I met with the goddess and I could feel Jerry’s presence there as well. Everything was laid bare in this ethereal state. Knowledge of my quest’s end goal, my goddess’s relation with Mans Tontrau, and even things about Jerry entered my head. It was an unusual experience that seemed to last hours but I knew would only last minutes in reality. Eventually, we woke up and looked at each other with a new understanding, both good and bad.

“I knew you were one of three that drank from my keg. Things didn’t add up with Stephen being the third perpetrator. Not just that, but you’ve considered running off with the money for the group several times. I believed that you would put it to good use for the knight order,” I said.

During my time with the goddess, I had seen glimpses of memories from Jerry. Mostly ones leading up to him joining me like his desire to steal my shield, his envy of my ability to get so much from the dungeon, and his dreams of becoming a knight. However, there were ones like him drinking my ale with the others and knowingly ignoring the irony of commending me for giving up the room while not doing so himself. As for the money he’s been hoarding and not spending on the group, he saw it as his money and embezzled from it a few times.

“You did and thought of some pretty rude things as well. Constant doubts about the knight order you created with me and thinking about keeping the necklace to yourself even after your hand healed. Then there’s the dark dagger you’ve hid from us and all that silver from the copper ore you still keep on your person, worrying about whether or not to give it to Tom to help pay off your debts or save it for what exactly? You’re the same with money as I am, just you’ve been trying to get freebies constantly to keep yourself from using it,” said Jerry and everything he said was correct.

If I had known that praying together would have produced a result like this, I would have never done it. Now it was too late and Jerry knew too much about me for me to ever cast him aside. Not that I didn’t know plenty of secrets about him that he wouldn’t want to be revealed as well. As embarrassing as it was, perhaps this was a good thing. Everything about us was revealed to each other so there were no more second thoughts about things. We knew how we felt about things and what we wanted to do, with many of our goals overlapping to a degree.

“Let’s work together to make this knight order a proper thing,” I said.

“Of course, after all, your life is on the line while I have no other avenues to achieve my dream. We’re past the point of no return. I would say sorry, but we both know I’m not sorry. So how about some mutual acceptance of our differing opinions and actions?” asked Jerry. That was quite the mouthful but it was better than an apology he didn’t really mean.

“Right, now to deal with Mans Tonrau’s knights, or at least minimize the damage they’ll cause to us,” I said.

Unfortunately, my worst fears had come true and the knights hated the divine we served and would stop at nothing to inconvenience us. As their god wasn’t an evil one, they would not kill or heavily injure us unless we attack first. They only kill in self-defense and to achieve that, they would relentlessly annoy us and maliciously damage us in ways not directly harming us to trigger a response.

The best option was to find a way to kick them out of the headquarters and warn the others not to react to their provocations. After that, we’ll… do something. We can’t really force them to leave and if we leave, what would they do in the town? Would we even find anything left of the headquarters if we left and came back? What would happen to Tom, Jeoffry, Jeff, and the other townspeople who had done nothing wrong?

“So, what do you think cutting our losses by selling the barn and leaving town with the others for a month or so? I’ve always wanted to visit the city,” said Jerry mercilessly.

“What about the townspeople?” I asked.

“We can warn them all. It’s up to them if they believe us and take our advice or not,” said Jerry.

That was true. If they knew about Mans Tontrau and their grudge against us, it would no longer be our problem and they might even approve of us leaving town. The sooner we left, the sooner the knight order would leave in their eyes. If only it was that simple.

“Let’s just go to the dungeon and grab the others. They’re the ones in the most danger and the knights were heading that way. Best not to leave them out of sight for too long,” I said.

On the way to the dungeon, I paid far more attention to the surroundings and noticed changes. There were parts of the ground on the paths through town that were dug up for no reason and some houses had scratches on the wood. Little things that added up. All it took was nine men to chip away at an entire town, to create a feeling of being unwelcome.

Nine men bearing weapons and plate armor along with any number of divine or enchanted items. They could do whatever they wanted and no one could stop them. Complaints from the populace would fall on deaf ears until they took action and lost. Blood would be drawn in such a situation, none of it from the knights. In a way, it was worse than the knights attacking the town outright.

At the dungeon, we found the others standing around the entrance of the dungeon, which was blocked by the knights. It seemed like they were trying to enter the dungeon but the knights refused to let them. All the while, the knights refused to go in themselves, making the blockade all the more unreasonable. I heard one of the complaints as I got within earshot.

