It was easy to find the point where the trail split; while Tom had stayed on the road, Leroy had hared off into the forest, running into and through brush. There was a clear path leading away from the road, even if Tom and Rissa didn’t immediately see it.

Serenity wasn’t certain if he should credit himself with any special ability, there; he’d simply been out in the wilderness more than either Rissa or Tom, who seemed to be from a city. He probably also had a higher Perception, though he didn’t ask them to compare; he was a higher Tier, after all.

Even though they hadn’t compared their skills since the Tutorial, Serenity was certain Doyle was still better than Serenity. High Perception didn’t matter if you didn’t know what to look for.

It wasn’t a particularly long time after Serenity led the way into the woods that they found where the scouts had run Leroy to ground; he’d clearly stopped to fight. There were two dead human bodies and one dead horse, but no sign of Leroy or his pack. Tom took it as good news.

They followed the scouts a ways farther into the woods. It seemed like they’d joined up with more scouts; they were making an awful lot of noise for just six people, and Serenity was fairly confident he’d seen more than six horses. Rissa, Tom, and Serenity quickly retreated after they heard the talking, wanting to avoid disturbing the enemy without a plan.

Serenity found himself wishing he had someone like Doyle with them; he was not exactly the stealthiest person. While he could be hard to spot if he shifted form, his Sovereign form moved slowly.

On the other hand, they only really had to worry if Leroy’s captors decided to kill him or destroy the message. Leroy’s life was the more important of the two; two witnesses would probably have enough information to get a large force moving to relieve the siege. On top of that, if they’d discovered the message, they’d probably already have destroyed it.

Serenity turned to the other Rissa and Tom. “I can sneak in and try to free Leroy and protect him. Can you two wait until there’s noise coming from the camp, then attack from the side? More confusion would help.”

Rissa nodded. “We can go after the horses. They shouldn’t spook if we’re careful, but they probably will run if we free them, and that way the scouts can’t run easily.”

Tom shrugged. “You’re sure you won’t get caught while you’re sneaking in? We could always just go in hot.”

Serenity nodded. “Pretty confident, yeah. I’ll be going in through the treetops; they won’t hear me until I jump down.” He was going to need time to shift back and doing it in a tree, then jumping down, should keep him from being interrupted. Shapeshifting wasn’t all that fast, and shifting two forms at once seemed to be even slower.

Tom looked up at the trees. Serenity knew what he had to be thinking: they weren’t nearly big enough to be able to move in the treetops. On top of that, about a third of them were evergreens. “You can do that?”

“It’s a Path Skill,” Serenity admitted. “I can float and be hard to see. Thing is, it’s hard to get into and out of and it’s really slow. So I’m going to travel up where people don’t look and jump down after I end the Skill. I’m not particularly good at sneaking otherwise.”

He was going to have to remember that description. It was entirely truthful without saying anything he didn’t want people to know.

Tom nodded slowly. After a moment, a grin spread across his face like a lightbulb had come on in his head. “You’re the one that took the attention of the soldiers on the road, too, aren’t you? So you’re some sort of tank build? You think you can keep their attention on you and off Leroy and us while we attack from outside.”

Serenity nodded. “More or less. It’s the best plan I’ve got with only the three of us. If any of us were good at sneaking, there are all sorts of things we could do, but getting into place is the limit of my ability.”

That was true when they were all clustered together, at least. On top of that, Serenity had exactly no desire to use Merge. As useful as it had been against the Sterath, he still felt terrified about what it might do to him. He’d probably call it “worried” when he talked to Rissa, but he knew he needed to be honest with himself and the truth was that his feeling about it was closer to terror than anything else.

Sure, it was called Down to the River now and claimed it didn’t leave him with their personality, but that didn’t change anything. He was still not going to use it unless he had to.

There was one more thing he could do, come to think of it. “I’ll send up some fireworks when I head in. That way you’ll know when it’s time to attack.”

It would actually be magic, but all he really needed was some light and some noise. That was simple enough.

Serenity tried to map out the camp as he drifted above it. It was definitely not a camp for six people; at a guess, it was set up for closer to twenty. When he tried to count people, he didn’t come up with that many, so it seemed likely that it was the camp the scouts had originally come from, and they were missing the six Rissa and he killed on the road.

There was no way they should have been close enough to that camp to reach it so soon after the attack on the road if this were the real world. Serenity didn’t let that bother him too much; this was an Event dungeon. It was completely capable of bending space in order to make Events happen.

