The portal to the dungeon distorted and rippled as the item influenced it and the woman who spoke to us earlier took the lead. Out of the group of nine now, she was one of two females. Which was somewhat rare as I had noticed most adventurers and knights were male. Heck, I had barely seen any females in the city at all. It truly was a city mostly focused on military and the dungeons within. Surprising that it wasn’t more well balanced with the trade routes going through it.

Before long, we had all entered the dungeon and I was the last to go through. I raised my guard, expecting a fight as soon as I had walked through the portal but instead found all the monsters already dead. So much for fighting in the front if the others go ahead and kill everything before I was even in the room. Then again, it gave me a chance to observe the monsters without them trying to kill me or worse, keeping their distance and acting suspiciously or not at all.

It resembled a bird in its overall body shape, head, and legs, but instead of feathers, fur adorned its body and it had arms with claws at the end rather than wings. There were around ten bodies scattered across the ground, most of them missing a few limbs, sporting new holes in their chests, or had their heads bashed in. The group as a whole took out these monsters without taking into account the rough plan we had before going in.

As for the room itself, it was spacious enough to fit two or three one-story buildings inside and had plenty of space for all nine of us to move around. The ground and walls were a greyish color that had somewhat of a metallic sheen to it while the temperature was the same as outside. Unlike past dungeons which felt like I was underground or in some foreign, alien place, this place had the unnerving aspect of feeling manmade, as if I was simply in the basement of the fortress rather than in a dungeon. The floor and walls were smooth and in a perfectly rectangular shape as opposed to the more circular or maze-like structure of rooms in past dungeons.

None of the dead monsters dropped an item in stark comparison to the almost constant loot in the public dungeon. For all I knew, this dungeon had a completely different ore than what was normally traded around. If so, why hadn’t I seen this other ore being traded around in the markets?

“Took you two long enough, you were supposed to be the vanguard yet your reluctance to go through forced us to take out all the monsters. If this goes on like this, you won’t get anything out of this trip,” said one of the members, a guy leaning on a spear piercing through the head of one of the monsters.

They just entered the dungeon without letting us know that we should have gone ahead. I’m not psychic and I hoped the knight beside me wasn’t. At this point in time, I started to regret coming along on this trip as it seemed like it was going to be a hassle. The knight beside me simply kept his head down when this guy berated us, inspected one of the dead bodies then moved to the next room. Since he didn’t bother saying anything, I held back my complaints and followed.

In the next room, the knight and I were instantly assaulted by the strange creatures from the previous room. They rushed towards us with their arms flailing about. It would look ridiculous if not for the fact that a single swipe of their claws could tear chunks of my flesh with ease. Thankfully, their swinging arms were purely offensive, leaving a large gap in the center of their body for me to pull my spear from my back and stab it. The spearhead pierced its body and thrust out the other side, pushing the body of the beast uncomfortably close to me. If not for the fact that it almost instantly died and stopped attacking, I would have been at serious risk of being hurt.

The knight, on the other hand, pulled a knife from his waist and threw it at one of the oncoming creatures, lodging itself firmly into its head and dispatching the monster without trouble. Then he pulled out a sword with the symbol of a divine upon it to meet the charge of another monster. As one was also coming towards me, I was forced to pay attention to my own manners.

My spear was stuck, or rather the furry bird thing was on my spear and I couldn’t get it off. It’d take some effort to pull it out considering how far the spear had gone through it. As the next monster approached, I had the choice of ditching the spear for my sword or continuing to use it. Surprisingly enough, the monster was very light so I could still move my spear with its corpse skewered on it. With that in mind, I shifted the spear to the side and skewered the next monster and then another. Before I knew it, I had these birds covering the entire length of the spear, four of them in total, making it impossible to use the spear further.

I reached for my sword to continue the fight only to realize the rest were already dead, felled by the knight in close combat. He had accrued a few wounds, mostly new scratches upon his armor and a cut on his face, but he had killed six of the beasts in the timespan it had taken me to kill three. Then again, he wore armor and could afford to fight more recklessly, attracting the ire of the beasts and allowing him to dispatch more of them faster.

