“Look out!” Felicia yelled. I ducked down as a stone went whizzing by my head and shattered into pieces on the wall behind me. I really should be paying better attention,

“Sorry!” Kyle called back while doing his best to bash the Curab that had thrown it. He’d swapped his enchanted sword for a mundane, but very heavy maul that was more effective against the creature's stone body.

[Identification]: - Small Serpentinite Curab - Threat 12 - Properties: Hard Body, Fire Resistance, Ranged Attack

Or serpentinite body, I guess. The strange, rocky creature was typical of what we’d found so far in the Adamant Guardians Mine. Despite being listed as small, it was almost two meters from one end of its claws to the other. Shaped somewhat like a crab, it had appeared to be a cubical block of stone before it unfolded and moved to attack. Similar blocks of stone — serpentinite and other types — lined the walls of the tunnel we were in.

The notion that any of these stone blocks could unfold itself into a monster made for a certain amount of paranoia, but we’d been assured that most of the blocks wouldn’t do that. Every now and then, a block would wake up, pull itself out of the wall and go looking for something to eat. The chances of that happening when an adventurer was walking by, or resting against a wall, were small. But not non-existent.

Left to itself, a Curab would eventually crawl into another hole and go to sleep again. Ones that were killed were replaced eventually, but over the years the guild had killed Curabs in such numbers that the original cavern had expanded into a vast mine. There didn’t appear to be any limit to the extent of the blocks. They just formed bigger and more durable Curabs the further you got from the entrance.

The layout of the mine had been shaped by the constant movements of Curabs. Blocks didn’t wake up on an evenly spaced pattern. Already existing holes seemed more likely to spawn Curabs, so long, branching tunnels were formed that led to more dangerous, and more valuable types of Curabs.

“Above you!” This time it was my turn to call a warning. To Janie, who looked up to see a swarm of glass beetles. Just in time to roast them before they jumped down on her.

[Identification]: - Glass Beetle - Threat 6 - Properties: Fire Resistance, Swarm

We weren’t really equipped for this Dungeon. [Club] was not Kyle’s best skill, though he was happy to get some practice with it. Similarly, a lot of the Curabs had Fire Resistance. It wasn’t total immunity, but it greatly reduced Janie’s damage output.

On the other hand, you wanted to kill glass beetles with fire. If you cut or smashed them, their glass bodies shattered into jagged, sharp-edged pieces. Dangerous if you stepped on them, or picked them up, but more importantly: they were worthless.

If you killed them with fire, on the other hand, the legs curled around their bodies and they shrunk to become solid glass wrapped around a mana crystal. You could still use the crystal through the glass, so they were a decorative rarity.

The novelty of these had worn off a long time ago, but people still liked them enough to pay a premium. No two bugs were exactly alike, so the Guild had created an elaborate classification system to value the damned things.

Kyle finally finished bashing his Curab into the floor. “Are we taking… serpentinite?” he asked.

I checked the list. “Yeah… stick it on the cart.” Serpentine was fairly high on the list of rock types that we could expect to see on this beginner run. Kyle picked up the monster’s mana crystal and started manhandling the block of stone onto the cart.

We had rented a hand cart for this run. It felt weird, but the floors of this dungeon were flat — barring the occasional hole — and the loot was heavy. Felicia had her bag of holding, but that had weight limits that were quickly reached when you were tossing blocks of stone in there. That was what Curabs dropped. When they finally died, they curled up again into a block of whatever stone they were made of. At deeper levels, they dropped additional materials, but here at the upper levels, it was just stone.

We all gathered up to discuss things, keeping an eye out in all directions. One of the things about the mine was that there weren’t defined rooms. Just tunnels and caverns and monsters wandering about.

“What do we think?” Felicia asked.

“Curabs keep throwing rocks at me,” I complained. “I miss being invisible.” I wasn’t using that spell just yet because we were still developing tactics for this dungeon and needed to see each other.

“Me too,” Kyle agreed. “This is good practice, but this maul doesn’t do enough damage and it’s too hard to hit with. [Blind] helps with that, but being invisible is easier.”

“These tunnels are too cramped though, Janie said. “I can’t keep my fire off you unless I know where you are. Unless I limited myself to bugs on the ceiling?”

“That’s no good,” I said. “Sooner or later we’re going to have to go up there ourselves.”

Janie blanched. “Uh, hanging from the ceiling? I know we saw those guys doing it, but all the blood would go to my head.”

“It’s not like that,” I assured her. This was another peculiarity of the mine. “Each block provides its own gravity once you touch it.”

“What you said doesn’t make any sense,” Janie countered.

“I mean… it's not like hanging,” I said. I eyed the tunnel wall with some trepidation. We’d all been informed, and we had seen the other teams in the main cavern, but trying it out was something I had wanted to put off.

Swallowing, I put one foot up on the nearest wall. There was a solidity to the way I placed it that made me more confident about the next step. Before I lost my nerve, I gave a little jump with my other leg.

