Avan carefully descended deeper into the cave system. The stench encircling him was outright feculent, with a whiff of decay, blood, sweat, and something vague.

Fortunately, his presence was still unnoticed, and no goblin had ambushed him so far. Avan was constantly concentrating while using his sphere of influence to identify as much as possible of his surroundings. Need to level up the skill. Dunno at which level skills can rank, evolve or get stronger, but there MUST be a breakpoint somewhere. He pondered.

The Identify skill leveled nearly nonstop, thanks to all the new objects he sensed. It showed him various days-old remains from blood stains from animals, humans, goblins, and even other species. Creatures unknown to Avan were not identifiable yet. Maybe after encountering these species himself, his skill would know them in the future.

Furthermore, he had acquired a tracking skill because his Dungeon perception could distinguish even footprints and how old those were. His steady skill had profited, too, even though only in one level up.

After finishing another [Golden Meaple] fruit, Avan rechecked his skill progress.

Active Skills

-

Passive Skills

Pain Resistance: 2

Steady: 2

Potential: ?

Celestial Affinity: 3

Identify: 7

Dungeon sphere: ?

First Aid: 1

Tracking: 3

Neat. A lot more progress than previously.

Tracking had shown him precisely one recent pair of footprints that must have to belong to the goblin he had killed above ground. All others were at least a day old, which matched the human corpses state of decay. So, this runt was down here with others. But only he had decided to go back. Avan thought back to the corpses. He leaned against the wall and tried his best not to throw up. I can't shake off these images... Yesterday the wolf, and today, the goblin. Urgh. Too many pictures of dead people that will hunt me for some nights. Shit! He had tried his best but couldn't hold back anymore and vomited in front of the wall. The torch was dropped on the ground, both hands occupied to lean against the wall. Dizzy, he slightly shook his head and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand. Still heavy breathing, he moved back a few steps and dropped his backpack on the ground. Far enough away from his vomit.

Just... ab-so-lutely... awesome, Avan. He grimaced. Avan searched through his backpack for some piece of clean cloth. He found something that resembled a small towel and cleaned his hands while adding some water from his flask. Clean enough for his taste, he threw the now foul-smelling towel nearby to the floor. I really shouldn't make a habit out of throwing up... If it wouldn't be for the stench of matured corpses and all these entrails hanging out all the time...

After he had cleared his head of his dizziness, he continued. And soon found himself at a two-way fork. Avan could tell that the recent tracks came out of the right tunnel, while all other older tracks would appear to go into the left shaft without coming back out again. Meaning, the lonely goblin he killed went through the right and had carried something with him based on the deep footprints, while when leaving, he have had a lighter step.

For now, the right side seems safer, and all other traces went in the other direction. Just the one, no dead, ugly goblin went in and left the right tunnel. Decided to check the right side first, Avan cautiously continued onward.

He and his little furball beside him wandered for mere minutes, and Avan soon noticed a flickering glimmer of light from behind a bend further down the tunnel. Slowly, they reached the corner, and Avan glanced around while trying to listen for any unusual sounds. Around the corner was a small cave, about five meters in diameter. Hanging on the natural stone walls were cages in different sizes, crudely made out of rusty iron and bronze. If Avan saw it right, all but one of them empty. Prisoners, possibly?

Avan perceived a young beast-kin with furry ears and a smudgy tail at the end of its spine. It was sobbing, hugging both of its knees while rocking back and forth. He warily moved forward, unnoticed, until he stood in front of the cage. What a nightmare this must be... He witnessed with shock as he stared at the insides of the dirty cell.

With a shudder, he whispered carefully to the fox-kin. "Hey..." And discerned that it was, in truth, a young female. Her head slightly moving upwards, she glanced with one eye at the stranger standing in front of her prison. Just as it clicked in her head, she fearfully and hastily graveled backward until she had reached the end of the cage with her back.

With narrowed eyes, she squinted at him. Too much fear in her eyes to say a single word. She resembled a young fox-kin indeed if such a race certainly existed in this world. With her fiery shoulder-length hair, her two orange-tinged ears protruding out of her head, and the brownish tail. And if not for all the grime, she surely would look cute. Focus, Avan! He told himself. His thoughts always drifted away.

Kneeling in front of the bars separating them, Avan held up a hand to imply his friendly intention and meaning no harm to her. After a few seconds, the girl visibly relaxed a tiny bit. Her shoulders not as tense as before. "Hey... Sorry, I... didn't mean to ambush you. I am Avan. I just stumbled over this cave... I will try to help you out, okay?" He asked her gently.

