The next day I sent the Miners and Warriors down the tunnel that lead deeper into the caves. My goal was to have them reach the cave that my party had come into this world through and start a series tunnels in search of ore. All of the stone that they broke was brought back to the camp by the warriors, who were probably getting sick of being used as laborers at this point. I turned in just enough stone to purchase a general work station. Once the station was constructed I used the next thirty points we earned to get some specialized crafters and their tools.

These crafters started on the task of turning the stone into standardized blocks, which did not count towards the same trade value as raw stone. One of the crafters also informed me at some point that if I could find some wood, we would be able to make some basic tools, instead of buying them. I made sure to keep this in mind, but since we were underground, I doubted this would happen any time soon.

Only a couple of days into the new project, the core informed me that one of the miners had broken into another cave system. I was in the camp helping with the stone processing, so I two of the closest warriors do some scouting. For a while the only reports that came back were uneventful and of more tunnels. About three hours in though, they reported a cave whose walls had streaks running over them.

I had them retreat back to the miners for the day and tried to keep my excitement at bay. That night we argued about whether to immediately go for mining the ore, or to keep mining the stone which was safe. Kevin and Sam wanted to go for the ore, but Sarah and I were hesitant because of how far it was from the camp. With the ore cave being about a one and a half hour walk, if there was some sort of hostile creature that attacked, we wouldn’t be able to get to them right away.

“Yes,” Kevin said, waving his hand around. “but that is why we send some of the warriors with them, just in case.”

“By extending that far though,” Sarah countered. “We could alert something powerful to our presence, and right now we aren’t exactly prepared for that.”

“The only way we will get more powerful is by fighting and getting stronger.” Sam interjected.

“So what, are you saying that you will be going with the warriors to escort the miners?”

“Sure, if that means I have the chance to get some more experience and actually DO something, I will gladly go.”

After letting them go on for a few moments I finally threw in my two cents, “Guys there is some merit for both options, but we need to take a step back and think about this from both sides.” They all turned and looked at me. “There are some things that we can still do in order to make it safer to go out and gather the ore. Sam we still have eight more beds in the camp, we could always use some points to fill them with some more warriors and miners. You can then train some of the warriors some of which you can take with you to guard the miners.”

“We can leave the rest of them here to guard the camp, or as reinforcements if you need them. If you guys get into fights that aren’t too dangerous, we can rotate our warriors to level them up a bit. Before you start taking them out though, and we risk pissing off something that is bigger than us, we should probably build up some defenses, after all look how easy it was for the four of us to just waltz in here.”

“Yeah but if nothing ever makes it this far, then we don’t need to worry about it.” Sam replied.

“So are you suggesting that we build defenses along the tunnels first?” I asked.

“No, I am suggesting that we get strong enough that we won’t need defenses.”

I was about to tell him just how moronic his suggestion was when the core cut me off, “Vincent one of the warriors returning with stone is reporting a glow in the cave that you and your party came through.”

“What is the core saying?” Kevin asked. The party had gotten used to my eyes randomly getting distant when the core talked to me.

“You think…?” Sarah asked, the link between us had gotten strong enough, over the course of our dungeon point grind, that she could basically here my thoughts at this point.

“Activity in the cave we landed in.” I said jumping up. Kevin and Sam barely had time to process what I had said before I was out of the cave, Sarah hot on my trail. I sprinted for as long as I could, on the way to the cave that we’d come to this world through, getting there in barely two minutes. The glow was getting decently intense at this point, and I had to cover my eyes as I caught my breath.

“You think it’s more people?” Sarah asked from next to me. She apparently wasn’t even out of breath. Show off. She rolled her eyes at me then motioned for me to hurry up. I flipped her off and finished catching my breath.

“Possibly. No idea. Could be. Something else.” I got out around my panting. By the time Kevin and Sam had caught up to us, I had at least recovered enough to stand up straight. This was a very important lesson in pacing myself, even with all of the stuff we were doing I was still out of shape. By this point the light had gotten so bad that I was barely able to stay inside the cave.

Just as I was about to leave the cave and wait for whatever the fuck was going on to unfold, there was a loud bang and the light vanished. In the center of the cave, where the light had been, were six unconscious figures. I pinged the core to have all of the miners and warriors go back to the camp, and to have Tamani and Grathial come to the cave.

