Time to Run a Dungeon

"Good afternoon, Headmaster," Aya greeted him obediently, but she didn't put away her dagger.

"Not quite," Dumbledore said, taking a few steps forward. "I was supposed to be enjoying a lovely afternoon tea, but the screams of a merperson drew me over. Sorry for the trouble, miss, but could you tell me what happened?"

"I wanted to eat fish," Aya answered honestly.

"Perhaps I should teach you more common knowledge about the wizarding world, miss. Merpeople aren't fish," Dumbledore said patiently, even though his afternoon tea had been interrupted.

"It is." Aya pointed at the merperson's lower half. "A big fish. Xiaohua confirmed it. It is one."

"Perhaps Xiaohua was mistaken?" Dumbledore was quite curious about Xiaohua, but the cat, which he suspected was an alchemical creation, was almost inseparable from Aya. He couldn't very well lay a hand on a child's companion.

"Impossible," Aya said firmly.

"Perhaps you could ask Miss Xiaohua? Mr. Xiaohua? To let this poor merperson go. She's scared out of her wits." Dumbledore understood the language of the Merpeople. To his ears, the shrill screams that had just echoed throughout Hogwarts had all been cries for help.

"Xiaohua doesn't have a gender," Aya muttered, glancing regretfully at the fish tail that was almost as long as she was tall. "I don't want to give it up. It's so big-"

"...Then could I trade you a bag of Honeydukes' new sweets for it?" Dumbledore sighed.

"How much?" Aya immediately abandoned the big fish and came over.

"One box. Ah, I bought it but haven't even opened it yet." Dumbledore took out the sweets, looking dejected, but Aya was utterly oblivious and reached straight out to take them. Feeling his reluctance as he held on to them, she simply turned around and forcibly pulled them free.

"Wow-there's so much!" Aya was delighted. The new sweets came in beautiful packaging, with wrappers that looked like a starry sky. They probably tasted good too!

Dumbledore looked reluctantly at the beautifully packaged box of sweets. "Now you can let this unlucky Miss Merperson go, can't you?" There was a hint of resentment in his voice.

"No problem, Headmaster. Would you like some grilled fish?" Aya invited him enthusiastically.

"No, thank you. I think I should return to my office and enjoy my afternoon tea." Dumbledore declined, but still reminded her, "I hope you can put out the fire when you're done playing, all right?"

"All right, Headmaster." Aya shook her head regretfully and watched him leave. Xiaohua also released the merperson and pushed her into the water-there was no helping it, the fish was still unconscious.

It had been a perfect picnic. Aya put out the fire before the students finished class and walked back to the castle, holding her belly, with half an uneaten fish tucked into her backpack. She couldn't eat her fill, or she'd miss dinner!

That evening, Aya successfully slipped out of the dormitory after Hermione fell asleep.

She planned to go back to yesterday's spot and solo the doggy boss!

Even without a player directing her, less than two months wasn't enough to erase more than two years of combat experience.

Most importantly, she wanted to try fighting it and see whether there would be a reward for winning. She hadn't opened a treasure chest in over a whole month!

With Xiaohua around, Aya never worried about getting lost. Besides, Aya, Xiaohua, and Mrs. Norris were all cats, so Mrs. Norris was especially tolerant of the two of them. They ran into her twice along the way because Xiaohua didn't want to take a detour, and neither time did she go back to fetch Filch.

They successfully reached the door from yesterday, but Aya didn't know the unlocking charm.

"I'm counting on you, Xiaohua." Aya patted Xiaohua's front paw. Xiaohua went straight for brute force—and only managed to open the door after clawing it out of shape.

"Ha, I'm here!" Aya hopped forward and planted her hands on her hips. "Come on, Xiaohua, it's time to show them what you can really do!"

The three-headed dog lifted its heads, all three faces bewildered, drool still hanging from their mouths and their eyes bleary. The head on the left even had its tongue dangling out when a cat slapped it across the face.

"Woof-whimper-whine!!" The three-headed dog didn't react at first, but after a few slaps, it fought back. A clumsy dog like that was no match for a cat's speed, though, and it took only half a minute for it to go from fighting back to lying flat. After its faces had been scratched bloody, it whimpered in a corner, facing the wall and feeling emo.

"Why isn't there a treasure chest?" Aya asked, puzzled. She darted around the room and checked two glowing spots, but still couldn't find a chest. "Do we have to kill this dog? Right, bosses only drop treasure chests when they die. Xiaohua!"