It was also completely capable of stretching things out so that Events didn’t happen too early, so Serenity was grateful it was compressing things. They were probably still less than a day into the dungeon, so there was plenty of time available for them to be earlier than the “standard” messenger.

Serenity needed to plan for fourteen or so enemies and a prisoner to protect. Finding the prisoner was the next task, and it was easier than expected: there was a wooden cage set up near the center of the camp. It made next to no sense, there was no reason for a group of scouts to carry something as unwieldy as a well-made cage with them normally. On the other hand it would make freeing Leroy easier than expected, so Serenity wasn’t going to complain.

Serenity started building the Reduced Gravity spell he wanted to use for the jump, then shifted back to his human form before tossing the acorn he’d Infused with his Signal spell, Evoking it at the same time as he triggered his Gravity spell and jumped towards the cage.

This time, he used an Energy-based spell, with a touch of SpaceTime to make the visual effect linger. He could have gotten the same effect out of Plasma, but using Energy for lightning gave him a sound that wouldn’t be missed yet might be mistaken by anyone who wasn’t looking for it. The lingering light should make it clear it was the signal and not a storm in the distance.

Serenity landed next to the cage, catching the nearby scouts completely off-guard. There were three near the campfire, and none of them was able to draw a weapon before Serenity took care of them. His sword was simply unfair; they couldn’t block it and no one was ready to dodge or even attack.

One did manage to scream out a warning.

Serenity darted to the cage, shortening his sword’s blade as he brought it up. He’d landed near the back of the cage, and it seemed faster to just open it than try to head around to the front and worry about the door. He bent over and cut several of the bars, then cut those same bars near the top of the cage. “The bars are loose, you should just be able to knock them out of place.”

Serenity turned to face the onslaught of attackers he expected after his flashy entrance. He wasn’t disappointed; there were six more coming at him that he could see. Four were to his right and one was to his left, while the last one was on the other side of the campfire.

Naturally, the one across the campfire threw a firebolt at him. Serenity dismissed him from consideration; after his fight against the Sterath, he knew that he didn’t need to worry about Tier One magic unless it was something unusual, and a firebolt wasn’t even remotely unusual. At Tier Three it might be a carrier for something nasty, but a Tier One dungeon was exceedingly unlikely to do that, the same way the arrows were exceedingly unlikely to be poisoned.

Serenity ducked under a poorly-aimed blow from his right and slashed at the enemy to his left, ignoring the shield. His blade went straight through the shield and the opponent’s arm, cutting into his chest. Serenity counted him as out of the battle for now and turned to his right.

One at a time shouldn’t be much of a fight.

Two opponents later, it was obvious that they’d started to get wary of him. The seven opponents Serenity could see were grouping up away from him and seemed to be trying to figure out what to do; two of them were mages, trying to “keep him busy” with firebolts he simply ignored.

That was when Leroy took his chance and emerged from the cage. He dove for the sword and shield of one of Serenity’s opponents, then took up position to guard Serenity’s side.

Serenity saw a crossbow bolt hit one of the men in front of him. He couldn’t allow their attention to be drawn from him, so he started an elaborate chant as he built a spell. The chant didn’t have anything to do with the spell he was building, but that wasn’t the point; the point was that they’d charge him to try to interrupt the spell.

Four of them did. One came straight at Leroy, two came through the space to the right, where it was partly blocked by the cage, and one jumped the campfire. Serenity stopped chanting and simply held the spell in place; while he ought to be able to complete a spell while fighting, he didn’t want to risk losing control and he was less sure in his control than the Final Reaper had been.

Leroy ought to be able to handle one of them; Serenity set himself to handle the other three.

The first one to reach Serenity impaled himself on Serenity’s sword. He clearly hadn’t cottoned on to the fact that it would simply strike through equipment and attempted to use his shield to strike it out of the way while he attacked.

Serenity was happy to let his opponent do his work for him.

The other two seemed a little smarter, but they had an issue getting close to him: Serenity hadn’t bothered to do anything with the bodies of the men he killed and they were in the way. When the one who leapt the campfire ran at him, he stepped on an arm and slipped, skidding towards Serenity. That was all the opening Serenity needed.

The last man facing him was no challenge at all.

By the time Serenity finished, there were no enemies left standing.

“Tom? Who are these people? Where did you find these people?” Leroy lowered his sword as he turned to his teammate.

Tom shook his head. “Aval mercenaries and also apparently real people. They found me on the road.”