Opening and closing her mouth repeatedly, she lastly mumbled something unintelligible. "H-hello..." she stuttered, looking ashamed to the ground of her confinement. "A-are you... here... t-to t-take me away, too?"

With all thoughts vacant, he didn't grasp what she was hinting at. Then it dawned on him. "Noooo, no, no! I-I... had an encounter with one of these monsters, a goblin. Above ground, in front of the entrance. I... He is no more, don't you worry. Okay? No one is going to do anything to you anymore, I promise. What is your name, dear?" Avan soft-spoken comforted her.

"I am... not from around here. I just stumbled upon the goblin and... some... victims. So, I went into the cave and tunnels to investigate the situation. And to find out more about those ... nasty goblins."

Slowly and still looking in her eyes, he mildly dropped his backpack on the floor and started to sift through his belongings. Find what he had sought, Avan slowly showed her the provisions. He held some dried berries, dried meat, and the remaining water inside the flask in both of his hands. "Are you hungry? You look hungry... And freshwater. Take it, okay? While I try to take you out of this hell." His hands outstretched; he kept his hands still towards the fox-kin while glancing at the rusty, slightly bent cage doors.

Careful and still not trusting the situation, she groveled closer to his hand. She slowly took the berries and the flask from him and tilted her head slightly to the left. As if she was asking if it was really okay. With a nod, he beamed at her and packed the dried meat away again.

After picking up the food and water, she instantly shoveled all the berries in her mouth. Quickly overstraining her stomach and dry throat, she started to cough. Noticing her mistake, she opened the water flask next and gulped down all the remaining water in one go.

Simply smiling at her antics, Avan used his daggers to bend the rusty padlock holding her cage door locked. After some more aggressive prodding, the lock busted open. He waited for her to finish the food. Exhausted, she finally looked back at him. The fox-girl looked immediately healthier, with a lively spark in her eyes.

"Thank you..." She whispered and looked down once again while squeezing her muddy hands nervously together. He just smiled at her and was honestly happy to help her out with something so simple as food and water. "Not worth mentioning. It was my pleasure, young lady." He told her, still smiling, and bowed his head slightly with a nod.

She suddenly giggled with a harmonic and soft sound coming out of her mouth. He looked at the girl and grinned. Avan tapped his non-existing hat, mimicking a gentleman out of movies he had seen. Success. Made her a little less aware of the situation she was just recently in. Actually, she looks stunning when smiling. He mused and tried to hide his grin with one hand.

Looking more alive, the young girl crawled out of her prison and started stretching like a cat would do. A quiet purr could be heard. And a giggle from Avan that earned him a smirk from her.

Still smirking, he turned around to give her some well-deserved privacy. The ragged clothes she wore were rather tattered and not suitable for a young woman. Searching for something better than her rags, he found some spare pants and a shirt in his backpack. Handing them to her with both of his hands while still not looking at her, she quickly snatches the clothes out of his hands. Entirely understanding his intention, he heard the rustling from behind.

"Thank you... I am in your debt... For saving my life..." She whispered with a stutter. "I owe you my life. I can never repay you for what you did today..."

Angry at these vermin, who dared to mistreat another sapient being for whatever cruel reason, he gritted his teeth. "No, you owe me nothing. The only things you owe are painful and long-drawn deaths to these vermin. But you owe me nothing..." He quietly assured her. He seethed internally. Moving forward to grab the torch he had dropped on the floor, he stepped out of the cavern back into the tunnel. Both fists clenched white.

While walking back through the tunnel, he noticed his furball companion around the bend. Horny had waited for him, for whichever unknown reason. Maybe not as dumb as I thought... Thanks, dude. It would have been too much with the two of us. Maybe, possibly? Thankful, he crouched down and fondled his velvety white fur.

Sensing the fox-kin girl around the corner through his sphere of influence, he calmed down eventually. No one deserves to be treated like this. And I don't know the scope of it yet. Something more sinister happened here. More than just Imprisonment. She mentioned something about taking her away... Some reason they held captives in these cages.

Shit... What a rough situation. Three dead men on the surface, only one goblin. A young woman imprisoned underground. There is something amiss.

