“Hah!” Liliana shouted as her [Light Burst] successfully struck the goblin that Sasha had been fighting, killing the beast. The woman turned an unamused look at Liliana, who whistled innocently as she swung her naginata from atop Lelantos, stabbing into another goblin that had charged her.

Lelantos wasn’t really fighting, he mostly just stood there and ignored the attacks that didn’t even drop his Health as Liliana and the others mowed through the goblins. The cave system thankfully wasn’t cramped, the walls at least thirty feet high and twenty feet wide from what they’d seen so far. It left plenty of room for Liliana to swing her weapon from atop the large tiger, netting her levels in [Mounted Combat] while keeping her away from most dangers.

At this rate she’d be the healer’s favorite DPS, as she was the only one who hadn’t needed even a small heal yet. Anything that hit her was taken care of by her [Regeneration].

“That makes 8 for me,” Liliana taunted the other woman who gave her a droll look and swung her axe without looking, beheading a goblin that had been trying to jump on her back.

“9,” the woman informed her, and Liliana glared at Sasha, but there was little heat. They’d been in the dungeon for a few hours now and Liliana had gotten a better read on the guards’ personalities.

Sasha had challenged the entire group by claiming she’d have the highest kill count by the end of the dungeon. This had ignited Liliana’s competitive spirit, and she’d immediately informed the woman her kill count would be highest. The entire group had joined in, everyone claiming they’d walk out with the highest number.

“11!” Sam shouted out as an arrow buried itself in a goblin’s eye and ended its life.

“5,” Emyr droned on as his shadows finished off a goblin that Alistair had been fighting.

“4,” Alistair grumbled as another goblin charged him, attracted by his [Incensed Aura].

“7,” Daniel shouted back at them with a grin as his daggers sliced through the throat of a goblin.

“13!” Charles announced as a pyre of flames swallowed two goblins whole, a mad cackle accompanying the fire. Liliana shot a concerned look at the fire mage, who had been tossing out fireballs like they were going out of style the entire time. What was the limit to his Mana?

“1,” Eric called from the back and, almost as one, the group turned to look at him in disbelief.

“Eric, the cockroach doesn’t count,” Sam informed the healer slowly, earning him a glare.

“It had a level!” Eric informed him, tone insulted.

“Yea, it was level 1!” Charles shot off another fireball at a goblin that was trying to sneak attack their back-line, “that was very rude of you. We are having a civil discussion,” Charles told the goblin as it screeched, slowly burning to death. An arrow finished it before the flames could.

“12,” Sam counted out and hastily dodged a fireball thrown at his face.

“That was my kill, you thief!” Charles argued and Sam grinned cheekily at the other guard, dodging the next flaming projectile sent his way.

“Lelantos, please,” Liliana asked, and the tiger let out a roar that rang in the enclosed space, forcing both allies and foes to clasp hands to their ears.

“Guys, focus please, stop playing around,” Liliana ordered, when the echoing of the roar had subsided. The guards listened to her order, even if Charles did still look ready to flambe Sam at any given moment. Alistair simply huffed and pulled the next set of goblins on them, Emyr once more in the shadows and providing support.

The group had more or less figured out a fighting style that worked for them. Daniel would scout ahead, locating patrols or groups of goblins. He’d run back and Alistair would approach first. They’d found out if Lelantos approached first the goblins would run off screaming. Once Alistair had grabbed aggro the goblins would be less likely to run off when Lelantos came up and attracted the rest of the aggro. Goblins might be intelligent for their ranks, but they were about as smart as a five year old child. Once they had aggro grabbed the goblins usually wouldn’t retreat.

With both tanks doing their jobs, Liliana would begin attacking the goblins circling Lelantos, Sasha would move to killing the ones on Alistair. Emyr would provide his normal support, pulling down and trapping enemies or finishing them off. Sam and Charles would keep Eric safe and provide ranged support, and Daniel would cover any spots that needed help. Rinse and repeat.

While the monsters were higher leveled than Liliana, ranging from level 60-72 from what she’d seen so far, it didn’t feel overly dangerous. Their group was large, and she had a level 90 tiger to ride on far out of range of most of the goblins. If she had tried this dungeon alone, she wasn’t sure if she would’ve survived five minutes.

Goblins were swarm creatures. While individually weak when they got into groups, they could be vicious and ruthless. Their patrols usually had anywhere from 8 to 10 goblins in them. The small gatherings they’d seen usually had 15 or so goblins in them.

