Chapter 17

Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region

Expeditionary Camp

"So, are you sure you'd rather not come with us milady?"

Allya looked up from the map spread on the table, and gazed at the heavily armored dwarf that had just spoken from the tent's entrance.

"I'm sure Artok, still, thank you for offering." She said to the assault guild leader. Apparently to avoid conflicts with the adventurers guild, the assault guild called their leader, well, leader, instead of guild master. "As you can see I have quite a lot to do." She chuckled. "And your delve promises to add even more work on my plate."

The dwarf laughed.

"True, true! Well, at least it'll be the good kind of work. In any case, if that is your final word, then I will be going."

"Of course. Good luck, and try not to get yourself killed!" She smiled. "And do try to avoid looting everything that is or isn't nailed down."

The dwarf's laughter redoubled, and he shook his head, before leaving the tent.

Allya smiled a bit, before her expression reset back to seriousness. As hilarious as her quip might have been, it was also depressingly true. A surprisingly high number of adventurers, including some of the assault guild's members, had proposed looting the crystals and screens dispersed throughout the dungeon's entrance. Only an horrified intervention by Starvak and her had stopped those idiots from actually carrying out their plans. If there was one thing that experienced dungeon delvers learned, no matter their ranks, it was to never deface a dungeon's entrance. Unfortunately most of the expedition was composed of adventurers who hadn't exactly specialized in dungeon delves (otherwise they wouldn't have been in Darthar in the first place), and most of them hadn't thought beyond the 'profit' part of their scheme to realize that the dungeon would have been less than happy with them. And an angry dungeon, especially one you depended on for your income, wasn't exactly the greatest thing for your health and continued survival.

Still, it had reminded her rather forcefully that she no longer was an adventurer. Well, she was still a member of the guild, but her main occupation wasn't adventuring anymore. She was on the other side of the barrier now, which meant that she had a whole different perspective on the 'make as much money as possible and get more powerful as fast as possible' mindset far too many adventurers had. She was sure some of them will hate her for the taxes she had set, of 15% of mana value of any loot, payable in loot or cash, mirroring the guild's own policy on the matter, but she couldn't please everyone, and she had a dungeon town to build. The main problem was that she also had to babysit some of the less bright adventurers, who only saw some easy money, and didn't realize the consequences of their actions.

She sighed. It was like her week training recruits back in the Eris Empire all over again. Only then she could at least throw noncoms at them if they were being idiots about it. She snickered as she realized that she had solved a lot of problems in the military by throwing noncoms at things and letting them deal with it. Then again, it was what they were here for, weren't they? Maybe she just needed to assemble her own staff to throw at problems.

Mmmmmhhh, now there's an idea, she thought. Pyn and I can't do this alone, after all. Heck, even Myskarios and his staff won't be enough at some point, and they're too busy trying to get everything organized to truly help us with anything else. Plus, I want to delve into Crystal's dungeon as well, and I can't do that if I'm stuck in an office all day, every day, all week long.

She looked up at her elven friend, who met her gaze from across the table.

"What? I'm not going back in there blind! I saw firsthand what kind of surprises Crystal can hide, remember?"

Allya laughed at the elf's response.

"Relax! I'm not going to ask you to delve in there without me. Besides, like I said, we have better things to do right now."

"Precisely! Dear gods, do you have any idea how long it's going to take to get everything up and running? And that's not even talking about the city planning! If we are to build sewers, we really need to get started now if we don't want to have to risk damaging everyone's foundations when we finally get around to it. That's not even mentioning what we are supposed to do if someone tries to build ontop one of the mesas, and-"

"Wait." Interrupted Allya. "The mesas?"

"Yeah. There are already some people trying to get their tents up there, because they have a better view and some of the merchants have already tried to pressure me into selling them the buildable area up there, so they can sell it at a profit once the town gets started." She snorted. "Fat chance of me falling for that."

Allya frowned, and Pyn blinked.

"What is it? I mean, it's just what merchants do, there's no need to get mad-"

"I'm not mad at them. I'm mad at myself." She straightened up, and joined her hands behind her back. "I'm afraid I've been slacking. Oh well, what matters is what we can do now. Pyn, I need you to completely forbid construction on the mesas and between them. Particularly the outer ones. If there are demands for construction on or between the innermost ones, we'll decide on a case by case basis, but the outer ones are a straight up no."

Pyn straightened up, almost by reflex as she heard the command tone in her friend's voice. Her eyes widened slightly as Allya's presence changed completely from that of her friend to a military commander. She had seen Calder do the same thing, cracking a joke one second, and then dishing out orders the next, but she hadn't expected Allya to be able to do the same thing.

