Deep Sea Agent Lobster moved quietly along the side of the ruined ship, water sloshing around his legs as he stepped through the flooded hold. Salt clung to everything. The planks underfoot were warped but firm, holding just well enough to suggest someone had made sure they wouldn’t fall apart. A lantern bobbed on a rope above, casting soft circles of light across the curved walls.

  The hull creaked, not from stress, but rhythm. Like breathing. The sound came and went in long intervals, almost like a tide, as though the whole room shifted just enough to make people uneasy. Whether it was magic or clever construction, Jims had stopped wondering. It wasn’t the weirdest thing he’d seen lately.

  A fishing net draped over the railing to his left, tangled with half-rotted oars and barnacle-covered glass bottles. Some still held corks. Others didn’t. The water shimmered faintly around them, suggesting something old and half-awake rested nearby.

  He crouched beside a half-sunken crate, one hand resting on the haft of his long weapon. The space wasn’t hostile in the usual sense.

  Jims, or Deep Sea Agent Lobster as the others had joked, was used to being the quiet one in the back row. His gear was piecemeal, mostly waterproof leather and a harpoon with a decent reach.

  He’d stitched up a few wounds earlier with steady fingers and cheap gauze. His fingers still smelled faintly of that powdered wound dust the shops sold in paper packets. Good stuff if you didn’t mind the sting.

  A rope ladder hung nearby, frayed but intact. He eyed it, unsure whether it was a way up or bait. The waterline just reached the first rung, slick with moss. If he grabbed it, he wasn’t sure it would hold.

  Off to the side, a rusted cannon sat tilted in a shallow pool. Light glinted across its surface like it wanted attention. He edged forward, careful not to stir the water too much, avoiding the stairs that creaked so loud they felt like an alarm.

  At the top of the ship’s deck, slumped behind the wheel, a skeleton waited. Its ribs showed through a torn diving suit, the right hand still wrapped tight around a massive, salt-bitten knife.

  Glowing seaweed curled around the body, flickering faintly with blue-green light. It looked like the old diver had been claimed by the ship and hadn’t bothered resisting.

  Someone had posed it, though, its posture held too much intent. Gripping the wheel, leaning forward, waiting. Even in stillness, it had weight. If the rumors were true, this was the one they called Captain Curtley.

  The skeleton didn’t move.

  But Jims went absolutely still.

  “No, no, no…” he muttered, voice barely above the drip of water from his coat. He didn’t want to tangle with that little event, no matter what reward was tied to it. Then he caught a flicker of motion. Past the wheel, beyond the drooping figure of Curtley, something shifted.

  A cloak of gull feathers fluttered slightly between two crates, caught in the soft current that moved through the higher deck. Tucked beside it was a long wooden pipe, unmistakable, plain as day, and a small leather pouch spilling out short darts, each one fletched with fluffy white feather tufts.

  The Sea Gulf Faction.

  Someone else was here. And they didn’t even know Jims was watching.

  The chance was too perfect to pass up.

  He pressed himself to the edge of the upper deck, wedging between a warped beam and a rotten strut, trying to vanish into the structure itself. He kept low.

  Most folks didn’t step into this part of the ship without checking twice for Captain Curtley.

  There were stories.

  Some said Curtley waited by the wheel like a relic, slumped forward with that knife still clutched in one hand. Others swore they’d found him collapsed in the hold, half buried in rope, only to hear him move behind them later. One team said they tripped over a pile of bones that screamed once it hit the surface of the shallows.

  Jims had no interest in finding out which version today was true.

  He eased his weight onto one knee, boards soft and damp beneath him. One hand kept his harpoon close. The other hovered near a pouch of smoke chalk, the cheap stuff, barely enough to make the air shimmer, but it bought time if he threw it down, creating a cloud.

  Half this game was dependent on who found who first and it was the silliest of things that could give you away.

  Belt buckle glint. A breath too loud. A cough at the wrong time.

  Other times?

  People tripped right over him.

  Luck was War’s lover as much as tactics, and Jims swore they all needed therapy.

