Approaching the dungeon, Andaris was even more blown away by the bustle of activity surrounding it. The extensive markets and places of business all around, with the large grandiose dungeon entrance at its center. A town that forms a round a dungeon was normally quite prosperous, to the point where these days, towns that did not have their own dungeon, were starting to become abandoned as they simply could not compete with the better economy and higher quality of life a dungeon town offered.

Andaris fell into line. One of the lines that is. The dungeon had four major paths leading into its entrance area. North, South, East and West. For each of these sides there were multiple lines of delvers waiting to be processed. Each line led to a different area of the dungeons' first five floors and the seventh.

Benusia was an old and large city and it’s dungeon, older and larger yet. The size was such that despite its age, it remained only a ‘tamed’ dungeon. Meaning, that while mostly fully mapped, the final Elite monster guarding the entrance to the core room had never been beaten.

Over the many years, various secret passages had been unlocked to different areas of these first several floors that allowed you to travel directly, instead of navigating the dungeons labyrinths floor by floor.

Of course Andaris had stood in a line that led to what was essentially the ‘start’ of the dungeon. He needed to familiarise himself with it, before venturing into any more dangerous territory. He had asked a few people for this basic information since this was the kind of knowledge that would be freely given.

He did not however ask about information on the dungeons first floor itself. Since that information was likely being sold by the guild and had value. To ask someone else to hand it over to you would be both rude and likely to earn the guilds ire if they found out. While he probably wouldn’t receive any drastic punishment, it is just the first floor after all, he saw no reason to tempt fate. Since it was the first floor of a well established dungeon, he could just go in blind this time.

The line moved up enough that Andaris passed under the canopy of the dungeon entrance. It was even larger and more impressive up close like this. A huge structure with a multitude of pillars and supports. The canopy, pillars and even floor, were made out of a blueish grey stone, with intricate square patterns and detailing consisting of grooves, indentations and outcrops that gave it an almost ‘ancient puzzle’ feel to it. The walkways between the various pillars were also extremely spacious.

It was finally Andaris’ turn to be processed. A guild worker, flanked by two guards stopped him. The guild worker took out some kind of tablet device and quietly began working. First he inspected Andaris’ guild glyph for a few moments, before looking back to his tablet. Nodding that whatever he was looking at seemed to be acceptable, he then turned his attention to Andaris’ storage glyph. Once more looking at his stone tablet, only this time he gave Andaris a raised eyebrow.

Andaris could only guess that his appearance and absurdly cheap contents of his storage contrasted rather heavily against the price of the glyph itself. But beyond simple curiosity, it seemed the guild worker did not care further and Andaris was motioned to proceed onwards.

Andaris followed the passageway. While a wall flanked his one side, the guild had constructed artificial wooden barricades to force a single passageway. Andaris followed until he came upon a large expansive staircase leading deep down to the first dungeon floor.

As he continued to descend, there was less and less light available to see where he was going. But Andaris was not concerned as he had inspected the guild's public notice boards early on when he arrived in Benusa and amongst the information the guild gave out freely, was that most of the dungeon levels were well illuminated, especially the upper levels. So there was no need to provide your own lighting.

While the guild normally sold information like floor layouts and monster composition for a price, there was some information like the aforementioned that they tended to give out for free. Most of it was not threatening information or information that would attract delvers though.

The staircase ended and Andaris finally arrived on the first floor. It had the same design and style as the canopy entrance, with only two notable differences. One was the stone was now more greyish than blue. The other, that in various places along the walls, floors, and pillars, there were blue rectangles of light providing an eerie illumination to the place.

Andaris had already equipped his leather cuirass that covered most of his torso with the exception of his arms, and of course his short sword. He did not wish to be fumbling with his storage glyph down in a dungeon to get his basic gear out, since interacting with a storage glyph was not instantaneous, nor would it magically equip your equipment for you. That all took time, time you sometimes did not have in a dungeon.

Andaris scanned his surroundings and began making a mental map of the area. He would eventually purchase either a map or materials to make one of his own, but for now he would have to rely on his memory.

As he explored the dungeon, with its eerie lighting and his footsteps echoing hollowly in the halls, he came across other delvers a number of times. Unlike the virgin dungeon he first explored however the atmosphere here was quite different and he did not feel threatened by any of them. Only polite greetings in passing.

A dungeon that was this crowded and well explored was a different beast to fringe virgin dungeons with their much more dangerous environment and their high stakes cutthroat competition. The increased guild presence no doubt played a role as well.

The upper floors were certainly quite crowded with lower ranked delvers trying to eek out a living. As a result, Andaris had to travel quite far out from the original staircase, before he finally encountered his first monster.