Which was a good number for their group to handle easily, while still being sure everyone got experience to some degree or another. Liliana had managed to level up to 54, and she hoped to see her Rank up today. However, the sharing of experience meant it was slow to level, even with the amount of goblins she had killed.

“Lelantos!” Liliana called out, seeing the tiger take an entire goblin into his mouth.

“Drop it!” She ordered, and the tiger growled, chewing on the goblin.

“Spit it out! That is not food!” Liliana jumped off the tiger, shoving her naginata into the chest of a goblin in her way as she tried to get to her bond’s head.

The tiger finally spat out the mangled corpse of the goblin and turned his head from her. Liliana placed a hand on her hip while raising the other at two goblins charging her. [Light Barrage] activated and kept the goblins at a distance as Liliana chased her bond’s head around, sensing he still had something in his mouth.

“What is in your mouth? Spit it out!” Liliana cried, earning laughter from the group as they finished the last of the goblins and watched the girl chasing the tiger around the cave. Liliana finally managed to catch up with him and grabbed his head. However, her lower strength meant she was left dangling off of him as he swung his head around, refusing to drop whatever was still in his mouth.

“I’ll give you a core if you drop it!” Liliana bargained as her head began to spin from the fast movements. Lelantos slowed but didn’t stop and she grit her teeth, “Three cores then!” she shouted and the tiger stopped suddenly, the lack of momentum making her lose her grip and throwing Liliana off. She fell on the ground on her back seconds before a saliva covered goblin head landed on her stomach.

“Oh, ew! Ew! Ew!” Liliana scrambled to throw the head off and began to frantically rub at her clothes covered in slobber and gore.

“What was it you said? Right, ‘focus guys!’” Alistair mocked from where he stood, leaning against the walls, sweat soaking his hair. Liliana stood and glared at her stepbrother. Sticking the end of her naginata into the decapitated head of the goblin, she flung it at him, forcing the tank to dodge the macabre projectile.

“Enough, children,” Sasha chided as she walked between the two, waving her axes around threateningly. Liliana huffed and folded her arms, sticking a tongue out at Alistair, who just huffed and turned from her.

“Theres a spot up ahead that will do for a rest,” Daniel informed the group, turning their attention from the siblings. Everyone was tired from the fighting and needed a rest. While they hadn’t been fighting nonstop, they hadn’t had a real rest yet. Anytime spent not fighting was spent getting further into the dungeon and mapping it out. Liliana was certain Silas or Jason had an actual map of the dungeon, but neither had offered such a thing to their group.

When she’d asked Sasha about it, she’d said it was fairly normal for groups on their first run through to not be provided with a map, as a sort of rite of initiation. They wouldn’t do it if they determined the dungeon to be too dangerous, but in this case, they’d thought the risk minimal. It taught a good lesson on making one’s own maps and learning how to navigate in new and dangerous environments. All vitally important lessons for the guards to know, and as for a few of them, this was their first time in a dungeon. It made the lesson ever more important.

Liliana had tried to draw her own map, but found her lack of any kind of drawing skills in her past or current life was rather hinder-some. Her map had ended up looking like some child's fever dream drawing and she had tossed the paper into one of Charles’ goblin pyres.

She wasn’t the only one without any kind of artistic ability. Emyr also had shown her his own attempts, which looked like some kind of abstract artwork made of ink and tears. Alistair, however, had surprised her by drawing up a rather impressive map. From the guards, Sam, Daniel and Eric all had varying skills in [Cartography] though all the guards could make at the very least a serviceable map, but if Liliana had to choose, she’d take one of Eric’s maps any day.

“Are we going in circles? That mushroom looks familiar,” Sam muttered as the group followed Daniel, Liliana back on Lelantos and playing vanguard. Liliana titled her head back and looked at the glowing purple mushroom in question. She pulled out her Herbology book and drew Lelantos to a stop.

“That is a Violet Hood,” Liliana murmured as she placed her book back into her spacial bracelet and withdrew a pair of hide gloves and a bag. The gloves were made of Giant Toad skin and enchanted to ward off poisons, something rather essential when gathering plants of all types. The bag was made of the same material, and she had several to keep all of her plants apart so they wouldn’t contaminate each other.

Taking a knife made for harvesting plants, Liliana carefully dug up the mushrooms and placed them in the bag, leaving two-thirds of them behind so they could be gathered again. Placing her gathering tools back in her spacial bracelet, she looked around to see the party giving her various expressions.

Alistair was edging away, as if he expected her to make the mushrooms explode. Emyr was already in the shadows. Sam was edging closer, a curious look on his face while Eric was rubbing his temples. Charles and Sasha both looked rather bored and ready to move on, unsurprising as this wasn’t the first time Liliana had stopped them all to gather some type of plant or another.

