First Floor, Salaria.

Sol sat with one leg crossed over the other, his elbow resting on the arm of the chair, and his chin resting on his knuckles.

The room was quiet. The other Brotherhood members stood along the walls, each one trying not to make noise and disturb him.

Even though they were all Adepts, and he wasn’t even the most powerful person in the room when calculated by Adept rank, he was the chosen one.

No one would dare go against him.

The man at the center of the room was on one knee, his head bowed.

"I wish mercy onto you, Young Master."

"And I carry it," Sol said halfheartedly. "Report."

The man lifted his head but kept his knee on the floor. "We found Lukas Valentine."

Sol’s eyes narrowed slightly. He didn’t move otherwise.

"But he’s not alone," the man continued. "He travels with two women. We traced all three of them to the Faustian Bank in sector four, where they opened accounts on the same day."

"Based on what we were able to gather, the women are identified as Akira Valentine and Melody Valentine."

Sol was quiet for a moment, then he chuckled. It was a short sound, low and genuine, which was unusual for him.

"Two wives," he said. "Lukas Valentine has two wives."

He tilted his head slightly. "Interesting priorities for a man walking around with someone else’s Fate Key."

"There is more, Young Master." The man said, trying not to put any inflection in his tone, in case Sol read something that wasn’t there. "Prior to arriving in Salaria, Lukas Valentine won the Prodigy Tournament in a Tier 5 city called Havenhart. We were also able to find out that he has already advanced to Adept rank."

"His current location is somewhere within or around the Red Desert spatial gate in sector four. Beyond that, we were unable to pinpoint his exact whereabouts."

Sol uncrossed his legs and sat forward.

He stared down at the man on the floor for a few seconds, then looked past him at the others standing along the walls.

"The Red Desert," he said quietly, more to himself than anyone else.

He stood.

"Make preparations," he said, his voice returning to its full, flat authority. "Pack for travel and have everything ready within the hour."

He straightened his jacket and looked towards the window. "I’m not sitting in this apartment waiting for more information to arrive." He turned back to the room. "I’ll find him myself."

The man on the floor bowed his head lower. "As you wish, Young Master."

Sol was already walking towards the corridor.

***

Second Floor, Red Desert.

The four of them passed through the outer gate of the ringed city as the sun slowly rose into the morning sky, chasing away the chill of the night.

Karrakas brought out his compass immediately, checked the needle, and adjusted their direction without breaking stride.

Melody fell into step beside Lukas, looking back at the gate behind them. "I don’t know why, but I assumed the dungeon entrance would be inside the ringed city," she said. "Like back on the First Floor. Every city had their dungeons’ spatial gates inside the walls."

"Well, the rules are a bit different up here," Karrakas said, not looking up from the compass. "There are dungeons inside Second Floor cities, but they’re rare."

"Second Floor cities are usually built around their spatial gates, and dungeons rarely show up that close to a spatial gate for the city to actually encompass it. But sometimes, we do get a dungeon close enough to be enclosed within a city."

He glanced back at them. "Out here, dungeons are scattered across the Floor. Some are marked, which means they’ve been found by someone, and some can be found by accident, which could mean you’re the first to find it. Or not."

Akira looked out at the desert spreading around them. "We’ve been on this floor for days and we haven’t come across a single dungeon entrance."

Karrakas gestured broadly at the red sand in every direction. "How large do you think this desert is?"

Akira said nothing.

"Exactly," Karrakas said. "The dungeons are out there. The desert just makes them easy to miss."

Lukas had been watching Karrakas work the compass since they’d left the gate. "Show me how to read it," he said. "You won’t be with us forever. I want to know the directions, what to look for, and how you’re navigating."

Karrakas glanced at him, then held the compass out flat between them as they walked.

"As I’m sure you already know, the needle always finds north," he said. "That’s your anchor. Everything else is relative to it. But that isn’t always the case."

"Some locations have needles that point in different directions, so the first thing to do in a new location on the Second Floor is to confirm the direction. But here, it’s north."

He pointed at the cardinal markings around the face of his compass, demonstrating how to read it. "All you need to do now is pick a landmark on the horizon in that direction and you walk to it."

"And if there’s no landmark?" Lukas asked.

"Then you check the compass every ten minutes and correct your drift," Karrakas said. "The desert will pull you off course without you noticing."

Lukas nodded and kept watching.

They walked for the better part of an hour before they encountered anything.

The sand ahead of them burst open and a single Chilopoda pulled itself free, legs already cycling, orienting towards the group.

Lukas raised his hand and fired two [Death Bolts] in quick succession.

The first hit the shell and spread rot, while the second found the gap the rot had opened. The beast folded before it had covered half the distance between them.

Akira and Melody chuckled behind him.

Twenty minutes later, Karrakas raised a hand and stopped them.

"There," he said.

Lukas looked.

A stone arch rose from the desert floor ahead of them, looking plain and undecorated, sitting in the open sand as if it had simply always been there.

Inside its frame was a swirling mass of darkness, moving slowly within the arch like it was alive.

"That looks nothing like the gates on the First Floor," Melody said.

"No," Karrakas agreed. "Second Floor dungeon gates look like this. All of them."

"Why does it look like it would hurt to walk through?" Akira asked.

"Looks can be deceiving." Karrakas chuckled.

She stared at the swirling darkness with narrowed eyes. "And I still have a hard time believing that."

Karrakas smiled and stepped forward.

They followed him in.