One of the beasts he had killed formed into a shiny metallic ore, looking far more valuable and useful than the blackish ore of the public dungeon. Before the knight could even touch it, the rest of the group crossed through the portal and observed the situation without any change in expression. It’d be nice if they could complement us on our performance but it seemed like we did as expected.

“Pass that silver ore over to us and retrieve your weapons. We’ve got more rooms to cover today and until we recoup our costs, you won’t get a single coin or ore for yourself,” stated the woman who had listed off the requirements for joining the group earlier, as harsh and blunt as ever.

The knight willingly tossed the silver over to the others, one of whom caught it and slipped it into a small drawbag hanging off a belt. Silver ore was valuable enough to be used for coinage and was one of the metals that backed pretty much every currency in the surrounding countries. Its value could not be underestimated and I’d love to get my hands on some. All of it was going straight into the group who brought us here’s pockets and depending on how this trip goes, I might not get anything out of it.

A few minutes later, I had pulled the corpses off the spear and cleaned most of the blood and gore off it. No point in being thorough as it would just get messy again in the next room. I wondered how much it would cost for this group to recoup their expenses and let us keep some of the ore. Rather than expensive, I felt like the private dungeons were only used by a select few with connections to the owners or were the owners. However, if they did rent out the dungeon then it must’ve been quite costly since this place drops silver. A single silver ore could be smelted down and used to make a bunch of silver coins. However, only nobles could mint coinage from valuable metals so the ore isn’t worth as much as its weight in coin even after taking out the impurities.

Whatever would happen, I hoped that the group could at least make it to the rest area so I could get some new alcohol as I had but a mouthful of wine left and the beer cask back at the inn wouldn’t last forever. The third room was much the same as the second but more monsters. With the knight charging ahead like before, I was able to take on the beasts pretty much one by one despite their numbers. Before long, I had my spear completely covered in beasts and drew my sword which drew the attention of the rest of the monsters in the room.

The fire coming from my sword aggravated the monsters far more than the knight's reckless charge and I found myself surrounded by six to eight of them, desperately swinging my blade all around. Every time I swung my sword I cut one of the beasts down, either from the blade cleaving their body and slashing open their veins, or the flame spreading to cover their fur and scorching every inch. In retaliation, they scratched my exposed back, bit my tender legs, and even aimed for the hand holding my sword.

In the end, the knight came over and helped me fend off the last few beasts and we were surrounded by anywhere from twenty to thirty bodies, not one of them dropping anything and we both had wounds. Even the knight’s plate mail couldn’t hold out and he had scratches everywhere, but nowhere near my injuries where parts of my flesh were gouged out. Luckily, none of my vitals got hit and the knight helped patch up my wounds with some bandages as the shield got to work stopping the bleeding.

“I’m surprised that you’re willing to patch me up after I stole your friend’s spot,” I said to the knight as he wrapped a bandage around my body to cover a nasty bite to my ass.

“Only a fool would be so petty as to not help a comrade in the dungeon even if there’s a bit of history. Right now we’re basically a two-man group fighting deep in the dungeon as the others won’t help until much later unless we die. If you die, it becomes a solo suicide mission so it’s in my best interest to keep you alive. I still dislike you and feel free to dislike me, but for now, let’s have a truce,” said the knight.

Right as he finished speaking, the rest of the group came through the portal and looked around the room. They ignored our wounds and inspected the dead bodies and the room around them. They were likely counting the bodies to make sure we didn’t take any silver ore for ourselves.

“No ore this time? Well, keep moving. No time to waste as we’d like to get to a place where we can stretch our muscles before the day is out,” said one of them.

The knight was right, this was a two-man raid with all the benefits going to those doing nothing. They had absolutely no intention of helping us and were even rushing us to go faster. Then again, they did pay the entry fee so it’s not like I have any right to complain. If anything, leaving the dungeon is still technically an option if things go South.