  The gull cloak shifted again. The figure was just beyond the crate wall, oblivious or pretending to be. They hadn’t seen Jims. They hadn’t seen Curtley. Or if they had, they were using the old skeleton’s presence like a scarecrow, banking on others keeping their distance.

  If so, this wasn’t some newcomer to the battlegrounds.

  He moved closer, each creak of the ship covering his approach. The warped planks gave slightly underfoot, softened by ithe impression of years of salt and pressure. The hull itself joined in, groaning on a long breath that came and went with the tide.

  The water moved with him, slow and steady, barely up to his knees. It rocked in subtle rhythm, catching the lantern light above and scattering it across the walls in long, shivering bands. That light skimmed the surface of barnacles, slick ropes, and rotted beams like it was hesitant to linger. Every shape became something else for a second. Every glint invited doubt.

  Jims didn't blink.

  He matched the sway of the room. Shifted his weight just as the next wave rocked the ship. It was a trick he’d learned early, move against the motion, and you stood out like a broken oar. Move with it, and you vanished.

  Up ahead, the cloak of gull feathers shifted again, tugged slightly by the air. It looked alive from this angle, like it might take flight any second.

  Then, without shifting his balance, without a whisper of doubt, he reached for his weapon.

  His harpoon slid free. The leather wrap held firm, damp from the water but not swollen. The shaft was solid oak, plain and aged, with no blessings carved into it, no spark of magic tucked inside.

  A solid weapon.

  He adjusted his grip. The cloak fluttered once.

  Then he lunged.

  Entering a place like this was signing an invisible agreement, pain, maybe pride, but not permanence. Even if you took a harpoon to the ribs, even if your vision went white from the shock, the most that would follow was a flash of orange light and a sudden pull through space.

  That was the mercy of these rooms. No one died. You could unleash your urge to win in almost any manner and it didn’t kill anyone.

  The harpoon sliced through the air where the cloak had hovered just a blink before. He didn’t feel resistance. Not immediately. But the room always told you.

  Either someone staggered.

  Or they vanished.

  Feathers drifted, slow and quiet. Then they peeled away, revealing what had actually worn the cloak, a rotting sack of clams, stacked and tied into a crude, lumpy shape. Fish guts smeared the floor beneath it, the smell hitting him a beat later.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  A rare Sea Gulf cloak, wasted. Used as bait to lure him in,.

  Those cloaks weren’t handed out. You earned them through sanctioned wins, dozens stacked without defeat, or through enough blood and breath offered to the Faction's rites that you were granted one in silent recognition.

  It took time.

  No one discarded a mark of that kind. Not unless they meant to unsettle someone. Not unless they knew exactly what they were doing.

  Only one person would burn something that valuable just to make a joke, spring a trap, or remind the world that she didn’t need to hoard trophies.

  The Betweener. Her. The Primal Hunter.

  He looked up. Too late.

  A shadow loosened from behind the crate. She didn’t walk.. She slipped free from the space between two bands of light, like she'd been tucked there all along, waiting for someone to blink.

  The hunter’s build was lean, each motion like sailcloth drawn tight over rope. Her grin didn’t ask questions. Her eyes caught the dim and reshaped it, turning the air sea-glass green.

  She wasn’t quite human. Not elf, not dwarven, not scaled or horned or feathered. She looked more like a suit of armor forged with obsessive care into the shape of a young woman, but left hollow, like something sacred lived inside and hadn’t left yet.

  Those green eyes held more than sight. They held growth and decay, the shimmer of water lilies in bloom, and the stillness of rot settling into roots. They were alive in a way a wild beast was, wiser than a crow, hungrier than a wolf, and more playful than a cat.

  Then came the drums. Not real ones, not played, but remembered, something echoing through the bones. A beat that belonged to somewhere deep under the ground where monsters roamed.

  Then came the orange flash.

  Forced removal.

  Jims hit the mat outside the matchzone, ribs clenched, air pulled from his lungs like a net had closed. Sunlight pressed in, far too bright after the deep interior of the ship.

  He blinked.

  “I got Prim’d,” he muttered, barely loud enough for himself.

