Chapter Thirteen

John

The group of three returned to camp in lower spirits than their first dungeon run despite getting farther through the dungeon. They had learned a lot about the dungeon, but it looked as if they had missed their best chance to get a big harvest. Based on how fast the dungeon was adapting there was no way their strategy for getting past the fish would work again, and they didn’t even have a strategy for dealing with the bear and bees. If they wanted to deal with the bear they would probably need enchanted gear based on how easily it had shrugged off Sam’s arrows.

Before going to Olivia’s they stopped by the healers tent. All three of them felt like more of their body was covered with bruises than not. After that they went to Olivia and started to tell her the bad news. They walked in and Olivia greeted them before asking

“So? How did it go?”

The three looked at each other awkwardly before John started talking

“ It didn’t go quite as well as we hoped. We managed to get far through the dungeon, but we had to flee from a bear and the dungeon is adapting so fast I doubt the strategies we used before will work. We also had to leave some gear behind when we fled.”

Olivia grimaced and said

“Do you think you can still explore the dungeon? If so the craftsmen can make you some more gear”

John thought for a second and said

“I don’t know if Sam and Camille will agree with me, but we can probably explore a bit more. The dungeon had multiple paths so even if we can’t go up we can explore the valley that we didn’t enter before.”

Olivia looked confused as she asked

“Why would you explore a valley?”

John paused as he realized he hadn’t told her the full story and said

“We actually managed to get to the top of the dungeon. It ends on an island in the middle of a river instead of in a cave, so I figure that the valley might actually be part of the dungeon. If it is we might be able to avoid some of the more dangerous creatures in the dungeon but still raid it.”

Olivia nodded and said

“Alright then, stop by the craftsmen and they will make you gear, but don’t lose it again. We haven’t found anywhere to mine yet so every piece of metal we lose is gone until the supply ship arrives.”

After that they talked briefly about the details of their dungeon raiding plans, but they were all too exhausted to talk for long and all went to bed.

The next day they went to the camp's craftsmen to get their replacement gear. They ended up doing light duty around camp for nearly a week while they waited for everything to be made. Once the craftsmen had completed their order they gathered up and got ready to hike back to the dungeon. As they were walking out of camp someone yelled

“you better be careful working with those little girls.”

John turned to see it was Chase that had yelled and asked

“What did you say?”

Chase snorted and said

“you heard me” before continuing “If it wasn’t for their incompetence I wouldn’t have lost any fingers and I would be out there getting rich off the dungeon instead of them.”

John frowned and Chase just kept talking

“you better get yourself a real team or those bitches will bring you down just like they did to me.”

Sam interjected saying

“You can’t be fucking serious” as she got ready to correct some of Chase’s misunderstandings, but before anything happened Camille grabbed her shoulder and said

“Lets go. We shouldn’t waste any energy before the dungeon.”

Sam shot Chase a look of disgust, and then the trio continued towards the dungeon.

They walked in silence for a bit, but before long John felt the need to try and dispel the unpleasant atmosphere so he started talking

“He’s a real piece of work. For him to be that stupid his parents must have run off and joined a circus to avoid him”

With John opening the floodgates Sam started to vent as well saying

“I don’t understand how anyone can be so stupid. He made a mistake and we saved him, but that just made him hate us even more. I wouldn’t be surprised if he acted that way because no woman would let someone with that shitty of a personality get anywhere close to them. But if that's what happened, how did he get that shitty in the first place? I wish we could just ship him back to the mainland and replace him with a dog or something.”

Sam kept venting with John and Camille both nodding along and before long she started to run out of steam.

The negative atmosphere seemed to have largely abated with Sam now in a better mood, so the party switched to pleasant conversation until they arrived outside the dungeon. Once there they ate a small lunch and then dashed into the dungeon to start the day's exploration. John and Camille were about to walk right past the poisonous flowers when they heard Sam say

“Wait a second, I talked to some of the farmers and herbalists at camp and I think I can harvest a few of these safely. Cover me while I take a closer look.”

Sam kneeled down and examined the flowers for a second before nodding her head and cutting a few of them. She put the cut flowers in a small box and then said

“Alright let's go see what the other side of the mountain looks like.”

From there they started marching through the dungeon once more. They walked carefully making sure to watch for any ambushes until they heard a crack. They all froze. Each of them was looking around to see where it came from but couldn’t pinpoint it. They heard the crack again and realized it was coming from the stone beneath their feet. They tried walking slowly to avoid damaging the ground, but the cracking continued getting louder. John looked back and asked

“Jump on three?”

Sam and Camille both nodded in agreement. John started counting and then they all jumped. That was enough to destroy whatever was left holding the ground up. All three landed on the other side of what was now a pit. They looked back and saw that it was filled with the same wickedly sharp spikes they had seen in the leaf covered pit.