After Avan had calmed down, he looked back in the girl's direction. She just walked around the corner. Excited about the upcoming reaction, he expectantly grinned. Let's see if we can't distract her even more with fluffball here. No need to think about the shit she had gone through.

As soon as the fox girl saw his furry little friend, she squealed in delight and dashed forward. She threw herself on the floor to look Horny in the eyes. And expectantly looked at Avan to get his permission to stroke the white rabbit. With a laugh, Avan nodded. "What's your name anyway, oh queen of all rabbits? Or should I call you with a nickname?" He asked her while the girl busy petting his little companion.

Gently waiting for her reaction, he got down to his knees to watch Horny savoring the attention she is giving him. After few minutes, she fought for words and hesitantly answered him. "My name is Yue ... And your name is Avan, right?" Nodding, he decided to elicit a few answers about the goblins and the situation underground. "What happened to you? Were you the only one held captive, or were there more? And what are the goblins doing?"

He immediately noticed her reaction to his questions. She suddenly stopped caressing his companion and hugged her shivering knees again. She looked like a lost puppy to him. Reassuringly and carefully, he reached out a hand to squeeze her left shoulder. "You don't need to answer anything, dear. I won't press you any further if you don't wanna talk. I just wanted to know how a single goblin could kill three adult men and why you were held confined down here..." He whispered at her. It made him sick to see her so sad and broken. "I want to help by hunting these bastards down." He told her with steel in his voice.

She calmed down once again and sighed quietly. Yue looked at the hand on her left shoulder and then directly into his deep eyes. "That wasn't a single goblin... These critters ambushed and attacked us. Yannis, Ivan, and Nota were quickly overwhelmed, and we women have been knocked out with clubs shortly after. When I came to, I was already in this cage, and one single ugly creature just ran out of the room at that moment. I don't know where Jane and Nia are..." She answered him with fear for her comrades in her voice. As she continued talking, she proceeded to stroke Horny. "We had accepted an assignment from the adventurers' guild over in Cyntha... An increasing number of residents, adventurers, travelers, and traders have disappeared over the last week on their way to and from the town. Whenever corpses were found, it was always men. It was suspected that goblins were the culprits, so we took two adventurer groups of three to accept the quest. One group would not have been enough for a goblin plague. Which was assumed we would find here. Nobody knows exactly what happened to these abducted people and whether there is more to all of that. Or if someone is pulling the strings."

After Avan heard about the nearby town and the alleged quest of the two groups of adventurers, he pensively thought about it. They kill men and abduct women to carry them into their tunnels, but Yue was left out. Fortunately. But why? And they didn't make such an intelligent impression on me. Is someone else luring the people into these ambushes?

"Will you help me search for my... missing friends?" She asked him hesitantly and threw him out of his thoughts. "Jane and Nia were my childhood friends... We grew up together in town, and their families always showed me friendliness... After my parents had died... We just started as adventurers a week ago. Please, help me find them! I... I owe you my life already, but please..." Yue desperately requested and started lightly sobbing.

Avan reassuringly squeezes her shoulder again. He determinedly locked eyes with her. "Shhhh, everything is fine. I will help you find your friends. Even if I don't know anything about goblins. Because from where I come from, we never had any experience with goblins. But I will try to help nonetheless. And you owe me nothing, Yue. I am just happy to have been here in time. To set you free."

He then leaned against the tunnel wall and tilted his head back to think about their possible next steps. If they would go together, then Yue needed something to protect herself. He couldn't let her follow him defenseless. In the room with the cages, he hadn't found any weapons.

He took a glance at her and asked himself whether and with which weapons she could fight. As an adventurer, she must have had a role in their group, too. "Yue, can you by any chance fight with daggers? I have two I could give you. And I am not trained with these, either. I think I can better fight unarmed. Even better than with these daggers if the single goblin fight before indicated anything for me." He asked her with another smile. "I know at least some martial arts, even against some ugly armed goblins."

Yue glanced back at Avan and shortly thought about his inquiry. "I can decently fight with a sword but primarily trained with dual-wielding daggers. If you can really separate yourself from those, I would love to get some revenge with your help. While we search for Jane and Nia..." She sternly nodded.

Avan stood up again to take his belt with the two sheathed daggers and gave them to her without comment. Yue also stood up and gratefully accepted the weapons with the belt and immediately fastened everything around her waist. Ready as good as possible, he gestured to his two companions to follow him back to the first fork.