“It causes hallucinations, and no, we haven’t passed it before. The one you saw was a Weeping Azul, and it’s used to make sleeping droughts,” Liliana clarified as she got back on Lelantos and started off once more.

“Should we be concerned that she just grabbed enough magic mushrooms to send us all to crazy town?” Charles stage whispered to Sam.

“I’m not concerned, but you singed Lelantos tail during one fight, so maybe you shouldn’t eat anything tonight,” Sam responded. Liliana threw a glance over her shoulder to see the fire mage edging further from her. She decided to not tell him that the hallucinogenic effects of the mushroom were mild unless it wash dried or steeped properly.

Liliana looked up, seeing her [Will-O-Wisp] dancing above the group. Charles had offered to light the way, but Liliana didn’t fancy the idea of flying balls of fire floating around them during fights, just waiting to catch her hair on fire at any given chance. Her [Will-O-Wisp] didn’t cause damage and provided ample light for them, though their more ghostly coloring gave a creepy air to the dungeon.

“Are all dungeons this….” Liliana trailed off, trying to find the right word for it.

“Easy?” Sasha offered.

“Boring?” Charles drawled, juggling fireballs from the back.

“Repetitive?” Eric asked, not looking up from the book he had pulled out.

“I meant… underwhelming,” Liliana clarified with a droll look. She tapped her fingers against Lelantos’ saddle as she considered it. While the goblins were a higher level than her, she had remembered this dungeon, while solo-able, being the first sort of soft ‘wall’ in the game. There was always a wall in every game, something that was such a step up from other things of the same level that it gave players their first taste of loss.

Realm of Hope had many walls, many instances of humbling the players and forcing them to up their mechanical skills to progress. The Goblin Dungeon was one, the specialized creature battles the second. Once you learned the mechanics of the dungeon and fights, it became much easier, but until then, you got your ass handed to you repeatedly.

Yet in this dungeon, while it was at a higher level than she remembered, and with far more mobs than in the game, they were progressing fast. It set her nerves on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Nothing in the game had ever been easy. It had always been a way to lure a player into a false sense of security. She had seen nothing to suggest the actual world itself was different.

Even her fight with Lelantos was proof of that. Had he really meant to fight her and Emyr, they’d have died with his stats and skills. He’d played with them, let them survive because it entertained him. What if the dungeon was similar? In the game, dungeons hadn’t been sentient, but the same couldn’t be said for reality. She’d heard stories from the guards of dungeons suddenly changing halfway through, or delve to delve, as if it was learning.

“Its normal for a first run in a dungeon to be fairly easy, as it’s only just materialized and hasn’t accumulated enough Mana,” Sam explained from the back and Liliana nodded. It made sense.

“That’s probably why the captain is letting us all take a shot at it first. Since it hasn’t settled fully on its difficulty yet and won’t have all the traps and tricks a more established dungeon would,” Sam continued and Liliana perked up, turning to look at the guard. She hadn’t known that part.

“Dungeons progress like mortals or beasts. Well, technically, they grow differently than us or beasts, but they grow too. It’s part of why we have to delve them. The increased essence we receive in dungeons is partially the dungeon’s own essence, so by farming it, we control the power of a dungeon. If they’re left too long to gather Mana, then they can become strong enough that they can become real threats to civilization. Towns, cities, even countries have been wiped out by rogue dungeons left unchecked,” Sam seemed to drop into a lecture mode and Lelantos slowed some so the archer could catch up and continue his lesson.

Liliana noticed Emyr had dropped out of the shadows and seemed to be listening as well. Even Alistair was walking closer. She thought the two would have already known this, but it seemed she wasn’t the only one who didn’t know everything.

“All known dungeons are carefully guarded and relegated by the governing Lords in the area they’re found in. Either to lower or increase them, depending on what is necessary for the nation. Each dungeon’s Rank is carefully decided based on necessity. We obviously don’t need a hundred Rank 1 Dungeons, and maintaining that Rank is difficult as it’s incredibly easy for a Rank 1 dungeon, more than any other, to become a Raid class dungeon,” Sam explained, hands gesticulating as if to illustrate his point.

Several gasps rang out at the term Raid class dungeon. A Raid class dungeon could become a cataclysmic event, when a Dungeon became so strong it couldn’t comfortably be considered its own Rank any longer, but it also couldn’t be considered its next Rank either. Liliana had heard of this at least. Her history lessons had featured the tales of the Five Raid Dungeon Disasters. The five times in known history where a Raid Class Dungeon had destroyed not just a city, or a nation, but reformed an entire continent itself. Or in one case, destroyed a, continent entirely.