  Around him, voices lifted. Some laughed. Some sighed. A few cursed.

  The woman had left her mark.

  Again.

  ---

  “That one has potential,” Prim said, and Delta couldn’t stop staring.

  The form of her shell shimmered in soft green copper, threaded through with veins of dim orange that pulsed faintly when she shifted. It looked forged, sculpted even, but not from anything Delta could understand. The whole thing had been ‘commissioned’ by the Demon Smith, Runliac, using nothing but Delta’s own mana as material to create a vessel for the battleground.

  Which didn’t make sense.

  She made things from mana only because she never stopped holding them together. Her mind was the binding. Her presence was the structure. If she ever slipped, even for a moment, the dungeon would either collapse or turn still. Reduced to a grainy weak dust like Silver’s Dungeon. Dead mana would cling to the walls like frost. It would look like stone, but too pale, too lightless. Quiet in the wrong way.

  And yet, somehow, Runliac had done it.

  When people took loot, they used their own mana to make it real but Runliac hadn’t done that, he had made the mana become real without giving himself to the process.

  It was unnatural and Delta could see why Dungeons didn’t often mingle with the demonic.

  It felt strange and Delta was the spearhead of weird for Dungeons.

  Runliac had reached into her, taken something without touch, and struck it into shape with no fire, no tools. Delta hadn’t felt pain. But she had noticed. The moment it left her, she felt smaller.

  Now it stood in front of her. Prim turned slowly, testing her new form. The joints moved without a sound, designed for grace rather than force.

  “I’m embarrassed for you, accepting such a form over the superior rectangle,” Nu said from behind, voice dry and definitive. He floated in his usual space, his screen rotating in a perfect loop, radiating the judgment of a creature born from chaos and a system.

  Prim didn’t respond with words. She reached out and flicked him, a single copper finger tapping against his side. A soft ping rang out, sharp but not harsh.

  Nu wobbled once. Re-stabilized then folded in on himself, expressionless. His lines realigned with quiet offence. A perfect sulk.

  “Fingers are useful to hold many weapons,” she said succinctly.

  “And shaking hands,” Delta interrupted.

  “Of course. I would like to…” Prim’s copper fingers curled, the movement so fluid and controlled that it looked less like mechanics and more like practised choreography. Every joint turned in sequence, smooth as breath.

  “Shake many hands,” she finished with a smile.

  That didn’t sound ominous at all.

  In fact, Delta was pretty sure she was going to think about that later. Possibly while lying awake.

  Nu continued to sulk nearby. His lines remained sharply folded, edges clean and unyielding. He had reduced his presence into a sort of tactical rectangular, minimal emotional output, maximum judgmental surface area.

  Delta exhaled and glanced toward the interface, watching as Prim phased herself into another version of the Fishgeon.

  Technically, there should only be one.

  That was the design. One entrance, one loop, one matching ecosystem where challenge and chaos could politely queue up like a well-behaved catastrophe. But then the battle junkies came. Loud, cheery, half-armored people with swords they didn’t clean and banners they forgot the meaning of.

  Over the last twenty-four hours, they had arrived in waves. By the dozen. Some of them were using duplicate names. Some were definitely the same person with different hats.

  The original Fishgeon had held for a while, but eventually, the pressure got to it. Spells misfired. Room states desynced. One poor crab got duplicated eleven times and ended up applying for legal non-combatant status.

  In the end, Delta had dumped more mana into the core and let the system split the whole thing. Now there were seven Fishgeons running simultaneously, each slightly out of phase. Echoes, really.

  Fragile, glitchy, and just coherent enough to keep people from noticing they'd broken the laws of localized space.

  Again.

  She peered in at one of the mirror Fishgeons, just in time to catch someone using nothing but two barrel lids as shields. Not for defense but for bashing. He wasn’t even hitting hard, more like annoying his opponent into defeat.

  But it was working. Somehow.

  Another fighter was using only his feet. Just grimy socks and a cigarette that never left his mouth. He’d staked out the wreck’s galley kitchen as his domain and refused to fight anywhere with good lighting.

