"No response? Did I touch a sore spot? Whoops, tee hee!"

"'Tee hee'? You're not even trying."

"But nightmares don't need to make that much sense, do they? They're just putting a face to your fears. And fear is all you have, every morning when you teleport home. Fear of losing me, fear that I won't be there waiting for you, fear that I'll be off laughing at you with my real friends.

"Of course, if you weren't so immature and insecure it wouldn't be a problem. I fell for your confidence and competence, so you showing me this pathetic side that can't even trust me... It's somewhere between sad and hurtful, you know?"

...why would it be hurtful???

"Because you don't trust me, I just said! You keep thinking that I'm lying, that I don't mean what I say. There's nothing I can do, is there? You'll just never trust me."

It's not Tae-gun he doesn't trust. 

And it's not trust that's the problem.

"Anyway! That's all probably moot. I mean, what are the odds I'll even survive this confluence? Sure, I'm good at my job, but that means I'm always taking the riskiest dungeons, so one small misstep..."

"Shut up you asshole."

"Maaaaake meeeee~" he singsongs, skipping over his own corpse lying on the floor, impaled by something.

He hates this dungeon. He hates this dungeon. He hates this dungeon. He hates this dungeon. He hates

"Escher" was the name given to an S-rank dungeon by someone who was going for sounding cool rather than being descriptive. Not that that matters much—by the time an S-rank gets a name it's famous enough you'll know what people are talking about—but still, there are hardly any bizarre stairs with fucked up gravity, and those have become less and less numerous over the decades, and not even Escher's worst nightmares featured the kinds of stuff this dungeon likes to pull.

For one, it's properly four-dimensional. Not that humans can really interact much with that fact; despite what fiction might like to tell you, being in 4D space doesn't drive you crazy or make you time travel or whatever else. It doesn't really look like much at all, as both espers and kidnappees still have to just navigate the 3D projection they happen to be in. Light can still travel in all four directions, though, and some teleporter espers are even able to teleport you kata or ana from where you are. And of course, the dungeon would love to take you to some other three-dimensional projection of itself than the one you're in.

That's also where the non-Euclideanness comes in. Some places will in fact take you kata or ana, and sometimes taking a step to your left will leave you somewhere that looks completely identical to where you just were except for how everyone who was with you is nowhere in sight, and it's not clear whether that's better or worse than when you take a step to your right and end up somewhere completely unrecognisable with no good way to get back to where you were. You also have standard hyperbolic geometries (a.k.a. we were right next to each other and now she's ten feet away), cyclical geometries (a.k.a. didn't I just come from here?), punctured connections (a.k.a. portals), acyclic directed topologies (a.k.a. fuck retracing my steps won't bring me back to where I was), and so on.

And finally: the monsters! There aren't that many, to be fair, and they're small and not very threatening. What they do enjoy doing, though, is tripping you and pushing you and knocking you around, it's snipping your lengths of string and eating your breadcrumb trails, and it's pulling you kata or ana (because they, of course, can move along all four dimensions).

The fact that light in the dungeon can travel in all directions is a blessing, at least: that means that specialised tracking software can go some way towards creating something that could almost be called a map if you squint and also are high on acid. Trying to find the core is basically out of the question, and espers' job is to try to track as many kidnap victims as they can and bring them back. This means you want espers with very precise mobility skills, a way to make sure your breadcrumbs aren't lost and, of course, good teleporters.

yaaaaaay

"This was one of the first dungeons that appeared back in the seventies, before we knew anything about anything and had our acts together," says the lead of this particular expeditionary team. "It had a lot fewer teeth back then, and if we'd managed to nip it in the bud we wouldn't be having to deal with this kind of headache now.

"Everyone already has their partners," by which she doesn't mean the people who usually help with guiding but rather the people whose powers dovetail well enough with yours in this situation, "and the teleporters will be by the portal. By the way, we do have closed tents set up in there if you would be most efficiently guided in private ways; this is going to be hell on your backlashes, I'm telling you right now, I've never met a single teleporter who didn't find this nightmarish, so whatever we can get out of you we're taking."

...God, he could never.

Oh he could and he probably will; his new prospective partner is really hot.

"I'm going to let you all get acquainted with each other and discuss strats, we'll reconvene in fifteen and then go in. I'm point person if you need anything at all."

"You got your wish."

"...my wish?"

"Running a dungeon with Tae-gun."

"—oh! That's true." She'd kinda hoped it would've been one where she could, you know, see him in action properly. There'll be hardly any combat here, Tae-gun is mostly present because his conjuration skills are nearly unparalleled and very good at being breadcrumbs.

"Have you done non-Euclidean dungeons before?" Tae-gun asks Woo-young.

"Only every other week. People got it into their heads that my power is good for those."

"...isn't it?"

"It is! So I can't even say no! Doesn't mean I have to like it."

"Can you teleport in the fourth dimension, Woo-young?"