with the mechanical rabbit in her hands, "But we've always found loot when we found big monsters. If she's the Mother of Monsters, maybe big loot means nothing BUT big monsters."

"That's what I'm worried about," Roland said, looking at each of his compatriots. "What do you think then? Take the money, run, and try to double back if there's anything left to loot. Or take what we can and go deeper into the Dungeon?