Chapter 2

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[Sigurd]

John had made good progress. Where before was a chubby, lazy teen with a voracious interest in dungeons, now stood a man. Stronger, meaner, and far less naïve. The training had done him good, and he had changed so much, yet he hadn’t lost that kindness, the heart that he had always shown.

I was glad of that; kindness was his best feature and it would have been sad if he had lost it.

“Begin the sequence again John…” the instructor yelled out. Instructor Prantalio was a man you didn’t want to trifle with, and though he didn’t delve dungeons any longer, he was well respected within the community. You couldn’t ask for a better teacher, and John was incredibly lucky. Though he didn’t know it yet, he had made leaps and bounds and as I watched him regain his footing, I saw the determination in his eyes.

He could fight!

John danced around the training dummy, with skill. Slashing out with the sword and ducking under the blow that it launched in return.

I was impressed, perhaps I could take him out for a delve soon.

Perhaps not, I thought reconsidering as I watched him get caught. Not quite yet. The boy could fight, but he needed more awareness. In a normal dungeon, sure, he’d be ready. But The Realm Beneath was different, and the huge caverns and imposing terrain meant it was easy to be taken by surprise. It had happened to me and I was far more experienced.

John was taken to the medic tent and I wandered off.

The new inn was still being built, but it had come along enough to serve beer, and that was what most adventurers cared about. Sleeping in a nice bed was good, but they were used to sleeping rough, the good ones anyway. You had to, to make it far down dungeons, but beer was something you could only get on the surface.

It was also where I knew some of my colleagues would be, and so I took the short walk over to them, finding Kael and Jackson sitting at the bar with a tankard in hand. Though it did look comically small in the huge hands of Jackson.

I grinned when I spotted it but managed to not laugh out loud as I headed over to sit down.

“What you grinning for Sig?”

“Nothing.” I replied, nodding at Jackson’s hand when the big man looked away. Kael split into a grin when he noticed it too.

“Figured I might find you two here.” I continued, slipping onto the wooden chair, and signalling for the waitress.

“And why are you trying to find such austere personages as ourselves?” he questioned trying to hold a serious face.

“Just wanted to catch up on the gossip, been gone for a week and a bit you know. Things move fast around here, you know. What’s been going on?”

It was true, things did truly move fast once the guild got started. When I had left to visit ma, the inn was just a floor and now it had walls and the beginnings of a roof, some too with many of the buildings.

“Good, good. We still hold the deep point which is nice.” I smiled at that. “But several teams have gotten close, getting to the ocean floor before turning back. Turns out there were a number of features that we missed first time around, I mean with such huge floors and all, its not any wonder we missed a bit.”

“True, too much to explore and too little supplies to do it with. Speaking of which, we going down again soon?” I asked hopeful...

“Hell yeah, man. Seb’s had us waiting on you, too much of a gentleman that one. Jackson said you wouldn’t mind if we explored without you, but Seb and I held him back, how could we explore without our little man I said”

“Fuck off Kael” Jackson said with a huffing laugh. “Sig, don’t believe a word out of the twits mouth… I never said that, he’s a liar, a liar I tell you” he commented pointing his finger at Kael and shaking it to emphasise the point.

I chuckled, “Hmm… who to believe, who to believe. The stoic man mountain that seems honourable, or the cheeky prankster rogue that I’ve caught lying hundreds of times before…”

“Wha… I… Sigurd, how dare you impugn my honour, my reputation.” He wailed as if it was the end of the world.

“What will the ladies think? You must have me confused with someone else. I have never lied in my life.”

We were all laughing now, and I had trouble stopping it in time to order my drink from the waitress.

A beer, obviously.

“So, you haven’t been down again then?”

“Nah, course we’re waiting for you. You’re one of us now and the teamwork with Jackson, it was a thing to watch. Besides, Seb and the guild master have had us writing down everything we could think of from the trip, haven’t had time even if we wanted to.”

“Thanks”

“Oh, and what did we miss then, you said we missed some features of the dungeon?”

“Yeah, some traps mostly, and hidden chests and rooms like the one in the swamp.” Kael replied.

