Chapter Fifteen

Chase

After seeing John and those girls come back with such a big harvest the other day Chase knew he needed to start raiding the dungeon. If those incompotent idiots were able to make so much in the dungeon then he could probably get enough to relax for the rest of his life in just a raid or two. The only problem he had was that he was having trouble finding a team.

All the other adventurers had formed little cliques and said they don’t need anyone else to explore the dungeon with them, so he ended up having to recruit two of the more hot blooded farmers to act as his team. He would have to be the one resisting the mana pressure for all three of them, but that girl had been able to do it on their first raid so he knew it couldn’t be that hard.

He went to Olivia and signed up for a slot for them to raid the dungeon and the bitch told him that he had to wait over a week to get his turn. He tried to get the farmers to skip a day of work and come raid it with him earlier, but they said something about pests and losing the crop if they didn’t have a replacement so he had to wait for them. He tried extra hard to make sure other people did most of his work so he would be refreshed when he finally did get to raid the dungeon, and before he knew it a week had passed and it was time for them to hike out to the dungeon and prepare for their raid.

He had the two farmers bring shields and daggers while he carried a massive spear. He had heard that there were enough harvestable plants to be well off for a lifetime at the top of the dungeon and the idiots that found them let themselves be chased off by a bear. With his spear he just needed to let the bear impale itself while it charged and then wait for it to bleed out.

They entered the dungeon and carefully worked their way to the alcove leading upwards. They climbed up and walked through the plant floor before getting to the fish. To get past the fish Chase had the farmers block both sides of him with their shields and then they simply trudged through the rain of fish. They had to walk slowly or they risked losing their footing on the uneven vines covered ground. The slow movement combined with the massive number of fish made sure that by the time they made it to the end of the floor both of the farmers were exhausted.

Once they were in the relative safety of the next plant floor one of the farmers turned to Chase and said

“I think we should go back. I heard there were a lot of floors like that on the way to the top, and I don’t think I’ll have the strength to even go up that many floors, let alone get back down”

The other farmed chimed in

“Yeah, lets head back.”

Chase needed to have a successful raid to get his rich retirement, so he did the only thing he could do with his team betraying him, he threatened them.

“You guys can go back if you like, but I’m not going with you. I hope you have good luck resisting the dungeons mana pressure when you can’t even channel a rune on your own.”

The farmers looked back and forth at each other before turning to Chase and saying

“But how are we supposed to get back down when we get to the top? I was serious about it being too tiring to come back.”

Chase replied

“The other party that got to the top said you can jump off the falls into the pool and be fine. We can get down that way.”

The two farmers nodded reluctantly and resumed their journey upward. They fought through their exhaustion to get through all of the fish floors before arriving at a plant floor that had sunlight shining down through its exit. They were exhausted, but happy at the thought of their soon to be wealth.

The first thing they saw after climbing up into the light was a bear. It gave a terrifying roar before charging at them. Chase braced the spear against the ground and the bear impaled itself on it. He backed away with the two farmers following him and looked back to see how well the spear had worked. He saw that the bear stopped for a bit and tried to pull out the spear before ignoring it and charging at them again. He dodged to the side and then looked around after realizing there was a problem.

The bear showed no sign of slowing down despite having a spear in it. And even worse, his initial exit plan looked like a no go. He didn’t know how that idiot trio survived a jump off of the island, but it was high enough that there was no way he was going to try jumping off. He looked back at the hole they had entered through and saw that the bear was between him and it. He desperately scanned the island for another way out without success. The water was fast enough that if he tried to swim to safety he was sure to go off the waterfall and he saw no other paths for him to exit through.

Confirming that there was no other exit made him realize that he needed a distraction. Conveniently, he had two farmers who would be great for such things right next to him. He waited until the bear charged and then dove out of the way while removing the mana he had been using to protect the farmers from the dungeons mana. He looked back and saw that the bear was busy savaging the farmers, so he made a break for the hole leading back into the mountain. He dove in and sprinted through the floor filled with plants, only stopping when he ran into his next problem. He had to get through the fish floors without his meatshields.

He thought about just sprinting through, but when he remembered how many fish there were he immediately discarded the plan with a shake of his head. Next he remembered the story of how the idiot trio had made it up. They claimed they just needed to crawl and the fish could only shoot over them. He looked down at the spike covered vines and hesitated until he heard a bear's roar coming from above.

