Prior to the goblin army making contact with the ogre tribe, Cynthia and the others made contact with her village. They had no reason to sneak in as the ogre sentries had left their posts to fight the horde.

The groonvat were collecting their meagre possessions as fast as they could. The only ones that had carried any significant amount of belongings were children, so it didn’t take long for the entire tribe to be ready.

While the village was getting ready, Cynthia and the chief were talking alone in the only structure.

“Where’s Mirielle?,” asked the chief. “I thought it odd you were the one contacting us. The others did too but were smart enough to not bring it up.”

“She’s fine now, but she was forced to mind control monsters to attack the dungeon.” lamented Cynthia.

“What?!” yelled the chief with a directed thought that would not escape the wooden hovel. “You said everything went fine!”

“Of course I did! What would the rest of the tribe have done if they intercepted a message about the next chief being deformed do to her overusing her telepathy!” she shouted back, “With everyone on edge, hearing about the best telepath being down for the count might have been the last straw. I made a decision that was best for the village, father, as I always do.”

Cynthia’s father recoiled slightly, “...You’re right, I’m sorry I yelled. I was just worried about Mirielle.”

“I know that very well,” said Cynthia as sarcasm dripped from her words.

The chief shuffled his stumps but asked the other question that had been on his mind, “You’ve interacted with the dungeon a bit, do you think we made the right decision?”

Cynthia gave the telepathic equivalent of a stare before she left the building. Her father sighed and followed after her.

Once outside, the rest of the village was ready and waiting.

The village chief stood in front of the whole village and began to speak, “I’m sure all of you are worried, but fret not! I, Arend, your village chief vouch for the safety of the dungeon. From Cynthia we have learned that it is not a terrifying dungeon that will consume us, but one that treats its intelligent monsters with care. It is also strong to an extraordinary degree and will protect us from dangers such as the ogres. Now, let’s move!”

A telepathic roar of agreement moved through the villagers as they all followed Cynthia and the goblins. Behind the eight hundred groonvat slowly scuttled a large spider.

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Back to after the goblins made contact with the ogre tribe, Yervin was planning his next move after one of the blink hobgoblins was killed. Moving foliage in front of a high rank monster was on the high end of stupid, but the other blink hobgoblins were liable to make the same mistake. The distance to the group of ogres made it harder to target their shift skill, but maybe hoping they got a strong ogre was their best bet.

The vice-chief they snagged was currently being dragged back to the dungeon by one of the blink hobgoblins. Not easy considering the ogre’s size, but once the hobgoblin started to use his blink and shift skills, his speed increased. Shifting such a large mass was still mana intensive however.

Reducing the threat to the dungeon wasn’t the point, the point was distracting them long enough for the groonvat to escape and then leading the ogres into the dungeon where they could all be killed. Doing so would give Ian a large variety of ogres to create.

Yervin wanted to get the chief, but Ian told him not to. Apparently, while ogres were a revenge based society, even they would hesitate to follow after an enemy that eliminated their chief quickly and efficiently. Hence, why they aimed for the vice-chief first.

However, he glanced to the dagger at his hip, without the enchantment Ian placed on the daggers, they would be hard pressed to do anything to the ogres. Besides the ones in the center, they were all around S rank. Thankfully all it took to put the vice-chief to sleep was a scratch as the dagger had barely penetrated the skin.

In the end, Yervin decided to go with the long distance shift. He tried focusing on the ogre whose hair burned with fire, but his focus was too large and shifted the female ogre behind. He had overcompensated his shift location just in case, so the ogre landed right in front of him. With a swipe, the dagger slashed across her arm, a long red line appearing. Much thinner skin, Yervin thought. The female ogre fell to the side. He plunged the dagger through her ear into her brain. No reason to drag such a weak ogre back to the dungeon, they would have plenty of those.

Seeing Yervin’s actions, the other blink hobgoblins imitated him. Their aim was even worse than his and often missed the group of entirely. He wanted to yell at them, ‘Aim for the center if you can’t hit shit, dammit!’, but that would give his position away.

Their shift plan ended up being too successful as the ogre chief sent out a roar that echoed across the battlefield stunning them. By the time he recovered, Yervin saw two blink hobgoblins splattered beneath the fist of the ogre chief. He wanted to punch himself in the face, of course the ogre chief would attack them if all they did was hide in the woods and pick off his people.