“Holy shit,” Samuel said next to me. “six more? Already? I thought groups weren’t supposed to show up this close to each other.”

“Unless the spell is getting closer to falling.” I mumbled absently. Samuel face turned to one of worry and horror.

“B-but if the spell is failing that means…” The other two only took a split moment to put it together and then I felt a wave of anxiety crash into me over my connection with Sarah. With how much energy I’d already expended running here, her emotion almost made my knees buckle. It took me a couple of moments to clear the emotion out of my own head and actually look at her.

“Hey are you okay?” I heard Kevin ask, his voice full of concern. She was shaking violently, and her breathing was uneven.

“I-if the spell fails th-that means.” Her breathing grew more ragged and she collapsed.

Kevin and Sam dropped next to her and I saw their lips moving, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying, it was all I could do not to succumb to the even larger wave of panic and fear that she was projecting. It was barely able to catch myself as I dropped, catching myself on my hands and knees.

“Your making it worse.” I tried to make myself say. My tongue felt like lead in my mouth and I wasn’t even sure the words made it out. I focused on the wall link and the flood that I was fighting against. If I let it overwhelm me then I would lock up, and if that happened… No I couldn’t let her fear infect me, I had to stay calm. I emptied my mind of all thought and centered myself. I felt her emotion whipping around me like wind, but it had stopped affecting me. I focused on keeping my calm and did my best to project it across the link.

Mental Fortitude Level 1

Aquired!

“Sarah.” I thought, not even sure if she would be able to “hear” me. “Sarah you can't give in to this. Just because the spell could be failing, doesn’t mean it is.” The emotion didn’t let up, continuing to whirl around me, as though looking for chips in my resolve. “Even if the spell does go down, that doesn’t mean that the people you care about will be part of it. You need to focus on what will happen if they do survive it. Will you just let the thought of them not surviving take over, or will you make yourself stronger so that you can find them when they survive and protect them.”

Somewhere in the chaos of her core I felt a seed of reason peak it head up. I hurriedly continued, “If you have been dealing with this for almost half a month and you’re this scared of what might happen, imagine what it would be like for them. If the spell drops they will need all the help they can get. Even if you don’t think you’ll be strong enough to do that, you still have me and the others to be there with you.” I felt the seed start to take root, and I forged ahead. “We might not be strong enough yet, but there are six people right now in the same place we were in two weeks ago that are going to need our help. They’ll probably be scared, they’ll probably have questions. Are you going to help them out when they wake up, or will you still be here still wrapped up in what might not even happen?”

The seed of reason took bloom, and started beating the chaos back into its dark holes. I felt her mind start to clear itself as mine had, until only a slight breeze remained of the storm. With the turmoil cleared my hearing returned, and I heard her breathing slowly start to even out. I opened my eyes and looked over at where I knew she was lying to see that her breathing, while still ragged, was calming slightly. I turned just enough to sit down and started to gather my energy back.

“Are you going to be alright Vincent?” I heard Cilendrial’s voice ask, faintly, her concern clear.

“Fine is a term relative to an individual. If by fine you mean not consumed completely by whatever that was, yes. If you mean mentally stable, without the wellness of those around me causing me stress, that probably won’t happen anytime before I die.” This seemed to be a good enough answer for her because she didn’t reply. I felt a hand grasp mine and almost jumped.

“Did you mean that?” I heard Sarah choke out, the fact that she had been crying more than clear.

“Mean what?” I asked exhausted from what had probably happened in less than five minutes.

“What you said through the link, about being there if I needed you.”

I had to stop myself from giving a slight laugh, “I have a very simple saying, ‘Me. Mine. The Innocent.’ First of all, we are quite literally soul bound, which I’m pretty sure means you kinda qualify for the ‘me’ part in a weird way. Second of all, you’re part of my party and one of the only reasons I’m still alive, which qualifies you under the ‘mine’ bit. While I can’t testify as to how innocent you may or may not be, those first two are good enough.”

