He had been stuck in hell for a week now. It was not the kind of hell he expected. Fire and brimstone would have been more fun, a lot more fun. But no, he was stuck with a different kind of hell. It had been his own fault really. He was bored. The week had not been great, the event he had planned was cancelled, no one had responded to his email and so he had wished for any distraction. After pacing for a full hour, he had grabbed his gear and decided to delve. The last couple he went on where all 6 hours max so it would be good for getting his mind back in order. Instead, he had been stuck in a different kind of dungeon. He was stuck in a small farming village, surrounded by seemingly nice people. At least there was a murderer to catch.

He got up from staring out of the inn window, it was the morning of the seventh day. They had decided to regroup and consider the next steps. Walking down the stairs he saw that the other two members of his team where already awake and eating breakfast. He was still half awake and hungry, them sitting there, speaking happily was only making him more and more annoyed. This was the second part of his hell; he had been stuck in a team with The Paladin and The Light Cleric. Both were more than happy to be here too. They had been sightseeing and introducing themselves for the first two days. All instead of doing the actual mission. If he was entirely fair, he had not been working those days either. He could at least pretend that he would have worked if they had as well.

This mission had been strange from the start. They had woken in the middle of a town square, being welcomed by the mayor of the village. Most dungeons were just that. Underground complexes, ruins, or cave systems. Not a welcoming village in the middle of the forest. Their mission was the second strange part. In theory it was simple, Find and arrest the killer that hides in the village. They had immediately checked the map, it would probably not have given the location that easily, but information was important, only to find that the map feature of the tablets was disabled. The final weird part was that they could understand and speak to the villagers. If this was his first dungeon, he might not have found it strange, but he had fought humanoids before and never had he been understood. He and his teammates could always understand each other, that seemed some internal magic from the delving process, but never had that been expanded to the other inhabitants of the dungeon. This whole thing was so fucking annoying.

He finally walked down the final step and got his food from the innkeeper. It was not anything amazing, just a bowl of some kind of vegetable stew. He walked down to his teammates; they were happily chatting away. Somehow that made him angrier, it was not like he wanted to talk to them or discuss the daily weather, but it felt bad to be excluded anyway. He also realised that did not make sense, which made him angrier than he expected. The situation was getting to him too much. He calmed himself down and tried to be more civil, they were his teammates after all. They all wanted the same thing.

"Hey there. Did you do anything find anything?"

The Paladin and The Light Cleric both stopped talking and looked at him. The Paladin was an older man, instead of the expected knights armor, he wore a protective vest, simple jeans with combat boots. The Light Cleric was younger and like him was wearing a simple shirt with jeans. Both had been nothing but friendly to him. He knew that it probably was genuine, but he was so bad at stuff like that, it just felt like they were making fun of his difficulties with how easy they did things he had massive problems with.

The Paladin was the first to respond. "We have some suspicions, but nothing concrete. I tried to talk to the local guard office but was rebuked." The Light Cleric stepped in. "I actually got in to talk to them. Some simple healing spells and they were more than happy to talk to me. Wasn't worth it though, they spent the whole-time avoiding eye contact and said that nobody has been murdered here in years."

He doubted that this was actually true. A village like this, it was so happy. He tried to give voice to his concerns. "These people are unnaturally happy about everything. It is like they have not had any issues in years. Have any of you been to the fields? They barely grow enough to feed everyone. It makes no sense."

They both looked up at that. For all his complaining about his class, he was a druid and while animals were outside of his wheelhouse, plants were not. The Paladin continued: "Well, that is strange. I have not seen any merchants arrive here as well. I also tried to leave but could not move past the town gate. The dungeon doesn't extend to any part outside the village." He had not thought of that. For all his complaining, he had not tried to actually leave. The fact that he suddenly could not did not sit right with him at all.

After a tense silence The Light Cleric spoke up. "So, what do we do? We need to find a killer, but there is no one who has died. How does that even work? Maybe it's a possession thing?". The Paladin looked up at that, but after a short while looked down again. "No, that isn't it either. I have a sense for undead and ghosts would have set that radar off. Maybe it is something else? I once read about these fungi that take over ants, maybe there's a human equivalent here?". Well, that was worrying. But no, that could not be it either, like The Paladin's undead sense, he could sense plants in the vicinity and the spores of the fungus would have set that off. He shared this with the group, and they went back to their cooling bowls of stew.

After a tense few minutes in which no one spoke, an idea came to mind. It was a very dumb idea, but he had not thought of anything better. He might as well pitch it. "I have an idea. It's not a great one but there is someone who knows this town inside out." "The mayor!" The Paladin interrupted. "Yes." He continued. "I saw, we kidnap the mayor and get him to explain what the hell is going on in this town of his."