Chapter Six

John woke up feeling refreshed after a great day off and a good night's sleep. He jumped straight out of bed and got ready for his first raid on the dungeon since they fought the blood mages. Once he had all his gear ready he ate a quick breakfast and left to meet up with Camille and Sam. When he got there he was surprised to see Bjorn there as well.

“Why are you here Bjorn? I thought Olivia only put you with us until we repaid the dungeon.”

“I’m here to help increase the number of blood river flowers you guys harvest. We’ll need a lot if we are going to be wiping out a settlement of blood mages.” Bjorn said

“Not that I don’t appreciate the help, but couldn’t you improve the yield more by helping out a weaker group? We already have a pretty good results with just the three of us “ John said

“You're probably right,” Bjorn replied “but I don’t want to be stuck babysitting. That will only increase the number of flowers we get in the next few raids. You guys are close enough to tier two adventurers that I think I can actually teach you a thing or two instead of just being there to make sure nobody falls into a spike pit or lets a drybold stab them.”

John nodded “Alright. I’m looking forward to seeing what you have to teach us.”

They were about to keep talking when Sam walked up and yelled “You guys ready to go? Camille and I want to get a full day in since we haven’t been able to raid in a while.”

Bjorn and John both gave the affirmative, and then they all headed off. Once they were underway Bjorn started talking to the whole group.

“I volunteered to raid with you guys because I think you are one of the few groups in the settlement that actually has a chance to get to tier two. That doesn’t mean I am going to put up with any shit. If I think you aren’t following instructions or have stopped getting any stronger than I will find another team to raid with. Is that clear?”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh? It’s not like we asked for you to be here.” Sam replied

“You might not have asked for me to be here, but I doubt you want me to leave either. Other than the first few raids the first attempt at deep dives are how the adventurers guild suffers the most casualties. Almost all adventurers would kill for an experienced tier two adventurer teaching them how to start doing deep dives into a dungeon. Are you going to turn that down?”

Sam looked away and stayed quite

“I’ll take that as a no. Any other questions before we start the raid?”

John and Camille shook their heads and then they entered the dungeon behind Bjorn.

They were about to start raiding when John held up the map of the surrounding territory they made. “Wait up a second guys. I need to give this to the dungeon before we start raiding. If we don’t who knows what it is going to throw at us.”

He bent down and put the map in the crevice of the wall before speaking again “Here is the map I promised you. Since we are even now I am going to go into the dungeon.”

Then he walked behind Bjorn as they went deeper into the dungeon. They kept walking until Bjorn stopped abruptly.

“A lot of the advice that I am going to give you won’t show its full worth until you are all tier two, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try and make use of it. Many abilities are not very useful when you are tier one and don’t have much mana. That makes many people wait till tier two to learn them. The problem with that is a lot of those abilities are easier to learn when you are tier one and have less mana.”

“Why are you telling us this now?” John asked

Bjorn replied “ I am telling you now because I am about to tell you about one of the abilities like that. You use an earth rune right?” John nodded his head. “Then you should try using this technique whenever you have full mana. I want you to use your earth rune to try and spread mana through the ground.”

John got a look of concentration on his face and sat there in silence while holding his earth rune. After a few moments Bjorn asked

“What do you sense?”

“I don’t feel anything in particular. Am I supposed to be feeling something?” John asked

Instead of answering his questions Bjorn responded “Focus on trying to spread your mana out in front of me. What happens?”

John concentrated again before stomping his foot and saying “I can’t sense anything! When my mana gets in front of you I can’t spread it anymore.”

“That’s because there is a spike pit there. Seeing where I can’t spread my mana is how I detect traps. It either means that there is no earth to spread my mana through or whatever is there is so drenched in the dungeons mana that it blocks mine. For now you can practice it whenever your mana is full and once you are tier two you should do it all the time. Now let's get moving.”

They kept moving deeper into the dungeon. With Bjorn pausing every once in a while to have John sense a trap. They kept that up as they passed the path upwards and kept moving towards the valley. After passing through the remaining hallways without incident they left the tunnels and descended into the clearing where they could get their first harvest. They did not see any drybolds so Sam and Bjorn kept watch while John and Camille picked the blood river flowers that were there.

Just as they finished and turned around to walk back to Bjorn and Sam drybolds hiding in the bushes launched a surprise attack. Two of them threw their spears and the third shot an arrow. All right at Camille.

Sam yelled out “Behind you Cam!” and notched an arrow in her bow as she watched the projectiles fly towards Camille. The two spears wobbled and missed, but the arrow flew true. It struck her in the back and she stumbled before starting to run towards Sam.

Sam loosed her arrow and John drew his sword and turned around. Sam’s arrow struck the drybold archer in the shoulder and it dropped its bow before fleeing back into the woods. That left John facing two Drybold spearmen. As they charged he dodged one spear, deflected another, and then he struck back at the drybolds. He swung his sword down at the nearest one and heard a thunk as the sword cut through the drybold’s wooden armor. The drybold crumpled to the ground and he tried to pull out his sword but found it stuck. He jumped back to dodge a stab from the drybold that was still standing before pulling back on his sword while kicking the drybold corpse away. He stumbled back a few steps but quickly regained his form holding his sword in front of him, but the last drybold had already fled.

He turned towards the others and started to say “didn’t feel like helping huh?”, but stopped when he saw Sam looking at Camille’s back with her medical kit out.He rushed over and asked “Is she alright?” and let out a relieved breath when he saw Sam nod.