Sam groaned and said

“It’s not fair how fast this dungeon is adapting. How are we supposed to raid it if we have to come up with new tactics everytime?”

John grinned and said

“ We’ll just have to get better ourselves. Uncontrolled dungeons wouldn’t be training grounds for the best adventurers if they were easy.”

Sam grumbled in response saying

“I guess, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

With that said they continued going deeper into the dungeon. Now that they knew about the new way the spike pits were hidden, they managed to avoid them and get to the exit of the mountain.

They climbed out over some rocky terrain and then scrambled down the side to find themselves in a valley brimming with life. Bees were buzzing, birds were singing, and plants of all kinds were everywhere. Unfortunately, they did not have much time to enjoy it. Three wolves were coming out of the treeline and they were not normal wolves either. They wore wooden armor covering everything but their eyes, their lower jaw, and their lower legs. Without any sign or noise beyond the faint crackling of leaves the wolves all started charging towards them at once.

Sam fired a few arrows straight at their bodies, but they just got stuck in the wooden armor without any visible effect. Seeing the poor results she shifted her aim and started shooting at their legs. She managed to hobble one, but before she could land another shot the wolves were on them.

One lunged straight at Camille and the other went for Sam. John deliberated for a fraction of a second before swinging at the wolf going after Camille. The blow left a score on the side of its armor and interrupted its attack. The wolf rounded and lunged at John. John stopped this attack by bringing his sword straight down on its head. This swing still didn’t break the armor, but it did put the wolf out of the fight. After confirming that the wolf was down John turned around to help with the last wolf and saw that it was already down. Sam and Camille had managed to get a dagger in its undefended throat and then waited for it to bleed out.

Surprisingly, Camille was the first one to move on from the battle. She bent down and examined flowers as she asked

“What are you guys waiting for? The dungeon will send reinforcements soon so we have to harvest something fast.”

John looked around and saw that Sam and Camille were both already harvesting flowers, so he looked for something else to grab. A beehive caught his eye. He grabbed some leaves, climbed up a short tree, and then used his fire rune to make smoke. He let it burn until the bees were thoroughly smoked and then he started harvesting honey. He shoveled honey into his bottle. He got a few stings but they were not enough to stop him. He kept going until his bottle was full and then climbed down the tree. As soon as he got down Sam yelled

“What are you doing wasting your time on honey? Help us with the flowers.”

John bent over and started to harvest flowers when he heard a familiar cry. Demi-humans started to charge out of the trees each wielding a spear and a shield with wooden armor protecting the majority of their body. There was no way they were going to be able to beat all the Demi-humans on their own so they gave up on harvesting any more flowers and fled. Spears were thrown at them, but fortunately the demi-humans appeared to all be bad shots. The trio scrambled up the side of the mountain and entered into the cave portion of the dungeon as quickly as they could. From there they went through the dungeon as fast as they could while ignoring spike pits. They kept that up until they reached the waterfall where they dashed to safety.

Their adrenaline was still rushing when they got there, so they immediately started hiking back. They joked around for a while and eventually they started talking about what they were going to do with their money. That led to talking about what they harvested, and that led toam asking John

“Why did you harvest the honey anyways? There's no way it’s worth more than the flowers.”

John responded by saying

“Think about it. No matter how much those flowers are, we won’t be able to get much use out of the money until we are back to a more civilized society. On the other hand, honey can be immediately enjoyed.”

Sam pondered for a second before saying

“But still, how can you give up that much money for some honey?”

John shrugged and said

“We will probably be set for life when we are done raiding the dungeon anyway, so I might as well enjoy now a little bit more.”

They kept chatting till they got back to camp. Once there they informed Olivia of their success and then had a long night of celebration before taking a few days off.

Gem

The gem pondered what it learned from the most recent invasion as soon as the intruders fled. The first and most interesting thing was what it learned from the wolf's death. It had expected to be angry with the death of one of its wolves or at least annoyed, but instead it felt that it was natural. Wolves would be lost. Invaders would die. Even its bear and drybolds may perish. The gem realized this didn’t matter as long as its defenses stayed sufficient and their deaths were for a suitable reason.

The gem counted this death worth it because it learned that when something died in its territory it could learn a little about it when it absorbed the mana the dead creature released. From what it absorbed just now on it could understand how wolves thought a little bit better and would be able to use them to fight a little bit more efficiently.

Knowledge about death and wolves was not the only thing the gem gained. It was also honing in on making its spike traps work. The ground had been a tiny bit too thick still, but next time that wouldn’t be the case. From now on if an adventurer stepped onto one of its pits they would be falling straight through.

