“Just goblins,” Celia reported as she threaded her way back through the trees. Vance gave a sigh of relief and Arthur’s posture relaxed. He hadn’t been looking forward to fighting other people again, a small part of him though was disappointed. Bandits were the scum of the earth killing their fellow humans for dregs of power.

“Arthur, Arthur are you paying attention?”

“Nope sorry.” He snapped his head up and looked over at Vance who was peering at him with concern. “What did you say?”

Vance gave him one last look before explaining. “I was saying that we should just attack the goblin camp. No need to be sneaky or anything, they’re tier one and there’s only about ten of them.” Celia nodded affirming the number of enemies. “We shouldn’t take it too easy though, I want you to stay in the back and throw spells, and Celia can attack their flank.”

The girl nodded her head and looked critically at Vance. “I can do that but keep in mind it's not going to be holding my ground fighting like you do. It’s going to be more along the lines of hit and run.” Arthur wasn’t sure what to make of Celia, she seemed like a decent enough person, but he didn’t quite feel comfortable around her. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why they hadn’t even known each other for more than a few days. The rogue was surprisingly terrible at tracking though. Weren’t assassins supposed to be adept at tracking and sneaking up on unsuspecting targets?

“That’s fine, just make sure to stay safe, everyone.” Arthur nodded and they moved through the trees as quickly and quietly as they could.

Soon they come across a small camp of goblins sitting around a campfire with what looked like a dead sheep roasting over the fire. The monsters hadn’t even bothered to skin the poor animal and the smell of burning wool was nauseating. Vance strode forward massive sword in hand, Arthur hurriedly began weaving his mana into a bolt deciding to forgo a shield. He didn’t see where Celia went but he assumed she was working her way around the main body of goblins.

Vance’s sword whistled through the air and a goblin head went flying, the rest of the green monsters seemed to freeze at the sudden violence. Vance brought his sword down again, almost splitting another of the monsters in two. Arthur let fly with his mana bolt and the remaining goblins howled in rage seizing any weapon around them. Tree branches were shorn in two and crude clubs were deflected as Vance brutally demonstrated the difference between ferocity and skill. Arthur dished out as many spells as he could, making sure to keep his distance and avoid as much attention as he could.

The last three goblins crumpled and a panting Celia appeared behind them. “That was fast. I hardly had time to get into position before you hacked them to pieces.” She smiled briefly before her face settled back into a suspicious semi frown.

Vance smiled and nodded. “Sorry about that, next time I’ll leave more monsters for you to fight. That’ll be more important if we’re actually ever fighting together for levels, I didn’t think it mattered in this instance.”

Celia nodded wordlessly, but her suspicious frown deepened. Arthur was frowning too as he thought about what his friend had said. He was under the impression that Celia was a temporary addition to their group, just replacing Kira for this trip. Kira was a tier five though, she wouldn’t be getting anything from babysitting them.

“Alright, let's go to the village and let them know these goblins are taken care of. We can also check and see if there are any other monsters in the area that are bothering them.” Arthur held in a sigh as he followed Vance. He would prefer not to go haring off on another low-tier monster hunt, he had been stagnating for too long and was looking forward to earning some levels. They were helping people though and that was important too, he just wished that help came with tier-appropriate monsters.

As they made their way to the village Arthur mostly checked out of the proceedings and from the slightly vacant look on her face Celia had as well. Vance talked to one of the village elders who thanked them profusely for taking care of their monster problem. Frankly, Arthur wasn’t sure what they were so worried about. Sure there had been quite a few goblins but there were far more villagers. Even if they didn’t want to fight them it wouldn’t have been that hard to set a few traps for the bumbling monsters.

His father had driven off wolves wherever they got too close to the village and goblins were a bit more mindlessly aggressive which didn’t make them that much more of a threat. Arthur winced as he thought about his father like a thorn was jabbed in his chest.

All in all, he was happy to be on their way back to the dungeon town. This trip had been long and boring, and mostly pointless in his opinion. He did feel like it was time for him to start delving again, maybe he would ask Vance when he was planning his next dungeon trip.

Mathias grumbled as their carriage hit another bump. “Couldn’t we have taken a floating carriage? We rode one of those when we went to visit king fancy pants, right?”

Angela sighed deeply but didn’t correct her husband’s blatant disregard for their monarch. “They’re expensive and your family are all cheapskates. There were only so many when we went to visit our King because he was trying to show off. I highly doubt he actually owned them all, he was probably renting a fair few from a rune mage or artificer.”

Mathias grumbled again before settling back down. “We could run, you know, or fly. There has to be something that we could do to make this trip faster.”

