Chapter 87 Swamp, herb, and next dungeon

We were just on the edge of the swamp before I felt a twinge in my heart. I knew that was the feeling of a new herb I had never touched before. Just glancing in the general direction of the ping let me know I wasn’t going to be searching for the herb, because it was visible this far away. “Wait… There’s an herb I need to gather.”

Millicent noticed the direction I was walking and squealed out. “Oh my god. Is that an ironweave plant!?” She rushed past me, stirring up the waters as I grabbed her so she didn’t run right into a hidden crocodile in her excitement. “Pay attention to where you’re going. We've got to take this slow, or you might get ambushed.” The only real threat so far was the dang dog-sized mosquitoes.

Crocodiles were obvious since they were berserk, at least so far. And that was the same with the monkeys in this area, the swamp monkeys were the strongest monsters, but still very easy compared to the lizardmen we killed. The mosquitoes were a threat because, as big as they were, they could move fast enough that if no one noticed them in the sky and they dive-bombed, they could potentially land an attack before dying, and we had a few close calls because of it.

“We’re going to go ahead. We’ll start setting up a camp after we get out of this swamp. Catch up with us when you’re done.” The knight had all but taken over, which really shouldn’t have been the case. I think Marcus and possibly the mercenary leader were stronger than him, but both were hiding their actual power for some reason.

It was fine, I doubted they wanted the extra work that being the leader gave, and I was betting on them just wanting to get this mission over with, because everyone(except for me and my wives) was bypassing the rare resources we were passing by. We made it to the area where the plant was, as I asked. “What does it do?” “It’s ironweave. You can use its roots to make extremely strong clothing, and its white leaves can be used to make a defense potion.”

She’s about to pull it out before I stop her. “What are you doing?” She looked confused before saying. “Well, I’m obviously going to pull this out of the ground-.” I cut her off. “No, you most certainly are not. Why do you think I have all these planter golems following us with herbs? Well, there are a few reasons, but you’re married to a farmer now. We don’t just loot herbs, we keep them so I can grow them on the farm.”

She sighed. “Yeah, except this requires a swamp or a swamp-like area to grow, so we can’t plant it on the farm unless you figure out some way to grow it there.” “Which is exactly what I’m going to do. I just need to bring the soil it’s grown in and keep it more wet than normal, right?” “No, not right. You need an actual swamp; you can’t just water it more often, it needs to stay wet.” “Well, I have a rune that keeps one of the glass rooms hot. Why can’t I have a rune that keeps one room wet?”

She paused for a second as she thought about it. “...That… That might work.” A crocodile came charging out of the water, and I brained it with my axe before it got even close to the plant. “So… You want to dig this up or should I?” I got to work digging up the herb. The problem I found was that the roots were very long and fibrous.

The roots were so thin, long, and voluminous that it made sense that you could make clothing out of them. I had to cut off some of the roots, which could cause the plant to go into shock and die, but it was necessary for it to fit into the planter golem. We quickly caught up as they made it out of the swamp and were resting in a more mountainous area.

The line between the forest dungeon and the swamp dungeons wasn’t very clear. We went from wet ground with trees to wet ground with fewer trees until it became a swamp; the delineation lines from swamp to mountain were clear, as we had to climb up a ten-foot wall to exit the dungeon and enter the mountain one. Getting up all the golems took quite a bit of time after that, as I had to make trip after trip before finally making a platform for the golems to climb onto before hoisting them up.

I decided that this was going to be the location of my first safe zone. This was technically a dungeon; I could tell it was severely weakened, but the core wasn’t destroyed like the swamp dungeon was. The core was in even worse shape than the forest dungeon, and I could intuitively know that the dungeon core had been moved and placed somewhere new recently.

The dungeon was smart enough to have its boss monster pick it up and carry it around until after the enemy passed them. The problem with this was that after the initial wave was wiped out, the berserk dungeon would just make another wave eventually, which would attempt to wipe out the dungeon, possibly with more fervor than the first time, once the berserk dungeon realized there was still a dungeon in its way.

I began to plant the flowers around our location, which drew some questions from the other adventurers as I explained. “I can make a temporary safe zone. We’ll still need a guard, but it should be safer than no protection.” I could make the safe zone more than temporary, but they didn’t need to know that. The looks of shock on everyone's face were enough for me to know I made the right call.”

I cleared my throat. “I can make another one, maybe two smaller ones before I run out of plants I brought with me.” Everyone looked on in shock, the only person who didn’t understand how insane that skill was was the prince, as he asked. “What’s so special about making a safe zone?” Everyone’s head slowly turned toward him as the knight explained.

“Some dungeons take weeks to clear, that’s weeks of constant vigilance, otherwise you might die. The only workaround is safe zones, but almost no dungeons have them. The dungeons that still have safe zones are famous because of the safe zones. Some dungeons are impossible to finish because of how long they take with no safe zones; that power is reason enough for raiding parties to recruit him.”

He grumbled as he mumbled out. “Well, it just doesn’t seem that impressive to me.” The knight pulled out a tent from a magical storage container and began setting it up for the prince. I yawned as I asked. “Did anyone see what type of monsters are in this dungeon?” The mercenary leader cleared his throat. “There’s a bunch of centaur corpses on the other side of this hill; chances are it’s a centaur dungeon.”

Well… That sucked. Centaurs were known for their archery. I doubted my safe zone would stop arrows from going through. Hopefully, we wouldn’t be harassed in our temporary domicile while we rested. They had bigger things to worry about than adventurers making their way through the dungeon to go kill the real threat to their survival… If I played my cards right, I might even be able to make the dungeon look at us in a more friendly light before we made our way all the way through.