“Not the boss!” Sunny sputtered. The pixie nodded her head at the irate woman's words.

“Come see what I found.” The pixie replied and then sped off into the darkness a faint afterglow trailing her retreating form. The two adventures looked at one another sighed then followed the pixie at their best speed. Victoria could hear the older woman cursing softly. In a few minutes, they found themselves across the cavern outside of a secondary entrance. “He was aggressively guarding the entrance.” She stated as she pointed.

“They usually guard the exit,” Sunny said trying to peer into the darkness.

“Let me check something,” Victoria said as she eyed her mana bar carefully. She cast a small globe of light that moved into the tunnel's mouth illuminating a path that leads down deeper into the subterranean complex. “Should we check to see where it goes?” The teen asked the group when she looked at Sunny she saw the older woman was chewing on her bottom lip in thought.

“We don’t really have time for this, “She said in thought. “But I have a bad feeling that this has been left far too long.”

“What do you mean?” Victoria asked.

“This whole mine, this dungeon. They don’t appear out of whole cloth. They start small and build from a dungeon core. The monsters don’t just suddenly appear. The monsters have to grow too, they level and mature. This place…” She said waving her hand. “It had to have been here for years. Now it's broken through the surface. That truck,” She said waving back along the way they came. “That's been here since at least the nineteen sixties. Maybe the nineteen seventies.”

“That's what over forty years.” The teen asked her mentor.

“Yeah, and it's linked to the quest for the cheerleaders.” The older woman said musingly. She then looked at her trainee. “This is going to sound counter-intuitive. But I think we have to go down the rabbit hole as it were to save the other girl.”

“You’re right that makes no sense,” Victoria said with worry in her voice. “What's your reasoning?” She asked.

“We were led to the entrance from the last cheerleaders home. Her mother was taken and she was an alchemist with a formula that seemingly affects the good monsters.”

“Why do they want to do that though?” Victoria asked trying to clarify and understand Sunny’s thinking.

“I don’t know. I just think we have to complete this to find out and that it affects everything.”

“Do you hear yourself? What if she dies?”

“Then we failed the quest.” The older woman replied.

“NO! If she dies we failed her. I’m not doing this for the damned quest.”

Sunny gave her a stern look. “You don’t even like the cheerleaders.”

“It’s not that I don’t like them. I don’t care about them other than the fact they are human. But I’m not going to let one of them die just because of its inconvenient.” The teenager said glaring at the older woman. “We need to head back and get to her.”

“I know, and we will but we need to find out about this I think we are very close to the end. There is usually an exit. Just come on with me for thirty more minutes if we don’t find the exit by then we’ll turn around and I’ll call Erasmus to see if he can dispatch a larger team. Will that work for you?” The teen looked at her mentor angrily, the older woman must have sensed the teenager's discontent and distrust. “Look, I know you don’t really know me enough to trust me. But in the past few years, I’ve seen a lot. If she can be saved she will be saved.” Only through some miracle did she leave off the two words that would forever doom a relationship.

“Thirty more minutes?” Victoria confirmed.

“Thirty more,” Sunny confirmed. The two hunters and pixie scout trooped down into the tunnel that led down deeper into the earth.

As they descended they noted that the floor grew more even and the walls wider and smoother. The slowed soon using an abundance of caution. “Lacie, can you scout ahead?” Victoria asked her guide. The pixie gave her a stiff-armed salute before her wigs carried her forward into the darkness. The two women continued on is silence. Soon however they started to hear the faint whirring of wings as their companion returned.

“You are not going to believe this.” The pixie hissed as she returned. Looking over her shoulder she continued to speak in excited tones. “There is a small town down here.”

“What?” Both Victoria and Sunny said at the same time. “What kind of a town?” Sunny asked.

“It looks like a small western town. About ten or twelve buildings I can see int he next cavern. They are surrounded by mushroom fields. At a guess maybe fifteen or twenty goblins.”

“This is bad,” Sunny said looking concerned. “How much further?”

“Only about five minutes” Lacie replied with a grin on her face. “The best part is there looks to be an exit.”

“Soo, we go through kill the goblins burn the town and go through the exit then save the cheerleader?” The older woman said smiling. “See I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“You did but I think I will wait until it's all over before I agree with you.”

“You are such a pessimist.” Lacie sighed as she looked at her charge.

“That may be, but all of my surprises will be good ones.” The teen quipped. “Let's get going the sooner we get this over with the sooner we can get out of here.” They hurried down the tunnel with a renewed spring in their step.