Chapter 32 - Better get that cross ready mate

In the dark dungeon, there was a scene reminiscent of a landslide. The dungeon had caved in, dirt had almost completely filled up the passageway, an occasional ant could be seen crawling around, looking for the scent of its kin. Yet it's antenna could not find a single fresh scent.

Suddenly, a gauntlet popped out of the dirt. Followed by an arm, then a head, soon the full body of the giant could be seen.

Clint stood up. Thankfully the earth didn't completely fill up the cavern, even though it was enough to fill up half the cave, it wasn't a weight that Clint couldn't handle.

He crouched, clawing at the area around him. He soon found who he was looking for.

Gordan, abnormally silent. Completely unmoving like a corpse. Clint gently placed his hand on Gordan's chest. After a few seconds, he removed it. Then continued digging.

A small indentation appeared on the surface of the dirt. Clint noticed this and went to it, and began digging. Soon desperate gasps of air could be heard, as Clint pulled Sophia out of the dirt. Dumping Sophia to the side to catch her breath, Clint continued his work, now knowing which signs to look for.

A patch of dirt began moving and soon Jane dug herself out.

Clint wasn't surprised. Jane trained with him. And during their training, they were buried alive more than a few times.

Jane soon caught her breath, her tougher body allowed her to recover much faster than Sophia, who despite emerging first, was still breathing heavily.

Jane took a moment to get her bearings. Her eyes passed by the panting Sophia and landed on the still Gordan.

She quickly rushed forward to Gordan, pulling a feather out of her dirty pack. She brought the feather in front of Gordan's mouth and nose and held it still. Breathing a sigh of relief as she saw the feather quivering slightly. Proof that Gordan was still breathing.

Clint was still digging, he saw a slight amount of dirt move near where the cave was completely sealed with dirt. He deduced that the person here was either Victoria or Rayes.

He dug until he found a root, looking closer the root was connected to another root, which was weaved with various other roots, forming something like a thick net. Quickly he tore apart the roots, to find Victoria and Rayes. Rayes lying stomach flat on the ground with Victoria next to him, unconscious as she clutched a large palm-sized seed, several tendrils protruded from an opening on the seed, revealing the origin of the strange roots.

Rayes lifted his heard, the lighting in the dungeon was bad and he couldn't exactly see who dug them out. However, the silhouette showed that it was either Clint or a monster with a bucket for a face.

Seeing the silhouette reach its hand for him, he decided it was the former. However, he could not move.

"Legs stuck, get Victoria out of here first."

His words were straight to the point, which fit Clint's style.

"Jane."

Clint called Jane over, gesturing at the hole and pointing at Rayes' left leg, which was just outside of Victoria's plant barrier.

Jane understood and jumped down, easing the seed out of Victoria's hand and putting it on the floor. After that, she put Victoria's limp body on her back and simply jumped out.

Clint began working on the hole, trying to widen it. After a bit of digging, he cleared away the dirt surrounding Rayes' leg, unearthing the large rock on top of it. He slowly removed the rock, careful to not hurt his comrade. Rayes slightly winced as the rock was moved away from his leg, however, he didn't make any other sound.

"Pretty sure my ankles are broken,"

Rayes said solemnly, he knew enough about his body to know when something didn't work.

"hmm"

Clint grunted in agreement, gesturing at Jane they began the slow process of safely removing Rayes from the hole.

After a few minutes, they had seated Rayes against the wall.

"I'll be splinting your leg,"

Jane told Rayes as she fished for some bandages and a splint from their packs.

"Just get on with it,"

Seeing Gordan completely incapacitated, Rayes resigned to his fate, his arm covering his eyes.

"I'll... I'll help,"

Sophia said as she pulled a few herbs and a mortar and pestle from her own pack. She quickly began grinding away at the herbs. Expertly beating at the herbs till only a green paste remained. Using some of the bandages she scooped out the paste and told Rayes.

"This will numb your leg for a bit and alleviate your pain."

"Just hurry up,"

"Alright."

Getting a bit of the paste on her fingers, she began rubbing it on Rayes bent foot, soon his entire ankle was covered.

Jane squatted down, her hands gently grabbed the heel of Rayes bent foot. And using a single quick jerk she set the foot back in place.

Rayes stayed silent during the entire ordeal. His teeth clenched to the point that grinding noises could almost be heard. However, it was over quickly and Jane was already bandaging his foot.

Clint didn't need to be a genius to figure out how bad their current situation is. Three members of their party incapacitated, two completely unconscious due to mana deprivation, one can't walk until Gordan wakes up.

"This was all my fault..."

Jane said, her eyes downcast. Clint was about to reply, however.

"No, it's not your fault. It's mine."

Rayes interrupted, now looking directly into Jane's tearing eyes.

"Sniffle How so?"

Jane asked, wiping her eyes.

"This dungeon is definitely an intelligent dungeon, the fact that the cave collapsed is solid proof of this," Rayes said as he tried to move his leg into a more comfortable position.

"How does a cave collapse indicate that this is an intelligent dungeon?"

Sophia said, confused. She had the least adventuring experience out of all of them, so of course, she didn't make the connection.

"A normal dungeon doesn't create its own things. It merges a few things by accident or something might get influenced by a special type of mana. Anyways, the point is that a dungeon usually doesn't make something on its own. It burrows power from the world to create something based on a previous imprint." He paused, taking a deep breath.

"And all dungeons follow a special type of blueprint when constructing their dungeons, this usually means a lot of them are very similar. They usually all have the same pattern for a cave or corridor. If we were in one of those corridors then we could throw explosives all we want but only barely scratch the surface." He continued.

