Suddenly, they were no longer on the street outside Tavern. They were in a room where the water was just about to reach the ceiling.

"What the hell?!" Mr. No exclaimed nervously as he desperately swam toward the little surface they had left. "What is this?! What the—?!"

Before he could finish, the big man froze and was completely encased in a crystal-like material.

Swordsman turned to Master for an explanation. She was dressed in white robes embroidered with gold, covered by a breastplate with shoulder guards made of a bright, silver-colored metal. On either side of her were two enormous golden wings, formed from hundreds of thousands of feathers made of light. Her eyes were enveloped in a blinding radiance. She wasn't looking at him. Her attention was fixed on the ceiling above them.

Within a second, a hole opened in the dense stone, creating a perfectly circular passage without sending rubble or even dust flying, as though the stone that should have been there had simply ceased to exist.

Without saying a word or giving the group time to marvel at what they'd just witnessed, Master took flight at superhuman speed and disappeared into the darkness of the caverns.

"Well, apparently Mr. No knew some other words besides 'no,'" Dragoon remarked, trying to lighten the mood.

"Do you think he's all right?" Cleric asked.

"I suppose so. Master wouldn't have left him behind if he wasn't, right?"

The group didn't answer. They weren't so sure.

With nothing else they could do, they patiently let themselves be carried by the current of water rising through the circular opening. After several minutes, they realized the passage extended more than fifteen meters through solid stone. None of them said anything, but they were all stunned by the amount of power Master must have possessed to accomplish something like that.

"So? What now?" Swordsman asked when they finally reached what appeared to be the roof of the building. Another tower stood among a forest of towers of varying sizes and states of decay. Absolute darkness surrounded them both above and below. Bridges like the one they'd fallen from stretched out in both directions.

"Master went looking for Rogue, so..." Archer began.

"Rogue? I hope he's still alive," Dragoon said.

Swordsman noticed his friend clenching his fists as he said it.

"Yeah. Rini says he is. She can sense his Angelino."

"Angel... what? Rini?" the three boys asked in confusion.

"Forget it. It's just... Forget it. What are we going to do? Ri... Something tells me they're not that far away. Four towers in that direction. But how do we get there? Should we wait for Master?"

"

Something

?" Swordsman asked, intrigued. "

Something

tells you exactly where Rogue is, including his direction and altitude? Archer, a hunch can't be that specific."

"I already told you it doesn't matter, Swordsman. Yes.

Something

is telling me."

"Archer, don't act like—"

"All right, all right," Dragoon interrupted. "This isn't the time to fight over stupid things. Thanks to that

something

, Archer knows where we need to go. So let's go."

Swordsman stared at his friend in disbelief. He had never seen him this serious. This focused. He waited for him to suddenly follow it up with some tasteless joke, as was customary. But nothing came. His attention seemed completely fixed on the spot Archer had pointed toward.

"Dragoon," Swordsman began. "What if we let Master handle it? I mean, look how powerful she is. I don't think she'll have any trouble dealing with whatever danger this place can throw at her on her own."

"And what if she does? What if she ends up needing us?" Dragoon replied.

Silence fell again for a few seconds. None of them were accustomed to seeing him like this.

"I agree with Dragoon," Cleric finally said. "After all, a little backup never hurts, right?"

"Fine. Yes, I'm with you. But how are we supposed to get there? We'd need wings to cross the abyss or we'd have to jump from tower to tower."

"Leave it to me, Swordsman," Dragoon declared resolutely. "I may not have wings... but I sure know how to jump."

----------------------------------------------------

Sarah had no trouble locating Jacob, as for the first time Andros decided to cooperate with her by guiding her toward what he believed to be the boy's Angelino.

She couldn't help but feel proud when Andros himself told her that Catherine already had one, that she'd accepted it and they were already communicating, forming a bond. But she had no time to stop and celebrate.

After flying over the abyss for a couple of minutes, she reached the stone wall separating the ruins of the old castle from the actual Warren. As she approached, she did the same thing she'd done to the ceiling of the trial chamber and opened a hole large enough for her to pass through comfortably. This time, however, she decided to add a little drama and blasted through the final layer of rock.

The dust kicked up by the explosion prevented her from seeing immediately, but the sounds of panicked screams and astonishment told her she'd just arrived at the right place.

In midair, she snapped her fingers and changed from Archangel to Divine Knight in a fraction of a second, crashing to the ground like a meteor thanks to the enormous weight of her golden armor.

The stone floor shattered beneath the impact. Before the debris had even settled, she was already cutting down goblins with her enormous greatsword. There were hundreds. Perhaps thousands. But not even a hundred times that number would have been enough to stop her.

As she slaughtered them, she scanned the area, searching for her target. The cavern was enormous. But the most surprising thing was that everything inside it was made of gold. Well... surprising to anyone who wasn't her. After all, she was the one who had created all of this.

"Stop!" A guttural voice came from the back of the chamber.

The attackers immediately halted. Sarah did the same. She could now see the enormous leader of the clan. A massive goblin whose body was almost perfectly round from sheer obesity. Unlike the other goblins, who wore loincloths, this one wore a very fine scarlet vest that fit him extremely tightly, along with a dark blue beret decorated with a long white feather. They were the garments of some of the few nobles the goblins had counted among their victims. Dozens of gold and precious gemstones adorned his fingers, neck, and arms.

The monarch sat upon a roughly forged throne, almost shapeless but made entirely of solid gold. One of his enormous feet rested on a cage. Inside it, Jacob lay on the floor. The moment he saw her, Jacob's face lit up.

"Who disturb place peace?" the goblin asked. "Gortlabr, I, monarch, disturbed by disturbance. Disturber pay by being Gortlabr night breakfast!"

