***** Amandine’s POV 3:10 PM *****

It didn’t take us long to get to the first Courage & Trust room. The only notable things along the way were the lack of traps and greenery. Being a dungeon I expected several traps along the way because dungeon, but there was none whatsoever. As for the greenery, it stopped at the threshold of the hallway. I had kinda expected this to be a nature dungeon given its location and the number of plants in the Entrance hall, but I guess not.

The room itself explained the lack of traps. It was shaped like a cylinder on its side with an odd structure spiraling down the middle. The entrance and exit of the room were directly above where the spiral structure connected with the walls at either end.

“What sort of dungeon challenge is that?” said a voice somewhere in front of me.

I’m not sure who had spoken, but I had to agree. It almost looked like we were supposed to walk along the inside of the structure and collect the key hovering over the pedestal at the other end, but we can’t walk upside-down like that. I have no doubt that Doskan could come up with something given time, tools and materials, but we don’t have any of that at the moment.

“Ma’am?” called Lieutenant Banulf, the leader of 4th Platoon. Most of them were rangers, but they had a druid and an air mage for support. Combined with all of them being elves, this made them my preferred platoon to handle the sneaky stuff. Being the 4th platoon, they were far enough back in the formation that they only lost four rangers to the dragon, all of them stuck under his neck.

“Yes, Lieutenant Banulf?”

“I think my men and I can make it around the loop.”

“Oh?”

“A couple of weeks ago a couple of my men managed to take down a minotaur by running up a wall and backflipping over it, causing the minotaur to run headfirst into the wall and knock himself silly. I got a side view of this, with their feet going in a circle and decided that it would be a fun training exercise to run in a complete loop. We’ve been messing around with this in our spare time ever since with some help from the earth mage in 1st Platoon who created the loops for us. Between a speed boost from our air mage and spider touch from our druid, I think we can make it all of the way around the loops.”

“But you don’t think the rest of us can make it.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I don’t like splitting our party even further, but I don’t see any other option. Go, just be careful and try to keep everyone alive.”

“Yes Ma’am!” he saluted before turning and issuing orders to his platoon.

***** Bud’s POV *****

That was harder than I expected it to be. I said, having just finished some temporary changes to my dungeon at the World System’s request.

“Of course, it was difficult,” replied Tracy. “There are people in your dungeon. Even with the World System temporarily reducing the penalty it is still going to be difficult to change things in your dungeon.”

That is going to be seriously annoying for me. I’m used to being able to change things however I want to as long as I’m not in anybody’s way and they’re not in mine.

“I know, I’m just telling you the rules.”

I know. That still doesn’t make it any less annoying.

“True. It’ll be interesting to see what they make of the dungeon without the guidance they would normally get from Embreyon.”

Yes, yes it will. It was fun reworking the keys so that they could be collected without Embreyon though.

“If you say so. Now let’s sit back and enjoy the show.”

***** Amandine’s POV *****

When we arrived in the first fighting room, again noting a lack of traps, it was also a large open area except this time it was a twenty-meter wide cube full of metal things. As we were taking stock of the room, a ten-meter square door opened in the wall to our left revealing what at first glance appeared to be a starry night sky. Then I noticed that all three moons were visible and in locations they shouldn’t be. On top of that, they were not alone in the sky. There was another much larger celestial body floating along with them colored green and blue with hints of white.

After a moment of staring at this, I noticed that the doorway was shimmering faintly enough that I couldn’t determine the color of the energy field.

Half a moment more and a metal thing shaped like a slightly rounded brick that tapered to a point with some stubby little wings came flying gently through the door and landed inside one of the previously unidentifiable metal things that turned out to be a cradle intended to hold it. I knew it was being controlled by someone or something because it was far too graceful in its landing.

While we were still trying to process this, a second metal thing came flying through the door, except this one was smaller and much sleeker looking, but it was clearly battle damaged and struggling to stay airborne. Once it finally managed to land in its cradle, some of the other metal things sprang to life and started messing with the damaged sections of the flying thing.

The big door started to close behind them until a jagged and misshapen piece of metal came flying in and wedged the door open with a loud CLANG!

Then a door opened in the side of the smaller ship and a kobold walked out wearing the same outfit as the statue of the dungeon fairy, except his came with some sort of helmet that covered his entire head.