Idiot! The elf thought to herself. Of course she can, she's a gods damned knight valiant of the Eris Empire. The only surprising thing is that she's only starting to boss us around now.

"Uh, yeah, sure, but why?"

"Fortifications." Allya smiled grimly as she saw her friend's eyes widen further. "We're going to get attacked eventually. Now I'd love to tell you it would be by wasteland creatures coming here to see what we taste like, but truth is I think they'll be the least of our problems." She turned around, and gestured at the map of the continent hang up on a tent pole, with the trade routes and important hubs of commerce carefully marked. "A war is coming. I've been through the Republic, and so have you. You've seen how greedy and corrupt their matriarchs and patriarchs have become, correct?" The elf nodded. "Well, how long do you think it will be until they decide that they should bring us under their 'benevolent rule'? For our protection of course, not to bleed us dry to fill their own pockets!"

Pyn's face went white, and Allya grimly nodded.

"So I need you to outright forbid anyone from building on or between the outer mesas. And start working on probable wall placements and artillery positions." She held up her hand, forestalling her friend. "I know, you're no fortress designer. We'll hire one when the time comes to actually build this stuff. But you're the best I've got right now, and I just need you to stop people from building in places where defenses should or could be."

Pyn met her gaze for a few seconds, then slowly nodded.

"Good! Now, onto the subject of land speculation..."

*****

"Everyone ready?"

A chorus of 'yes' answered Artok's question, and he nodded, satisfied.

"Good!" He put on his helmet, and grabbed his axe and shield, before looking at the massive double door, and the hall beyond, with it's single golem standing at it's end. "Then let's go!"

They quickly assembled into the standard dungeon delving column, with a ranger or a rogue up front to spot any traps, and a tank, usually a fighter or a paladin, right behind to take the hit if they were ambushed or the scout failed to detect a trap in time. Then afterwards it was just a big blob of the melee combatants, and finally the ranged ones, so the melee focused adventurers could fan out into the room and get out of the way first. Artok wasn't especially happy how...weird that became in closed spaces, especially with a group as large as his, but it was the best of bad choices, unless he chose to just dump a large chunk of them, which probably wouldn't be a good idea.

After a few seconds of walking, they arrived in front of the golem. It was just standing in the middle of hall. A massive line on the ground, softly glowing from what Artok suspected was a long, cylindrical magic crystal, clearly told them where the safe zone ended.

The assault guild leader took a deep breath, and looked back at his group, and gestured for them to fan out. They obeyed, and he gave them a thoughtful look.

He had 15 adventurers accompanying him, so 16 persons total in his party including him. That was a respectable size for a small raid group, and very much overkill for a newborn dungeon...in theory at least. The assessment's team report clearly stated that said dungeon took challenging adventurers seriously indeed, and that while she wasn't one of the psychotic 'let's put traps everywhere' dungeon, she certainly wasn't going to discount them.

And his group wasn't exactly a crack team either. In total, he had 3 copper ranked adventurers, 3 steel ranked, 8 iron ranked and a single clay ranked. He himself was copper ranked, bordering on silver. That was a bit low for an assault guild leader, but Darthar had never been a city that required the service of his branch much. In fact, outside of the other 3 coppers, who were his regular party members, and a few of the iron ranked, all of the group had been recently inducted into the assault guild. That meant that most of them were hardly as cautious as any member of the assault guild ought to be -the saying went that there were bold assault guild members, and old assault guild members, but not old bold assault guild members. And even then they were the more level headed of the people that had joined in the last few days. He could have brought all of them in, but they would have interfered with each other more than they would have helped, and it probably wouldn't have ended well.

He gave the clay rank a look. Her name was Camille Sortar, and she was a young, novice adventurer, that had done only a single quest before heading out of Darthar. But she was smart, had her wits about her, and wasn't infused with the sense of invicibility far too many young adventurers seemed to have. She also specialized in melee, as calling her a fighter yet would be a bit of a stretch.

"Alright! Camille, you're up!" Said the dwarf as he gestured towards the clay rank.

The young woman -a girl, really- jumped up in surprise, looking around for a second, before pointing at her own chest.

"M-Me?"

"Do you see any other Camille around lass?"

"I-I, uh, don't know the name of most of the others, a-and-"

Artok held up his hand, sighing.

"That was a retorical question lass. Nevertheless, yes, I mean you. This is the occasion to test your skill, and to be able to measure how dangerous these golems are." He smiled softly at her anxious expression. "Relax, we'll heal you if you get wounded. Just try not to die, although the dungeon will bring you back it's not a pleasant experience, trust me."

