The Rangers encamped not far from the dungeon entrance, and had a mostly quiet night. Rivera and Pugh did wake them halfway through sleeping to deal with a dozen Dream Creepers, which were carnivorous plants, but Niederhauer and Guzman basically had all of them snuffed out by the time Dane got his wits about him. A couple of quick heals later, and they were back to sleep.

The following day found them picking through some more ancient ruins a little further from the portal on the southwestern side. They were definitely in Canada, that wasn’t in doubt, but it was like the majority of the countryside had gone full Mother Nature, and another ten percent ended up as ruins, dungeons, and in a few cases hamlets or villages.

They found a mostly-destroyed castle another three clicks from where they’d camped, basically half of a tower, some stones that would have made up the walls, and wildlife overtaking everything else. Even most of the walls were overgrown with vines, and he would likely have missed it entirely except for the clear moat that ringed the former castle. The twenty foot deep trench of salted earth wasn’t something you could cover with plantlife too easily.

It didn’t take long to hump it over to the ruins. They were almost upon the castle when they found the tattered remains of what had once been a road, and a familiar suit of armor perched up against one of the trees flanking the twin wheel ruts.

“Hey guys,” Guzman said, doing several cartwheels and another couple of handsprings to rejoin the group from scouting ahead. “You remember that suit of armor with the ooze fetish?”

“The… sentient ooze?” Dane asked.

“That’s it… the armor’s up ahead. It didn’t move, but I also didn’t try talking with it.”

It did stir as soon as they got close enough. It didn’t stand up as much as it slowly got to standing position. The process was complicated and looked impossible for a human, even by yoga instructor or Olympian gymnast standards.

“We meet again, Oozymandius,” Dane said.

The ooze paused and cocked its helmet, then nodded sharply. “So we do.”

“Have you had any luck in your quest?”

“None.” It paused for a moment. “And your quest? How do you fare?”

“We’ve made great strides just recently. And look, I’ve found some information for you.”

The armor swelled up a bit, until Dane could see patches of gooey green striped with purple showing through beneath the helmet and between the individual armor pieces.

“Shall we trade for this information?” Dane asked.

“It is impossible to know the value of your information.”

“Yet once you know it, you will not need to reciprocate.”

“Can we just move on?” Niederhauer asked.

But Dane wanted to satisfy a curiosity.

“Ah yes, deception is key to the running of sentient societies. Would you be satisfied with a promise that I will hold up my end of the bargain with honor?”

Dane appeared to think this over. Honestly, it was a treat for him to interact with this oddity in any capacity. He would’ve given away the information and dealt with being stiffed without trouble, just to see where Oozymandius was headed in his own bizarre character arc.

He simply said, “I would be satisfied.”

Oozymandius nodded. “Continue.”

Dane revealed the item tag with Harriet the Enchanter™’s name on it, and the way to contact her, and added that they’d met an ooze in a kobold cavern not far off. Oozymandius was keen to learn both of these, and even more keen to be shown a map of the ooze’s location. Afterwards, it lifted its helmet on a column of ooze until it had a slimy, semi-transparent neck about two feet long.

“So weird,” Niederhauer muttered.

“Shut it,” Daniels said.

A sword appeared from within the armor, a big beautiful bastard sword with jewels in the hilt and runes engraved all along the slime-covered blade. More uncomfortable shifting of armor bits later, the hilt popped free of the neck hole and Oozymandius retracted itself, leaving it clean.

“Will you accept this in return for the information?”

“Gladly,” Dane said, completely and totally uninterested in whether the blade was a good fit for any of them, or powerful enough for them to use. He picked it up and handed it off to Niederhauer without even a hint of Inspect. “I wish you luck in your quest to… whatever your intentions are.”

“And you,” Oozymandius said, and sketched a slight bow. Dane returned the bow.

They watched the sentient ooze amble off in the direction of the kobold dungeon. Dude had a serious obsession with oozes and Dane was curious to find out why. He had the impression this wasn’t the last they’d seen of señor ooze.

Another short hike had them at the ruins themselves, and looking for an entrance. Another few moments found them surrounded by hooting, loping things that dropped off the ruined walls. These sounded like monkeys, had the hind legs of wolves, and the forelegs of orangutans. Their snapping lizard heads and scaly hides earned them the name wall monitors. Each one had over two hundred HP.

