“This means war!”

The pyramid trembled, as Vainqueur’s roar echoed through the treasure chamber. In his fury, his tail hit a wall and caused it to shake.

“Your Majesty, calm down!” Victor pleaded before he could collapse the place on them.

“Ah, that takes me back,” Furibon said from within his scythe. “I should not rejoice at the sight… but I do.”

“You, shut up,” Victor replied, while Jolie attempted to calm her uncle.

“Uncle, we can still find new treasure—”

“This is not about the treasure!” Vainqueur roared back, his niece cowering at his outburst. “This is a personal insult and challenge to my authority as the first, and greatest, dragon adventurer!”

As Vainqueur loudly declared the Third War of the Hoard on Icefang and ranted about his grievances to his niece, Victor noticed that Kia remained eerily calm. She was busy examining the mummy left behind by icefang, ignoring the dust falling from the ceiling.

“The mummy hasn’t risen,” Kia said, after finishing. “They plundered the pyramid’s treasure room, but no mummy rose.”

“So what?” Victor asked, before catching on. “Oh, I get it. If it was a dungeon’s true treasure room, then the corpse would have attacked or cursed the invaders.”

“The Tower of Sablar was said to reach the skies, and this pyramid is smaller than other dungeons I visited,” Kia replied. “The bulk of the structure is probably below us, with the room serving as a decoy to deter foolish intruders.”

Icefang must have called it quits after grabbing the first batch of gold he could find; meaning there could still be treasure left behind. How did he knew Vainqueur would loot it soon afterward though? Something didn't feel right. “So there may be a secret passage, either in this room or the next.”

Kia nodded, examining the walls Vainqueur hadn’t smashed. Strange hieroglyphs covered the murals, representing scenes of elves prostrating before a giant worm as it moved to eat the sun. Victor recognized the iconography as the symbols of Sablar, the worm god of time, destruction, and earth.

Allison had told him Sablar’s worshippers took over the elven empire which ruled the continent, before drying it out. The magical cataclysm they caused wiped out their entire civilization.

Could the pyramid be only the tower’s tip, with the rest buried under the sand?

A picture, so small that almost no one would notice, caught Victor’s attention. A skeletal beast surrounded by icy, chilling winds, whispered words to a pharaonic figure. An immense, pointed tower overshadowed them, the creature looking at it with a malicious grin.

“Vic, can you read the pictures?” Kia’s fingers trailed on dust-covered runes. “I don’t know the elf language.”

“That is not elven,” Furibon said from within the scythe. “That is R’lyehan.”

The tongue which the Moon Beast used? In that case, Victor tried his hand at reading it, translating the words out loud thanks to his Perk. “The password is: Wormlike Apple.”

The second he ended his sentence, Victor was swallowed by a flash of violet light. He had left the treasure room for… somewhere else. A place filled with such thick darkness, that he couldn’t even see his own hands.

“[Death Candle],” Victor cast, a ghostly will’ o wisp materializing in front of him, and illuminating the room.

A dark, closed room crawling with animated corpses.

Victor immediately raised his scythe to find himself surrounded by eight undead knights three times as tall as Kia herself; monsters wearing heavy armor thick enough to resist artillery fire, and massive swords which could easily cut horses like cheese. These monstrous beings glanced down at him, their crimson eyes shining in the darkness.

“A trap room,” Furibon guessed, taking pleasure in his ‘owner’s’ impending trouble. “I had one but your dragon master smashed through it.”

“Guys?” As no one answered, Victor readied his scythe, ready to defend his life. “You want a piece of me? Come at me!”

But they did nothing.

The knights stood there threateningly, observing him as if he were a prop.

“Hello? You aren’t going to kill me.” No answer; the knights didn’t even move an inch. “Hello? Can you understand me?”

No answer. Either they didn’t care, or more likely, couldn’t.

They weren’t sentient. Fearsome automatons, but vulnerable to his [Deadfriend] Perk nonetheless.

“Okay…” Victor didn’t question his luck, glancing around in case the stone room had murals with other trick passwords; it didn’t. “Why didn’t Kia and the others follow? I blurted out the code out loud.”

“You must say it in their native tongue,” Furibon said. “Your Perk translated your words into R’lyehan, but your friends will not have the same privilege.”

Come to think of it, why hadn’t Vainqueur summoned him back to his side? This being a trick room, maybe it blocked teleportation effects?

He would have to find his way out. Bugger. Victor walked out of the room through the only gate, the dead warriors leaving him be.

Victor found himself in an underground maze of stone stairs and corridors, kept in much better shape than the levels above. His will o wisp familiar provided him with much-needed light, guiding him around.

Rusted, steel golems dusted off the various rooms like workers, while undead warriors patrolled the area. Victor guessed that no sentient creature would stick around keeping a silent tomb after the first century, leaving only mindless automatons to defend it.

Unfortunately for the owner, time hadn’t been kind to the guards. Most of the golems had fallen into a state of disrepair, enough that some had collapsed and now crawled with their arms. Their design reminded the visitor of Rolo, and he figured the golem may have come from this stock.

While the defenses could have easily taken down any invader in their early days, Victor’s group could probably force their way through.

“Hey, can you point me towards the exit?” Victor asked one of the undead guardians, which ignored him. “Furibon, is there a necromancy spell which could take them over?”

“I would teach it to you if you had the tier level needed to cast it. These are Tomb Defenders, among the most powerful kind of undead to exist. A group of them could swarm and overwhelm a dragon.”

Victor doubted they could take down Vainqueur unless in large numbers, but decided not to linger long, in case their programming could overcome his Perk.

After twenty minutes of wandering around the tomb though, he realized this would be easier said than done. The dungeon had many rooms, all of them identical and lacking in anything other than walls and space. He began to cut marks in the stone to note his path, and quickly realized he had walked in circles.

“Where is the treasure?” Victor wondered. “Hell, where are the decorations? Who would build a tomb containing nothing but stone?”

“You think the tomb of a cult worshipping entropy would care about post-mortem materialism?” Furibon taunted him. “Followers of Sablar do not value anything that does not come from the earth.”

“Wait, you knew this tomb might have no treasure? And you said nothing?”

“I hoped that you and that dragon would die for nothing, is that too much to ask? Also, have you tried the second room on your left?”

Victor glanced in that direction, finding a room he hadn’t marked yet. He stepped inside, finding it to be slightly different from the others.

For one thing, a black sarcophagus laid in the center, covered with worm symbols and purple gemstones. Murals similar to those of the fake treasure room adorned the walls, alongside decorations such as canopic jars on pillars and scimitars.

One of the decorations contrasted starkly with the others by its brightness: a golden shield covered with gemstones, attached to the wall in front of the sarcophagus. Victor’s [Eye for Treasure] immediately identified it as a [Crest].

“Trap?”

“Trap,” Furibon replied.

Victor first glanced at the sarcophagus, in case it was a mimic or some other dangerous device. He warily knocked at the surface with his scythe, remaining at a respectable distance.

When no mummy rose to kill him, Victor turned to look at the crest, poking it with his scythe. Instead of causing the roof to collapse or the like, he received a notification.

Use [Crest] to break the Class ceiling?