Camille gave him a chopped, nervous nod, but her gaze filled with resolve, and Artok's smile widened. The kid had potential, and spine. Her only problem was that she was more interested in books and asking questions than learning how to swing a sword properly. That wasn't an issue in and of itself, she would probably make a good magic user, but she knew nothing about magic, and even less about mana and essence. She didn't even know how to cultivate for that matter! Although that was something he was sure he'd be able to rectify by the end of the delve.

He watched as the novice adventurer stepped forward, her sword raised in a standard guard position, and went over the line. Instantly, the golem's head started tracking her, and it started walking towards her.

Camille stopped, and waited for the golem to make the first move. The automaton walked right up to her, then swung ponderously at her. She easily stepped aside, and countered with a swing of her longsword. The golem staggered back, a large gash appearing in it's bronze like torso. It stopped, and swung again, which Camille dodged. The adventurer's follow up strike hit the overextended golem straight in it's neck, the sword embedding itself inside of the construct, and it froze, before dropping to the ground, inert, almost ripping Camille's sword out of her hands.

Artok waited for a second to make sure the golem was indeed neutralized, before chuckling and coming forward, patting the novice adventurer on the shoulder.

"See? Not so bad, eh? Alright, now let's get a move on, we have a whole dungeon to map." Camille nodded, putting a foot on the golem to help her extract her sword. He turned around, and looked at the 3 mages of the group, each a different rank. "Just remember to keep notes."

The mages nodded, and Artok nodded back, before gesturing to the hallway.

"Onward then!"

They reformed the column, and started their way down the dungeon. Artok took a deep breath as they cautiously walked down the first hallway. This place felt...Strange. Ancient, but...reborn. Of course, those were Old World ruins taken over by a dungeon, so it literally was an ancient place being given birth once again, and reforged with newfound purpose. Still, it had quite the aura. It reminded him of some of the old dwarven strongholds that had been abandoned during the Great Tesseract Crisis that his homeland had reclaimed.

"Contact!"

Artok froze as the call from the ranger at the front came.

"How many?"

"3. Same as the last one."

The dwarf nodded. A soft, but meaningful increase, just like the assessment team had reported. At least it meant the dungeon hadn't taken...somewhat badly their delve, and reflexively beefed up it's early room.

Of course, the question would be if that would last...and what kind of surprise she would throw at them when they stumbled upon something new at last.

"Alright." He turned around, and gestured towards Camille and a iron ranked ranger. "Alright, you two are up."

What followed was a fairly standard assault guild delve start. Every room, they encountered slightly more of the golems, and Artok adjusted the testing party's composition accordingly, until...

"Alright!" Yelled out the iron ranked adventurer in charge of the small 4 person party. His name was Edwards, if Artok recalled correctly. A decent fellow, just a bit too orthodox in his style and leadership. "Prepare for battle!"

"Yeah yeah, we get it." Called out the rogue accompanying him, named Joruk. "I'm ready. Martin, Camille?"

The ranger and fighter called out their own readiness and Artok nodded in approval. Even with a cobbled together party they were still checking everyone was in sync and truly ready before jumping into the fight. That was good, since not all adventurers would do the same, and he had seen far too many idiots get killed by this sort of behavior.

"Excellent! Attack!" Yelled Edwards as he stepped into the room, followed closely by his companions. Artok rested his head on his hands, themselves resting on the handle of his great axe. This was where the upgraded golems the assessment team had reported were supposed to first appear, and he was keen to see how they would do against adventurers of such a level.

It turns out, they would do very well.

Edwards and his teamates walked to meet the golems, and the party leader swung his sword at his enemy's head, just like he had done in the previous fight, to hopefully end the battle in a single hit. He had just a split second to realize that something was wrong when the golem ducked under his swing, before the golem's punch knocked the air out of his lungs and folded him in half...sending his head straight towards the golem's knee.

Artok winced as he heard the distinctive crack of a broken nose, and saw the fighter stagger back, screaming in pain and surprise. Fortunately for him, his teamates were alert, and they turned their attention towards the greater threat. Artok's eyebrow rose as the golem dodged Camille's sword strike, in-extremis stepped out of the way of Martin's arrow...and ended up straight into the path of Joruk's dagger. He'd expected them to be agile, but not that nimble. Although it did look that the arrow dodge was more of a fluke than anything else -every adventurer worth his salt knows that pure blind luck can play a huge part in a fight-, it was still impressive. Granted, those four were the weakest he had in his ranks, but there were still 3 iron ranked among them!

