I jumped over a fallen Codex Wight clutching its burned face, landed on my feet, and kept running. Jonah was on my right, nearly keeping pace with me, while Ruth was on my left, lagging behind us ever so slightly. As for Nimbus, he had leaped out of Ruth’s arms as soon as we ran and was well ahead of all three of us. He deftly maneuvered through the fallen bodies of the Codex Wights and their dropped weapons and armor like he did this sort of thing every day.

  A Codex Wight jumped out of the trees on my right, causing me to instinctively cast Splinter Glyph at it. At the same time, Jonah used his Bulwark Slam spell, and both of our attacks landed at the same time.

  If we hadn’t been running for our lives, I would have taken the moment to admire how thoroughly our combined attacks destroyed the Codex Wight that had surprised us.

  Behind us, I heard the sounds of Wolfbrand and Sheminith’s battle, along with the shrieking of the Codex Wights. It sounded like Sheminith’s surprise attack hadn’t actually killed or knocked out all of the Codex Wights, but it had taken out a good chunk of them—especially the ones between us and the Node Dungeon entrance.

  We reached the Node Dungeon entrance in record time; we were running so fast the four of us almost smashed into it. Because I got to the door first, I grabbed the door handle and tried to yank it open, but I was briefly interrupted by a strange notification:

  You are about to enter the Verdant Seal! You meet the minimum qualifications for entering this dungeon. Once you pass this threshold, you will not be able to leave the dungeon unless you complete it or are expelled by the dungeon’s forces. Do you still wish to enter?

  If I’d had the time to think about it, I probably would have asked Nimbus or Ruth or anyone else about this notification. I would have spent at least a few days coming up with a plan of attack for tackling this dungeon, gathering supplies, and training so that I would be ready to spend however much time I needed inside the dungeon, and maybe gathering allies so I wouldn’t have to tackle it alone.

  But the screeching and shrieking of the Codex Wights sounded uncomfortably close now—not to mention Sheminith’s Divine Blessing buff wouldn’t last forever.

  So I yanked open the door and rushed inside. Actually, Nimbus darted in before I could, but I followed second, and then Ruth stumbled in after me. It was much cooler and darker inside the dungeon entrance than it had been outside. When my Divine Blessing from Sheminith finally ended, I didn’t receive any notifications about being affected by Wolfbrand’s Hex Field.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news …

  “What the Sheol? Why can’t I enter?”

  Panting and sweating, with my hands on my knees, I jerked my head over my shoulder to see Jonah standing just outside the open doorway of the dungeon entrance. He was slamming his fists against some type of invisible wall in the doorway, which didn’t budge no matter how hard he hit it.

  I had no explanation for why Jonah couldn’t join us until Ruth, sitting beside my feet and leaning on her hands for support, gasped and said, “He doesn’t have entry permissions because he didn’t discover it like we did!”

  I looked at Ruth in confusion. “Entry permissions? What are you talking about?”

  Nimbus, who had hopped a good distance away from the threshold of the entrance, wriggled his nose anxiously. “It’s a quirk of newly discovered dungeons—the actual dungeon discoverers usually get First Access, while other people don’t unless they first get invited into the dungeon by one of the dungeon discoverers. Since you, Ruth, and I were the first to actually discover this dungeon, we automatically get First Access privileges without having to do anything else. Jonah, on the other hand, does not.”

  That explained the First Access privileges that I had received from that Codex Achievement about becoming a Dungeon Discoverer. I wondered why I hadn’t heard about this quirk of Node Dungeons before, but then again, discovering a new Node Dungeon was always a big deal. Maybe it wasn’t so unusual to not know about—or forget about—that fact.

  Regardless, that fact was biting us in the butt. Jonah was still trying to break open the invisible wall preventing him from entering, but he wasn’t making any progress. Behind him, I caught flashes of red and black light clashing with golden light, which told me that Sheminith was still alive and keeping Wolfbrand distracted.