"Whimper-woof!" The three-headed dog was horrified. Seeing the cat charging over to kill it and silence it, it practically wanted to crawl into a crack in the wall. It protected its three poor heads, and after its rear had been scratched to ribbons, it couldn't take any more. It hurriedly struggled to escape, patting the floor pitifully with its front paws. Only then did Aya notice a trapdoor in the floor.

"Oh, so it's a dungeon!" Aya realized. In that case, this big guy probably really was an elite monster. It was perfectly normal for an elite monster not to have a treasure chest. "All right, since you know what's good for you, we'll keep going!"

Aya opened the trapdoor in the floor. Xiaohua went down first, and she followed.

The opening was quite deep, and Aya slid for several seconds before landing. It was soft beneath her, as if some kind of plant were cushioning her. Xiaohua had already moved nimbly some distance ahead, and just as Aya was about to follow, the previously soft vines began to move and wrapped around her feet.

Aya paid them no mind. She connected with Xiaohua, swapped places with her, and then recalled her. Neither girl nor cat had the slightest intention of looking back, and they continued onward.

"I think the start of this dungeon is pretty interesting," Aya muttered to Xiaohua. "How novel, sending a dog to guard the door-hmm, maybe that's how it's supposed to be?"

Swishing her tail, Xiaohua opened the door to the next room. The room was brightly lit, looking nothing like a room in the castle after curfew. Aya looked up at the high vaulted ceiling, where many little birds as beautiful as jewels were flying overhead.

"It's so pretty in here-" Aya exclaimed. "Can we take these birds out? Are they tasty? But they seem a little too small?"

Xiaohua jumped up and caught one. Only after the little bird was caught did Aya see that it wasn't a bird at all, but a key with wings, perhaps for opening the door.

"Oh..." Aya was disappointed. She had been ready to start a fire in this room.

She ran to the closed door on the other side and had Xiaohua catch the keys.

Xiaohua was an all-purpose automatic hunting cat, and before long, a small pile of keys had accumulated on the floor.

Aya examined the lock and found that one of the keys they had caught was a match. She successfully opened the door and entered the next room with Xiaohua.

"Is this Wizard's Chess?" The room was pitch-black, but as soon as Aya stepped inside, the torches around them lit up, illuminating the enormous chessboard before her. Aya looked at the pieces, which were considerably taller than she was, and studied them for a while before tentatively deciding that this might be the Wizard's Chess she often saw students playing in the Gryffindor Common Room.

"But I don't know how to play, Xiaohua. What do we do?" Aya was troubled. Whenever she watched them play Wizard's Chess, she had focused entirely on the pieces that could move. They fought and brawled, making Aya, who hadn't run a dungeon in a long time, terribly envious.

What could Xiaohua do? She was just a soulless cat. If her master needed something, she only had to get it done.

And so Aya watched with satisfaction as Xiaohua wreaked havoc among the chess pieces. The black pieces got one slap, the white pieces got two, and the pieces that tried to hit her got the full Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms.

Before long, the discarded pieces outside the board had piled up into a small mountain, and Xiaohua had successfully become the sole winner among the three sides.

"Yay!" Aya raised both hands and cheered. But clearly, because they had broken the rules, the door hadn't opened.

"Maybe we still have to force the lock," Aya guessed. She didn't know the unlocking charm, so she could only use such an impolite method.

Xiaohua scratched at the door for a long time and finally broke through. The hole was the size of a dog flap, big enough for Aya to squeeze through, but a strange smell was coming from the other side.

Aya lay on the floor and peered through, but all she saw was a foot with oddly colored skin. Was it another elite monster after all?

Aya sent Xiaohua through first to fight the monster, then laboriously squeezed through the dog-sized hole herself. She looked up and saw an enormous-Troll.

Thankfully, Snape was always calling Gryffindors Trolls in class, which had made Aya curious about the creatures. She had asked Hermione about them, and Hermione had shown her a picture in a book.

It was just a little too smelly.

Aya covered her nose and watched Xiaohua scratch the Troll, whose thighs were thicker than her entire body. She also took out her wand and began attacking it.

But her level was too low, and her attacks were barely better than nothing. She could only wave her wand to restore Xiaohua's health and energy. After a long battle of attrition, the Troll fell from blood loss.

"We're amazing!" Aya stood beside the Troll with her hands on her hips.

The thing had pretty high magic and physical resistance. Fortunately, Xiaohua could take a beating and had sharp claws, or they wouldn't have been able to make the Troll bleed so much.

"Go, go, go, next stop!" Aya held her tail high, feeling that her treasure chest was close at hand.

