Chapter 30

Since we’re sharing camp with two others Bella and I haven’t been able to play with each other last night or this morning. I wasn’t horny enough that it was affecting me too much yet but I’m already feeling an itch for it only one full day after the last time we had some fun. I don’t know if it’s because sexual appetite is only level 3 or if only having sex with each other is having diminishing returns but the two of us probably won’t be able to avoid fooling around while on this trip. We’ll have to find a way to sneak off somewhere and have a quickie if we want to be in our right mind for the entire trip. I wondered if it was only me at first but a glance at Bella showed she was a bit fidgety too. It seems like replacing food with sex can be kind of a pain.

I checked my status again this morning but predictably the only change is that drawing went up one level. So far this trip has been pretty peaceful, we haven’t run into any monsters during the day or during night watch and there haven’t been many signs of animals either. Actually, come to think of it, isn't that a little weird? Even if there aren’t any monsters in the area wouldn’t there at least be some animals? I don’t even hear any birds right now.

Morrigan was sitting next to the embers of the dying fire to warm up a bit while waking up. Since the two of us took first watch she was feeling a little groggy and the other two have already been up for several hours now.

“Hey Morrigan, isn’t it a little strange that we haven’t come across any monsters or animals in the area?”

She just stared at me blankly for a few moments before looking off to the side in thought. Seems like she’s not great with mornings. “Hmm… Now that you mention it, it is a little odd we haven’t run across any monsters or wild animals. If we can’t find any, maybe we should look extra carefully for a dungeon entrance. Animals naturally avoid dungeons and any nearby monsters would either not spawn in this area at all or would move into the dungeon if it was close enough. It could be a coincidence but considering we already know there’s at least one dungeon relatively nearby there’s probably a good chance of it.”

Torien walked back from the stream and sat down next to her sister. “What are you two talking about.”

I wave Bella over and quickly summarize the conversation we were having to the two of them.

“Now that you mention it I probably should have noticed it sooner. I haven’t been seeing anything around either,” Torien said. “We’re supposed to survey this area anyway and if we found a dungeon the guild definitely would want to know about it. Rather than work on the accuracy of the map we should probably prioritize looking for anything that could be the entrance to a dungeon first.”

All of us nod in agreement to that. Bella speaks up, “I don’t really know much about this stuff but if you’re saying that the lack of animals and monsters is because of the dungeon, should we all go out separately to look for it?”

I cut in, “I don’t like the idea of that. The lack of monsters and animals is weird but there’s still a chance of it being a strange coincidence, if we decide to split up to search at all it should still be in at least in pairs.”

“I agree, even if there is a dungeon that’s affecting the spawn of monsters in the area, whoever finds the entrance first could just be attacked by one of the monsters from the dungeon instead. Since the dungeon could be higher level than the monsters in the region, I think we should all go as a group. I-If that’s okay with you Lilith,” Torien quickly added at the end.

“I agree that it’s probably better to all stay as a group. We’ll cover less ground this way but we’re much less likely to get hurt as a group than if we were in pairs or alone. Any objections?” I asked looking at everyone in turn, everyone just shook their head in reply.

I turn to our two magic users. “Can either of you use search magic? We could cut down on time if we had a direction to look in.”

Both of them shook their heads in reply to that as well.

“In that case I can use some ritual magic but it will take a little bit to set up. That fine with everyone?”

With no objections I took out my chalkboard, magic chalk, and my ritual magic book. I could probably do this one from memory but I figured it would be best if I don’t waste time here. I complete a simple but unfortunately fairly weak terran detect monsters ritual. I activated the magic circle, felt a pulse of magic flow through the ground and found… nothing. Well damn, looks like this didn’t work out this time.

“Ah… looks like I didn’t find any monsters in range.”

I was a little embarrassed by how the ritual turned out but no one else seemed to be that perturbed by it. It’s not as if the magic didn’t activate, it just didn’t find anything so everyone just shrugged and moved on. Instead we decided to head north-east diagonal from the road to get a idea of the area and hopefully come across some indication of the dungeon. While we’re at it we’ll look out for any landmarks that we can later mark on our map.

We spent about half the day walking around and taking note of landmarks like distinct rock formations or anything else out of place until we finally came across something. There was something that looked like a large boulder from one angle and stone chiseled door from the other side. The door was fancy looking and looked like it was carved out of a large solid piece of dark-grey stone, it stood out since it was so much darker than the more tan colored stone in the area. The ornate door looked completely out of place in the forest, it looked like it would be more at home in a graveyard, or as the entrance to a mausoleum.