Maybe he had been a bit too hasty when he'd assumed the dungeon hadn't upped it's lethality by much. Then again, the first time they had encountered this golem type, it had costed her party a teammate, according to lady Windwrath. So maybe they had always been this way.

Still, it was worrying. He sighed. There was no helping it.

"Good job!" He called out as stepped back from finishing off the last of the golems. "That was some good fighting. Still, Edwards, you have to stop being so predictable. I warned you there was a special, hand to hand golem in this room, and you still treated all of the enemies in there like the previous ones. Don't take anything for granted, next time you might not get off so easily." He took a vial from his potion pouch, and tossed it at the team leader, who caught it by reflex. "Here, drink this. It's a lesser health potion, it'll fix you right up."

The iron ranked fighter looked at the vial, then back up at the assault guild leader, and opened his mouth, only to close it with a snap as Artok held up his hand.

"Save me the crap about the injury not being bad enough to warrant a potion. This is a dungeon, kid. Heal yourself between each room. Take every advantage of every moment of respite that you can get. Because believe me, this place will eat you like jerky if you take it lightly. So drink the damned potion before the dungeon starts complaining about you staining it's beautiful floors with your blood."

Edwards chuckled, alongside most of the other adventurers, and uncorked the vial, before downing it's contents. A few seconds after drinking it, his bleeding slowed down, then stopped entirely, before his nose started to slowly shift back into shape, and the iron ranked team leader winced as the cartilage knit itself back together.

Artok nodded in approval, before sighing and turning towards Camille.

"I'm sorry lass, but this is where you turn back." He shook his head, pre-empting her from speaking as she opened her mouth. "No 'buts'! You see how Edwards got his arse kicked by a single one of these things? How do you think you will fare if more come all at once at your party, and your teammates are too busy fending off their own to help you with yours?" The girl's mouth snapped shut, and Artok nodded. "Precisely." He switched to a softer tone. "Go back. You'll get your share, I'll personally make sure of it. But this is becoming too dangerous for you."

The young adventurer stared at him for a second, before giving him a single, choppy nod. It wasn't especially polite, but the girl had clearly seen this as her chance to break through the ranks, and hopefully get herself into a party. But this wasn't a fairy tale, and the under-leveled hero wasn't going to single handedly take down an entire dungeon by themselves despite all odds.

Artok nodded back, and gestured towards Sorior, the elven ranger of his party. Well, 'ranger'. He did know his stuff about reconnaissance and ranged combat, but he leaned more towards throwing sharp things at people. Lots and lots of very sharp things. In fact getting close to the elf was a definite hazard given the insane quantities of knives he was covered with. Even lady Aubétoile had been shocked, and she was no slouch in covering herself with sharp instruments of death.

What was it that Stor had said? Ah, yes, 'if someone ever throws a fireball at him, he'll put a claymore mine to shame'. Artok wasn't sure if he believed the bartender's description of a claymore mine -how could something so small be so lethal with only gunpowder and musket balls?-, but he'd found the comparison fitting nonetheless.

Sorior nodded, and stepped forward.

"Come on. I'll escort you out. The golems shouldn't have reappeared behind us yet, but you never know."

Camille sighed, and nodded again, before following the ranger out.

The return trip was very, very short. In less than two minutes, they arrived in the hall that had been marked as a safe zone on their map. Sorior patted the downtrodden adventurer on her shoulder (eliciting a clangor of knives and dagger banging against each other as he did so), before turning back and jogging to rejoin the group.

Camille started walking towards the entrance, then as the elf's steps behind her faded into the background, she slowly stopped. And she looked at one of the light sconces. She looked to her left, then to her right, and seeing no one (although any experienced adventurer could have told her that the dungeon didn't need anything to watch you in it's influence), she unsheathed her utility knife, and made a beeline for the light source.

It wouldn't be much, but it would be something to show for her expedition...and she could appraise it's value. Usually, light crystals were only a dozen mana, but maybe the dungeon's had some special properties or something. At least, that was her reasoning.

She looked at the light, and hesitated for a second as she recalled the guildmaster's intervention about looting the dungeon's entrance. But then she shook her head. Surely, it wouldn't apply to the dungeon's inside! Plus, they had already thrown the dungeon's golems whole into spatial bags, surely a single light crystal would be nothing compared to that!

*****

Gods damn it, you idiot! Don't do it! Thought Alexandra as she watched the adventurer make her way towards the light sconce. The booby trapped light sconce.

