Things proceed smoothly, with one last chance to rest.

Thankfully for us, this dungeon wasn't as massive as it appeared. Oh, it had every bit as many floors as it looked like, and maybe had a few extras. But fortunately, most of the floors weren't nearly as large as the first one. Thank whichever gods made this place-frankly, the tedium of grinding through if had been might have killed my zest for dungeoneering. As it was, most were two or three room-the last containing another plinth to use to raise the level.

And naturally, the loot got better as we went on. Shinier coins started appearing, to the delight of the dragon-and minor magic doodads to all us more civilized folk's. Now, as is the odd construct nature of the dungeon, few of them were something streightforward, like say, a minorly enchanted sword. If anything, gear we found more represented crafting tools of some type, like a pair of gloves that were unnaturally insulated. To us, only a little utility value, but the rogue was pretty sure that they'd have good resell value. Like, say, those gloves to a blacksmith. There were also some minor mechanical devices-unless I wanted to take up clockmaking, they were largely scrap. Good scrap, but scrap

In keeping with trying to keep my own treasurely imposition low, I was largely just insistent on one possession be part of mine: a tap that would produce a trickle of water ex nihilo if attached to anything, and could do so unnaturally easily. Like, installing is straight onto dungeon walls to test was easy as push and twist. Even if it might be trying to the patience of others to sit there and collect the small stream for their use, I could always just throw it up whenever I put down roots.

In retrospect, where the key to the big boss door ended up being shouldn't be particularly surprising. Third floor from the top, spawned after beating another boss. Unlike the last, which was basically a soup-upped golem, this was naturally a larger version of the other main enemy type-those filigree constructs. Which, long since having lost the element of surprise, actually proved far easier to beat, since its weakness took a lot less brute **** to get at. Its raw agility at first proved difficult, until we decided to combine might and agility. Namely, by using some of the smaller party members as projectiles, strong musculature able to fling them faster than the boss could move out of the way. Thought the harpy would have been ideal-but the feathers that grant control in the air actually slow her down when used like this, so the more humanoid party members proved most ideal for this.

After beating it, there was once again the wierd aura of calmness as the key popped into being. While I could have kept going, several of the other were a bit battered from the various near misses and exertions of the dungeon, so we stopped to make sure we could go up against the boss as close to 100% as possible.