The group sat silently under a tree and tried to fully comprehend what they had just learned. Reysha knew what she had read. Apexus could understand that tracing their trail may have been harder than he anticipated. Aclysia reasoned how bureaucracy and a lack of leads may have caused the investigations to miss them. The full story was outside their reach, but they could understand it. They had hoped for it.

Now that they had gotten it, they were confused.

It wasn’t common confusion. They knew where they were. They knew how they had gotten there. They knew what this meant. They knew and understood. Yet, their minds inspected that piece of news, churned it through, and then stopped when they were done only to think about it again. They came to the same conclusion each and every time.

“He…”

Apexus looked back at his behaviour for these past few months. All of the times he had felt threatened merely by people being around, adventurers especially. A series of precautions taken, for what? To feed a sense of security that was born from paranoia. They weren’t in danger. They were not in danger. Apexus had thought they were just one mistake from being chased. He had thought that for so long, a different view had trouble seeping into his nucleus.

“Hehe…he...haha…”

Aclysia remembered how she had, every morning and every evening, searched around the cabin. For several months, she looked out for any adventurers that might discover them. Even if they had found them, they would have only seen an odd trio in the woods. They would have had to stay there either way, Reysha’s mental state was disconnected from whether or not they were chased or not. It had been wise to behave cautiously. Still, she couldn’t believe all of the stress she had put on herself for so little.

“Ahaha… ahahahah… AHAHAHAHA!” Reysha burst out laughing. Having had a bit more time to come to terms with this and being the most spontaneous in the group in the first place, she managed to find her outlet of the absurdity of it all in the laughter she so gladly shared with the world. The crazed, unsteady tones echoed over the nightly landscape. They didn’t have to care about being discovered. The break-in had been done, Reysha hadn’t left any signs she had been there, and the guild wasn’t looking for them.

Every repeated giggle was a little push of the information to finally enter the consciousness of the other two members of their little party. Apexus first, then Aclysia, joined Reysha’s laughter. They didn’t really know why or what was so funny that they kept going for several minutes. Whether they laughed at themselves or something else completely eluded them. They simply felt elated. Elated, confused and weird.

When the laughter finally faded, the three went still again. Reysha was laying on her back, Apexus was looking at his hands, and Aclysia swiped little tears from the corners of her eyes. Then the metal fairy said something, “This reduces our need to be cautious by quite a margin.”

“Quite a margin?” Reysha asked, only raising her head to establish eye contact. “The fuck do you mean? No… wait… I just got it… the Church is still a thing…”

“Indeed,” Aclysia nodded. “Whether Mehily survived or not, I find it unlikely the Church would not have started its own investigation into the matter. The seal was in the basement of their building and the Cardinal fuelled it. They may have, like the Adventurer’s Guild, failed to link us to Apotho breaking free. They may know almost everything. Why they wouldn’t share information in this case, I do not fully understand, but animosity between those two organizations may very well exist.”

“Guess I’ll try to break into a church next we see one that has a Distance Feather?” Reysha suggested.

“That would be the necessary course of action…” Aclysia hesitantly agreed.

“Could have gotten that done a while back,” Reysha scratched her chin and made a sour face. “Probably would have collapsed in the glimmering corridors, though. Churches always looked the same to me, plus or minus some extra gold here and there.”

Apexus stretched his fingers, ran his hands through his short hair and then sighed in relief. Somehow, the prospect of them still having a source of worry was more calming than worrying. They had worked around the assumption that they could get caught for so long, Apexus needed a minor source of stress to feel normal. A slow diminishing of the constant worry, rather than a sudden drop.

“That is then and now is now,” he spoke up and got up. “Let’s get into the dungeon.”

“Alrighty,” Reysha responded and pulled her knees up to her chest. Tensing up, she launched her feet into the air and a moment later stood on them. Apexus lacked that level of athleticism and got up the old fashioned way. Looking between both of them, the metal fairy seemed somewhat perplexed.

“At this very moment?” she asked.

“Don’t see why not,” Reysha asked, looking up to the moon. “None of us are tired, none of us are hungry, and they won’t have any reason to assume it was us even if they somehow do find a trace of me. Might as well start getting work done.”

“That,” Apexus underlined.

“You are correct,” Aclysia conceded, even if she found it unorthodox to start work in the middle of the night. When she was on her feet, she could feel a twinge of nervousness again. A deep-seated feeling that something would go wrong, that persisted while she got changed into her proper adventuring gear. The other two felt it as well and it grew with every step they took down the large crater.

Where they started the short journey bantering in the usual way, they went silent when they were closing in on the building. When they walked past, they heard the voice of the Scribe. “Hey! Hey, listen! Hey!” he shouted out. Reysha snorted with amusement, wondering if these words were ingrained in all people that sat on dungeon outposts.

“Yes…?” Apexus reacted, turning his masked face towards the Scribe. He had to concentrate to keep his wings from unfolding and betraying his tenseness.

“Just standard guild questions, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Need an update to your identification cards or new ones?”

“No,” Apexus kept it short.

“You signed in with the local guild?” another question.

“No,” another short answer.

“You want to sign in?” the Scribe continued to riddle him, leaning out of his window. His job was usually so dull that he welcomed any change of pace. Apexus’ height and looks didn’t faze the guild employee the slightest. He had seen quite a few adventurers of odd appearance and talked to many who didn’t have many words to say.

“No,” the slime was growing more uncomfortable by the second. Was he being kept in place so help could be called? Could he get away with just ignoring all of this and marching on?

“Want to buy a map of the dungeon? Myrlight is static. We have a number of pre-planned routes that present you with some challenges. The monsters are life-threatening, of course, so please don’t take them lightly just because I sell this to you like a tourist attraction.” Reaching under the windowsill, the Scribe produced a simple map and showed it to the group. The outlines of caverns showed as black bloats on the white parchment. “It’s a bit simplified, ignoring depth, but you should still be able to find your way around. Do you want one?”