  But I also saw over a dozen armed and angry-looking Codex Wights running toward Jonah, raising their blunt swords and claws into the air, shrieking and shouting as they rushed toward him. Jonah also noticed them, quickly looking over his shoulder and then looking back at us with an alarmed expression on his face. “One of you! Give me entry permissions so I can enter. Now!”

  I scratched the back of my head. “How? This is the first time I’ve ever been in a Node Dungeon.”

  Ruth brushed her hair out of her face, clearly thinking fast. “In one of my textbooks at the Academy, I remember it said that First Access Dungeon Discoverers could share entry permissions with other people by sending them an invitation via their NodeLink contact list. Did anyone link with Jonah? I didn’t.”

  I grimaced. “I didn’t, either. Nimbus, what about you?”

  Nimbus raised a rather offended ear at me. “Do I look like a portable Node to you?”

  Jonah shook his head from the other side of the invisible wall. “Maybe one of you can briefly step outside the dungeon and link with me, and then give me entry permissions. Shouldn’t take more than a second or two at most.”

  I personally questioned if we even had that much time based on how fast those Codex Wights were running. But I didn’t have a better plan, so I rushed up to the open entrance and tried to stick my hand holding my portable through the threshold to link with Jonah’s portable, which appeared to be in his gauntlet based on the way he held it out toward me.

  Stolen story; please report.

  But my portable stopped against the invisible wall and wouldn’t pass through, no matter how hard I pressed my portable against it. I tried a few more times before getting the following notification that just made the situation that much worse:

  Warning! Because this is the first time that the Verdant Seal has been discovered, you are forbidden from exiting the dungeon until you complete it or are expelled by the dungeon’s forces.

  I cursed under my breath. “Darn it! It won’t even let me just poke my portable out the doorway. What’s up with that?”

  Jonah sighed deeply. “Just how dungeons work. Looks like I will just have to die a warrior’s death.”

  I shook my head rapidly. “No way. There has to be a way to get you in here somehow. We just need to think about it.”

  Jonah smiled at me. “No, that’s okay. I appreciate you trying to save me even though we are strangers, but there’s nothing either of us can do. You, the girl, and the rabbit should just try to complete this dungeon. Sheminith and I will deal with Wolfbrand and his Wights.”

  Jonah turned away from me and pulled his trident off his back, facing the crowd of Codex Wights rushing toward him without a hint of fear in his frame. He spun the trident between his hands before taking a fighting stance, though I noticed he wasn’t using any spells. That had to be because his Divine Blessing had also worn off, which meant not only was Jonah on his own, he didn’t even have access to his spell repertoire thanks to Wolfbrand’s Hex Field still being in effect.

  In other words, we were almost certainly about to watch Jonah get torn apart by the Codex Wights.

  In frustration, I banged my fists against the invisible wall keeping us in and everyone else out. Though Jonah may have been just a stranger, that didn’t mean I wanted to let him die. He had already saved me and the others from Wolfbrand once. I owed him, even though we barely knew each other at this point.

  Yet dungeon notifications had made it crystal clear that we couldn’t let Jonah in unless one of us had already linked with him. In the insanity that had followed Wolfbrand’s attack, it hadn’t occurred to either me or Ruth to even try that. That also explained why Sheminith didn’t try to join us. He must have known that he couldn’t enter the dungeon without first linking with us, and he hadn’t been able to do that, either.

  I looked up at the ceiling of the dungeon and shouted, “Come on! You have to let Jonah in. He’s with us.”

  Of course, the dungeon didn’t respond. That would have been weird if it did. Node Dungeons weren’t sentient creatures, at least as far as I knew. Though in my defense, as we had just seen, I didn’t know very much about them—especially newly discovered dungeons like this one.

  And I was out of time to come up with a solution. The crowd of ravenous Codex Wights reached Jonah and started attacking him. Jonah put up a good fight, even without his Codex spells, using the reach of his trident to keep the largely melee-based Codex Wights from getting too close while also dealing good damage himself. He even managed to kill a couple of them, which was pretty impressive.

