"Before I leave you lot. Let me give you something to thank you for all your work," Finlay turned around, keeping the doorway he had just created behind him and blocking the path if anyone tried to cross over.

"Hang on. What do you remember about your life? Are you actually Finlay or just a version of him created by the MAZE?" Leo asked.

"I honestly do not know my boy. What I know about myself are… stories. I cannot remember doing most of the things I told you about, but they feel true to me. It's like remembering something that someone told you about yourself. A childhood story or something you did while piss drunk," Finlay smiled.

"It's weird. I know Leo. But it's one of those things we won't have the answer to," Hera replied.

"What? How are you not freaking out about this? I never heard about people inside dungeons who knew they were in dungeons," Leo gasped.

"We've met someone like that before. It was a fortune teller inside a dungeon in Boothudurn. There were many people there, but she was the only one that seemed to understand what was going on," Blue explained.

"Yeah, I had time to process that. Let me give you a tip, don't spiral. Keep yourself busy and if you want to freak out, wait until you can call a therapist," Hera said.

"I'm not following this, so I'll pretend nothing is happening and give you your rewards," Finlay picked his bag again and pulled a small leather collar with a small wooden sculpture of a penguin, and passed it to Leo without saying anything. Then he pulled a small mahogany scabbard and handed it to Alex, again without speaking a word. For Blue, he took out a pair of raincloud earrings made out of maple wood. Lastly, he turned to Hera and pulled something from his pocket, "For you. I have more of a request than a reward. You are an explorer, and I heard you mention similarities. You might be at least aware of what happened in my city before the fire. If you ever find other survivors from there, please. Ask around and see if anyone recognizes this crest," he showed a round wooden symbol with three flowers in a triangle with a mountain on the back, "This is my family crest. The only other person who should know about it would be my mother. I believe she would be happy to know I'm alive and well."

"Are you tough?" Leo asked.

"Fucking hell, let me do my thing, boy. You got your reward now shut up!" Finlay scoffed.

"Sorry," Leo stepped back.

"As I was saying. I have no idea if my mother is still around, or even if she survived, but either find what's left of the city or find someone who recognizes this crest. That's my reward for you."

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Lost Family

Explorer exclusive quest

Finlay asked you to find any remaining members of his family. Deliver the crest to his descendants or to the final resting place of his mother.

Rewards:

Powerful Connections Skill ( Explorer exclusive)

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"Oh wow," Hera gasped, "Seriously?"

"Yes. I hope you find my mother or someone who can recognize that crest," Finlay grabbed his bag and turned to the rest of the group, "Once more, thank you for all the help. For you, this might have been just another dungeon, but I will never forget what you did for me."

Without saying another word, the dwarf turned around and went through the doorway. He started moving in the fresh snow and before anyone could react, what looked like a snowstorm covered the doorway, and the doors closed. At that moment, the structure shifted and returned to be of solid ice, as if the doorway was nothing more than the carvings made by an excellent sculptor.

"So… what did you all get?" Blue asked,

"This collar can buff Tiger. He gets a boost to his attacks, and I can always know the direction he is, which is… well, kind of a waste. I already have a spell that can do that," Leo shrugged.

"But does it cost mana to do it through the collar?" Alex asked.

"Yeah, less than the spell, but the information I get is a bit different too. My spell tells how far away he is in meters while the collar just tells the direction. What about your scabbard thing?"

"It's… kind of nice. When I keep my weapon sheathed, the weapon gets a buff. The longer it stays like that, the higher the buff gets, and the first attack that I do with the dagger will be much stronger. If that can combo with my sneak attacks, I might be able to do some serious damage to monsters," Alex had a large smile on her face.

"Nice, mine is… I don't know. If it wasn't for Stormcloud, I would be really sad about this reward. Basically, the earrings can let me summon a small cloud of rain that either stays in an area or it follows me around. If I'm under the cloud, I get a 5% buff to my defenses, and everyone else gets a 5% debuff to their attacks. It's nice, but the cloud is small. It has a 1-meter radius," Blue explained.

"Well, if you can make Stormcloud do something with that like it is doing with your griffon mount, it can be very strong. Like imagine covering the sky of a dungeon with that or something," Alex suggested.

"Yeah, but I need to see if that works first. Stormcloud is telling me that to do that, I have to do some things first," Blue sighed.

"Telling you? What do you mean telling you? Your legacy can speak?" Leo asked.

"Oh right. I forgot to tell you. Legacies have those things called Heralds, who are kind of the 'personification' of the legacy. They help you learn about the legacy and how to use it," Blue kept going with her explanation, answering most of Leo's questions. When she was done, she turned to Hera, "How about you? What's your reward?"

"I got a quest…." Hera kept staring at the crest. Even when using her [Inspect], it just said that it was a quest given by Finlay to complete a quest.

"A quest?" Alex asked.

"Yeah. You heard what he told me, and if I complete the quest, I'm getting a skill."

"Which skill?" Leo asked.

"It's called Powerful Connections."

"Oh shit! That's a really good one," Leo gasped.

"Really, what does it do?" Hera turned to the hunter.

"I don't know the specifics, but it gives you a small buff based on… something. Apparently, it varies from person to person. One of the commanders for the coalition has it, and he gets a 1% increase in his stats for each person he helped train in the same room as him. You can imagine how busted that can be for the leader of an army," Leo explained.

