"Hi. We've got some loot to sell," I said to the guild worker who was manning the sales desk. I'd never been a fan of the dismantling areas of the guilds, with their horrific stench and ambivalent attitude towards bloodstains and gore. Serpent Isle was worse than Dawnhold in that respect; due to the much longer average length of a delve, the corpses being turned in were usually a few days old. A few days of decomposition did wonders to add extra complexity and depth to the aroma of their supplies.

"Oh, it's you again," he replied with a polite smile. "What do you have for us this time?"

I waved my hand over an empty pallet, depositing a dozen rainbow mamba corpses, five anaconda skins and twenty-five monster cores.

The smile of the guild worker cramped up slightly, but he inspected the goods with a professional eye regardless. "All level twenty monster cores, I see. You certainly have a way with this dungeon. And these skins are in good condition, too."

"We'd have had more if Peter didn't slice them up so much in combat," commented the invisible Cluma, who was standing next to the worker, causing him to flinch.

"It's not my fault they have such high health. They have the [Vitality] ability on top of their high endurance. Anyway, we'd have more cores than that, too, if you didn't eat half of them."

"I ate two! Two is not half!" complained Cluma.

Taking pity on the guild employee, whose smile was looking increasingly strained, I accepted our pay for the goods. "Who would be a good person to talk to about the hydra?" I asked. "We don't want to attempt it without getting some information first."

"Since mythril goods came onto the market, all the teams capable of fighting it have moved onto deeper dungeons. If you want to talk to someone with first-hand experience, I'm afraid there's no-one here."

Damn. I could look it up in the library and hope it had good commentary, but I'd been hoping to talk to someone who had actually fought it. "What about people with second-hand knowledge? Or are there any teams that moved to Synklisi or the Emerald Nest?"

"I'm afraid I don't know where any particular teams have moved to. I could give you some names, though, and you could ask for their current location at headquarters in Synklisi. For second hand info, check with the waitresses at the tavern. Delvers are always trying to impress them with their exploits. Can't guarantee the stories won't have been exaggerated, of course."

Names. Now that I thought about it, there was one party that had once worked here, and who I was sure would have cleared the dungeon at some point. I'd have to look up Xander's team. I'd seen members each year at the annual tournament, but had no idea which dungeon they were working these days. What were the chances of them being somewhere I could easily get to?

"I already know some names, and there's the library too. I'm sure I can manage."

"So, to Synklisi?" asked Cluma, falling in behind me as I left the building for the blissfully fresh air outside. "What names are you thinking of?"

"Yup, and remember Xander's team?"

"Of course. Noah was the one that first taught me how to use a dagger."

"They worked this dungeon for a while. Let's see if we can find them."

Picking up my redundant teleportation blob of flesh, we teleported to Synklisi and headed to the guild, where a receptionist took the names of Xander's party members, then worked her way down a list. Then stopped, looked confused, and worked her way down it a second time.

"Are you sure these are active delvers?" she asked.

"They were the last time I heard from them, but I suppose that was a while back."

"How long? One year? Two? More?"

When had I last seen one of them at a tournament? But then, it wasn't required to be an active delver to join in, and it wasn't as if I'd asked them. I'd just assumed.

"I saw Freya at the tournament last year, but I didn't explicitly ask her if she was still a delver, or in the same party."

"Hmm, let's start with this year's retirements then," she replied, pulling out another folder.

I found it surprising that they'd give out personal information like this, but I suppose no-one asking for it would misuse it. Or more accurately, that they were trying to give out personal information; none of Xander's party were in this year's still-short list, or the much longer list of the previous year. It wasn't until the list of two years prior that she found them.

"Here they are—all five names were marked as retired two weeks into winter, so about a year and a quarter ago. A complete party wipe in the dungeon of Bluestone Peak. Thankfully, that was after the addition of [Failed Delver]."