“The arrow just barely got through her armor. It’s just a bit difficult for her to treat a wound on her own back.” Sam finished dressing the wound and then Bjorn started to speak.

“Now that you are done with treatment lets start on the obvious improvements. The most obvious one is that you should never have let those drybolds catch you by surprise. They can’t have been far away while you were picking flowers so you should have noticed them.”

“I was only caught by surprise because I trusted you and Sam to keep watch. Are you telling me to not trust my teammates?” John said

To John's surprise, Bjorn nodded “That is exactly what I am saying. Trusting your teammates is good when you are in situations where you have no other choice, but when you are not forced to trust your teammates you should always rely on your own senses.” He then turned to Camille and said “You made the initial mistake of not noticing them even worse by continuing to show them your back.”

“What do you mean I made it worse? I’m a back line fighter so I moved away from the enemy combatants. That’s exactly what I was taught while learning to dungeon dive.” Camille said

“That is a good general rule of thumb, but top tier adventurers need to know when they can break rules of thumb. That thing over there” Bjorn gestured towards the fallen drybold “is not dangerous enough for you to drop everything and sprint backwards. The only way one of them kills you is that it gets an extremely lucky shot, or if you don’t see the attack coming. You can’t guard against an opponent being extremely lucky, so you might as well be able to see them the entire time.” He paused and looked at their belts before continuing. “All three of you made the last mistake I noticed. None of you so much as touched your runes. If you had your runes at the ready you” he said as he pointed at Camille “should have been able to use her wind to deflect the projectiles,” Next he pointed at John “You could have avoided getting your sword stuck”, then he pointed to Sam and said “And you could have finished off the drybold archer instead of just wounding it.”

With Bjorn’s lesson over they once again started to move deeper into the dungeon. They followed a path through the trees until it led them to a ladder leading upwards.

John sighed “It looks like the dungeon wants us to go up if we want to go any deeper. I don’t suppose we could look for another ground path instead?”

Bjorn shook his head “Unless you are trying to tame or destroy a dungeon going off path is almost never rewarding. There is usually heavier resistance and less goods to harvest. Why don’t you want to go up anyway?”

“Last time the wind almost blew me off while I was being distracted by the birds. What I am getting at is that I don’t mind fighting beasts, but I find it harder to focus when I’m constantly worried about falling to my death.”

“That’s just something you will have to get over if you want to raid high level dungeons. You need to be able to fight up high, underwater, near poisonous plants. If you let environmental hazards bother you then you might as well stay as a tier one adventurer forever.”

“Fine. Let’s get it over with then.” John said as he started climbing up the tree.

The rest of the group followed, and soon they were in the canopy moving deeper into the dungeon along vine paths. This path was even a little wider than the path they went on last time. It was also closer to the trees. Their line of sight was blocked by branches and leaves that went right up to the edge of the path. John walked over to the edge of the platform and stuck his hand into the foliage. When he saw that his hand went straight through he said

“That’s a shame. I was hoping we got lucky and would have something to help us stay on the path.”

“Lets just keep moving. The longer you sit there complaining the longer we are up here.” Said Bjorn.

They started moving forward again and soon they heard the birds that attacked them last time. John pulled out his sword and held it in front of him. When he did he saw that there was something on the hand he stuck into the leaves.

“Hey Camille, do you have something in your med kit for pulling off ticks?”

She was about to respond when the birds struck. They all came in at once and attacked her. She managed to grab her rune and conjure a quick blast of compressed air to knock a lot of the birds off out of flight but a few of them still made it through. Camille took a broad swipe and managed to hit two more of them, but then the rest were upon her. They used the momentum from their swoop to scratch her with their claws and then pecked a few times before flying away.

Seeing that they were targeting Camille the other three all got close together so the birds couldn’t single one of them out. They raised their weapons in preparation for the next wave of attack, and then the birds struck again. The smaller ones harried them consistently while the larger birds of prey waited above looking for a chance to strike a killing blow. Since they were all grouped together they managed to cover all sides and avoid giving any of the more dangerous birds that opportunity, but then the wind started to change.

Instead of a steady breeze coming through the branches there were gusts and spurts of winding stymying them at every turn. The gusts were strong enough to push them off balance when directed at them and push the attackers out of harm's way when used defensively. What had originally seemed like an easy battle was now becoming a struggle.

“Can we give up on the upper platforms now? We’re not doing much good fighting here and the next platform is pretty far.” yelled John

“I’m down.The wind is making my arrows useless.” Sam yelled back.

Bjorn looked around for a second before he said “Fine. Let’s go down and figure out how to get across when there aren’t all these pests.”

They slowly retreated back along the vine bridge until they reached the wider platform. They fended off the attackers there for a few more seconds before the assault ended. Then they climbed down the ladder and hiked back to the clearing.

“So what went wrong there? You guys should be able to handle that.” asked Bjorn

“That fucking wind made me pretty useless. It just knocked my arrows off course so the only thing I could do was stab the swooping birds with my dagger.”

Camille avoided making eye contact as she spoke “Sorry about that guys. I know I’m the one who uses wind, but I couldn’t focus on dealing with those gusts and avoiding the birds.”

Bjorn looked at the three of them and said “If those were the issues then it’s not something that a short planning session will fix. We’ll just have to head out and fix them at the settlement.”