“Inside one of the trees, giant ass snake guarding it.” Jackson said, continuing.

“Oh, dangerous?” I asked.

“Yep, more so than the others on that floor. Took down one of the adventurers from the team that found it, the rest managed to take it out, but it got one of them.”

“Prize?”

“Plenty of gold, and some rare herbs and mana crystals, but it was the Black Dorchid that was the real prize.”

“Really? Wow.” Dorchids were incredibly rare flowers, that grew in dungeons and looked like orchids, hence the name. Silly I know, but it stuck. They absorbed mana and when transplanted they started emitting the mana into the environment. They were incredibly valuable for making safe training environments and the nobles almost always snapped one up for hundreds of gold.

“lucky group, well despite the death, that’s a fantastic prize. Pity it was black, though. They’re not worth anywhere near as much as some of the others.”

“Still a huge prize though.” Jackson commented.

“True, anyone checked for the room again, see if we can farm them.”

“Course they have, gone, it seems the dungeon is intelligent enough not to just hand out free rewards like that.”

“Tsk… shame.”

“We also missed spike traps in the ice slide floor and huge creatures that slap down on the floating ice in the ocean floor.”

“Sounds bad.”

“Deadly.”

“So, we got lucky?”

“Nah, Seb spotted the ripples from one of the impacts and made sure to guide us around it. Didn’t know quite how good a decision he’d made until the stories started coming up though.”

“Phew, glad he’s team lead. I would not like to try this dungeon on without him. It’s too strange.”

“Amen to that…” They replied, clinking glasses with me as we downed the beers.

“Any word on ranking?”

“Nope, still being decided, and since we didn’t reach the bottom yet and its only just being explored, I’d say it’ll take a while yet before there’s anything official. But it’s got the kill count for a fairly high grade so far, depends what we find in it lower down.”

“What’s the number?” I asked

“fourteen, if we’re counting your boys.”

“Jeez, that’s a lot for so little time. What’s been happening?”

“Just little accidents and more discoveries. There’s so little information out there, and with all the newbie teams going in unprepared, they’re getting surprised time and time again. The deaths keep adding up. It’s been open what. A month and a bit?”

“Bout that, yeah”

“That’s gonna be in the hundreds a year, and its not even particularly active here yet.”

“I expect it’ll tailor off as people get more used to it, and when we can produce a guide it’ll decrease even more. Its usual with powerful new dungeons. Trust us, we’ve done this a few times. I’ll grant you its higher than usual, but it’s not unprecedented.” Jackson replied, speaking more than I’d ever heard him say before.

“Well, we’d better fix that knowledge gap then, when are we delving again, I missed it already.”

“How on earth did you ever retire Sigurd. You’re like an addict.” Kael said laughing.

“A story for another time…” I said, more sombrely. His comment had brought up some memories I’d long thought buried.

“Ah, sorry man, didn’t mean to bring up some stuff.”

“It’s cool Kael, don’t worry about it. I’m happy, doing what I love, and I’m sure that wherever they are now they’re thinking the same thing.”

A moment of silence elapsed as we sipped our drinks. They didn’t need to ask who? And I didn’t need to say, everyone knew the costs of this life and I’m sure they had memories of similar severity to my own.

“What are the others up to then?” I asked, moving on.

“Jenna’s earning some quick cash, working in the healers’ tent, they’ve been needing help with the influx of injured adventurers. Sebastien’s been helping the guild master organise everything, its up to him to tell you, but he’s a bit of a big shot, and Lore’s been working with the apothecaries, helping boil up some potions. We’re getting all the surplus. Jackson and I have been slumming it down here, helping with the training and just manual labour.” I was surprised at how much volunteer work they’d been doing around the camp. But when I asked Jackson gave me a surprisingly obvious answer.

“It’s really about the community here. The staff that work the services know who helped them, and though its not essential, being on good terms with all of them lets you get the information faster. Getting news that second before you go for a delve can save your life and since they’re all veterans in their own right, the whole atmosphere is just better. Besides, we needed the booze up and running right.”

I laughed at that. “Sure do.” We finished off the drinks, and then left the inn, mellowness flowing through our veins.

Soon I would be back in the dungeon.