“No precision. Damage,” Reynard said, his words getting chopped off by the need to breathe as he ran. “Vulnerable to blunt. Fire.”

I scowled. We weren't great at blunt damage, and we’d left Janie behind. I missed her already. Still, it might be for the best. Vulnerable to fire probably meant a tendency to catch fire, and while Janie could control her burns, she might have trouble controlling a bunch of myconids running around on fire.

My [Earth Magic] was capable of blunt damage, but my accuracy was pretty abysmal, and would stay that way until I got my skill up. That thought was all I had time for before we reached the monsters.

My daggers were in my hands and they sliced through the pallid flesh of the Myconid in front of me.

You have inflicted 112 damage!

You have inflicted 117 damage!

The monster didn’t seem to notice. Attacking with both daggers had left them out of position to parry with. I tried to dodge, but the fungal arm slammed into me.

Dodging must have helped some because my armour absorbed the hit. The arm had felt so squashy as it hit me, that I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a negative damage bonus.

“Shouldn’t you be casting illusions?” Reynard yelled at me, his blades swinging into his own opponent.

“They don’t have eyes!” I yelled back, and it was true. These myconids really stretched the meaning of humanoid. They mostly had two arms, two legs and a torso, but that was clearly a guideline rather than a hard rule. My target had three arms, and Kyle’s had three legs. As for a head, they either had one big mushroom cap or a cluster of smaller ones.

Cloridan, normally our heavy hitter, wasn’t exactly having a hard time against the guardians, but he was finding things more difficult. His daggers just made small cuts, no matter where he struck. He was able to avoid their attacks entirely, but their hits were so light it made little difference.

Kyle was doing the best out of our group. He hadn’t brought his maul with him for this trip, so he was limited to slashing damage like the rest of us. His big, heavy, enchanted, broadsword did a lot of slashing damage though. He was taking down myconids with just three hits, compared to the seven or eight it was taking Cloridan. Cloridan was hitting at twice the rate, so it almost evened out, but Kyle still had the advantage.

Cutter was doing… all right. His swords had a high base damage, and he hit a lot, but he didn’t have Kyles's strength or Cloridan’s skills. He was whaling away at his opponents and showing every sign of having a good time. The myconids were hitting him, but he had heavier armour than I did, so I doubt he was feeling it.

Felicia was staying out of the fight, of course, hanging back to provide healing. We didn’t seem to need it, so she moved further along the line, providing aid to the level threes and fours who were having a much harder time with the attackers.

With the five of us joining the fight, the villagers were able to form a defensive line against the intruders. Two druids managed to form a wall of vines that entangled the myconids that came near. They couldn’t cover the whole front, but with the rest of the fighters covering the gap, I thought we had turned this fight around.

Then about a dozen lights floated out from behind the myconids. Fine golden dust floated down from them.

“Those will be spores!” Felicia called out from behind us. “They’ll give status effects!”

Great. I took a break from whittling away at my opponent and cast [Water Stream] up in the air. Maximum dispersal, maximum spread, maximum velocity.

Just like the last time, water sprayed out like an upside-down fire extinguisher. There were shouts all around me from people getting soaked, but the droplets swept the spores out of the air around us. I couldn’t cover everyone, but it looked like the druids were on it with their own countermeasures. Felicia dashed off to cover a few people who had fallen to some spores that had slipped through the cracks.

Reynard also dropped out of melee combat and unslung his bow. “This water is going to ruin the string,” he complained. Then in one smooth action, he put an arrow through one of the lights.

Whatever it was, it didn’t like that and dropped like a stone. Further arrows followed.

Throughout all this, the Myconid I’d started attacking kept trying to kill me, but I was able to keep fending it off while casting the spell. Score one more for silent and subtle casting. It felt a little odd being on the front line, but these monsters were easy enough for me to manage. And with so many attacking, everyone was needed.

I slashed at it again and again until finally,

You have inflicted 111 damage!

You have killed a Myconid Guardian. Contribution increased.

Huh. I don’t think I got notifications for all those assists in the Talnier Outbreak, I thought.

After that, it was just a slog. A desperate and dangerous slog for the lower-levelled villagers, but as the Myconid numbers dwindled, the less capable could drop out and get the healing they needed. Eventually, it was over.

Outbreak Defense, Wave One completed

Total Experience earned: 114,480

Your contribution: 7.3%

Awarded: 8,357 Experience.

Next wave: Pending

Not bad for a morning’s work. I thought. But it looks like we’re not done yet.