He locked eyes with some kind of snake. A golem, from what he could tell as it slithered quickly in his direction. The mechanical creature made mostly of a soft looking stone, was about the length of his leg when stretched out.

The snake came to a halt a dozen meters away from him and stood up ramrod straight, with a portion of its tail coiled below it for support.

Andaris felt the urge to charge it before it had a chance to do whatever it was it was about to do, but he resisted. Even if he could defeat it quickly, he knew nothing about the monsters here and would rather not find out what they were capable of only at a less opportune time. So he would take the chance now when facing only one of them, to see what it could do and what he needed to know about it.

Andaris heard the snake make a high pitched whining sound while it opened its mouth impossibly wide. He tensed, preparing himself.

Then he heard a strong sharp wind like sound and instinctively twisted out of the way. He was however a little too slow and a stone dart was now embedded in his arm. It wasn’t particularly large, but it still hurt like hell and he could see a swarm of these things easily downing a delver.

He felt like this monster was a little too dangerous for the first floor of a popular dungeon. There had to be some kind of trick or weakness to exploit. Andaris ripped the dart out of his arm and immediately felt his gift kicking in and slowly healing the wound. It was very slow compared to when he first received the gift, but it was steady and would give him a massive edge as a delver, allowing him to delve for extended periods of time without the need for obscenely expensive healing elixirs or other medial attention.

Andaris charged the snake, when he heard it start winding up for a second shot. So there was a cooldown for that ability, a decently lengthy one. Still that would still be too much, especially if there was a group of them it would still be quite deadly.

Andaris quickly realised he wasn’t going to make it before the next shot and did not wish to be skewered again if he could avoid it, so he tried darting to his left instead. His instinct was right. The snake only turned its head a little before it gave up charging its shot and sank back down to the ground.

Andaris changed direction and began running straight at it once more. Once the snake was once more aligned with him, it stood up again and began charging anew. So that was its weakness. It had to line up first each time before it could prepare for a shot and had very little range of motion while charging.

This time Andaris reached it timeously and with a single swing of his sword, cleaved the snake in half. The stone that made up its body was quite soft, more akin to clay than anything else. The monster died immediately, they were apparently quite weak. A typical ranged attacker.

It also dropped nothing. But then again, few low level monsters did and even then, quite sparingly.

Andaris continued on. He encountered another snake and used the same tactic to avoid getting shot. His following encounter with two snakes at the same time proved a little more tricky as he had to evade both their angles of attack at the same time while gaining on them one by one. But the result was still an easy victory.

This happened a few more times with numbers ranging anywhere from groups of one to three at a time. All the while not a single snake had given a drop, reaffirming his prior assumption.

Andaris entered a particularly large room where he spotted three more snakes heading towards him. He readied himself to begin charging at them the moment they were in range and stopped. But he never got the chance. Just before they came in range, Andaris heard the sound of something falling to the ground behind him. Multiple somethings.

He spun around quickly to assess the situation. There were three snakes behind him as well! An ‘encounter’. That’s what this was known as, a trapped area filled with monsters or an abnormally large group working as a team or launching a surprise attack.

Andaris wasted no time and charged for one of the newer snakes, effectively putting himself out of range of the first three that had just begun to set themselves up. He could not waste time carefully approaching them one by one this time or they would gang up on him. He would have to tank a few hits and end this quickly. He only hoped that they would not land a critical shot on him or slow him down too much.

Andaris moved to the side, putting himself out of range of his target and one other of the newer snakes, while the three originals pursued him. Only one of the newer snakes got a shot off. Andaris shielded his head with his arms as he ran and did not attempt to avoid the shot, knowing it to be futile, they simply travelled too fast. The dart hit him squarely in the chest and while it knocked the wind out of him a bit, his leather armour did a sufficient job of preventing injury.

Andaris reached his first target and swiftly struck it down. By now however, the first three snakes were in range of the remaining two newer ones, which means he would have to try and evade five snakes at once while he targets the next one, an impossible task. At least impossible for him as he is now.

Andaris steeled himself mentally, as he prepared to make another desperate charge, this time at a diagonal across the group of snakes in a hope to get outside of their current ranges as much as possible. The closer you were running to them the easier this was to do after all. However he was interrupted by a loud crashing sound that left both himself and the previously winding up snakes toppling over to the ground as it shook.

Andaris spun around to see a large strong looking golem getting up from the ground. Where the heck had that thing fallen from exactly?! It looked strong, and tough and was about 50% taller than most men. It held a large one handed club at the ready, that would be able to pulverise weaker delvers in a single hit. It was clear that this encounter was not done with him yet.