“Not funny,” Guzman said, and immediately launched into a series of punches too fast for Dane to make out. Rivera raged out and roared to taunt them, but there were enough to give Dane one to worry about. It was over eight feet, the game informed him, meaning his gnomish power of being extra small would enter into play.

He grabbed up his Voluminous Sack and called for his footlocker. The eagle was circling overhead and pulling into a dive, but he needed a shield–

The eagle’s big old luggage shot out of the sack and cracked his enemy across one shoulder for 5 damage. An aura splashed over him, but he ignored the pop-up and aimed the sack at the monitor. He called forth all the kobold armor scraps. These fired out like a machine gun, blasting the thing repeatedly for 3 to 5 damage one after another. Since the armor scraps could be stacked five to an inventory slot, he had well over a hundred to pummel the thing with, and soon it fell back, dead.

Congratulations, you have defeated wall monitor!

You’ve gained 150 xp and earned 100 silver.

You’ve gained a monitor’s venom gland and 2 monitor leather scraps.

The process of hoovering up the armor scraps wasn’t hard either: he just pointed the sack at the ground and mentally commanded them to get back in there. He heard a roar behind him, and spun to find a wall monitor heading his way. He peppered it with armor scraps, and killed it too, earning more monitor leather scraps, silver and experience.

When he got his wits about him next, the battle was basically over. Rivera was bashing two of them together, Niederhauer was stabbing a dead body and gleefully laughing, Pugh was also stabbing another monitor, and Daniels had just clocked another one across the face with his hammer. As for Guzman, she was already standing atop the one remaining turret, peering down for more enemies.

Dane gained another bit of XP from participating in a party combat, bringing them all pretty close to level 7.

“Guzman, what do your fae eyes see?”

She flipped him the bird, but answered anyway. “Dungeon entrance down here.” Then she leaped off the turret with a few flippies and twisties, and rolled to a superhero crouch.

“The thane-general will be pleased when we eliminate these vile creatures in pursuit of our quest-mission,” Daniels grumbled. “Let’s clear a dungeon.”

***

They’d cleared two levels of the dungeon beneath the ruins of the castle before Dane began to believe they’d fallen into some other dimension. The first floor spanned a much, much larger area than the actual castle grounds: maybe a thousand feet from one end to the other, full of twists, turns, several secret doors to trap-filled rooms, and a secret tunnel to an entire secret laboratory absolutely filled to the brim with gadget components. Niederhauer and Rivera had only been able to demolish about a tenth of all the usable stuff there, so he hadn’t freaked out too badly; he literally needed these gears and springs and power cores to build contraptions to help them out in the event they ever did take on The used-to-be-Five. He ended up with metal rods, a fusion torch tool, and a workbench. He hadn’t thought it would fit in his Voluminous Sack, but it got sucked right in there.

As for enemies, the first area had been almost entirely slugs, and some stupid creatures that mimicked stalactites in the middle of the stone roof. Here Rivera really shone, because Pugh almost immediately got himself diseased with slug guts, and Daniels had to be there for absolutely ages trying to heal and purify what he’d contracted. Dane used the machine gun feature on his Voluminous Sack, but not much, mostly because he had to pick up after himself each time, and Rivera was very effective.

They hit level 7 not halfway through the first floor, found the secret door with the help of his eagle, and had a whole new set of adversaries to take on in the other half of this gigantic puzzle maze.

Now they were fighting clay golems: three foot, lumpy reddish brown things with stubby fingers that proved simple enough to destroy. Rivera’s fists did most of the talking, though the dragonite fire breath baked several of these for Daniels to shatter. Pugh peppered a few with crossbow bolts before realizing that was pretty much useless, and allowed Guzman and Rivera to pummel them to death.

By now Dane had created a handful of little scout gadgets, ball-shaped things that relayed the all-clear or danger ahead to him, and mapped out the dungeon so they didn’t have to. They had no blind corners or cul-de-sacs to worry about once he had the fourth one up and running. Niederhauer wanted to call him testicle maps, and Pugh tried out scoutsicles, but they were testing out various ways, so ‘testicle’ was the name they all agreed on. Pugh and Niederhauer demanded he store them in his Voluminous sack, hur dur dur.