“What’s the point of stopping us from going in? We all go to a different place inside. There’s no competing over resources and the order we go in is pointless. Just get in there and we’ll go after you,” said Chris.

“Just stop it, Chris. They’re not listening to us. Let’s just wait until they lose interest and leave us alone,” said Matt.

They went silent as soon as they noticed us walking up. The knights of Mans Tontrau reacted to our presence as well with one of them walking up to me. It was the same one I had sat next to at Tom’s bar.

“Hello there again. I see that you’ve multiplied like cockroaches, filthy believers of Sanae Patil and wannabe knights. We’ve already crushed your predecessors and we’re not afraid to stomp you out before you even become a problem,” said the knight.

So that’s why Sanae Patil wanted a knight order to her name. She had one before and it was destroyed. That would have been nice to know back in the temple.

“We’re not afraid of you. Stand aside and give us access to the dungeon,” said Jerry. Which wasn’t true, we were very afraid of them.

“Not for the next hour. We’re going to cause a convergence artificially and if you go into the dungeon, you’ll get caught up in it. So, don’t use the dungeon or we’ll treat your presence as an invasion on our dungeon run with the intent to harm or sabotage us,” said the knight. In other words, he’d use it as an excuse to kill us.

“Then go. We won’t enter until the convergence effect is over,” I said.

“No, you won’t. Not at all. This dungeon entrance is now our personal property. Anyone who goes in without our permission is trespassing and will be dealt with,” said the knight.

“You can’t claim ownership over the right to enter the dungeon. The dungeon is everywhere and is something anyone can publicly enter,” said Stephen, jumping into the conversation despite not fulling understanding what was going on.

“Watch us. The dungeon is free to enter anywhere other than here for you all. With the exception of you three if you leave this fake knight order,” said the knight while pointing at Chris, Matt, and Stephen.

Exploring the dungeon for loot was currently their livelihood. Not being able to do that was tantamount to being jobless. They would have to find work elsewhere to make a living. That, or betray us by leaving the knight order officially so they could use the dungeon again. It was a decision I hoped they would never have to make or at least one I'd like them to make under different circumstances such as offering them a divine item from Sanae Patil.

None of them spoke up and the Mans Tontrau knights went over to the dungeon and pulled out an item that made the color of the dungeon’s portal change from an almost holy white to a menacing dark blue color that swallowed up all the knights one by one. Inside the dungeon all nine of them would be in the same place, defeating monsters with ease and making it to later floors with much less effort.

Although the others didn’t speak of leaving, there was no doubt the thought was in the heads. Loyalty to us wouldn’t put food on the table. Unless we cut into our savings to try and subsist until the knights went away or we found a solution to this conflict. There was nothing more we could do at the dungeon so we went back to the headquarters silently.

Of course, the headquarters was trashed and looted of all the stored ores and weapons. Thankfully, the money was kept on Jerry’s person so not all was lost. Stephen, Chris, and Jerry went into their rooms to find all their stuff broken or thrown about. Matt and I got out of this relatively unscathed, but that wouldn’t last. Who knew how long it would take for the knights to go after Matt’s family or for them to go upstairs in Tom’s bar.

“I’m going to kill them. I was annoyed when they kept us from the dungeon, but breaking my stuff is unforgivable. I don’t care how well armed they are, I’ll take at least one of them down,” said Stephen as he flew into a rage, ranting and raving about.

“Calm down. We need to figure out what’s going on before acting,” said Chris quite reasonably.

“Do we need to figure anything else out. They’re coming after us because of the divine we’re making a knight order for. I’m sorry, but I might have to leave if it stays this bad. My family needs the extra income from exploring the dungeon and I’ve already been taking back less so the knight order could save up money for things,” said Matt, also a reasonable thing to say.

None of them had a real reason to stay with us beyond friendship, monetary ties, and loyalty. Money wasn’t flowing too well and loyalty couldn’t be kept on friendship alone. I would not hold it against them if they left, though personally, I wished they would all stay.

“Stephen, that’s what they want us to do. Their god holds them back from killing unless we try to kill them first. All you’d be doing is giving them an excuse to draw their swords on us. We’ll get your revenge somehow, but not by fighting them head on,” said Jerry.

For around an hour, there was back and forth arguing about what to do. No one could find a solution that didn’t have some sort of major downside. Everyone wished we could magically make the knights go away but they were here to stay. Eventually, we decided that we would try to counter their strategy by annoying them.

