Chapter Thirty-two

John

John woke up feeling like he’d been run over by a moose. Every movement brought about a previously undiscovered bit of discomfort that he tried to ignore as he got ready for the day. As soon as he left his cabin he went straight to Olivia’s office and knocked on the door. When he was called in he saw that Lou, Sam, and Camille were there as well as Olivia. Sam and Camille looked a bit tired. Lou and Olivia looked a lot worse. Both of them had dark circles under their eyes and John thought he heard one of their stomachs growling. While John was thinking about all this Olivia looked at John with concern in her eyes and asked

“How are you doing?”

“I’m in tip top shape” John grunted “Don’t worry about me.”

Olivia gave him a skeptical look, but he ignored it and they continued with the conversation

“So back to what we were talking about. What should we do now? We have checked around camp the settlement as thoroughly as possible and don’t see any more of them. That makes us think that the rest of them are attacking the dungeon. Are you guys up to checking it out?”

“I’m willing to scout” Sam said “but I’m not sure if we can fight them. I think we got pretty lucky to take out the group we fought without losing anyone.”

“I agree, but hopefully you won’t be fighting alone.” Olivia pulled out the dungeon raiding schedule as she said “The tier two adventurers that just got in are su[pposed to be raiding the dungeon. I’m hoping you will be able to team up with them to take on the blood mages.”

Lou coughed before chiming in “Actually I am also here to offer some information that might help with that. Based on what you have told me so far I think you might be able to negotiate with the dungeon. If what I have heard about how fast the dungeon adapts and how many people it has killed is true then it should be able to understand language by now. If you go in and offer to help the dungeon you can probably work together with its defenders to kill the blood mages.”

John frowned and then started asking questions “Are we just supposed to trust the dungeon? Even if it can understand us, how do we know it will negotiate with us? Also how do we know the dungeon won’t betray us after making a deal?”

“You don’t really need to worry about any of that” Lou said “There are plenty of tricks for communicating with dungeons. Normally we would take a slower more measured approach, but in this situation I think it's fine to just throw every idea we have at it and see what works. I have a few rare flowers that only grow on the mainland here for you to get its attention. If you bring them in and give them to it willingly that should draw its attention enough for you to start negotiation. After that you can just give it valuable information to gain its trust.”

“That doesn’t cover the issue of it possibly betraying and killing us.” John pointed out

“I’m afraid you are going to have to trust in my guesswork on this one. I’ve never heard of a dungeon this young breaking any agreements. We don’t actually know why that's the case but my personal theory is that the dungeon hasn’t killed enough people to learn how to lie.”

Sam frowned “How sure are we talking here? This dungeon has been anything but normal so far so I don’t really want to risk my life based on past precedent.”

Lou shrugged “Like I said every young dungeon I’ve visited or read about has kept its word. Just go in and trust your instincts. Try and trust the dungeon but if it feels like it is getting too dangerous then just run away.”

“Is it just the three of us?” John asked.

Olivia nodded as she said “I wish I could send more people but we lost a lot of adventurers last night. If we send anyone else I’m worried they might just come back and kill everyone at the settlement.”

John stood up and said “Unless anyone else has any questions I’m good to go.”

Sam and Camille shook their heads so Lou stood up and said “In that case let's go get those flowers I mentioned. I’ll tell you about my negotiations with dungeons on the way”

The four of them started to walk out the door when Olivia called out

“Be careful. I’d hate to have a settlement without anyone who gives me poisoned baked goods.”

John turned to look at her and said “I’ll be extra safe as long as you promise me a date once I’m back.” Olivia nodded and then they left the office, followed Lou to get supplies, and went to the dungeon.

They knew something was wrong as soon as they saw that all of the traps had been triggered. They didn’t want to take extra risk so they stopped at the entrance of the dungeon and then John called.

“Uh, Hi Dungeon core. We are here to help. We don’t like the people who did this either so we figured we could team up to fight them.”

After saying that he set the flowers Lou gave them on the ground and waited. After what felt like a very long half hour demi-humans showed up in the tunnel. The three of them all showed their empty hands to show they weren’t armed and then the demi-human began to talk

“Snud talk for Holy Tree. What you want? ”

John looked at the demi-human and said “the people who came in here attacked our settlement. We want to make sure they can’t do that again.”

Snud gave his best intimidating stare as he said “You attack Drybold settlement. Why we help you?”

John scratched his head as he thought “Err. Well you did attack me first. If you had talked like this then we probably wouldn’t have had to fight.”

“Snud no able talk giant language then. Holy tree teach Snud giant language.”

John didn’t know how to respond to that, so he chose to ignore it “You should help us because it would help you too.”

Snud paused for a bit. John assumed he was communicating the “holy tree.” After a minute the Demi-human John now knew was a drybold spoke again

“Snud no happy but how you help?”

This time it was John’s turn to pause while he considered his words. “In the future we can provide more resources like those flowers on the ground there. In the more immediate term I can give you information that will make it easier to fight the invaders”

“What information?” Snud asked

“We know the weakness of the group that is attacking you. If you use it your defenders will be able to fight them much more effectively.”

John expected the drybold to ask what the information was, instead it asked

“Which group? Two groups attack territory.”

John floundered for a second before remembering that the tier two adventurers were already raiding the dungeon “Errr, the ones that pull the blood out of things? I don’t know about the other group.”

“That group bad.” Snud said “Killed many fish. Talk of hurting core. What weakness?”

John pulled out a blood river flower and gestured to it. “You know this flower? The reason everyone has been taking it from the dungeon is because it can prevent them from using blood. If your creatures take it then the mages won’t be able to pull their blood out. It will be even better if you can stab them with a paste made of the flower. Then they won’t be able to control their own blood either.”

