Chapter 33

The four of us sat in the shadow of a rampart as we silently watched a patrol of suits of armor walk by. We’ve been sitting here for at least half an hour now but I’m sure we have the timing down now. I looked at the pair of wooden double doors on the edge of the central tower again, they seemed unassuming but it’s hard to know what we’ll be walking into.

“If we open the doors into a hall filled with soldiers then we'll have to double back and figure something else out. If it’s somewhere we can continue to sneak around we can keep going.” I whispered to the group.

Everyone nodded in affirmation and we continued to wait for the next round of guards to pass. Just as we saw the suits of armor start to round a corner we all darted out of the shadow and quietly jogged to the doors we’d been staring at for ages now. Torien, our resident rogue, quietly cracked the door and peeked inside before giving a signal and slipping in. I felt relieved as all four of us made it in before Torien silently closed the wooden door behind us.

Inside the tower was not what I expected from the outside. Rather than any kind of room, we were instead in a corridor that didn’t at all respect the curve of the tower’s walls. In fact, the left hallway continued down straight, well past where the tower would have ended. It looks like the space inside the tower doesn’t really correlate with the view from outside the castle we had been traveling through until now. On the other side, the right hallway continued for a bit and sharply turned to the left after a while.

“So girls, left or right?” I asked the group.

“Left!” “Right!” exclaimed the twins in unison.

“Well…” I turned to Bella. “How about you?”

“Uhh… Left,” she answered after looking back and forth a bit.

“Sounds good to me, hold on a sec though.” I slipped off my backpack and pulled out some of the regular chalk I bought. “I’m not sure if the monsters in here are able to track us or not but this place looks like we’re bound to get lost if we don’t leave some markings.”

In front of the door we entered from, I drew an arrow pointed inwards surrounded by a circle.

“Alright, if you get separated somehow, try to follow the arrows I leave on the ground. Torien, can you take the lead and look for traps? Other than that we should go in the normal formation. I’ll be right behind you Torien.”

She nodded and started walking slowly in front with her eyes on the floor. I kept my eyes up and my extra large sword at the ready. The hallway wasn’t cramped but it was too small for me to use my sword normally. The borrowed instincts I was relying on guided me to hold my sword up balanced on my other hand almost as if I was using a spear for thrusting. It wouldn’t be easy, and my movements would be more predictable but it would still probably be better than trying to use the dagger length broken sword still on my waist.

We continued on for a while until there was a sharp right turn in the hallway. I pulled out some chalk and put down an arrow indicating the direction.

“Can I borrow a stick of chalk Lilith?”

“Sure.”

“Thanks, there’s a trap up ahead and I don’t really have the proper tools to disarm it. If I mark it out we should be able to avoid it pretty easily.”

She went up ahead a bit while I kept watch, after drawing a few lines of chalk around an irregular blob she came back. We kept going like this for a while, Torien occasionally going ahead to mark off traps for us. It was eerily empty the entire time since we entered.

“Is it normal for the mazes in dungeons to be this quiet for this long?”

“Not really,” Morrigan answered in a hushed voice, “but this dungeon is likely pretty young. Between the hallways and traps, it probably just didn’t have the ability to fill this area with monsters yet. I wouldn’t drop your guard though, some mazes like to send monsters in swarms or leave only a few big monsters to wander the maze.”

We kept walking for what felt like hours, Torien did an amazing job marking off every trap before anyone else got near it. The path forked numerous times and a few times we even ran into our own arrows after following a loop so we had to take a different path through. It seemed pretty clear the maze had to overlap in places and it was easy to confirm since some hallways completely traveled through others in a few points past a short bend. It was pretty disorienting and messed with your sense of direction.

Finally we came across a single wooden door much like the one we entered through. It would have been a scary sight if it wasn’t for all the chalk marks I’d been making this entire time.

“Alright Torien, you’re up. Check for traps and see if anything is on the other side of the door.”

She nodded and began to check the door. After seemingly finding something she started scratching at something with her claws until I heard a loud twang sound followed by a dull thunk. She jumped back and drew a dagger but there wasn’t any other reaction. Slowly she opened the door and peeked in before sighing in relief and opening the door fully.

Inside the small room was an odd fountain blurbling with water and an identical looking door on the other end of the room. I thought the room looked a little odd but after wandering nonsensical hallways for hours who was I to judge what was weird anymore.

“Oh gods finally!” Morrigan exclaimed much louder than I would have expected.

I turned to her in shocked confusion. Torien and Morrigan expressions held a ton of relief but Bella shared my confusion.

Torien noticed our confusion and started to explain, “Rooms that are shaped like this with a fountain in the center like that,” Torien pointed to the fountain, “are always safe rooms. Monsters aren’t able to enter rooms like this.”

“Really?” Bella asks with a concerned tone.

“Yeah, it’s actually rather common knowledge among adventurers. If anything I’m a little surprised you two weren’t aware of it.”

“I… see… Well, we haven’t exactly been adventurers for very long…” Bella timidly added.

“Well sure but these rooms often come up quite a bit in stories and stuff.”