"How many people are in the coalition?" Alex asked.

Leo thought for a moment, "Maybe like 300 or so. I'm not entirely sure."

"Wow, that's a big buff then. I wonder what my version will be," Hera kept staring at the quest notification.

Blue looked around then tried to push the doorway open, but nothing happened, "Anyone knows how do we get out of here?"

"I'm guessing we need to go to the cabin again," Hera got up.

With a nod, they all headed down the iceberg and towards the wooden hut. While walking, they discussed what they should do next. After talking with Finlay, no one wanted to try the dungeon again. It would be one thing if the dwarf would remember them, but they knew that wouldn't happen. Even if he recognized that he was in a dungeon, things would start the same way on a subsequent run. Hera and Blue learned that in the Weeding Disaster. They could never find the fortune teller again, but some of the people from Boothudurn found her a couple of times. On both occasions, she acknowledged that she was inside a dungeon but couldn't remember anything about the outsiders.

In the end, the group decided to head back to the outpost and see what they could do next. It was still early, and they had a lot of time to do anything they wanted, even go to the next room. Walking inside the cabin, Tiger had to squeeze inside it again. Leo saw how much his pet was struggling to do so and mentally decided not to push Tiger into dungeons with such small entrances if possible. On the way back to the outpost, Hera sent a message to Silah, asking about the crest and attaching a picture of the wooden trinket that she got as a reward. She didn't expect Silah to reply right away. After all, it was the middle of the afternoon, and her girlfriend should be working in the forge right now.

After about half an hour, everyone was back in the outpost. Hera went to take a hot shower since they spent a long time surrounded by ice. Another benefit of doing the dungeon was that now everyone had some more money to spend. Leo and Alex weren't struggling with that, but a 50 thousand gold payout made things much easier.

With that, everyone went their separate ways for the rest of the days. Blue wanted to take some time off and just stay in her room. Alex went to the guild to see if she could upgrade her weapons. Leo went with the assassin, but he wanted to know if more people had found beings inside the dungeons that recognized that they were in a dungeon. Hera tried staying in her room, but she couldn't stay still. Deciding to go out for a bit, she looked at her skills and realized that ever since she got the [Naga Poison] skill, she didn't have time to properly test out the skill. The only poison spells she used after getting it were some random shots while leaving the Wailing Valley, but at the time, she was moving quickly and couldn't stop to understand what was going on with her magic.

The penguins in the area weren't that strong on their own, and near the outpost, there were a couple of small groups and stragglers that would annoy people at times. Hera dropped by the guild just to see if there were any quests about hunting the penguins and found a couple. It seemed like they were among the primary source of food in the room. Hera texted the group to let everyone know where she went and looked for a small group of penguins in the area to test her spells. She considered going to the training rooms to do her testing, but the poison wouldn't work that well without an actual living target. Unless she was using an ART or one ASZ, she would at most see the spell going off and not the actual damage it would do.

It took her less than ten minutes to find a pair of penguins moving around. They were on the small end, but that wasn't an issue. Hera activated her [Sneak] skill and started moving closer to them. Before attacking, she shot out a poison needle near her feet, just to confirm if the spell itself was different than what she was expecting. The magic felt mostly normal but using it felt more natural than before. She didn't have to focus so much to pull the mana. Creating the spell was almost like snapping her fingers, a physical thing and not a mental one. Another change was with the color of the projectile. Instead of the bright orange, now the poison needle was brown, almost as if it was made out of gravy. It still had a soft glow, but it was much easier for it to blend with the environment. Hera looked to the penguins.

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Ice Lake Penguin - Level 12 (Ice affinity)

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Ice Lake Penguin - Level 11 (Ice affinity)

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Hera put some of her mana into two needles and threw them at the monsters. She saw the projectile hitting their bodies, but the penguins didn't seem to notice anything. On the other hand, Hera could see a difference. The poison mana was already inside the creatures, and not just that, but she could feel the poison spreading inside their bodies. It was much clearer than she expected, and the poison was spreading faster. Hera always felt like her spells were being absorbed by a sponge and only when she commanded the poison to search for their bloodstream that the mana would move in that direction. Now, the poison was moving on its own, almost like thousands of worms or snakes looking for the best way to spread on her target.

The spell that Hera created wasn't particularly powerful. She didn't put that much mana on the needles, but in less than 30 seconds, the penguins were almost filled with poison. Wanting to see how powerfully her spell actually was, Hera just waited silently while watching the creatures. The monsters already seemed to be affected by the spell. They were sluggish and seemed to try to shake something off. Two minutes went by before they fell to the ground, too weak to move. Hera got up and walked to their bodies. Both penguins saw her coming and tried to move away, but they couldn't even get up. Using her poison control spell, she commanded the poison to stop their hearts and clog the blood vessels going to their brains. It took only a couple of seconds for that to kill the creatures, and to Hera's surprise. Her poison was expelled from the bodies after the monsters were dead. She tried to see if the monsters still had poison inside of them, but she couldn't be sure. Wanting to get some answers, Hera pulled Yarnball from her waist and cut off some of the thread, using it to help her drag the corpse back to the outpost. The people who butcher the monsters should be able to tell her if there was poison on the corpses or not.