He gritted his teeth and started crawling while feeling the spikes drag through the exposed flesh on his arms and legs. He held back the urge to scream in agony, worried any extra noise might attract the bear, and kept crawling through the spikes. Once he got down to the next floor he sprinted through before dropping down and repeating his excruciating crawl. He repeated this for what felt like an eternity before reaching the base of the dungeon. From there he sprinted out, only stopping once he was well clear of the dungeons entrance. He laid down there exhausted and covered in blood before falling unconscious.

Gem

Different invaders started to come more regularly ever since the last group killed one of its wolves. At first the gem thought all groups would be about the same, but now that it had seen different invaders it realized that wasn’t the case. Most were not very threatening. One group fell into a spike pit and left without making it more than a few hundred feet in. Another group managed to climb to the first of its fish floors, but they fled as soon as they saw that they couldn’t just crawl under the fish anymore. A few other groups made it all the way to the valley and then turned around before even trying to harvest anything when they noticed its defenders were ready for them. Today’s invaders were more noteworthy than normal because two of them seemed very weak, and one was the invader that had come before but left after losing a fight to its wolves.

The gem had started ignoring the intruders and trusting its defenders to deal with them ever since it saw that most were not threatening. This allowed it to focus on strengthening its territory and would make it so its defenders could learn to deal with intruders even if it was having to focus on something else. It also had the added bonus of letting it get more work done.

Normally the gem would ignore a group this weak, but since this was an unusual group it decided to watch them. They made it by the first fish floor without too much difficulty and kept moving upwards. After another few floors their performance started to drop, with odd hits slipping through their defenses, but they kept going upward. Since they knew about the fish and had a plan the gem assumed they knew about its bear as well. It called for its birds and bees to return to act as a last line of defense in case they had a way of dealing with its bear.

To the gem’s surprise, it seemed like it overestimated them. Their only plan to deal with its bear appeared to be a single spear and that only gave the bear a minor injury. It didn’t even need to retreat for treatment; it could just keep attacking them. Everytime the bear attacked the invaders dodged with a smaller and smaller margin. This continued until the gem felt the weaker two lose their protection from its mana. The gem immediately flooded them with mana and watched them freeze in front of the bear's charge.

Each of the frozen invaders was dispatched with a quick claw swipe. The gem was about to send the bear to finish off the last invader when it started absorbing the dead invaders mana. It was the same as when it had absorbed its wolf’s mana, but also entirely different. What it was learning was more clear and not just about wolves. They gave it knowledge about plants, water, air, the entire world. It learned bits and pieces of the invaders language and even learned what they thought about it.

The gem learned they thought it was a dungeon and came in for the valuable plants. The gem tried to explore deeper into their knowledge, but once the mana was gone from the bodies it had no way to connect anymore. Once the gem finished thinking over the knowledge it gained it went back to managing its territory. That made it notice the most important change. The amount of territory it could control which had been growing painfully slow had jumped up a small amount. It certainly wasn’t enough to wantonly expand like it had been when it first started exploring, but it would add up if more of these invaders died. As long as it could absorb the mana of its intruders it could start expanding its territory once again.

John

John left his cabin when he heard a commotion outside. The adventurers who were supposed to be raiding the dungeon today were carrying what appeared to be a bloody body. He worked his way closer and saw that the person they were carrying was Chase and his chest was still rising and falling. John didn’t want to add to the confusion so he went back to his cabin and trusted that Olivia would tell him anything he needed to know. He started preparing for his daily work and had a boring day of patrolling the perimeter, but when he got back Olivia called for him and asked

“Did you hear about the commotion today John?”

He nodded and she continued

“Chase is covered with thorns and poisoned so we haven’t been able to learn what happened from him. You, Camille, and Sam have had the most success with exploring the dungeon, so I want you three to go and figure out if there is a new threat. I had to stop all the less experienced adventurers from going since we can’t afford to lose anyone else. I want you to head out there as soon as Sam and Camille return to camp.”

John asked a flurry of questions “Can you tell me more about Chase's wounds? Do we know what he was poisoned with? Were any of his wounds from creatures or did they all look like plants? Was he exploring with anyone else?

Once he was done Olivia started answering his questions in order saying “ It looks like He was poisoned by a tiny amount of black death, as far as we can tell all his wounds are from thorns and maybe a few blows from the fish, and he did have two farmers who were angling to become adventurers with him.”