As soon as I left contact with the ground I felt down switch directions on me. Now the wall was down, and I placed my other foot down without any problems.

“Oh, that is so freaky,” Janie moaned, looking at me. She looked pretty weird herself, from my perspective, impossibly perched from what was now a wall.

“See how my hair hangs down?” I said. “For me, this direction is down, now.”

I took out a coin and dropped it. It fell, not in the direction that they would expect it to, but down to my feet. I stooped to pick it up again.

The main cavern of the Adamant Guardians Mine was a huge cubical cavern, with fissures and tunnels leading off in all directions. It was dark enough, aside from the pools of light that each party made around them, that you could almost ignore the fact that every party was making their way along a different wall, ceiling or floor.

We’d taken the beginner's route, which avoided gravity changes, but we wouldn’t be able to rely on that forever. I gave Janie a challenging look, and she sighed but went through the same process to join me on the wall — or floor.

“How are we going to get the cart here?” she asked.

“It’s designed for it,” I answered. “See how the wheels stick out from the front? Move it up to the wall,” I told Kyle. He shrugged and wheeled the cart forward until its front wheels touched the wall. As he did so, the rocks shifted slightly, as the cart’s local gravity switched to a forty-five-degree angle.

“This is why it's got those high walls,” I said. I grabbed the handle from Kyle and pulled. The front wheels rose — from Kyles's perspective— and the cart slid easily up onto my wall. Once the back wheels left the old floor, the cart was fully reoriented.

“You see? Now let's work out some tactics because I’m still tired from last night."

“Long day?” Guildmaster Voight asked solicitously and handed me a cup of tea.

“Long night,” I said sourly. “I was up for half of it, going through the Chancellor’s correspondence.”

“You work fast,” he said with a smile. “Did you find anything?”

“Not much,” I said, sipping my tea. “I found some correspondence from Finley, but I doubt the Chancellor’s secret communication channel is a letter. Unless it’s a code?”

Voight just shrugged, so I considered the possibility. None of the messages were in what I thought of as code — random strings of letters. I was aware that there were codes that disguised themselves as normal communication, but none of the messages had seemed off to me. I thought that [Intrigue] would have noticed if I had found one of those codes, and feeling out the skill, gave me a feeling of confirmation. Unless the Chancellor had a higher [Intrigue] skill, of course, which he probably did.

“I was able to find out the terms of his deal with the Lyrans,” I said. “In exchange for luring the Duke into the sting, their import duties will be reduced to thirty percent. That seems high?”

Voight shrugged. “I’m not familiar with the current tax regime, but foreign imports are typically taxed somewhere between fifty and one hundred percent.”

That’s insane! I thought. How is he going to encourage trade with those kinds of taxes? I kept my face calm and just made a note for later. The King probably wouldn’t take kindly to me explaining the benefits of a free trade regime, but there must be something I could do to get the taxes reduced.

“Right. So that seems like a decent suggestion. The other thing is that their warships are to have access to the Maelstrom Strait, whatever that is, for the next three months.

“Mmn.” Voight frowned, considering the implications as he explained it to me. “The waters north of the King’s Isle are treacherous. Too many underwater dungeons in a small area.”

“Dungeons can form underwater? How do they get cleared?”

“Mostly, they don’t, so they’re almost always Breaking,” he told me. “Hence the danger. They spend most of their mana attacking each other though, so as long as you’re not between two of them, you are fairly safe. There are two routes through, one hugging the coast to the north, and the other coming close to King’s Isle.”

“I’m guessing the one close to the island is the Maelstrom Strait,” I said.

“Correct. It is heavily patrolled, both to keep it safe from monsters, and to control what ships pass through. Military ships would not normally be allowed.”

“But if the Lyrans were attacking King’s Isle, they’d break through and use that strait,” I guessed.

“Yes. It is a bit of a risk, but it is a good way to convince someone that you’ve started a serious attack. Finley must have someone watching the Strait… perhaps a spy on the Isle.”

“If he has a spy on the island, though, he’ll know fairly quickly that the island isn’t being attacked,” I pointed out.

“Yeesss…” Voight said slowly. “The timing would be important — and we may not yet have the full picture of the scheme. Perhaps the Chancellor is counting on this spy to blow the operation at the last minute? I will have to contact the guild there to look into this.”

“Hopefully that’s enough,” I said. “I hate to cut and run, but I’m meeting with the King tomorrow, so I suspect that my trip here will be ending soon.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.” The Guildmaster smiled slyly. “One audience may not be enough for the King to decide matters. And you have yet to have your promised meeting with the Duke.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” I growled. “Not meeting him suits me fine, especially if that delays him threatening me further.”

“He’s not a patient man. If he’s accepted your delays thus far, it’s more likely because he’s busy with this current plan.”

“Whatever keeps me off of his agenda.” I rose and gave him a curtsey. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting with the King to prepare for.”