At the end of the first floor, they were presented with an enormous, wide open room flanked by twin rows of columns, dirt instead of stone flooring. This was clearly the boss’s lair, and Dane told them as such. Still, they were feeling cocky again, so they waded into the room instead of heeding his warning.

Rivera got in exactly four ineffectual hits before he was clocked and sent flying. He took eighty percent of his health bar in that one hit, which sent them all scrambling.

For a while it was all panic and screaming and flailing, until Dane got his testicles rolling and figured out the room had a big gem-studded face at the far end. As long as one of them (Guzman) could deal out the damage, all they had to do was keep the invincible monster’s attention on them.

Roughly four thousand flips and six thousand punches later, the huge clay golem shuddered and slowly came apart into clumps of loose soil.

They had a bit of a break there, got Rivera healed back up, and looted the monster. They came upon a whole batch of healing potions, and Dane demanded one so he could try and reverse engineer the recipe.

Then they found the stairwell down.

“You want to?” Niederhauer asked.

“I’m game,” Pugh said.

Rivera’s eyes just flashed with red light. The depth of his emotional withdrawal was a bit worrisome, but he was still committed to the mission, but still a huge part of their winning strategy.

They headed down the wide, stone stairwell to the second level, which appeared to be very similar to the first: milled stone walls, torches spaced intermittently around the place for them to light on sconces set into the walls, and reinforced barrel vaulted ceilings. This time the dungeon inhabitants were very angry little squirrel people, interspersed with some larger cave slugs which now spit acidic goop at them. Dane wouldn’t have the faintest clue these things were squirrels, since they were slate gray and nearly hairless, except his Inspect told him so. They looked more like zombie versions of those hairless Egyptian cats, but a foot bigger and halfway humanoid. Sublevel Squirrel was the name given to them, along with ‘Sentinel’ or ‘Warrior’ or ‘Cleric of the Mighty Nut’.

Niederhauer and Pugh were busy snickering over that when they got a rapid fire burst of about twenty walnuts right up their chests and in their faces. After twenty damage all at once, they stowed the chatter and got down to some squirrel-based carnage. This time Pugh was much more helpful, sniping far off Clerics of the Mighty Nut with his buffs and pinpoint crossbow attacks.

Bizarrely, he failed to summon a single level 1 town guard to aid them.

This time Dane found the secret area a good 75% of the way through the second sub basement level, and the enemies shifted again. The damage flying at them this time came in the form of flying imp devil things, which were somehow still squirrels. These Sublevel Squirlings died just a tad less easily than their land-based counterparts, since Rivera was kind of slow. From here, Guzman took point with her flurry of fists and ability to run on walls.

Between the flying ones and the final boss, which of course was a hideous gigantic hairless flying squirrel, Dane disengaged four traps, found two hidden doors leading to rooms full of gold and a couple of uncommon cards, and a lot of healing potions. He collected a whole ton of hairless squirrel tails, several short spears, and a sackful of holy nuts, on top of some more random components. The chest at the end of this floor contained a single-use card that would open a portal outside, interestingly. It was a free way out rather than requiring them to retrace their steps and climb all the way back through the lengthy maze. They also got a couple of decent spells for Niederhauer, several duplicate cards, and a useless magical item called a Brazier of Elemental Purity, which… no. He put it into his machine gun bag of holding to use as a missile weapon.

When they came upon the stairwell leading down this time, all of them took a long look at the darkness below without speaking.

“Well?” Niederhauer asked.

After another few moments, Pugh asked the same. “Well?”

Dane noticed Rivera was staring at him.

“Well?” Guzman asked.

Daniels was staring at him as well.

“Well what?” His brain was already there, well ahead of his stupid mouth. “Oh cripes, me? I decide? Who put me in charge?”

“You did, moron,” Niederhauer said. “You’ve been hounding us the whole time to listen to your dumb ass.”

“Well, now we are,” Guzman said.

“Ohhhhhkay. I guess we head down then?” It hadn’t been so bad yet. As soon as that thought came, he knew he’d just jinxed himself for thinking it. He shook his head free of both thoughts. They’d be fine. They were Army fucking Rangers.

They were attacked by a psychotic magical clown not three minutes later.