“You’re welcome to try flying the whole way there, you’ll run out of mana and fall out of the sky on your head. Please let me know if you intend to try running though, that would be funny. Also, this is a mostly official visit and we’re trying to be formal, remember?”

“Oh come on mother’s there already, it's not like they’ll be expecting much in the way of formality.”

Angela grunted and scowled. “We should still try and set a good example for Vance.”

He held up his hands in surrender as the trees raced past them. “So anything else interesting going on at this new dungeon? Have we found any of the Bancrofts yet?”

“Still just Gary, Sophia looked for the others but they were long gone by the time she arrived, which is troubling. They had to have had a route and plan in place to escape in advance.”

“Or they had help.”

She nodded gravely, “or they had help. Still whatever the case is if we can get Gary to squeal on the rest of his family they won’t be able to do anything. Even if they’ve escaped they’d no longer be nobles in practice.” A look of glee crossed her face and Mathias suppressed a smile as he too imagined the indignance of an old noble family forced to live on the run.

“Well, we still have to get the Bancrofts convicted of attempted murder of another noble. Which won’t be easy, you know.”

Angela nodded in understanding. “You’re right but if we get Gary to confess then we’ll have them.”

“Easier said than done.”

“True but anyway something else I heard there was a dungeon boss on the upper floors.”

Mathias whacked his head as he sat up too quickly. “There was what now? The whole reason to send him to this new dungeon was that it was a safer place to level.”

Angela patted his hand. “Calm down, Silas’ tier four apprentice was with him every time he went dungeon delving and now that Sophia is there she will have been following him around.”

“Well that’s fine I suppose, but so much for less supervision. I thought it would be good for him to be away from everyone for a while.”

“Under the circumstances, I think it's perfectly reasonable to have her watching him.”

He grunted in affirmation. “Fair enough I suppose.”

They lapsed into silence as the miles fell away at an excruciatingly slow pace.

There was a less than subtle return as Magnus dragged a massive bag of fish into the dungeon. The guild attendant was fortunately unconscious, dead to the world by way of a fog-like spell Magnus had used. The core grumbled as he kept a look out for anyone coming, fortunately, it was the middle of the night and no normal delves happening right now but the drake could be a little more careful.

Magnus, what are you doing? What if someone sees you? Valens tried not to snap at his scally friend he really did, but he might have failed just a little.

Relax Valens, I used my new sleeping gas spell to knock everything out around the dungeon entrance. It’s all underground so this worked out beautifully. The drake dragged the fish further into the dungeon proper, grumbling as he did.

I’ve never heard you talking about that spell before.

That’s because I just came up with it.

Just came up with it. Magnus, did you seriously risk our collective safety on an untested spell? You’re supposed to be the old and wise one in the situation. He was peeved it was like the drake hadn’t thought things through at all. The new spell Magnus had tried was the chaos spell and that hadn’t worked too well.

Maybe it would have been better to have tried it out first, but still, I needed to come in through the entrance and I can’t exactly sneak through in my tiny form with this giant bag of fish. The drake vented his frustration by incinerating the entire bag in a massive conflagration. Valens flinched then focused as the disparate pieces of the pattern came together in his mind. Fortunately for the irritable drake, there was just enough to form a complete fish pattern, the pattern had enough similarities with his others to unlock it more easily.

Why couldn’t you have just dug a new entrance and backfilled it once you arrived? The core scolded as Magnus put out the various fires he had started.

That would have taken too long and would have been really obvious. Besides it might not have even worked, dungeons tend to mess with space around them as they get stronger. Valens tilted his metaphorical head at the new information forgetting to be angry with the oversized lizard.

Wait what that sounds important why haven’t you mentioned that sooner?

Magnus shrugged and sat down on the grass. It never came up, and it's not something dungeon control, it just sort of happens. Like breathing for most other creatures. Anyway as the dungeon goes deeper there’s an increasing amount of spatial compression that happens. That’s just a fancy way of saying your floors get bigger but they start taking up less and less space.

Okay, so what does that have to do with digging into the dungeon?

The wonky space means that if you successfully dig into the dungeon it's really a tossup on which floor you’ll appear on. If you’re truly unlucky you could get part of you on one floor and part of you on another, or you could just miss the dungeon altogether and keep digging until you get bored.

Interesting, I was wondering why there hadn’t been any more burrowers in a while. Valens vividly remembered the terror a snake had caused him before and couldn’t say he was upset about this development. Well, I’m going to get started spreading these fish around. You should probably make your way back to the core before adventurers start arriving again.

The drake started threading his way through the trees at a steady pace. Fine so long as they stay in the water I’m fine with it. Valens suppressed a chuckle and got to work spawning fish.