After all, if they could not strike us but could harass us, could we not do the same. Until we attacked them directly, their hands were tied. So, we camped outside the dungeon, waiting for them to come back. Even after the portal turned back to white and we could enter without ending up in the convergence, we held back from going inside while taking note that they couldn’t prevent us from going inside the dungeon completely.

Finally, after night fell, they exited the dungeon in a group and were met by us circling surround them in a half circle. Their hands immediately fell to their swords and unsheathed them within seconds. Stephen couldn’t help but pull out his weapon too, but no fighting ensued. They had tried to make us panic and attack before it seemed like they could, and we almost fell for it thanks to Stephen. Once again, Stephen managed to make himself even more dislikeable in my eyes.

“What’s this supposed to be? Were you hoping to ambush us, take us unaware? Such a petty trick would only quicken your demise in the eyes of Mans Tontrau and to our amusement,” said the knight.

“We know that you cannot do anything to us unless we do something to you. So no, we’re not ambushing you. This is simply a greeting. You can choose to push your way through and leave. We’ll enter the dungeon in your absence. Or you can stay for a while and we’ll stay just as long to see who’ll snap first. There’s always the dungeon behind you if you want to run away as well,” I said.

It was surprisingly satisfying to say that and confront them now all together. It felt like I was taking all the frustrations they sent our way and throwing it back into their faces. At this point, I really was willing to wait things out as long as necessary.

“I’d sooner chop your arm off than give into your weak pressuring. Just know that if you go into that dungeon, you might not find a town when you come back. Everyone here is a hostage of ours,” said the knight.

“I already lost my arm once, I can lose it again if I so choose. As for destroying the town, you’ve already started doing that and you can’t kill anyone. As long as the people live, the town can rebuild. No matter how you justify it, killing the entire town would make your god look bad,” I said.

There were no more words spoken as we stared each other in the eyes, gauging how serious the other was. The knights started to get impatient, moving around and wanting to fight. Stephen put his weapon away but kept reaching towards it to try and psych out the knights in front of him. Matt seemed like he was about to run away any second now while Chris and Jerry stood stock still as if they had done this a thousand times.

The knights conceded first, granting us a victory that felt somewhat hallow as they pushed past us and walked towards town. A win was still a win and we couldn’t help but smile as we watched the knights walk away. Before they disappeared from our site, the knight who had been talking to me before shouted back at us.

“If you dare to enter the dungeon, you will no longer have a home in this town!” he shouted.

Those words were empty as proven by the results of our standoff. It was tempting to just go back to the headquarters and sleep after this long day, but we decided to all go on a dungeon run to spite the knights. With that win, we were all pumped up and went in high spirits. If only we had an item with a convergence effect, we could enter the dungeon together and take it on in a group like they had done.

Once again, I was all alone in the dungeon. For the first time, it was a relief to come here as it was isolated from the troubles on the surface. Everything around me was purple, including a monster flying in the air. It looked like a dragonfly with its long body and a double set of very thin wings. Flying enemies left a bad taste in my mouth after last time, but now I had the fire sword to help me out.

I pulled it out of its sheath and watched as it let off a bunch of smoke but no fire. For some reason, the blade could not burn and created a constant plume of smoke. After a fit of coughing, I sheathed the blade and pulled out my spear. If the sword didn’t work, I’d try the spear again and hope this insect was a slow one.

It lifted up its tail and shot towards me in a straight line. I lifted up my spear to meet it while keeping my shield at the ready in case it was needed. Needed it was as the insect slipped to the side and dodged my spear and continued onwards toward me unimpeded. Its charge was only stopped by my shield and with it in such close range, I dropped the spear and reached for the dagger in my shirt.

The fast bugger tried pulling away with from the glint of my dagger as only a glancing blow hit it before it dropped to the ground twitching. Dead just from that? There weren’t any visible wounds and it seemed like the dagger had only skimmed it, not even drawing blood if it even had blood. For all I knew, it was faking its death so I stomped on it, splattering green fluids from its body all over the place with a sickening crunch and low squeal of air being released. Not sure if that meant it was still alive or if it just made that sound every time its shell was broken.

Who cared as it was dead now and I had a new strategy of beating it. Why even bother with the spear or sword if I could just block it and then swipe at it with the dark dagger. After all, it seemed to have quite the effect on monsters and I had been neglecting it for far too long. Mostly because it required me to get up close and personal with monsters. However, with these insects, it was going to be hard to stop them from getting close with their maneuverability and my fire sword’s issue.