Chapter 349: Rewritten Course

The OXI membrane at the dungeon entrance passes through my body with a cold resistance.

For an instant it feels like diving headfirst into a wall of condensed water. The pressure covers my eyes, gets into my ears, and runs over every inch of skin before vanishing all at once.

My foot reaches for ground and doesn't find it.

I go into a roll, trying to disguise a memory that failed me for one second.

'Damn it. There wasn't a drop here.'

It's only a few meters, but enough to spin me a couple of times before my shoulder hits a wet surface. I roll across stone and stop near a narrow channel, lifting my head in time to see Freya come through above me. She lands better, knees bent, one hand on the floor. Zhang Xi comes next, then Rhayne, who lands on her backside and lets out a small groan.

Veric is last.

He crosses the membrane with his body already set and touches down holding his weapon, looking for a threat before he even checks whether everyone made it in.

I went in last and came out first. The membrane sometimes holds on to whoever gives it the most resistance.

Above us, the blue surface of OXI trembles.

For a second, the colossal shadow outside appears through it, warped. Something hits the entrance hard and the whole membrane ripples, but the creature doesn't come through. The OXI contracts right after, sealing the passage until nothing is left but the circular wall of stone.

Veric keeps looking that way.

"Everyone in one piece?"

Rhayne gets up, rubbing her hip.

"I think so."

I check the group, then the tunnel around us. Water runs through two shallow side channels, leaving a central strip of stone where we can walk. Moss covers part of the walls, and small formations of blue OXI push out of a few cracks, giving off enough light to see several meters ahead.

"Who here has been inside a dungeon before?"

Rhayne raises her hand halfway.

"I haven't."

Nobody else answers.

That settles the question.

Veric keeps his attention on the tunnel.

"Then learn fast. Everyone stays on guard from here. We don't know who came in before us, or what's already been born in here."

He's right.

I look at Rhayne.

"A dungeon works differently from the open world. Out there, you can pull back, change routes, or just run if you find something above your level. In here, the whole place exists around its own rules. Ignore those rules and brute force only decides how long it takes you to die."

Rhayne pays attention immediately.

I point at the stone around us.

"There's usually some ancestral technology, artifact, or phenomenon concentrating OXI at the center of the structure. We call it the core, for convenience. That core sustains the condensed region, the paths, and most of the behavior of the creatures living in here."

She looks at the wall that closed behind us.

"So all of this was created by something?"

"Shaped would be a better word. Thirstfall already provides the raw material. The core forces that material to obey a specific structure."

Zhang Xi runs her fingers along the moss on the wall while she listens.

I keep going.

"In the Ferryman's Toll, the core is what we came for. The wishing statue."

Rhayne turns to me fast. It's a cute reaction for something that startled her that badly.

Before she can ask anything, Freya cuts in.

"Fine, but why did we run in like that? You barely looked at the entrance before you told everyone to cross."

I look at her.

"You really didn't feel it?"

Freya frowns.

"I felt the pressure."

"That was Rank B. And from the behavior, it wasn't defending territory. It was hunting."

Some of the irritation leaves her face.

Zhang Xi lifts her eyes from the wall.

"Saporotug."

I nod.

"Exactly."

Rhayne looks between us as Zhang explains before I have to.

"A psychic predator. It uses sonic vibration to wear down the mental resistance of its prey before establishing direct influence."

"The scream we heard was already part of the hunt," I add. "If we'd stayed out there, it would start with disorientation. Then altered perception, desensitization, and enthrallment. By the time you notice you're making a bad decision, you might already be walking toward it without knowing."

Freya looks at the sealed wall.

"And you knew that when you told us to go in?"

"I knew I'd rather face a Rank C dungeon than find out which one of us would be the first to want to hug a Saporotug."

Rhayne makes a face.

"Is there any way to fight one?"

"Rune Buds. Mental protection spread across the group, sonic interruption, and a team strong enough to kill the thing before the Buds stop working. We didn't bring any of it, because we weren't planning to hunt a Rank B predator today."

Veric finally lowers his weapon a little, though he stays focused on the corridor.

"Then walking sounds like a better option than continuing to discuss the local wildlife."

I agree.

I take the first step.

Ocean's Law reacts.

A window opens in front of my eyes, harsh enough to stop me where I stand.

[CAUSAL DISSONANCE] [Causal deviation detected.]

Another line appears below it. ℴ

[The course established by your previous choices has been rewritten.]

I go still.

"Wait."

The four people behind me stop.

I ignore the looks and read the message again.

Causal Dissonance.

Chaos Theory has never done this.

Since it appeared, that skill has worked in silence. Coincidences happened, improbable events showed up in my path, and outcomes went sideways without a single explanation. I only ever found out afterward that something had been pushed for better or worse.

The advance to Rank C and the skill's own evolution seem to have changed that.

'So now it warns me?'

The problem is that the warning says nothing useful about what was rewritten.

My choices? The dungeon? The creature outside? Some decision made days ago that has finally reached me?

I close the window.

Oliver is the only person I've ever explained Chaos Theory to. Telling everyone here now would mean stopping in the middle of a dungeon to explain a skill I don't understand myself, and informing the group that the system just announced our causal chain has changed.

'Great way to open an expedition. Panic and disorder.'

"What happened?" Veric asks.

I look at the tunnel ahead.

"I don't know yet. From here on, extreme caution."