"However the fact that the walls were not only shaken but the ceilings collapsed, means that these tunnels were dug by hand. The fact that I didn't notice the signs showing that this tunnel wasn't created but dug. Shows my ineptness as a scout." Rayes finished, falling back into silence.

An awkward silence seemed to fill the air. Only Gordan and Victoria's soft breathing could be heard now.

"It's no one's fault."

The group turned to Clint, surprised that he managed to say more than three syllables. If this was any other man, then it was the equivalent of a boring three-hour speech.

Jane was the first to break out of her stupor.

"He's right, we all have been dungeon diving for a long time, yet none of the rest of us noticed that the walls were different, so how could we expect you to keep track of it."

"But..."

"No buts,"

Rayes tried to interject, however, Jane stopped him.

"We've been doing this for a long time, just because it's your job to do something doesn't mean your the only one who does it. We can't blame one person everytime something bad happens, we are all here on our own accord, we know the dangers yet we are still here. If anything it's my fault for having us take this quest. Does anyone disagree with this?"

Jane let the question hang. In truth only Rayes blamed himself, no one else blamed him. They've each had their asses saved multiple times by Rayes. If you count the exact amount, then the times where Rayes saved the party far outnumbers the times he has screwed up.

"Well, I suppose we should hire a dwarf when we get back?"

Sophia said, perhaps this was a joke or maybe she was completely serious.

Regardless, a light chuckle still escaped Rayes.

"Give it up Sophia, if you think you can get a dwarf into a cave without ore, then you should try to scam a gnome while you are at it," Rayes jokingly said, his former self-blame seemed to disappear, though his eyes still seemed a bit regretful.

"This is all nice and stuff but how are we gonna get out now?" Gordan's voice suddenly sounded out.

"Gordan!" Jane called out.

"Are you fine?" Rayes asked.

"Yeah I'm fine, I've spent enough time mana deprived to be used to it by now," Gordan replied, he tried to raise his hand and do a small wave, however, his hand barely rose a centimeter before falling back down.

"Still can't move though,"

He said a dumb grin on his face.

"But seriously though, how are we going to get out of here with the entrance filled?"

"Dig?" Clint raised this question.

"And how long would that take?" Rayes sarcastically shot down the suggestion.

"I... I might have an idea." Sophia, who was silent this whole time suddenly but hesitantly talked.

"Huh? How?" Jane asked.

"I... I have a teleport scroll." Sophia continued, gaining a bit more confidence.

"What?" Jane, Rayes, Gordan and even Clint were dumbfounded.

Rayes was the first to break out of his stupor.

"How? When? Don't those cost at least an arm, a leg, a house, your life savings and a pile of dragon treasures? How did you even get one of those?"

"Remember when we tried to scam money off the mafia so we could pay off another debt," Sophia said, trying to shrink back into her robe as her comrades tried to examine her every facial expression.

"After we killed that purple worm boss, I used my share of the gold to buy a teleport scroll from a gnome. At the time I thought it was a great deal, and so I signed a contract with the seller..."

Right now the crowd had a pretty good idea of where this was heading

"However after a few days, the damned gnome found me and began citing a bunch of stuff in a contract, saying how I owed him a ton of money and when I told you guys and you all suggested we try to get money from the mafia..." Sophia replied, only the top half of her head could be seen now since her body was now completely hidden in her robe.

A bunch of stupified idiots had their mouths opened up in an 'O' as they all slowly connected all the dots.

"Wait... So if you never bought that scroll, we would've never been in debt, meaning we would've never had to get into more debt with the mafia... meaning we would've never needed to take this quest... meaning..." Gordan began muttering under his breath, however, it wasn't low enough for everyone to not hear him.

"IT WAS ALL YOUR FAULT!" Gordan suddenly shouted. Clearly, he missed the teambuilding speech from Jane a few paragraphs ago.

"RAYES GET OVER HERE!! I SWEAR UPON MY GOD THAT I WILL SLAP YOU TO THE RIVER STYX OTHERWISE MY NAME IS NOT GORDAN SON OF HORDAN!!" Gordan shouted.

"How'd I suddenly get involved?!" Rayes asked feeling wronged.

"YOU WERE THE ONE WHO SUGGESTED WE SCAM THE MAFIA! NOT ONLY THAT YOU FAILED TO SCAM THEM, OF COURSE, YOUR RESPONSIBLE!" The paralyzed man shouted. He was ineffectively trying to raise his body. However, he could only move a few centimeters at best before he fell in exhaustion.

After a few more tries. Gordan embarrassingly asked, "I can't seem to move right now, can you too slap yourself for me?"

Everyone's mouth seemed to twitch. Didn't this guy just righteously declare that he would slap Rayes, putting both his faith and name on the line, yet he just asked the other party to slap himself? The horrible thing is that it'll probably work!

Looking at Rayes, who was severely conflicted right now. Everyone knew the severity of not keeping an oath with the gods, at worst the god will send down divine punishment. One could be struck by lightning everytime he went out. His wealth could disappear overnight. His home could burn down and his wife would leave him. It could almost make him into the main character of a poorly written reincarnation novel.

Rayes seemed to have come to a decision and decisively slapped himself. The crisp sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed throughout the cave.

Everyone's eyes widened. Including the still limp Gordan. He didn't fully mean his oath, in fact, it was an open secret that the current Light God wasn't all that strong, and even if the Light God was as strong as the old one. Chances are he wouldn't send a divine punishment on someone just because he made an insignificant oath.

Yet Rayes had actually slapped himself after only a brief consideration.

Even if the matter was insignificant, Gordan couldn't help but feel his eyes tearing up at this friend who would willingly put himself on the line just to prevent a god from sending down divine punishment.