Content warning:


    Mention of killing animals.


    The rest of the evening was tense. Heather and Marama understood Lauren’s reaction and stayed in the house, while the rest angrily sat outside. Marama didn’t talk much, but browsed Lauren’s bookshelf.


    The books were entirely handmade, and had to be handled delicately so they wouldn’t fall apart. They were full of notes, drawings, and journals, all written in both English and Korean on lumpy paper.


    Heather, meanwhile, when she wasn’t laughing at something on her phone, was much more conversational. She eventually stowed her phone and gave her a serious look. “I met your family, you know.”


    “Really?! When? How were they?” Lauren demanded, spilling her tea.


    “It was around twenty years ago, so it’s been a while. They were among the first to become Explorers, and helped train others—myself among them. They were looking for you.”


    “They were looking for me…” she breathed. “How are they now?”


    “Fine, I think? We still talk occasionally, but we’re more acquaintances than friends.”


    “I see… Thank you for telling me.” She grabbed the tea with a spell and put it back in the cup.


    Lauren paced as the hours passed. As night began to fall, she cooked food to keep herself busy. Her stove was made of stone and used crystals to control the heat, and all her dishes were made of stone as well. The food was mostly an assortment of sauteed fruits and vegetables from her garden.


    Heather and Marama joined her for dinner around a small table in the house, while the others resolutely remained outside, eating protein bars.


    A small light on Marama’s Band flickered, and the others’ soon did the same. It was time.


    Knowing she probably wouldn’t be returning for a while, Lauren donned her armor as well, and joined the group with her spear in hand.


    Her heart pounded as Heather pressed something on her Band, the bee girl’s hand seemingly moving in slow motion. The very moment Lauren felt the spell activating, she tweaked the settings on her ward—just in case.


    Her vision distorted for a split second, then the scenery snapped from her garden to a gray, fluorescent-lit interior. They were in a large, concrete and steel room, with several metal pads set up, Explorer teams stepped onto them and teleported away, and other teams arrived on them—some of them hauling carcasses. Everyone here had also transformed in some way.


    The stench of blood and sweat stung her nostrils. The sound boomed her ears. Hundreds of people clanked around in armor and the fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and all of it echoed off the solid walls of the room. Somewhere, a recently-arrived Explorer team was crying, calling out someone’s name as they were ushered away by a staff member trying to console them for their loss.


    Lauren, feeling somewhat sick, grimaced and tightened her grip around her spear as she forced her way forward with the Abyssal Seekers, with Heather lagging behind as she sent a message. People stepped aside for Adam and waved at him, which he cheerily returned. He had removed his helmet for this, though no one else had. At the room’s exit were two large metal doors, currently open and being guarded from inside the room.


    “Oh, Adam, you’re back!” a guard excitedly said. “How did it go? Your armor looks pretty busted up. Is the tall one someone you rescued on your way to the bottom?”


    “We made progress, but you’ll have to wait for the video release,” he said, and strode past them.


    They walked through the lobby where there were yet even more Explorers, mostly lined up to trade their collected items—and kills—in. All of the employees were non-humans as well. They moved through the crowd and entered a meeting room, where everyone else set aside their helmets and weapons. A staff member, an opossum man, joined them soon after, carrying several bottles of water.


    Adam stated, “We need to finish this meeting as quickly as possible. Tell the others it’s urgent.”


    While they waited, Lauren asked, “Does teleporting always feel gross like this?”


    Heather looked at her. “What do you mean?”


    “I just feel kinda sick somehow.”


    “Teleporting doesn’t do that, though?”


    “I’ve never heard of there being any symptoms,” Marama added.


    Lauren got a lazy shrug from James, and no response at all from Adam or Mack. Only a couple minutes later, two people in suits arrived.


    One of them said to Adam, “It’s good to see you again, and I see you returned with an extra. We’ll get to that see, but let’s first hear your report.”


    Just as the lion man opened his mouth to begin, the opossum man from earlier entered. “Um, the Wolf Pack showed up, and are looking for someone.”Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    “Damn it,” Adam muttered.


    Heather smiled at Lauren. “That’s them.”


    Lauren bolted out of her seat and through the doorway, startling the one who’d brought her the news. She found the four most important people in the world to her gathered at a reception desk and demanding to see Lauren while the Explorers in the lobby gave them a wide berth.


    They all had wolf ears and tails like she did—though of different colors—and were wearing dirty, but well-cared for armor. With their helmets off, she noticed that they didn’t seem to have aged much.


    The last time she’d seen them had been around Christmas a month before falling into a Dungeon. She recalled that her older sister had just started dating someone and her younger sister was looking forward to an elective she’d be taking in her next semester of high school. Her mom had been doing volunteer work and her aunt was dating someone.


    Her aunt was on the phone, getting a lawyer to come here. She gave a wobbly grin when she spotted Lauren.


    Before she knew it, Lauren was wrapped up in a big, tear-soaked hug.


    Eventually, the opossum man coughed to get their attention. He flinched upon seeing all five of the notorious Park family staring at him, their eyes red.