“Torien, be nice. It’s not like we expected to enter a dungeon. You can’t blame them for not doing their research,” Morrigan chided her sister.

Since this room was apparently the safest we’ve been since we entered the dungeon I laid my sword down and sat against the wall. I stared at the uniformly grey ceiling for a moment before deciding to broach the subject I had been dreading a little.

“I’m not sure how much longer this dungeon goes on for but we’ve been in here probably all day. I’m not personally tired enough that I need sleep yet but I don’t know if we’ll get another chance to rest before the end. If we have to keep going for another 4 or 5 hours more we’ll be pushing it.”

“What’s an hour?” Morrigan asked.

“Oh, ah, I meant 4 or 5 bells.” Shit I forgot about that. People keep track of time using belltowers in place of actual clocks here. At eight in the morning they ring the first bell of the day and they ring it again roughly an hour apart all day till 10 p.m. I'm not sure if the time translates one to one but each 'Bell' feels like about an hour of time. It was something I first picked up on when I read the description of the *[Novice Prostitute]* class, after that it was easy to pick up on the pattern while staying in town.

There was silence as everyone chewed on my words. Torien was the first to break us from our thoughts. “We only intended to take a quick look but now we’re stuck in here. Sleeping in here will put us a day behind our return date but at least the bonus pay for destroying a demon spawning dungeon should be good. That might give us some more wiggle room on our quota and will at the very least make up for being late. We don’t really have much of a choice but to go forward since the entrance was blocked. Stopping for some rest sounds like the smarter plan."

Bella spoke next. “Coming in here was already reckless enough, we should really make sure we’re in the best shape possible before getting closer to the dungeon’s core. I don’t know a lot about dungeons but it should be the most dangerous right at its heart right?”

The cat girls nodded their heads in agreement.

I absently scratched the base of my horn before speaking again, “Maybe we should go a little bit farther and see if there are some supplies to scavenge that will make sleeping in here a bit more bearable. We didn’t bring in any of our supplies since we didn’t intend to clear this place so we don’t even have blankets to lie on. If we can’t find anything up ahead we’ll just come back and rest.”

“Sure but let’s eat first,” Morrigan said while slinging her backpack off and pulling out some trail rations. The four of us sat down and started to pull out our rations. I stared at them for a moment before I realized that I wasn’t hungry. Not in the usual sense anyway.

Sexual Appetite means that I don’t actually need to eat and this ration was precious since we weren’t sure how long it was going to take before we got out of here. Even if it meant revealing our nature to the twins I didn’t want to waste the sustenance they might need to survive. I looked at Bella and she gave a small nod to me, apparently coming to the same conclusion. I watched her take a small amount of the ration and eat it before putting the rest back into her pack. I copied the action, eating a small amount for appearances sake.

One thing that I was starting to become aware of though was the heat between my legs. I wasn’t hungry for food but I was starting to hunger for sex. I don’t think it was enough to really affect my actions or slow my mind yet but it was something I might need to find a way to solve before going too much farther. It wouldn’t be easy if we were going to camp in this small room overnight but it will probably be necessary to do something about it before this dungeon delve is over. We might need to sneak away in the middle of the night, hopefully one of the nearby rooms will have somewhere we can sneak off to.

Torien eyed us suspiciously when we barely ate any of our rations but thankfully she didn’t say anything about it. After the twins ate their fill it was time to prepare to search the adjacent rooms. I slung my backpack back over my shoulder just in case and picked up my large sword.

I opened the door forward into the next part of the dungeon and was surprised to find that it looked completely different from any of the areas so far. Rather than the cold stone of the maze or the chilly night of the courtyard it was a warm and bright mansion interior. The interior looked well furnished with wooden floors covered by multicolored carpets and rugs. There were expensive looking tables and cabinets with all sorts of knickknacks in them. Despite the unique objects in all of the cabinets it still seemed like it would be easy to get lost here.

Unlike the previous maze there were also doors along the walls that presumably lead to other rooms which would make the prospect of exploring this place pretty daunting.

“Let's split up for a little while and check some of the nearby rooms. How about you twins go that way and we’ll go this way for a while?”

“Lilith, are you sure you don’t want me to come with you to check for traps?” Torien asked.

“It’s fine, we're just going to check the nearby rooms and explore a little bit. We probably won’t go far. Besides, I’m sure you’d prefer to protect your sister over me anyway.”

She looked like she wanted to argue but just nodded. “Alright, we’ll go that way then, but first…” She took out the stick of chalk I gave her earlier and drew a campfire symbol on the door of the saferoom.

“Okay, let’s try to meet back up in the saferoom in around half an uh, bell by your best estimation.”

We split up and went different directions before Bella and I decided to check one of the rooms. The first door on the left that we checked appeared to be a bedroom with a four poster bed across from an ornate looking dresser with a peculiar looking candlestick on it. We stepped in and I closed the door behind us.

“Bella… This might be poor timing but I’m horny as hell and that bed looks comfy. If we don’t take the opportunity to blow off steam now I’ll be starving by the time we’re finishing up this dungeon.”

Bella gave me a mischievous smile. “Say no more.”