Yervin’s heart was in his throat. But his instincts and the prepared plan took over. With a blink, he appeared in the center of ogre group and began stabbing the adults, making sure to leave one of each type. He killed ten adults before the chief’s inner circle could react and blinked away towards the goblin army.

He watched as the ogre chief returned from the forest dragging the mangled corpse of a blink hobgoblin. Yervin saw the rage in his eyes as he looked upon the ten corpses that Yervin had made. After a while, Yervin smirked as he realized the ogre chief wasn’t going to attack the goblin army. It seemed he was still on the lookout for the leftover invisible hobgoblin. Unfortunately for the chief, it was time to order a retreat.

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Magrok watched the goblin army retreat back in the direction of the dungeon. His teeth were clenched so tightly the surrounding ogres could hear the creaking of his bones.

“You’re not going to destroy them?!” shouted one of his inner circle, their respect no longer as set in stone as it once was.

“They will get their due when we grind the dungeon to dust. The only threat was the hobgoblin that teleported in the middle of all of you and killed ten ogres WITHOUT. YOU. EVEN. NOTICING!!!” Magrok’s voice rising to a roar of anger.

All of his inner circle thought, but didn’t say, ‘But you’re the one who let it escape in the first place!’

The sounds of battle began to die down until they ceased. Soon after a messenger ran to the chief, “All monsters in the horde have been defeated, sir!”

“Casualties?” questioned Magrok.

“Fifty four close range fighters, twenty one scouts, and one sentry, Sir!”

Magrok waved his hand at the messenger, “Leave.”

With that, the non-combatants returned to their camping spots hoping none of their loved ones were the ones to die. The chief returned to his throne, while his inner circle stood in front of him and waited.

“After the tribe is well rested and has had their fill of meat, we take revenge upon the dungeon and those goblins that retreated.” His voice was steady and calm. It reminded the inner circle of the day he claimed the spot of chief and sent shivers down their spine.

One of the stronger members of the inner circle spoke up, “Why would the dungeon attack us in the first place? It may have damaged us, but it lost a vast amount of monsters in the process.”

“Does it matter?!” shouted another member, “We just have to take revenge!”

The inner circle started to split into two camps: the ‘just take revenge’ camp and the ‘figure out why the dungeon attacked us and then take revenge’ camp. Magrok interrupted the heated discussion with a raised hand, “Enough, once we send scouts to the telepaths’ camp, we’ll have our answer, I’m sure.”

There were a few moments of stunned silence before the inner circle released their thoughts.

“Those, damn telepaths!” shouted one.

“To think they were working with the dungeon,” scoffed another.

“Mental rats,” growled a few.

“That’s right!” erupted Magrok, “Not only did they reduce some of our strongest warriors to worthless pieces of meat, they couldn’t even handle us on their own! However! While they are still the target of our revenge, the dungeon is our top priority. The telepaths removed warriors who were prepared to die, while the dungeon killed our children! It must pay!”

His speech carried through the entire ogre camp hitting the warriors from the frontlines the hardest. They had not realized another army came at them from behind. One hugged his sobbing wife, and as he clasped her head to his shoulder, pure fury smouldered behind his eyes. Once they rested, the entire tribe was ready to wreak revenge upon the dungeon.

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Ian watched as the groonvat funneled into his dungeon. One ended up being split into a different instance. They (physically he could not tell their sexes apart) got embarrassed and ran back out of the dungeon and returned with the group. He assumed the rest had some sort of party magic or party telepathy. Although, he mused, the flustered groonvat would have been fine. As soon as the groonvat entered his dungeon, they became dungeon contractees.

If he had hands, he’d be wiping the sweat off of his brow. The possibility of them having to reach his core room before becoming dungeon contractees had been a major worry. Having such a large group avoid his weak traps would have been difficult, and if he couldn’t do something about the EX rank floor, they would have all died.

With his body still awash with relief, Ian spoke to Cynthia, “Cynthia, lead them to the town floor where the goblins live. I’ll expand it to accomodate all of them for now. Once the ogres are dealt with, we can discuss living arrangements if the town isn’t to the village’s liking.”

“Okay,” responded Cynthia after a slight pause, “First, let me introduce you to the chief, Arend, my father.”

“You’re the village chief’s daughter huh? Should I call you chief preemptively?”

Cynthia let out a long sigh, “No, the next village chief will be Mirielle.”

“Oh, I, uh, see. Well, uh, introduce me to the chief then.” Ian could almost feel the beginning of an amused smirk cross the telepathic link before it erased itself.