I think we check the left tunnel first to see what we are confronted with. And if these tunnels reaching even further down, we need to go back above ground to get more provisions and freshwater. The flask is empty, and the dried berries soon, too.

He grinned while he remembered that none of them has even touched the meat yet. Well, dunno from what animal or creature this meat is from. Avan had been on a vegetarian diet for a few years now. He had no issue with others eating meat, but he had found it unnecessary with all the abundance of food humans had had back on earth. But for survival, I would eat meat. Or chicken? Yeah, chicken would be nice again. And I want to taste the food of this world! He benignly smiled.

Looking over his shoulders, he told Yue about the food situation and what he had thought they should do. She just signed with her thumbs up that she understood and agreed.

Soon back at the first fork of the road, he pointed into the other tunnel and nodded in that direction. Tenser, now and on unknown territory, Yue and Avan carefully moved forward with his white furry fellow following behind.

Strained and with careful steps, they crept further down into the tunnel system. Avan couldn't sense anything other than the old footprints with his dungeon skill. After a while, they came to another two-way fork. A faint blue shimmer shone out of the right tunnel, but the source couldn't be seen as it came from behind the bend over. Both of them stopped, listened for noises or steps.

With a hint to the right in the direction of the blue light, he whispered to Yue that they should locate the source of the light first. They sneaked towards the blue light and stopped at the bend, both glancing around the corner to have a look at the light source. There was a door at the end of the passage, with a blue shimmering ornate archway from where the light emitted. Avan couldn't sense any creatures nearby and lightly touched Yue to whisper a quick "It's safe" in her ear.

They stepped forward and turned their heads around and up at the five-meter-tall double door. Abundantly decorated, the entrance was laced with runes and enchantments, those who pulsed slowly with the blueish light. The ornaments on the doors displayed people fighting monsters while the light was shining from above to surround them. This light healed their wounds, as shown on another mural. At the center of the doors was a picture of a person standing in front of the exact same entrance. With his hands laid on in another view, some energy flowed through his hands into the doors. In the following image, the two doors were open, and the person walked into the entrance.

"Do you know where this door leads to?" Avan asked Yue and stared at her as she ran her fingers along with the murals on the doors. Realizing he had spoken to her, she looked back at him, with amazement shown in her eyes. "These... images are telling how to open it. I never saw one myself, but I heard about such doorways. This could be an entrance to a dungeon, Avan! And so far, as I recall, there is no dungeon near Cyntha, or it would have been opened already. And the Adventurers guild would have revealed it already."

He looked back at the murals in front of them. "So, this energy shown here, is mana I assume? And you have to insert mana into these gates to open them? Presuming I'm correct with my suspicions." Without taking a look at Avan, she just absently nodded.

"As impressive as it is, maybe we should not meddle with it for now and concentrate on finding other survivors first. Hopefully, we can find out what's happening with the missing women and what the goblins are doing. If it's true what you told me, I don't even know if we two can do anything about this goblin nest without a bigger team. We can get help after we know more." He suggested after some minutes. He waved at her and slowly moved back to the junction. After he had checked his sphere of influence for any surprises, he waited for her to return while tickling Horny behind his long ears.

A short time later, Yue joined him at the junction, and they start investigating the last tunnel. Walking, with the flickering of their torch casting shadows on the tunnel walls, the smell of feces and piss suddenly filled the air and flowed towards them. Fighting upcoming nausea, they slowly continued while both pinched their noses to interrupt the attack on their sense of smell.

Right and left and everywhere on the ground at the brink of the walls were spread excrements. Nearly puking, they finally came to a tunnel opening that led into a medium-sized cave.

While Avan was able to fight because he had vomitted beforehand, the stench and the horror show in front of him inside the cave was too much. As quietly as possible and with haste, he hurried back a dozen meters. He audibly emptied his stomach on the floor. Ahhhh... Fuuuuuck...

With horrific images swimming through his head, dizzy and powerless, he leaned against the tunnel wall next to him. Yue puked at the other side while she violently shivered.

Wiping his mouth with his right sleeve where his wound was bandaged, he looked over at her in horror. Both locked eyes and stared at each other with wide eyes and unimaginable terror.

In a whisper and horror in his voice, he leaned over to her. "What kind of fucked up shit happened there?!"

Two adults, a more giant variant of goblins, and three minor relatives had been sleeping at the side of the cave. While at the far end of the cave, they had seen some male and female corpses with burst bellies opened lying amid pools of blood and other substances.