Snud looked at the flower and was about to say something when he jumped up and looked back into the dungeon instead “Holy tree say invaders getting close to island. Drybolds go fight. You help?”

John looked back at Sam and Camille and saw them nod so he said “we’ll help. Just show us the way.” The drybolds started to jog through the dungeon while John, Camille, and Sam fast walked behind them. John remembered one more important thing as they went so he yelled at Snud “Don’t use the flowers against other invaders. They make it harder for bleeding to stop”

Snud nodded and said “holy tree know” and then the drybolds' little legs started to pump faster as they moved up from a jog and raced through the dungeon.

Gem

Things were getting quite confusing for the gem. It now had three groups of invaders in its dungeon, all of them were from the same species, and all of them wanted to kill each other. None of the creatures it had been able to claim fought within their own groups like that. It went off track for a second trying to figure out why they would be fighting when they would be much more powerful working together, and then decided to save it for another time.

The most important thing now was testing the information it got. It directed one of the few rabbits it had left to nibble one of the blood river flowers and then had it charge at the invaders. They grabbed their normal runes and tried to use them as the gem watched in anticipation. The rabbit got closer and nothing happened. The rabbit jumped and tried to bite the one that was leading the group and got stabbed by a dagger instead of being drained like rabbits from past attacks.

That was enough conformation for the gem. It had its creatures gather all the blood river flowers on the island and keep it where it could be easily accessed. As soon as the first group of invaders was defeated the creatures would eat the flowers and then mob the blood wielding invaders. With this the gem considered its last line of defense ready, so it urged the drybolds to move faster and watched as the first group of invaders came out onto its island.

The gem examined them and saw that after a full night of fighting upwards they all had circles under their eyes and were moving considerably slower than before. It wanted to celebrate the success of the changes it made to its territory, but now wasn’t the time for that. Instead it directed its defenders to attack.

Without wasting any time the bear and the two tusked defenders jumped into combat. Some of the smaller creatures like birds, bees, and insects tried to join the fight as well, but all of them were warded off by gusts of wind or water blasts before they managed to get close to the invaders. That left only its three strongest defenders fighting on their own. Since its drybolds were close the gem waffled back and forth between trying to kill them quickly and trying to stall until the drybolds got there. Then it remembered there was a whole other group of invaders between it and reinforcements. That meant it was time to kill.

All three of its final defenders charged. The bear was the fastest arriving so quickly that the invaders didn’t have time to scatter. The bear swung its paw downwards and slashed its claws along one of the invaders chest leaving a nasty gash. In return for its reckless attack one of the invaders managed to score a bloody wound along its side despite its stonelike skin. While this was going on the gem listened to the invaders to try and gain any useful information it could

“What the fuck is going on. I thought there was just supposed to be a normal bear up here.”

“What the fuck are those two big things?”

“I can’t help much against the bear unless you want me to stop warding off the little things”

The invader that appeared to be the leader interrupted every else

“Shut up” he yelled “I don’t know how a new dungeon got enough mana to upgrade a bear but we can’t worry about that now. Set up for hit and run tactics and make sure to not get hit. Frederick I want you to try and drag Gunther back and heal him up while we start with that.”

The gem tried to direct the bear to chase after and finish off the downed invader, but it kept getting distracted by the others attacking it. Since that wasn’t working it directed its smaller creatures to try and finish off the injured invader since it would distract them even if it didn’t work. Then tried to coordinate its two tusked beasts with its bear. Since the invaders were doing hit and run tactics it had its defenders all attack one of them at the same time. Two of them were lured off by the invaders attacks, but that didn’t matter. They got close enough that the target didn’t have room to invade and one of the tusked defenders kept on target. Its tusks went straight through his gut and went out his back. The tusked defender raised its head and brought the man up with it. The gem listened in and heard the invaders yelling

“Bjorn we’ve got to get him off of there.”

“We have to finish him off fast so that Frederick can heal him”

After a split second of thinking Bjorn replied “Fine. We’ll deal with the small stuff attacking us for a bit. Start prepping spells strong enough to kill those things.”

While they prepared their attacks the gem used a second to take stock of the entire situation. Its three main defenders were all injured. None of the injuries were enough to take them down immediately but they would cause problems over time. If the current situation continued then the invaders that were on its island now would lose, but the invaders one floor down would probably be able to kill all of its defenders without any issue if they were already weak from blood loss. The gem started trying to figure out how to prevent that from happening when the second group of invaders climbed up onto the island. The gem saw the newer invaders raise their swords and get ready to strike Frederick and Gunther. The first invaders lost their focus on the defenders and screamed

“Fuck. How did blood mages get here?”

They channeled their runes and used what long distance weapons they had but none of them were fast enough. The swords came down and both of them were decapitated.

Bjorn yelled “Stop agitating the beasts. Let’s try and let them deal with that for now.” and then the island descended into even more chaotic combat than before. All of the new invaders attacked everything. The old invaders, the defenders, even the plants were indiscriminately struck. While they were attacking the gem heard them yell out

“We need to run the tier two beasts out of mana. Their natural resistance is too high right now and if we have to kill them the old fashioned way we are going to lose some people.”

After that they switched to less aggressive attacks and only used their strongest strikes when the defenders got close. The gem used this as a chance to use its new knowledge. It had the creatures retreat one at a time and eat the blood river flowers before sending them back in. Eventually all its defenders had taken the plant. It heard the invaders yell

“Someone taught it to use the flowers. Let's kill it before there are any more surprises. “

That prompted some of the blood wielding invaders to stop attacking the first group. They came over and blasts of viscous red fluid flew through the air. The bear roared in pain as they struck and the tusked defenders tried to flee. Soon they were cornered on the side of the island. They were about to start a last ditch effort to attack when another new variable came into play. The drybolds and the group of invaders that claimed they wanted to help had reached the island.