Of course, she didn't hear the dungeon, and started chipping at the stone with her knife, trying to dislodge the crystal with it.

"Welp, looks like this will be your first kill of a true adventurer." Said Emilia as she looked at the screen. "Not exactly in the most...glorious way possible, but still."

Alexandra sighed.

"Yeah, I guess...But still...She's just a kid Emilia."

"Yes. But she is the one choosing to ignore common sense...and you'll resurrect her anyway. At least it should provide a pointed lesson to leave well enough alone. To her, and others that might try to emulate her behavior."

The Earth-born nodded unhappily. She couldn't dispute the points Emilia had raised, but still...

Then, the girl managed to finally pry the crystal loose...and let out the fine, silicon powder contained behind it.

Alexandra cringed as the girl started coughing, then collapsed onto the floor, coughing and gurgling blood as the silicon powder began slicing her lungs apart like a million tiny razors. She couldn't even scream for her help as she started to drown in her own blood.

The Earth-born looked at the screen for a second...then shoved herself up.

"Oh, fuck this!"

"What? Alex, what are you-"

But the Earth-born was already gone. She plunged into her dungeon view, and immediately created a golem in the entrance, with a health potion, one she had absorbed from the core thief that had tried to take her, and jumped in.

She had never possessed on of her golems before, and she stumbled as the unfamiliar balance and vision took over her. Then, she straightened her shoulders, and bent down, grabbing the potion, before stomping towards the dying adventurer.

The girl saw her coming, and tried to weakly crawl away, as her rapidly weakening breaths created blood bubbles in her mouth. But Alexandra simply walked over to her, turned the girl onto her back, and kneeled next to her. She uncorked the health potion, and, grabbed the adventurer's face, before forcefully putting the end of the vial into the girl's mouth, and tiling her head to make the liquid pour into her mouth.

The adventurer tried to fight it, but couldn't stop herself, and she swallowed the health potion. Once the vial was empty, Alexandra stepped back, grabbed the cork, that she had tossed away, and closed the vial again, before looking at the adventurer.

The girl was on all fours, violently coughing up a mixture of blood, silicon dust, and...something else Alexandra couldn't identify. Then, the adventurer took a deep, staggered breath, and looked up at Alexandra. Well, the golem she was inhabiting at least. Shock was plain on her face, as was confusion.

"Y-You saved me..." She said, panting.

Alexandra set the vial down, before giving the girl a mock curtsy.

"W-Why?"

The Earth-born shrugged, before pointing at the entrance. One of the problems she had found is that she still hadn't figured out quite how the speech function worked on these things. She knew they could talk -the one she had taken down when she had woken up as a dungeon had spoken to her-, but so far the answer to making her own golems speak had eluded her.

The adventurer looked at the entrance, then back at Alexandra, who was turning around to place the golem at the end of the hall, and got back up on her shaky legs.

"W-Wait! Why did you save me?"

Alexandra sighed internally as she recognized the genuine curiosity in the adventurer's tone. The girl wouldn't leave her alone and get out without an answer...Or a more pointed warning to leave immediately. Well, that was fine with Alexandra. She was good at providing pointed warnings. Not so good at making them very subtle, but that didn't matter here.

She created half a dozen new golems in the adjacent room, and had them march into the hall, before pointing at the entrance again...and ordering all of her golems to start marching forward.

The adventurer's face went white, and she immediately started running for the entrance, stumbling and falling a few times along the way, but pushing herself back up with surprising speed as she fled the dungeon.

Alexandra smiled internally as she saw her go, and popped out of the golem, distributing a few orders for them to replace the ones that had fallen in the rooms, and popped back into her body.

She looked to her side, at Emilia's raised eyebrow, and sighed.

"Look, she was just a kid. I wouldn't have gained much from her death."

Emilia held up her hand.

"There's no need to justify yourself." She smiled. "First, because you sign my paychecks." Alexandra laughed at the vampire girl's joke. "Second, you're the dungeon core. And third, there really wasn't much to gain to having her die. Still, I didn't take you for the type to save adventurers from their own death."

Alexandra shrugged.

"Like I said, there was no real point to letting her die...and I gained some knowledge in saving her. I got to see a health potion in action up close! It's...fascinating really. Was that black good she coughed up something from the potion? Something to capture the dust in her lungs and neutralize it?"

Emilia looked at the dungeon for a second, and decided to let her switch the subject.

"Yes, indeed. Although it's more of a secretion made by body, enhanced by the potion, you see..."

They continued chatting about health potions as the assault guild continued it's way into the bowels of the dungeon and a very frightened -and confused- adventurer stumbled out of it.