  But the Codex Wights were pushing Jonah back toward the dungeon entrance, which he couldn’t even duck into because of his lack of entry permissions. Not only that, but I suspected that Jonah would tire out eventually, though I wasn’t so sure about the Codex Wights. They didn’t seem to have the stamina that humans did. For all we knew, the Codex Wights might just be able to keep going and going. Their description in their scan information had made it sound like they would just keep going until their master ordered them to stop or they died.

  And I suspected that Wolfbrand was never going to tell them to leave Jonah alone.

  Which meant that we had front-row seats to watching Jonah get torn apart by the Codex Wights.

  My fists balled tightly.

  No.

  I couldn’t accept that.

  Inkwyrm’s tip glowed golden as I tapped it against the surface of the invisible wall dividing us from Jonah. I really didn’t expect this to do anything, but I was inspired by how Salome had used her Quiet Quill to disable the spells of the bandits and attack them. I was also thinking about how I had managed to deal with the structurally unstable, malformed Codex spell entry in my Arcane Simulation not long ago.

  What if I could hack the dungeon entry permissions with my Discipline?

  It was worth a shot.

  As soon as my stylus touched the wall, my Inscriptionist Console popped into my vision, and I could suddenly see all of the glyphs that powered the invisible wall. I could also still see Jonah fighting the Codex Wights, but the Inscriptionist Console took up most of my view.

  It was insane just how detailed the glyphs were. I couldn’t understand even half of them. It was like trying to read a language that no human had ever spoken. I saw a handful of glyphs that I thought looked familiar, but the vast majority might as well have been gibberish to me.

  A strange notification appeared in my view, letter by letter, rather than unfurling like a scroll, like most Codex notifications:

  You are viewing the glyph structure of the Verdant Seal’s invisible seal! Due to your low Chapter, you have access to only 10% of the invisible seal’s glyph structure. Would you like to make a temporary adjustment to the glyph structure to allow specific guests to enter the dungeon with you?

  Warning: Any temporary adjustments to the glyph structure of the invisible seal might also allow violent mobs and other uninvited guests to enter. It is recommended that any Inscriptionist attempting to adjust the glyph structure of this invisible seal have an auto-glyph stabilizing spell active at the same time to decrease the odds of glyph destabilization and other unwanted side effects.

  Very little of that made any sense to me, but before I could think about it more, another notification popped into view on top of the previous one:

  Codex Bond effect activated! You may now auto-stabilize one glyph per day over the next 24 hours.

  Codex Bond effect? Did that imply that I had gotten this ability from Nimbus?

  I didn’t have time to ponder that, however, because I heard a yell from outside and dismissed the notifications to get a better look at what was going on.

  A surprising amount of Codex Wights lay defeated on the ground around the entrance to the Node Dungeon, but Jonah was still clearly about to be overwhelmed. More Codex Wights had joined their brethren, pushing Jonah back toward the dungeon. Jonah was bleeding and limping slightly, but still fighting back with his trident like a cornered animal, thrusting and spinning it in ways that didn’t even look human.

  Yet it seemed inevitable that Jonah would get overwhelmed by the growing number of Codex Wights—where were they even coming from?—unless I got him into the dungeon.

  I returned to my Inscriptionist Console and altered the glyph that appeared to regulate who was and wasn’t allowed inside the dungeon.

  As soon as I did, I received the following notification:

  You have altered the entry permissions of the Verdant Seal! Two more people may enter the dungeon with First Access privileges.

  Two people? I only wanted to let one more person inside.

  No time to think about that. I reached through the invisible seal of the dungeon entrance, which no longer felt solid, grabbed the back of Jonah’s shirt collar poking up from his crumpled armor, and yanked him into the dungeon.

  And it worked.

  Jonah stumbled backward into me and both of us fell onto the floor in a confused heap.

  Along with a Codex Wight that had grabbed Jonah’s ankle as he entered the dungeon, thereby trapping it inside with us.

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