John responded “Alright, I’ll go look for Sam and Camille so we can get going” before heading out.

He picked up all the gear he thought they might need and then started heading to the portion of the perimeter they were supposed to be patrolling. When he say them he tossed them the bags he packed and said

“Boss lady says she needs the experts scouting the dungeon. She gave us the go ahead to leave as soon as possible.”

Sam picked up her gear and started to follow him towards the dungeon as she said “Not that I don’t appreciate getting off of guard duty, but what are we going for? Something big must have happened if we are getting to skip the line.”

John frowned and said “ Chase came back nearly dead from his turn to raid the dungeon. He was poisoned and covered in thorns. We need to go make sure that there isn’t something new in the dungeon that less experienced adventurers can’t handle. If possible we are also supposed to do some search and rescue, though it is more likely to be confirming they are deceased.”

When Sam heard the start of John’s explanation she burst into a grin but as he continued it slowly disappeared. “I’m glad to hear Chase was put in his place, but hearing that he brought two other people down with him puts a bit of a damper on it.”

The marched to the dungeon with a somber mood pervading them the entire time and set to work as soon as they got there. They went through careful to avoid the spike traps and stopped when they got to the alcove leading up.

John turned to Sam and Camille and asked “Do you guys want to check up first or go down to the valley? I vote for up myself”

Sam and Camille both said “That’s fine with me” and then Camille continued asking “why do you want to go up first?”

John answered “ I’ve heard from some of the other adventurers that the entrance to the valley has been guarded pretty regularly. If they went and lost a fight there I would expect wounds from something other than fish and thorns. Also I heard the demi-humans are getting better at using their new gear so I want to avoid fighting them unless we are going to get a reward afterwards.”

They all climbed up and saw that the second floor was similar to how it had been when they were last there except for one major change; light was shining out of gems in the walls and ceilings. John stopped and asked

“Camille do we need to worry about that? I don’t sense anything dangerous but you’re our resident magic expert afterall.”

Camille went to one of the exposed gems lower on the wall and examined it before saying

“I don’t sense anything other than a light spell embedded in the gem. Maybe the dungeon saw the spells we used to make light and decided to use them to help its plants grow?”

Once they got they all clear from Camille they started walking forwards again and Sam said

“At least this change is beneficial for us too.”

John chimed in and said

“Yeah, maybe it will add running water and a bathroom next. Then we could just move in here and not have to trudge back to camp after every raid.”

The joke lightened the mood for a second, but once they started moving forward again it was back to being deadly serious. As they went forward they saw that some of the plants had been moved but nothing seemed particularly dangerous. They treaded carefully through the floor until they got to the entrance headed up. John readied his shield and prepared himself to face a tide of fish and then he climbed up. He blocked the fish while Camille and Sam followed him and then they started to investigate the floor.

Sam knelt down and looked at the path as she looked for any traces Chase’s group might have been there. The first thing she saw that made her think this was the right place was the black death growing intertwined with thorny vines. She called up to John and Camille and said

“I think we are in the right place. There are thorns and black death all over the place.”

As she kept looking she saw a dark red thorn and examined it more closely. The covering was blood so she yelled again saying

“I’ve got some blood on these thorns. This is definitely where Chase was injured. Do you want to go up or should we call it here?”

John looked up towards the top of the dungeon and asked

“Have you guys learned anything that could deal with the bear since we last came in here?

Sam and Camille both shook their heads so John continued

“I say we turn back then. I bet the bear is what killed the other two and made Chase crawl through the thorns and I am not looking forward to jumping off the top again”

Sam and Camille both agreed, so they headed back down and left the dungeon to head for the settlement. They made the hike back as quickly as possible and then went to Olivia to report what they had found.

Since Sam had been the one to find the traces she stepped up and said

“We found some bloody thorns and black death close to each other in the upper floors. We think Chase and the farmers tried to go up the dungeon. We were not able to confirm because we didn’t have countermeasures for the bear, but I don’t know what else would have happened.”

Olivia nodded and said

“Ok then. Let's just ban exploration upwards until someone figures out how to deal with the bear. Do you guys have any issues with that?”

They all shook their heads so Olivia continued

“Alright. You guys are off for the day then back on guard duty tomorrow, but I bet a lot of slots for exploring the dungeon will be opening up once everyone hears the details so be ready to start raiding again soon.”