There was silence in the cave for a moment as Kevin and Sam sat speechless looking at us, then each other, then back at us trying to figure out what they were supposed to do or say. I didn’t care, I had gone from perfectly fine sitting around a fire, to mentally and physically exhausted sitting next to a bunch of unconscious people. Oh shit, the new people.

I gave Sarah’s hand a slight squeeze, then carefully stood up slowly, shaking a bit as I did so. Kev and Sam stood up also, still not sure what to say. While part of me wanted to let the silence stretch on and reconstruct the mush of my brain, I decided to be a nice person and break it, “Just as a heads up for if that happens again, try to give someone space when they are having a panic attack. While talking to them can help sometimes, crowding them like that can make it worse, almost like a feeling of entrapment.” They just blinked at me for a moment, before slowly nodding. “Oh and also, we do still have the six new people to worry about.”

Luckily it was another few minutes before the new people woke up, which gave Sarah and I some time to gather ourselves. Sadly the “welcoming party” went about as well as I thought it would.

The first person to wake up was a blonde chick who, upon realizing that she was in a cave, started screaming. This woke up the others who began shouting and yelling questions at us. I think that the Mental Fortitude skill helped out a bit, because it took a whole fifteen minutes for a headache to set in. We did our best to calm everyone down and assure them that we were not a bunch of freaks that had kidnapped them and were planning on holding them ransom. Kevin was a huge help in bringing up the fact that if we had kidnapped them, we probably would have at least tied them up.

“So if you didn’t kidnap us then where the fuck are we and how did we get here?” A muscular dude asked, irate.

“You got here the same way we did, we were teleported here by something unknown that randomly chose us.” I didn’t want to hit them with the ‘There is a spell that will at some point fail and cause a miniature apocalypse when it goes down’ bit quite yet.

“Bullshit, don’t feed me the plot of some shitty anime and expect me to believe it.” Another one of the new people said. Now I was offended, there were perfectly good Isekai’s out there if people would give them a chance.

“Listen I know it might be hard to believe, but we have a camp set up where I can prove to you I’m not lying.”

“Why the fuck should we follow you? For all we know you’re trying to get us to join some weird fucking cult.”

“Hey Cilendrial you catching all of this?” I said in my head as I pinched the bridge of my nose.

“Of course, I don’t have much else to do but watch you. You are the only person officially tied to me you know.”

“Now do you understand why I question whoever built the spell?”

“Yes, but I don’t think even us gods could predict a mess like this.”

Fucking swell, even Cilendrial was calling this a mess.

“What the fuck is wrong with him, is he just fucking out of it?” The muscular dude said, probably referring to my eyes glazing over when I talk to people in my mind. Now that I actually thought about it like that, I could see why people might think I was crazy.

“No, he’s either talking to the dungeon core, or the goddess he met.” Kevin said matter of factly. This didn’t go over well with Muscles.

The guy grabbed Kevin by the front of his shirt and lifted him up. “Tell me how the fuck to get out of here or I’ll fucking kill every one of you psychopaths.” He screamed into Kevin’s face. Well this had escalated quickly and was probably going to end badly. Samuel moved so fast that I could barely process it, drawing his spear from his inventory and placing the tip of it right up against the underside of the guys chin.

“I suggest you set him down nice and slow, or you will wind up as the first human to die in these caves since we got here. Understand” Muscles froze, then slowly lowered Kevin to the floor. Kevin was shaking and as soon as his feet touched the floor, he took a few hurried steps back, almost tripping over himself. Sam slowly withdrew his spear.

“Take this as a warning, this world is not a joke and we have enough issues trying to survive without new people showing up threatening us. I will not hesitate to kill anyone who threatens us or our chances of surviving.” He manifested his armour and shield directly onto his person using it to drive home his point. The new people stood there in stunned silence, quiet for the first time since getting here,

I decided this would be a great time to interject, “Those of you willing to do your part and help us are welcome to join us. Those of you who aren’t, well this is a sealed dungeon, so good luck surviving on your own.”

I motioned for my party to go down the tunnel leading to camp, Sarah and Kevin leading the way in case any of the new people tried anything funny. It only took a couple steps before the new people started to follow, shuffling along nervously behind us. It seemed that Sam had made an impression, I would have to thank him for it.