The moment Sulika’s foot landed on the other side of the portal, she didn’t hesitate to reach into the pouch on her side and pull out a mask. It was a fact that every dungeon’s air was polluted beyond measure. So, every hunter, regardless of their level or position in the Guild, makes sure to always carry around a re-breather everywhere they went.
Sulika’s re-breather was black with white trim around the outer edges; a small, rectangular tank was attached on the left side of the mask, and connected to a circular vent on the right side of the mask through tiny tubes that ran beneath the surface of the mask.

Her mask was on the smaller side, only large enough to cover her nose and mouth. - though many hunters chose re-breathers that covered their entire faces, Sulika hated the ones that forced her to look through the lenses. They were always getting dirty or broken, and you had enough issues seeing through the miasma without adding even more crap to see through. The mask wrapped around her head and fastened at the nape with a quiet *snapping* of the buckle.

Once her mask was in place, she turned and inspected her teams’ faces; Derrick’s mask was one of the larger ones and just barely fit beneath his helmet. It was black with a red accent line throughout, a large circular vent was positioned exactly where his mouth was, and used subdermal tubes to connect it to a pair of cylindrical tanks at the back of his neck - just above where the buckles fastened it into place. Zarud’s was like Derrick’s in appearance, but instead of red accents, Zarud’s were yellow. Ralocan’s mask was small, like Sulika’s, but his mask was white with yellow accents. Four vertical vents were positioned over his mouth and nose and connected to a pair of circular tanks on either side of his neck. Like the other masks, his buckled near his nape and hid from sight by his armor.

Sulika nodded her approval at their preparedness and returned her attention to the surrounding dungeon.

“It’s a temple...” She trailed off with a sigh of annoyance. Temples usually meant one of two things: undead. Or spiders. She didn’t know why those particular creatures were the most common sights in temple dungeons, but time and time again she’d fought off one or the other in locations that looked incredibly similar to what she was looking at now.

They were outside. The sky overhead was a disgusting mix of black and sickly purple, and the all-encompassing smell of rot accompanied it. Thick, violent clouds blocked any sunlight from reaching the ground - not that it would’ve made it through the miasma, anyway.

The ground beneath their feet was covered in a thick layer of ash and snow, but Sulika could feel the rocky ground beneath. In front of them loomed a massive, Golden Temple that had been precariously built on the edge of a cliff that extended a couple hundred feet away from the mountain.

The temple’s entrance was a wide rectangle with thick, silver pillars supporting the triangular roof. Behind the entrance, Sulika could see a gigantic dome that seemed to comprise the entire temple’s main body.

It wasn’t the most elaborate design she ever seen, but the amount of gold and silver on display made her palms inch.

Metal was a rare and incredibly precious resource back on their world. And not just gold, silver, or platinum, but all forms of metal were precious. Just one pillar from the front of the temple could probably allow her entire team to live like kings for five years. The entire temple... Well, it was probably worth more than the entire city of Azuris.

Had they not been on a time limit with the risk of a dungeon break looming over their heads, Sulika would’ve gladly started shoving her pockets full of gold and silver.

“Eyes open and minds on the mission. I know it’s tempting – gods is it tempting -but we can’t afford any distractions until we’re sure the dungeon won’t break. Is that clear?” Sulika asked. She watched as her voice registered in her teams’ minds one by one, each one snapping out of a greed induced stupor. They’d all been just as fascinated with the sight of all that wealth... Just lying there... Ready for the taking.

Sulika shook her head again and began walking towards the marble steps that led to the temple’s entrance.

“Zarud, do you think you could -” Ralocan spoke from a few paces behind Sulika.

“Hell no. You’d need a crane to move one of those pillars.” Zarud instantly replied.

“I’m not saying we take the whole thing. Maybe just the broken one, over there.”

Sulika didn’t need to see him to know which pillar he was referring to; at the far end of the entrance was a broken pillar. Half of it was still attached to the roof, but the other half had been broken - shattered beyond any hope of repair. It left huge silver chunks scattered across the ground in front of the temple.

“Well... I could probably bring back some of those. Provided our captain gave the okay.”

“So long as we deal with the dungeon first, I don’t care what you grab on the way out...Provided you can beat me there. Because I’m definitely grabbing some of that silver to go,” Sulika said. Her voice said she was joking, but the look in her eyes told them she was probably serious.

They reached the staircase and quickly ascended them. They took extra care to watch for any traps or monsters that could’ve been hidden nearby.

They saw none. But this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. In Sulika’s experience, there were almost always traps or monsters hidden near the portal. It was the dungeon’s first line of defense against the hunters who sought to close them. So, for them to see none, meant they were hidden by magic, buried beneath the floor and were waiting to be triggered by a pressure plate or some other sensor, or worst of all - they’d appeared in a place that didn’t need traps to protect the heart of the dungeon.
The last option seemed to be the most likely. This was a ‘black’ dungeon, after all.

The color of the portal that opened it was how the hunter’s guild categorized a dungeon’s difficulty.

A white dungeon was the easiest. The demons inside were weak, and more often than not, had many weaknesses that could be exploited to make them even easier to kill. White dungeons also lacked any of the usual traps that made dungeons so dangerous. Which is why the hunters Guild often used white dungeons for training rookies.

Blue was just above white in terms of difficulty. While the demons inside were still weak, traps were now added into the mix. Blue dungeons were statistically responsible for more Hunter deaths than any other, because of the sheer amount of rookie hunters who meet their end during their first excursion into a blue dungeon.

Yellow dungeons were the next highest difficulty. Dungeons marked by the yellow color were only for hunters above level ten. The demons inside could hold their own in a fight, the traps were deadly to the unprepared, and the boss monster was insanely strong - Until this moment, the most dangerous dungeon Sulika and her team ever entered was a yellow dungeon that took the form of a labyrinthine mine.

As for black dungeons, they actually exist outside of the normal color scale. Black dungeons were widely known as ‘abnormal’ dungeons. While the actual difficulty of the demons and traps within could be any color, what made black dungeons so formidable was the unknown variable you had to deal with, while still fighting off demons and avoiding traps.

From infinitely reviving demons, strange elemental hazards and the boss room being the only accessible part of the dungeon, to having your stats temporarily enhanced, your equipment upgraded a level, or being granted temporary access to powerful magics. Entering a black dungeon was like rolling dice with your life on the line - you could never tell what the abnormal effect would be until you were already inside. And by then it was too late to change your mind.