Freya studies me for a few seconds but doesn't push, and the look Rhayne gives me tells me she's probably figured out that I'm hiding something, even if she has no context to guess what.

We start walking.

The tunnels of the Ferryman's Toll were built for water, not for people. The central passage changes width as we advance, while the side channels take in small flows that drop from openings in the walls and disappear through old grates. Some stones are covered in thick moss. Others carry lines of blue mineral formed over years of contact with condensed OXI.

The water brings things with it.

Small branches catch between the grates. Leaves, scraps of old fabric, and pieces of wood pile up where the current loses strength. I find the bones of some small animal wedged between two stones, polished by the flow until they've gone almost white.

I recognize the place.

At least that's what I keep telling myself.

The first turn is where I remember it.

So is the second.

Then a fork appears that should never exist.

I stop for half a second, read the flow of energy coming out of it, and take the passage on the right, because it runs roughly toward the main gallery. A few minutes later the tunnel drops, when in my memory it should have kept going straight.

I keep walking. The energy is still very close to what I remember.

Maybe three years changed more of this place than I thought.

Except dungeons don't age the way ordinary buildings do.

And what's more different than anything is that we still haven't run into a single thing.

No monsters.

No sound of movement beyond the water and our boots.

The silence starts to weigh more the further we go. Maybe the Tidefall is what pushes the monsters down into these tunnels later on. There's no way to know.

Veric notices the look on my face.

"You've been thinking too long."

I look at him.

"Is that a complaint?"

"It's an observation. Since the first fork you've been staring at the walls like they've personally insulted you. Are you sure you know what you're doing?"

I stop near a junction where three small channels meet.

There's no point pretending everything is normal.

"I'm sure about where we are. The problem is that some things are different from what I expected."

Freya looks back at the tunnel behind us, then at the next one.

"Different how?"

"Routes that should exist don't. Others showed up where I wasn't expecting them. I still recognize the structure. Not the arrangement."

Veric takes that with much less surprise than Zhang Xi does. He's spent enough time around my predictions to accept that "I expected something else" can mean something more specific than a bad memory. Freya and Rhayne already know my secret, so they take it without comment.

I start walking again.

Is that it?

The chain Causal Dissonance said had been rewritten?

If it is, I have a bigger problem than a fork in the wrong place.

I came into this dungeon because I knew the route.

I knew the mechanisms.

I knew the main puzzle.

Three years from now, the Ferryman's Toll would be dangerous but predictable for anyone with advance information.

Every step is eating into that advantage.

We go on for a few more minutes until the tunnel ends abruptly at a wide opening.

I stop before the edge.

The gallery stretches out far below us.

It's enormous.

An old maintenance walkway runs along the upper wall, giving a view of nearly the whole chamber. Dozens of stone pillars rise from the water to the ceiling, some thick enough to hide a small house behind them. Elevated channels connect parts of the structure and pour water into reservoirs spread across several levels.

Small statues are fixed to the pillars.

I remember them.

Hooded figures holding oars, vessels, and coins on open palms. Each one is part of the mechanism that controls the flow of water through the room.

The problem shows up when I start counting.

The pieces are right.

The positions aren't.

A statue that should sit on the third pillar is on the sixth. Two channels I remember as connected end in different reservoirs. An enormous floodgate takes up the center of the gallery, where my memory has nothing but a circular platform.

And there are creatures everywhere.

Dozens.

Humanoids with wet skin move through the lower areas, some hunched over their own legs while others patrol the walkways between the pillars. They have long arms, fingers partly joined by webbing, and open gills along the sides of the neck. Their jaws push further forward than a human's, and uneven rows of teeth show every time one of them opens its mouth.

Some carry spears made of bone and rusted metal. Others use broad blades pulled from some old structure inside the dungeon itself.

[Brinekin — Rank C]

Freya stops beside me and watches one of them drag a smaller creature into the water.

"Are those the fish-men?"

"That's the nickname Divers use."

She follows another Brinekin crossing a walkway, spine arched, gills pulsing.

"The 'man' part is generous."

I don't disagree.

The number of them worries me more.

I remember this gallery.

On my run, there were maybe eight or ten Brinekin spread between the pillars. The main challenge wasn't killing all of them. It was getting through the puzzle without triggering the wrong floodgates, raising the water to lift certain platforms in a specific sequence.

Now there are at least three times that many.

The sequence itself looks impossible to reproduce.

Veric steps to the edge and studies the channels.

"Is that the puzzle?"

"It is."

He points at the central structure.

"Do you know how to solve it?"

I keep looking.

I know how to solve a version that apparently doesn't exist anymore.

The oarsman statue was supposed to receive water first. Then the coin. Then the vessel. Opening the north floodgate too early released Brinekin from a side chamber, and letting the west reservoir pass a certain height blocked the exit.

None of that order matches what's in front of me.

Behind us, the entry membrane is already gone. The Ferryman's Toll only gives back an exit once we complete its rules or find some alternative the core itself accepts.

My knowledge of the future just lost most of its value.

I look over the gallery again, tracking the Brinekin, the channels, and the rearranged statues. Causal Dissonance warned me that the course of my choices had been rewritten, and for the first time I'm standing in front of something familiar that no longer follows the history I remember.

"If I don't know how to solve it now, I'm going to learn."

Veric turns his face toward me.

I tip my chin at the sealed passage behind us, then at the gallery.

"Because there's no going back before we solve the first puzzle."