  It was pure chaos, and Delta loved it.

  Not because she enjoyed violence. She couldn’t ever enjoy swinging a sword at someone. That kind of effort made her joints ache just thinking about it. But watching two grown warriors laugh like children right before vanishing in a clean flash of orange light?

  It reminded her that she could let other people enjoy things she didn’t. Like children running into walls, weird, but sometimes it made them happy. Who was she to interfere with the little joys of controlled trauma?

  She blinked and glanced down, only to find Cois and Fran standing beside her. The sheer difference in height made the moment feel like someone had bumped the perspective settings too far and then lost the manual.

  “Can we… can we beat the outsiders?” Cois asked. Or maybe Fran. Their voices had that wobble that meant it mattered.

  Delta’s mouth dropped open. Not at the question, but at the way everything else in the room suddenly responded to it.

  The ground shifted.

  Billy stepped into view without a word. His eyes were shadowed, his coat too long, his energy entirely monochrome. He didn’t make an entrance so much as appear, like smoke that had decided to coalesce into a goblin. His only visible effort was adjusting the thick belt slung across his waist. No one knew what was in the pouches.

  Behind him, Numb followed, taller than any goblin should be, face kind and unreadable in equal parts. He gave Delta a small wave, genuinely cheerful, and nodded at Cois and Fran like a little brother who fully expected to see them graduate from stabbing practice with honors.

  Hob and Gob arrived next, shoulders touching. They didn’t say anything either. They just cracked their knuckles in perfect sync and looked around like they were already halfway into the fight.

  Then came Jack, covered in small metal canisters, powder tubes, and wires that pulsed faintly with enchantments. His eyes were wide, excited, and deeply invested in the idea of the outsiders stepping exactly where he wanted them to.

  Delta raised a hand. “This wasn’t a meeting,” she began, tone light but hopeful.

  “I’m not asking,” came another voice, clear and level.

  Wyin’s lesser form phased into place beside them, flickering with restrained impatience. Her body remained asleep upstairs, untouched by any of this, but that barely mattered anymore.

  “I will be entering this hellscape,” she said, voice flat, “and carving a throne from the bones of the weak.”

  Wyin paused.

  “And I might need a second throne. Something fish-themed. For ambience.”

  There was a long silence.

  Cois and Fran nodded solemnly. Jack whispered something into one of his powder kegs. Billy folded his arms. Gob looked at Hob. Hob looked back. Delta rubbed her forehead.

  Could Delta sponsor a Pro-League monster team in a PVP environment?

  Was that allowed?

  ...Better question.

  Was it ethical?

  Even better question: would anyone stop her? Her dungeon was built to adapt. Built to evolve. Built to challenge.

  “Oh, sorry,” Delta said after a moment, squinting at a small chunk of fine print. “It looks like you all need to be associated with the sea or ocean to participate.” She tapped the requirement. It flickered. The words ‘aquatic alignment preferred’ blinked once and went still.

  “There, see?” she continued, snapping her fingers. “Tiny limitation. Very firm. Definitely something we should respect.”

  “Oh, I already expected that,” Wyin said, voice far too casual.

  Delta paused.

  “Oh?” she asked weakly.

  A distant sound answered.

  Drums.

  Not music, just rhythm. Ancient, rolling percussion that sounded like it was echoing up through the floorboards of the world. Then came the hiss and rush of ocean spray, followed by a creek that suggested someone was daring gravity to complain.

  From the fourth floor, something responded.

  “Nu,” Delta said. “Something just filed a... thematic override.”

  Nu’s interface blinked once.

  Then a ship appeared behind Wyin.

  A full ship. Smelling of warm apples and pastry. Its sails were stitched from fabric that looked suspiciously like hand-sewn recipe pages. Cannons rotated slowly. The flag bore a crusty pie with a sword through it.

  Wyin spread her arms as the ship settled behind her.

  “We are the Pi-rates.”

  ----

  Warning: Team Mode Unlocked

  Rules Adjusted: Theme accepted. Oceanic alignment granted via interpretive clause.

  Rewards: One Boss Skip Ticket.

  ---