    “U-Uh… Lauren has to finish the meeting,” he said. Three bureaucrats were waiting irritatedly near the doorway.


    Lauren huffed, quickly healed the redness from everyone’s eyes—surprising everyone who witnessed it—and trudged back to the meeting room with a scowl on her face with her family close behind her.


    A bureaucrat woman held her hand up. “Only relevant people are permitted in this meeting.”


    She stared at her. “All of us go in, or none of us do.”


    “That’s not how this works,” she stared back, not intimidated by Lauren’s height.


    “Great, thanks!” Lauren smiled and stepped past her, the other Parks close behind. The woman protested, but a hand was placed on her shoulder by one of the other bureaucrats, who simply shook his head.


    Unfortunately, the room was too small to accommodate everyone, so only her mom and older sister—Maeve and Emma—came in with her. Her mom’s hair and fur color was gray, while Emma’s was black.


    As they sat down, Lauren glanced at the wall where her spear was leaning.


    Good, it’s untouched.


    Adam began his mission report, and Lauren forced herself to focus on it, though her mom and older sister on either side of her made that difficult. His drone was synced with a computer, and the footage began a little over a week ago.


    It began with the team exploring a vast, mountainous landscape covered in snow, a task they had already been at for months. After several days of trudging through deep snow, fighting and killing animals—mountain goats, mostly—and occasionally using a vibration spell on the ground.


    They eventually detected a cave-like structure, and after investigating, found that it had a tunnel with a hole at the end. Through it, they looked down on the jungle from high above. They set up a portable telepad, which took several hours to activate, and then a large, metal device came through—a signal booster for their phones.


    They then used wind spells to descend to the bottom, where the animals were significantly stronger than they were expecting, and they nearly died. The camera of Adam’s drone was damaged by the lemur, when he later showed lots of Lauren’s house for information gathering, it turned out to be mostly useless.


    “The way out of the Dungeon was a tiny little hole in the ceiling…?” Lauren said. “I spent so long searching!”


    While her family comforted her, Adam cursed his bad luck.


    One of the bureaucrats coughed to get everyone’s attention. “Let’s address another issue right now. Heather, bringing the Wolf Pack here was an intentional obstruction of the mission. You will be demoted to another team, and your debt will be extended by six hundred thousand dollars.”


    Heather tensed, but nodded.


    “Wait a moment,” Maeve, Lauren’s mom, interrupted. “We’ll pay off her debt.”


    “You can afford that?!” Lauren asked.


    Emma whispered, “We make a ton of money from selling Dungeon materials from the lower Floors, and we have a lot saved up right now. We end up doing things like this pretty often.”


    “Thank you so much,” Heather said. She turned to Marama. “I’ll help you get out of this horrible team, too, once I can.”


    “Are they forced to be there by debt or something?” Lauren asked.


    “Yes,” Emma said. “It’s incredibly difficult to not end up in debt these days, and pretty much the only feasible way of paying it off is Explorer work for the government.”


    “That’s awful… Let’s help out Marama, too, then.” The mushroom woman was startled by the suggestion, but not against it.


    One of the bureaucrats interrupted, “That can wait. Right now we need to-”


    “No,” Maeve interrupted back, “We’ll get this sorted out right now. I know you have the clearance for this sort of thing.”


    Lauren added, “And I won’t reveal anything I know about the Dungeon or how I’m able to do this.” She created an orb of light above her finger. “My family will be the only ones I explain anything to or assist in any way from this point onward.”


    The bureaucrat woman gripped her tablet hard enough to make it creak and distort the colors on the screen. “Parks are always like this…” she hissed.


    Lauren and her mom smiled pleasantly while awaiting confirmation.


    “We will discuss the details of this later…”


    Lauren and her family were halfway out the door when the bureaucrat threatened, “You will not receive an Explorer’s License and will not be able to reenter the Abyss Dungeon if you leave now.”


    Maeve suddenly smiled and waved at someone in the lobby.


    A bald, human man in a suit walked up to them. “Hi, I’m Sean, your family’s lawyer. You must be the missing fifth member of my most troublesome clients.”


    “Soon to be causing even more trouble, I hope!” Lauren replied.


    He laughed jovially, and squeezed himself into the room after Lauren stepped out. The bureaucrats were even more displeased to see Sean than the Wolf Pack. With him there, Heather’s debt was addressed after some arguing over specific details, but Marama’s was stuck because of an international legal technicality. They also got Lauren’s legal status changed from deceased.


    Lauren stretched as the meeting ended and she could finally just be with her family again, and away from annoying people. “What do we do now?”


    “We go home,” Maeve said.


    They were about to leave, but were stopped by Heather.


    “Thank you again for all the help today,” the bee girl said. “You saved my life.”


    “Of course,” Lauren replied. “Can I… get a hug?”


    She blushed, and her antennae twitched. “Y-Yeah.”


    Lauren enjoyed hugging the cute little bee, while her family watched in amusement.