“Oy! You lot! Don’t just stand there, escort the refugees into uncontested sections of the ship!” the kobold barked at us, gesturing at the larger flying thing. “We’ve got a shuttle full of slavers inbound!”

We all just stood there staring at him, partially because kobolds can only speak low draconic, and partially because this is nothing like anything that I’ve ever heard of a dungeon doing.

“Well don’t just stand there! Move!” he yelled at us, snapping me out of my reverie.

“You heard the man, er, kobold! Defensive formation around the pointy metal brick!” I ordered.

“Yes, Ma’am!”

As we scrambled across the room, another flying metal thing came in the door, except this one was U shaped and very jagged looking. Unlike the other two flying things, this one was incapable of using the landing cradles scattered around the room, so instead, it forced its way into the largest open area in the room before a large door opened up in the side and a bunch of mechanical… things came pouring out.

They resembled spiders with a human-ish torso where their heads should have been, except they were completely mechanical and the proportions were… off somehow. They were all wielding batons that crackled with electricity and they shot webs at us, attempting to glue us in place.

Unfortunately for them, we had all spent significant amounts of time fighting the giant spiders in the southernmost reaches of the elven forests, so most of my people were able to dodge the webs. Those that did get stuck, especially the frontline, didn’t try and free themselves but waited while someone else freed them with a custom wand that Doskan had made for us. It’s not that we had a wand for everything, we just get contracted to fight the spiders every three months or so because nobody else wants to.

Seeing the batons, I cast a lightning resistance buff and a stun resistance buff on all of us then stepped back and watched to see if there was anything else that I could do to help.

As the spider centaurs charged at us, the kobold started swearing in draconic and pounding on the outside of the ship. At least it sounded like swearing to me.

Noting that the front line was holding before I turned to the kobold, who’d taken his helmet off so he could get a clearer look at something on the outside of the flying machine with the refugees in it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He glanced at me, started to say something in draconic, then pulled some kind of ring off the bottom of his helmet and placed it around his neck.

“The stupid slaver-webs-for-brains managed to get all of the doors stuck with some kind of intangible web spell before the transport entered the bay’s defenses. Just be glad the gun for that isn't small enough to fit in here. If you can hold them off of me for five minutes, I think that I can get this open.”

“Wait, you said it was a web spell?” I asked.

“Yes, why?”

“Show me where the edges of the door are and I’ll see if I can get it unstuck with this,” I said, pulling out my anti-web wand.

He scrutinized the wand for a moment before shrugging. “Eh, why not? At the very least it can’t hurt.”

We were interrupted by a clatter that was completely out of place, interrupting the rhythm of the battle behind me.

Glancing up, I saw that Billodon, my best surviving tank, had somehow managed to lose his sword and replace it with a baton stolen from one of the spider centaurs, which was now laying on the ground in pieces. When his baton connected with another one of the spider things it somehow triggered his Deconstructor ability and that spider also became a pile of pieces.

I’m not sure what was going on exactly, his ability doesn’t usually go off that often, but as long as he can keep it up I’m not complaining.

Shrugging, I turned back to the kobold.

“So where exactly was this door again?”

“Here. The door is here,” he replied as he traced a rectangular seam on the side of the ship.

“Ok, here goes nothing,” I said as I applied the wand to the seam. It was rather odd working with the wand when I can’t see the web I was removing, but I can tell the wand is doing something even if it isn't removing the web.

By the time I’d made it halfway around the door, I could start to see it opening and at three-quarters of the way around the rest of the web broke, sending the door crashing to the floor as a ramp.

“Everybody out! Listen to the nice lady, she and her people are going to escort you deeper into the ship,” ordered the kobold.

“Aren’t you coming with us?” asked one of the refugees.

“Yes, I am. I will be guiding them along the way.”

“Oh thank god.”

“Let me know when everybody is out. I’m going to go check on my men,” I told the kobold before wandering off.

Before I got that far Billodon walked up to me. “All spider things dispatched Ma’am. Looks like we’re ready to move out.”

“Alright people, escort formation! Squishies in the middle, bricks on the edges! Lead the way, Mr. Kobold.”

“With pleasure Ma’am.”