“Father, I introduce you to the disembodied thoughts of the dungeon, Ian,” said Cynthia theatrically.

Arend gave a mental huff at his daughter, “Nice to meet you Ian. I am Arend, the chief of this village of groonvat.” Arend gave a bow in the direction that the telepathic link seemed to point him towards.

“No need to bow. I’ll be letting you live your lives as long as you always have someone bringing me things from outside of the dungeon,” assured Ian.

“You’re not going to make us fight intruders?”

“Not unless my core is at stake. I’d rather use the non-sapient creatures and the sapient creatures that can respawn. Besides, when I contracted Cynthia, I got pattern to create more of your species.” He waited for their response, but the only thing coming through the telepathic link was stunned silence.

The first one to get ahold of themself was Arend, “Y-You can create more of us?” his voice full of apprehension.

“I thought it odd initially too. I’d never encountered a dungeon that could create sapients, or at least one that had sapients on their main floors. Of course, there were monsters that had reached sapience, but they still acted like monsters. I’m thinking it has something to do with a perk I got called, ‘All Creatures’. I almost want to put up their patterns during the Auction, whenever that happens, to see the other dungeon’s reactions,” Ian rambled.

He couldn’t tell by their body language, but minute emotions of wariness, confusion, and a slew of others were permeating the telepathic link. “I take it that me being able to create your species doesn’t sit well with you?”

Arend started to speak, but Cynthia interrupted him, “Of course it doesn’t! As dungeon contractees we might eventually die out, but now you can make us monsters! You’ll make our species attack other sapients, they’ll think of us as monsters, and then attack the other villages around the Mountain!”

Her words were laced with anger, fear, and despair. He didn’t know what to say, he could do all of those things. He didn’t plan too, but his words wouldn’t alleviate this girl’s fears as she did not trust him.

“Cynthia!” yelled Arend, anger evident upon his thoughts. “I know you are wary of Ian, your reports of a peaceful and helpful dungeon were laced with trepidation and worry, but that is too much!”

“But, father!”

“Enough! Ian’s words made me confused as well, but they also made me realize something. Over the years, each chief has been tasked with keeping the old stories alive. A lot of them contain information about dungeons as you know. Why do so many of our stories center around dungeons has been asked time and again. However, no one was able to come up with a satisfactory answer. Why? Because dungeons don’t create sapients.

“Now? Ian’s words show us that dungeons can create sapients. If dungeons can create sapients, then that must be why we know so much about dungeons. Our species was most likely born from a dungeon. If our species was born from a dungeon, and are still free outside of one, then not all dungeons are bad as you seem to think!”

A gasp escaped Cynthia’s thoughts as she ran off towards the town leaving the villagers confused and shuffling around awkwardly.

Arend let out a sigh, “Hopefully Mirielle wakes up soon, so she can deal with Cynthia. And hopefully Cynthia is the worst reaction to this news, otherwise we might have a split in the village. Ian, can you tell me where this town is so I can lead the villagers there?”

“Of course,” responded Ian.

As the villagers began to settle down into the expanded town, Ian made preparations so none of the ogres would leave his dungeon alive.

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Yervin sat up in a tree and observed the ogres breaking camp. Their ‘have the ogres follow the retreating goblin army’ plan didn’t work. Instead the ogres just rested. It seemed the chief was a little more cool headed than Ian had thought.

He was here to make sure they actually headed to the dungeon. If they started to go in the opposite direction, then he was to taunt the chief and get the army to chase him. Hopefully their anger would outweigh their intelligence. A taunting hobgoblin leading them towards the dungeon was an obvious trap.

Once the camp was fully broken down, the ogres formed into ranks. He waited for them to start marching, but instead they started to slam their weapons into the ground. The beat of their weapons surged as ogres with drums started to beat their instruments. The thunder of the drums soon gave rise to a chant that rose from deep within the ogres and emerged out their throats. With their rhythm and beat shaking the surrounding forest, they began marching in the direction of the dungeon.

Yervin’s eyes were wide as he watched the musical feat of the ogres. Even though he knew they stood no chance against Ian’s EX rank floor, he felt intimidated, like they might lose. He smirked at the thought. Maybe Ian could add drums to the learning room. A goblin drum sections would be a good way to intimidate foes.

With a blink Yervin sprinted towards the dungeon, avoiding the ogre army. He couldn’t wait to fight them without the worry of dying.