I stood stunned into silence. Xander's entire party died in a dungeon I'd never even heard of? Xander? His every step was guided by paranoia. How the heck had that happened?

"I don't suppose you have any idea where they are now?" I asked.

"I'm afraid not."

"I don't know about the others, but Jared works at the hospital here," called over the receptionist at the next desk, apparently having eavesdropped.

"Really? Thanks."

That was certainly easy to get to, but relied on him being on duty and not busy. Fortunately, healers here usually weren't busy. There was no messing around with diagnosis, beyond the most basic of 'yes, it appears that your arm is indeed missing', and it didn't take long to cast [Heal]. The only inpatients were usually people who needed regeneration of body parts. Perhaps there would be more of them here than Dawnhold, given the great dungeon, but it still wasn't exactly common, and they didn't demand full-time attention from the healers.

And so, ten minutes later, we found ourself sat in a small break room at the hospital, Jared sitting across from us in the patterned white robes of a rank three healer.

"Sorry, I hadn't heard. If you don't want to talk about delver stuff, just say so, and I won't."

"Nah, it's fine. It wasn't anyone's fault. Xander was a bit depressed about the whole thing, as I'm sure you can imagine, but he got over it."

"What happened?"

"We were doing reconnaissance of an unexplored dungeon. Narrow caves with air affinity monsters. It seemed fine at first, and at thirty floors we expected to be able to clear it. Then a trap got us. It wasn't even a real trap; it didn't respond to [Trap Perception] at all. Each section of the cave was separated by a door, so we didn't think anything of opening one more, but behind it wasn't another cave, but a faked exterior. It looked like we were miles up in the air. Or rather, just miles up, because there was no air. All the air on the floor got sucked out, the violent wind tore the door off, and we suffocated."

Wow. That sucks. Pun not intended. I still had questions, like how was the door completely airtight? Wouldn't it have been hissing? With that much pressure difference, how had they opened it? Did danger sense alert? But no doubt their team had poured over every detail they could have done differently, and it wouldn't do any good for me to butt in and accuse them of missing something obvious.

"Sorry to hear that."

"Mmm! The dungeon cheated!" exclaimed Cluma, giving the [Failed Delver] a compassionate hug.

"You think? In my opinion, we cheated. Most people, after dying of asphyxiation, don't go on to work a normal day job in a hospital. Of course, Xander would have refused the request to explore a new dungeon, had [Failed Delver] not have existed by then. He always said stepping into the unknown was a task for rank fours, but with dungeons being safe now and a lack of active rank four parties, headquarters convinced him to take the job."

"I'd mostly been thinking about the way it encouraged unsuited, low-level people into dungeons, but I suppose it could encourage even high-level people to do things they normally wouldn't."

"True. The number of fresh adults we get in here with missing eyes, when a low level monster gets a lucky swipe at the gap in their helmet, is silly. Anyway, I doubt you came all this way to catch up. What can I help you two with?"

"We're working the Serpent Isle dungeon at the moment. We've reached the end of floor twenty, but we didn't want to battle the hydra without talking to someone with first-hand experience of it."

Jared sprouted an amused little smile. "Xander would approve of that attitude. Everyone else would ask what the hell a pair of delvers your age are doing on floor twenty of any dungeon. But yes, that hydra is a dangerous beast. The right-hand head breathes fire, the left-hand ice. One in from the right is poison and the last sonic. The middle heads can't angle themselves to attack anyone not directly in front of the hydra, while the fire and ice heads can twist to face the sides. In our party, Xander would stand at its front and draw its attention, because his shield artes were enough to block all four breath attacks. Freya would flank it on the left, using her fire to counteract any ice breaths that came her way. Noah would attack from the right, using [Threat Perception] and [Stealth] to avoid being cooked. Me and Robin would hide back behind Xander."

"Hmm. Neither of us use a shield. Our usual strategy is for Cluma to use [Stealth] while I draw attention, but it sounds like it'll be tough for me to tank its attacks. I have no idea how to defend against sonic breath. Or even what sonic breath actually does."