The last and probably most important thing the gem learned from this invasion was that it needed to change the arrangement of its troops. The wolves were too much faster than the drybolds. They arrived, fought, and lost before the drybolds were even close. To the gem, the options were obvious. It either needed to slow down the wolves or speed up the drybolds.

Slowing down the wolves was no good. If the gem did that then the intruders would damage too many of its mana producers before its defenders got there. That meant it needed to speed up the drybolds.

It tried focusing its mana on the legs of one of the drybolds, but that only led to marginal increases. Motivating the drybolds with rewards and threatening them also only resulted in minor increases. The next thing it considered was moving the drybold settlement next to its mana producers. Unfortunately, that solution also had problems. Moving the drybolds would take up land that was being used to produce mana. It would probably even cost more mana than it would save so that was out. Moving the drybolds would also mean it had no defenders close to the other entrance to its valley. The invaders had not found it yet, but it was likely only a matter of time.

The gem pondered for a while longer before coming up with a simple solution. If the wolves moved faster than the drybolds then the wolves just needed to bring the drybolds with them. The gem immediately called for both drybolds and the wolves and set to testing. It got a drybold to climb up on the wolves back and had them race across the valley. They arrived slightly slower than the wolf would have on its own, but not slow enough that the gem scrapped the idea. From there the gem started working out the kinks. The main problem was that the process required the gem's constant attention. If it was not actively directing the wolves then they would buck the drybolds off of their backs.

As the gem considered this problem it realized something. Newborn creatures had proven themselves to be more agreeable to its claiming than their parents. What if it had wolf pups raised by the drybolds so they would not be bothered by their presence? It immediately called Snud and started working out the details. He had Snud pick some of his smaller warriors and placed them in charge of raising the pups.

With that done it started to shift its focus to its plants when Snud started complaining. The gem thought about just ignoring the drybold, but decided against it when it remembered that Snud had been useful. It started talking to him again and heard Snud say

“Snud chieftain. Snud need mount. Why stupid week drybold get mount and Snud no get mount.”

The easiest way to fix this was to just give Snud a wolf but it wasn’t fated to be that easy. When the gem tried to take a pup away from one of the warriors and give it to Snud he complained

“Snud need special mount. No common mount. Snud chieftain.”

The gem thought on what other mounts it could possibly give Snud before realizing it had one other creature. They were its least common creature other than the bear, so the gem had avoided using them against the intruder, but it did have moose. It had one of the moose calves brought to Snud and then said

“There. Snud have special mount. Snud better work hard.”

After that the gem shifted its attention to its plants without caring about what else Snud had to say. The reason the gem was so determined to work on making its plants more deadly was because it had noticed two things. The first thing it had noticed was that it already had plants that could move on their own. There were some that could move leafs, some that shot pollen, and some that even snapped shut to catch prey. The second thing it noticed was some of the plants that were growing close to each other taking on new characteristics. It figured all it had to do was grow some of its most deadly plants next to those that could move the most and before long it would have mana producers capable of defending themselves.

It placed the plants that were most poisonous next to the flowers that shot pollen. The plants that move their leaves next to the plants that had hard and sharp leaves, and the plant that snapped shut on its prey next to the biggest plants it had. From there it used mana to accelerate their growth as much as possible and waited for results

Snud

Snud charged the intruders after directing a few warriors to go first. He screamed his battlecry and nearly hit one when he threw his spear. Unsurprisingly the giants fled after such an intimidating display. They tried to chase after the giants and get revenge for their destroyed village, but the giants were too fast. The drybolds had no chance of catching up. Snud threw one more spear, but it was more to send a message than anything since it landed far short.

Seeing that they were not going to catch up Snud called back the warriors and decided to head back to the tribe. They had defended the territory and beaten back the giants without any injury so surely they deserved a reward. Around the time they got back Snud was contacted by the sacred tree like he was expecting and it started to give them rewards. Snud had been hoping it would be more females or maybe a feast but it turned out to be wolves. Snud knew that wolves were strong and would help with the tribe's defense so he wasn’t too unhappy until he realized something. There was no reward for Snud. How was he supposed to attract females and be chieftain if others had wolves but he didn’t. He called for the sacred tree's presence and said

“Snud chieftain. Snud need mount. Why stupid week drybold get mount and Snud no get mount.”

The Sacred Tree’s presence came back and was going to give him a wolf but then Snud realized that plenty of drybolds had a wolf and having one wouldn’t make him special so he said

“Snud need special mount. No common mount. Snud chieftain.”

To his surprise he did not need to negotiate with the Sacred Tree. It simply gave him a special mount. Snud started to get very happy thinking about how he could show up all the other drybolds with his special mount and get all the women, but then the Sacred Tree said

“Snud better work hard.”

and he realized he might have to pay for his request in the future.