"I'm sorry. It would've been fun to play with you, but I don't have time for this now."

Sarah once again assumed an attack stance.

"Us many ones, not even ten of ones of you!" Gortlabr shouted furiously.

"Yes. That's almost unfair... for you."

With that, Sarah snapped her fingers to change into Archmage.

At that exact moment, Andros interrupted her with an announcement that filled her with terror.

----------------------------------------------------

Swordsman and the others reached the tower Archer had pointed out, with Dragoon carrying them one by one across the rooftops and any other surfaces he could reach along the way.

The room was empty.

"And now what does Rini say?" Swordsman asked when Dragoon arrived with Archer in his arms, completing his final trip.

"I don't understand... She... Okay, but..." Archer began to mumble as though she were speaking with someone who kept interrupting her. No one in the group said anything. It wasn't that they'd gotten used to it, but it wasn't the first time she'd done it during the journey. And whenever someone tried to suggest that something strange was happening, Archer lashed out at them with a temper only she could have. "Yes, I trust you, but... Okay, I'll tell them. I'll tell them. Rini says it's right behind that wall."

The group looked toward the tower's balcony, where Archer was pointing. Three or four meters beyond it stood the imposing face of the cavern itself. Dragoon dropped onto one of the benches decorating the room, exhausted.

"You guys figure out what to do while I rest, okay?"

"Dragoon, Archer. That's part of the mountain. I don't think there's any way to open an entrance through it," Swordsman said. "We made it this far, but we have to accept that we've reached the limit of our abilities. We'll have to wait for..."

"Swordsman, since when are you so negative?" Archer asked. "Maybe it's because Healer isn't here? I'm sure if she told you to open an entrance through the rock, you'd grab a shovel and..."

"Please, guys. This isn't the time," Cleric interrupted.

Swordsman sighed and folded his arms in frustration.

"Let's look at it like one of those riddles from the treasury chamber, all right?" Cleric continued. "If Rini says it's over there, then there's definitely a way for us to get through. We just have to analyze the situation carefully."

"Rini says she likes you, Cleric," Archer said.

Cleric tried to take it as a compliment, but he couldn't completely hide his discomfort at the thought that his companion might have lost her mind.

Swordsman sighed again and turned toward the balcony, thinking.

"Do you think I've got the gears turning?" Cleric whispered as he walked over to Dragoon and nodded toward Mica.

"I can hear them from here, my dude," Dragoon replied with a huge grin.

"All right," Swordsman began theorizing as a die rolled. "Looking at it objectively, it's strange that this tower has a balcony that happens to face directly toward the mountain. The first explanation could be that the castle used to be on the surface and then sank. Hard to believe, considering most of the structure is still standing. The other possibility is that the mountain grew alongside the structure over the years. But that's simply ridiculous. If a mountain this size suddenly appeared, the tectonic movements would've brought the castle down. The other possibility is that..."

Another die fell showing a seventeen.

"...this is some kind of entrance into the mountain." He sounded puzzled. He didn't even believe his own theory. Yet something inside him told him it was true.

Uneasy, he began searching for some detail, some switch, anything that might give them a clue about how to open the hidden passage.

The search took five minutes. Then ten. As they approached fifteen, Dragoon finally stood up, bored.

"Dude, I'm starting to think this whole thing really is nonsense. Maybe this balcony facing the mountain really is just a coincidence."

"This isn't the time for that, Dragoon. I'm convinced there's a way through. Don't ask me why."

"Great. One person is talking to imaginary friends, and now the other is obsessed with solving riddles that don't exist," Dragoon said, turning toward Cleric. "You know what's worse? If Master could've solved all of this on her own, she'd already be here with us. I have a feeling everything has gone wrong."

"Maybe she already rescued Rogue and went back to where she left us," Cleric suggested. "Maybe we should go back."

"No. Rini says Rogue is still there. He hasn't moved. Now, as for Master... It's confusing. She can't detect her. She hasn't been able to since the beginning. She's not sure why."

"Ahhhh!" Dragoon exclaimed, losing patience.

In a fit of desperation, he grabbed the vase sitting on a table beside the benches and hurled it furiously at the stone wall.

"Damn it! Why can't I do anything?!" He shouted toward the ceiling, clutching his head.

"Dragoon?" Swordsman asked. "Did you throw a vase, or was that just my imagination?"

"Of course I threw it! And what?! Are you going to tell me I'm losing my mind too?"

Swordsman pointed at the wall, stunned.

"I saw it too, Swordsman," Cleric said.

"Saw what?"

"I think... the vase went through the wall."

Dragoon raised an eyebrow and went looking for something else to throw. With no other vase available, he grabbed the table and hurled it. Just as his companions had said, the table passed straight through the wall as though it were intangible.

"Okay. I think we've all gone crazy."

"It's an illusion," Swordsman said. He immediately grabbed one of the benches and carried it over the balcony railing. Without saying another word, he dropped it into the void. Instead of falling, it struck a solid surface just a few centimeters below. A dull thud echoed through the darkness. "It's a damn illusion!" he exclaimed, bursting into hysterical laughter out of sheer relief.

The others joined in. For the first time, they could see a way forward.

"Come on. We've got an invisible bridge to cross."

----------------------------------------------------

"I detect another Angelino within thy domain," Andros said, his normally monotonous voice carrying a hint of concern.

"Micheleangelo? Tomás?" Sarah asked, her hands surrounded by blue flames, ready to incinerate every goblin around her.

"I fear not. It is someone else, a..."

Andros never finished. The sound of shattering glass announced that Sarah had been stripped of her Dimension. She was no longer in the goblin warren. She was back in the basement of Tavern, her hands and feet bound, a gag covering her mouth. And to her horror... she was completely alone