"Deafens you, possibly blinds you if you take a direct hit and have low endurance, and leaves you feeling horribly nauseous. It doesn't actually do much health damage. Oh, and it hurts, obviously."

"How fast is it? Could we kite it?"

"No chance. It can spin its body around to point all four heads wherever it wants."

"Sounds like I'd be better off keeping my distance and dodging, then. What about accessories enchanted with resistance effects?"

"Accessories don't have huge effects. Rank three might protect you from the edges, if you slipped up on a dodge, and even rank four would only give a few seconds of protection. You want your armour enchanted, really. Can't have both fire and ice on your armour, though, and there's no such thing as sonic or poison resistance."

Could silence be abused to defend against sonic? It obviously didn't stop Cluma hearing things in the same way odour suppression killed her sense of smell, but maybe there was an alternate version of it. Something to check with Grover. The same time as I picked up a rank four fire resistance ring, because it sounded like I was going to need something as high as possible.

"No weak points to stab out?"

"No weak points. You can chop an entire head off, and it'll carry on. The head will regenerate in a few minutes, too. In a battle of attrition, try to bleed it out."

Perfect for Cluma, riddling the body with bleeding wounds. "And how would it react to Cluma stabbing it while using [Stealth]?"

"It relies mostly on sight, but it will use wide area flame or ice breaths if attacks come from unexpected directions. Or at least, that's how it responded to Noah."

"Hmm, maybe I can confuse it with [Far Reach]. And if it relies on sight, can we blind it with [Orb of Darkness]?"

"That's not something we ever tried, so I have no idea how it would react. It certainly has a sense of hearing and smell, just not accurate enough to make targeted attacks, so I'd expect you to still take wide area breath attacks."

"That's enough to be getting on with. Thanks for the advice."

"Yup, thanks!" exclaimed Cluma, who had been listening intently to every word.

"You're welcome. Good luck, and as a final bit of advice, I suggest you both spend some time thinking about what you'll do if you lose. You'll be able to think more clearly when you don't think you need it."

"We aren't going to lose," pouted Cluma, ever the optimist.

"If Xander can fail a delve, then anyone can," I answered. "But we'll damn well try our best."

That hadn't been as useful as I'd hoped. No glaring weak spots. The central heads had limited angle of attack, but that hardly mattered when it could shift its entire body to point them where it wished. The fact that the sonic attack wasn't too damaging was nice, with it sounding more like the orc roar than the ogre. As long as I cast [Endurance] on us both, and we made preparations to fight deaf, we could probably tank it. With [Dexterity] and orichalcum rank four rings of resistance, I'd bet we wouldn't get hit with enough fire or ice to be dangerous. The poison was a problem, though.

Trying to puzzle out a monster like this was bringing back memories of the goblin assassins. There must be a way, and we only needed to find it.

"Does the poison breath smell?" asked Cluma, just as I was standing up to leave.

"Huh? That's a random question."

"No it isn't! If it smells, then my odour suppression would defend against it."

"Sorry, but I've never breathed it in. We were always careful not to get poisoned. Interesting idea though."

I had to admit it was. It was nice that I wasn't trying to puzzle out our strategy on my own. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any way to test if odour suppression defended against poison breath other than letting it try to poison me.

"Well, it looks like we have a plan," I commented as we left the hospital. "I'll take Darren to the institute to make higher rank materials, and use them to bribe Grover for a ring that grants fire resistance, odour suppression and... dunno. I'll ask his opinion for the last one. Then you stab the body repeatedly, while I run around like a headless (chicken) avoiding it, and use [Far Reach] to confuse it."

"A (chicken)? That's an Earth animal, isn't it? Why would one run around without a head?"

Bah. Silly Earth metaphors. "Run around like a wild Cluma playing tag, then."

"Mmm. Sounds good to me."