“After a few delves in this dungeon, they’ll see where it falls, and likely send a communication to the capital to determine whether it’s Rank needs to be lowered or increased based on the other dungeons in the Rosengarde territory. Then it’ll fall to the guards or they will place a quest out for the adventurers in the territory, to run the dungeon a certain amount of times each month,” Sam finished with a shrug. Charles walked up and wrapped an arm around the archer’s shoulders and rubbed his hair roughly.

“Who knew our little Sam was so book smart?” Charles teased, and Sam flushed, scratching at his face with a nervous laugh.

“I wanted to be a schoolteacher originally, so I spent a lot of time studying the history of the land. Dungeons are a fairly prolific part of history and our legends,” Sam explained, and Liliana smiled a little at the thought of Sam teaching a bunch of children. He had the right kind of personality for it, she thought at least. Kind and patient. He had managed to put up with their eclectic group so far, at least, and Liliana figured a bunch of children couldn’t be any more difficult.

“Why did y-“ Charles started when Daniel appeared in front of them.

“Here’s the rest area,” he announced as they turned a corner, a large space unfolding. Glowing moss and different types of mushrooms covered the walls. Liliana spotted a small pool with a miniature waterfall against one wall, bioluminescent fish swimming inside of it. A natural camping site, provided by the dungeon. No one knew why, from what she’d heard, that dungeons provided periodic rest areas guaranteed to not have monsters inside of them. However, some rest areas were traps meant to lower one’s guard before some event in them wiped out an entire party.

But based on what Sam had just told their party, she didn’t think the dungeon was at the point it could play those kinds of tricks on them. Still, her guard was up as the group made a small camp. Someone swiftly freed Liliana of any task she tried to do, from starting a fire to setting up tents. With a sigh, she laid against Lelantos and set to caring for her weapons as she watched the guards setting up a camp, reluctantly admitting to herself that they were much better at it than she was.

Tiredness dragged at her limbs and Liliana reassessed how long she thought they’d been in the dungeon. Underground, it was harder to tell time, but her body felt like they’d been going for longer than a few hours. As Eric set up a pot to cook food in, Liliana’s stomach awakened and growled, informing her she was ravenous.

Watches, I’ve got to figure out how to make watches, Liliana decided as the group finally finished and everyone collapsed around the fire. The guards dropped into an easy familiarity and for the first time that day, Liliana felt like an outsider, watching them joke with each other. She gathered her knees to her chest and leaned further into Lelantos, letting his tail wrap around her in comfort.

The outside looking in was a feeling she was intimately familiar with, both in this life and in her last. Being sick, she’d watched from her room as other children were taken from the hospital, finally cured and free to live a life she would never get. Seeing friends and classmates visit their friends, taking pictures together, shaving their heads in solidarity.

In this life, she had memories of a smaller Liliana sneaking through the shadows to watch her family having dinners, the Duke and Duchess laughing and Alistair being lavished with praise and affection. When the twins were born, she got to see a love in her father’s eyes she’d never known.

Now the old feeling was back as the group of guards joked and conversed, telling tales of other guards she had never met or heard of. Inside jokes and nicknames gained through time spent together.

“Apple?” a voice asked moments before Emyr appeared out of the shadows on her right, startling Liliana so badly she almost fell over. The blue-haired boy held out the fruit in question, and Liliana flushed as she took it. He settled down next to her, leaning back against the big cat as if he hadn’t once been terrified of him. Now Lelantos chuffed a greeting and moved his tail to flick the teen in the face, earning a sputtered chuckle from Emyr.

Liliana smiled as she bit into the apple, feeling tears prickling in her eyes, though she couldn’t determine why she felt the sudden need to cry.

“Ugh, cleaning armor is the worst. I wish they’d let me bring a servant,” Alistair complained as he dropped in front of the pair, not willing to lean against the large cat like the other two. Emyr tossed the other boy an apple as well and Alistair caught it, biting into it.

“Hey! You three going to come get some chow or what?” Charles called out, prompting Alistair to groan once more as he stood and moved to the fire. Liliana stared at the circle of guards, unsure for a moment if she could take the step. A hand in her face startled her from her frozen state, blinking she looked up to see a pair of understanding silver eyes looking back at her.

With a smile and tears pricking at her eyes, Liliana took the hand and stood, moving to finally join the circle.