Apexus did not have a quick answer to that and looked over to Aclysia, who slowly nodded. “How much?” he then asked.

“Three silver, one if you pay a membership fee to the local Adventurer’s Guild,” the Scribe recited the words of his business. “Membership fee is two silver per month and comes with other bonuses such as-“

Aclysia already stepped forwards and put three silver on the table.

“The map,” Apexus said and extended his nail-less right hand. The Scribe took a moment to fold it neatly and then handed it over. Money was pulled into the outpost, the map wandered over to Aclysia and the trio distanced themselves from the outpost.

“Be wary,” the Scribe waved them goodbye.

“Have a nice evening?” Apexus returned the wave awkwardly before turning around. The nervousness still clung to his core, diminishing slowly while they walked down the slope to the dungeon’s entrance. It was a large arch. Its shape betrayed that it wasn’t a natural formation, having a shape identical to a castle’s gate, even though it was cut directly into the craggy stone. Its outline shared the roughness, but it was still too steady to be mistaken for a natural cave.

The first few metres were illuminated by torches that the Adventurer’s Guild had put there. Soon, however, the flickering fire was made unnecessary by crystals that covered the walls. Gold and silver, they started as a couple of shards across the walls but soon grew to large formations that dominated the spacious caverns. Pathways led between large clusters, particularly spikey ones made for natural traps along walls and at the bottom of pits and some even connected ceiling and floor as pillars that emanated steady light.

Apexus felt as if he was on the inside of one of the geodes that could be found all around the crater above. A deliberate design decision of the god who had created Myrlight. They made their way to a particular cluster and stopped. Not because they had encountered an enemy yet but because they needed to discuss their strategy.

Studying the map, Aclysia got used to the particular design and how it showed things such as underpasses, elevations and other important details. Healing fountains were marked through direct descriptions, as was the boss room. Alongside the cavern paths, different kinds of lines were drawn. One line was simple and parallel to the walls, another was squiggly, yet another went in a steady zig-zag. A legend in the corner of the map showed what route each of those lines was meant to represent. It was a simple solution to the lack of colour otherwise used to differentiate such things. There was also a number indicating how many days should be planned to take such a trip.

There was the safe route, recommended to newcomers to get used to the enemies in the dungeon, the long route, used to maximize the chance to find some additional chests that randomly spawned in, and the boss rush route, which didn’t need further explanation. “It would be best suited to our interest if we went with this one,” Aclysia declared, while showing it to her party members. “Would you agree, Reysha, my love?”

“You should ask Apexus too,” the tiger girl joked and got herself pinched in the butt by the slime for the comment. “Hey! What was that for?!”

“You wanted an excuse to make a joke, so you took it,” Apexus returned. “I wanted an excuse to touch your ass, so I took it.”

“…You know what, that’s fair,” Reysha giggled. “It IS a really nice ass.”

“While I agree that your behind is rather pleasant, it does not answer my question,” Aclysia pulled the discussion back to the topic at hand.

“Don’t you worry, bubble butt, your ass is fantastic. Might even go as far as admitting it's even nicer than mine,” the tiger girl’s grin went ever wider. “But I’m me and that’s a gap ya can’t overcome, I’m afraid.”

“I do not have any intention to even attempt to do so,” Aclysia responded.

“Probably for the best. World couldn’t handle that much awesome… or carry that much stupid…” Reysha mumbled the self-deprecating part. As confident as she gave herself and as much of her ego may have been restored, she wasn’t arrogant enough to just forget what she had caused. After all these months, she did manage to not let it bind her down either. “Anyway, yeah, rushing to the boss sounds good.”

“We should take it a bit slower than the map suggests,” Apexus added his opinion. “Instead of three days, let’s aim for seven.”

“Why so?” Aclysia wanted to know. “The entire idea behind the current strategy we follow is to maximize our time usage. Why waste four entire days?”

“The boss rush path goes from healing fountain to healing fountain,” Apexus explained and showed things on the map. “If we followed it, we could probably beat the dungeon in two days, because we don’t need to rest as much as normal people. We also would encounter less normal enemies. Less normal enemies means less chances to find a useful Growth. If we find anything I know I want permanently, we can accelerate again. Make… Does that make sense?”

“That is an understandable analysis and acceptable adjustment to my suggestion, yes,” Aclysia nodded.

“Man… even a week feels really fucking fast,” Reysha mumbled as she looked at the map. “What a difference it makes if you know where you’re going, huh? We should make a jaunt by an actual guild building when we’re in the next big city and just get the maps we still need.”

“The maps we can get,” Apexus responded. “I understand that there are dungeons that shift shape with time.”

“Yeah, but those usually are higher up… ah well, we’ll see when we ask about them.”

“Even if we buy them, we should not show our identification cards. As a matter of fact, I suggest we destroy them in the near future,” Aclysia said, while looking over the map one more time to engrain the path in her mind. “The Adventurer’s Guild may not be searching for us now, but I remain wary they might in the future. We can be less on guard when it comes to people seeing us, but leaving our names somewhere unnecessarily may be an issue. Especially since we have rather unique Classes.”

“I mean, the cards don’t really serve us a purpose if we don’t update them… so yeah, for all I care, let’s bust them,” Reysha agreed. Identification and checking one’s level were the only two uses for a copper card. Rarer metals were badges of honour, but copper, iron and even silver cards were sort of just used for ease so guilds (Adventurer and others) were certain they were handing privileges to people that had paid their membership fees.

“Didn’t teach me much,” Apexus shrugged, not caring if the cards were around or not.

They would get rid of the cards whenever they found a fire hot enough to melt them.