I spent some time properly marking it on the map as accurately as I could before we decided to discuss what to do next.

“We should vote on whether or not to check out the dungeon a little. It could be dangerous but we could make some extra money selling the information to the guild. For those reasons I vote that we should check it out at least a little. See what kind of things are inside,” I told the group.

Everyone seemed to naturally look to Bella next, maybe she was being looked at as the second in command. She hesitated for a moment before speaking, “I don’t think we should go in. We don’t really know what we’re getting into and none of us have delved into a dungeon before.” Torien nodded in agreement to that.

Morrigan spoke next, “I think we should go in, Torien has a lot of trap finding experience even if she hasn’t done it in a dungeon before and I think our team is pretty well balanced. We could also get really lucky and find something valuable in the dungeon as the first explorers. It’s high risk but possibly really high reward.”

Last to speak was Torien. “I agree with Bella, this is an uncharted dungeon. We could walk into the first room and come up against a monster we can’t defeat. There’s a reason they usually send higher ranked adventurers into situations like these. I think we’re a good party but I think we should get more combat experience before we try to delve a dungeon, let alone an unexplored one.”

I tap my finger against my arm for a moment. “We’re tied. Should we flip a coin for it?”

Torien looked at me angrily. “We’re not going to flip a coin for it! We should come to a decision, not gamble with our fates.”

I jumped a little from the sudden outburst, not at all what I was expecting. The pause lingered before Bella broke the silence, “We’re tied so maybe Lilith should make the final decision as the party leader?”

Torien looks like she’s going to object for a moment but ends up deciding to hold back. I lean back and look up at the clouds, Torien and Bella make a valid point, it could be very dangerous. At the same time the chance to find some good loot seems like it would be higher if we had first crack at it. Then again we were still on another job so we shouldn’t spend too much time in there even if we did decide to delve. We have some extra rations but if we decided to go in as deep as we could I would have liked to be more prepared…

I sigh. “I think we should go in. We don’t really have the leeway to try and clear it or anything but a little bit of information could be worth a lot. And there’s also a good chance we could find some interesting valuables in the first few rooms if we’re lucky. If it looks like the monsters are out of our league we can just run.” Morrigan looked excited and Torien looked a little anxious but didn’t say anything. I looked at Bella, her vote had been against mine but she didn’t seem to mind the outcome.

Since we thought it might come to this when we went out looking for the dungeon in the first place we had already packed our bags with things we would need in the dungeon and left most of the less critical things at the campsite.

We stepped up to the doors with myself in the lead. Now that I was looking closely I could see some writing on the door but I couldn’t read it. “Does anyone recognize what kind of writing this is?” Everyone looked at it but just shook their heads.

I took a deep breath before putting my hand on the handle. “Here goes nothing.” And I pull the heavy stone door open. I look around for a moment before deciding to cast a spell. “[Light Orb]” The Ball of light magic slowly enters the room and reveals stone stairs heading downward. There doesn’t seem to be anything in the first room though.

“Keep an eye out for traps Torien, I’m going to go first in case any monsters attack. I’ll be going slowly so grab my shoulder or say something if you see anything.”

“Understood.”

I kept one hand on the pommel of my sword in a familiar gesture as I slowly proceeded forward. I moved the orb of light ahead of us and down the passageway as we all proceeded forward on the stairs. The staircase seemed to go down for a quite a while and the architecture made it look like we were in a castle with hand laid bricks rather than any kind of natural cave system.

Eventually we reached the bottom of the stairs and it opened up into a what looked like a large courtyard of some kind. Above us was a night sky with a large singular white moon as if we were outside again and there was a large castle with a portcullis past the central fountain on the other side of the open space. Looking back, the stairs were connected to a wall that had no signs of the large stairway behind it despite being able to see up the tunnel we came through.

There weren’t any monsters in this large courtyard like we were expecting, it was just an empty space before the entrance to the castle. The courtyard felt eerie, the only sounds we could hear was the burbling of the fountain, there were no sounds of insects or animals you would expect from seemingly being outside. Things just felt incongruent like we were standing in an illusion.

Bella looked over to me nervously. “Lilith, this place creeps me out. Are you sure we should keep going?”

I took a deep breath. “We came this far, we should scout the place out a little more before we go back. It would be odd if there were no monsters here since this place clearly has the trappings of a dungeon.”

“This place feels so strange. The only ambient mana I can manipulate in this area is water and ice but other than the fountain there really doesn’t look to be much of that around.” Morrigan seemed to condense some of the mana in the air into a dozen half-foot icicles that orbited her staff.

“For now, lets keep going.” I took a step forward into our first dungeon.