She opened the door and went through. There was only a table in the room, with several oddly shaped bottles on it.

As soon as Aya stepped through the door, flames sprang up behind her and at the exit ahead. She wasn't worried, though. She picked up a piece of parchment from the table and looked at the clue-hmm, she couldn't understand it.

Never mind. She'd feed them to Xiaohua.

Aya took the seven bottles on the table and fed their contents to Xiaohua one by one. Three bottles made Xiaohua lose health, so Aya hurriedly healed her. Two gave Xiaohua a sluggishness debuff, which only needed to be dispelled. The other two did nothing.

In any case, with a full set of buffs on her, Xiaohua passed through the flames ahead. Aya simply swapped places with her and appeared in the new room.

"My treasure chest is gone." Aya frowned and looked around the empty room, then said to Xiaohua, a little angrily, "There's nothing here. Don't tell me that shabby parcel on the floor is my reward for clearing the dungeon?"

She had gone through so much trouble to open all those doors and get here, only for the reward to be a piece of junk. She couldn't stand it.

But she still had to take the reward. She had earned it!

Aya walked over and picked up the parcel from the floor. She had just put it into her backpack when Dumbledore's voice came from behind her. "...Miss Hawthorne, I believe you should be asleep in Gryffindor Tower right now?"

"Huh?" Aya turned around. "Good evening, Headmaster. I'm out wandering at night."

"...Yes, miss, I can see that you're out wandering at night, but why have you come to the forbidden area on the fourth floor?" Dumbledore was momentarily taken aback by her blunt honesty. "I recall saying before term began that anyone who did not wish to meet with an accident and die a painful death must not come near here."

"But I don't not want to~" Aya shook her head, not understanding what Dumbledore meant. Just then, a system notification sounded, distracting her.

[Congratulations! You have obtained the Philosopher's Stone: When the Philosopher's Stone is placed in your backpack, your gold coins will increase by one percent each month.]

Wow!

Aya's eyes lit up. So it wasn't a piece of junk after all!

"The reward here is amazing!" Aya said happily.

"I'm sorry, miss, but perhaps I should remind you that that thing is not a reward. You cannot take it away," Dumbledore said. He had placed the Philosopher's Stone here as bait, so how had he ended up catching a cat?!

"This is my reward." Aya grew wary. "I worked hard to get through all those rooms. I earned it!"

"You cannot take it away," Dumbledore repeated.

"I'm taking it!" Aya tightened her grip on her wand. I knew it! Someone dressed all in white when you first meet them is the most likely to be a red name!

Dumbledore was at a bit of a loss with such a stubborn student, but the Philosopher's Stone was far too important. Leaving it with an eleven-year-old student was like sending a child through a busy marketplace carrying gold; it could only attract greed and malice.

He thought no more about it and raised his hand to stop the bold little lion. Seeing his movement, Aya immediately used Pollen to protect herself. She had realized that the Pollen skill was more than half of what kept her alive in the wizarding world, since spells were all ranged attacks.

Dumbledore watched in some surprise as his spell failed. He took his wand from inside his robes and tried again.

It failed again.

Hearing it from Snape was never as vivid as experiencing it himself. He changed tactics, intending to use a Summoning Charm to take Aya's bag directly, but the Summoning Charm failed too.

"That is not a good thing, Miss Hawthorne." Dumbledore took a few steps closer, and Xiaohua also bristled aggressively, shielding Aya behind her.

"Pfft, you're lying to me! If it wasn't a good thing, why would you hide it so deep?!" Aya poked her head out from behind Xiaohua and retorted angrily.

"No matter where you put it, others will discover it. It will bring you misfortune," Dumbledore continued to persuade her.

"My backpack is perfectly safe!" Aya shouted back. Once it was in her bag, how could anyone possibly take it out again?

Dumbledore tried to physically catch the mischievous little lion, but the control-breaking skill Aya had unlocked made her too agile for the hundred-year-old man to keep up with. With Xiaohua, a cat who could grow or shrink, also getting in his way, even when he forced the naughty child out of Pollen's range, she could always swap places and appear somewhere else the next second. Even using Fawkes's teleportation didn't work.

Half an hour passed. Dumbledore braced his hands against his aged lower back, panting. "Let's each take a step back, miss. You must let me see whether your bag is safe."

"Hmph, search all you want. If you can find a single backpack's worth of my things, I'll give them all to you!" Aya was utterly confident. Xiaohua was standing some distance away, waiting for the next swap.