“So does anyone still think that it’s not a dungeon?” I asked everyone at the meeting. Chief Urnmor had gathered the leadership of the village to make some quick executive decisions. The two druids were the only ones I hadn’t formally met. One was an owl-kin, introduced as Serenal. Her wing-arms were wrapped around her, covering her in a grey feathered cloak.

The other was a squirrel-kin called Nyer Fernshadow. He twitched with suppressed energy. During the fight, he’d been dashing around and I’d seen him earlier, bouncing with excitement. Given the seriousness of the current situation, he must be making an effort to sit still.

Turem was here too, of course, representing the hunters. From what I’d seen earlier, there wasn’t a lot of agreement among the hunters. Having only one representative might not be the most democratic move, but at least it cut down on arguments.

In response to my question, there was a general reluctance among the beast-kin to meet my eyes. They didn’t want to disagree with me, but…

“That’s still impossible, Hammond,” Reynard said. He was perfectly willing to disagree with me. “They don’t get dungeons in the Wild, the mana is too calm.”

“That’s true,” I agreed because it was. Latorran theurges might sneer at the inefficiency of tribal mana manipulation, but I thought the tribes were leagues ahead in terms of controlling mana safely. They moved the mana the way it wanted to go, and it responded. It danced for them, moving across the land with nary a mana snarl or spawn point in sight.

The areas of the Kingdom that had been drained of mana were mostly safe, but it was trying to smooth over a wrinkled bedsheet. Every time you smoothed over one wrinkle, another popped up.

“It is impossible,” I continued, “but it happened, so we have to work out how it happened.”

Doubtful looks all around, but at least they weren’t trying to find a way to disagree with me.

“Now, my [Sense Mana] doesn’t go through trees,” I said, “So I can’t get a good idea of the mana in the area.”

I pointed at the druids. “But you two, I bet you have some sort of tree sense, that can tell you what’s going on? And even if you don’t, then some of the people that go out patrolling must have [Sense Mana].”

There were nods around the table.

“And none of you noticed any disturbances in the mana?”

“There were no such reports,” Chief Urnmor told me, while the druids looked at each other.

“No disturbance great enough to cause a dungeon,” Serenal said. “And even if there was, a new dungeon would have no cause to Break.”

“True, so it clearly isn’t a new dungeon,” I said. “Have you done your mana sense thing since things started happening?”

“There hasn’t been the time,” she said. “The spell isn’t difficult, but it takes time to examine a large area closely.”

“Right, you’re going to want to make that time,” I told them. “You’ll be looking for a dungeon that wasn’t there yesterday but is today. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”

“Hammond,” Reynard said wearily. “You haven’t been doing this long enough to have special insight into how mana works. You’re just spouting nonsense.”

“Oh yeah? I’ve already got a theory about what happened,” I said smugly. “It’s not great news, but once it’s confirmed we’ll at least know what’s going on.”

“You can’t be serious,” Reynard sighed. “There’s no way that an old dungeon would have escaped notice all this time.”

“What if it was underground?” I asked.

“All dungeons are underground,” he replied, rolling his eyes. He managed to avoid adding “You idiot” so I gave him some points.

“They go underground,” I clarified, “But they start on the surface and go down. What if a dungeon started way down, and went up?”

Reynard started to respond but realised he didn’t have a response. He stopped mid-breath and looked over at the druids.

“Mana can travel through the earth,” I explained. “Mana manipulation extends some way through solid material, but not far. Underneath our feet, there's just as much potential for a mana snarl as there is above ground.”

“If that were true,” Reynard said slowly, “We’d be getting old dungeons popping up all over.”

“I don’t know how it works,” I admitted. “Maybe conditions on the surface are more conducive to mana snarls. We’ve got a lot up here messing with the mana after all.”

“Even so,” Chief Urnmor mused. “Our history is long, even if underground dungeons are rare, we should have seen some in that time.”

“It also might be that dungeons normally grow down, so we never see them,” I said. “There could be endless volumes of deadly real estate, far below us.”

“Normally?” Nyer asked.

“Someone might have changed its behaviour,” I said.

“That would take—” the druid cut himself off.

“I mean, I don’t like it, and I admit it’s unlikely, but you have to admit that it's possible,” I said. “So check it out with your spell, and we can move on to figuring out what we are going to do about this.”

Urnmor looked around the room. “Does anyone else have any theories about what is behind this?” he asked.

There were shakes of the head all around.

“Fine then,” he said. “Serenal, you do the spell, Nyer, you get back to growing defences. If it takes an hour to finish the spell, we may well have another attack before we have any information.”

“Should we bring the patrols in?” Turem asked.

“Yes. For now. Until we have more information about the mana flow, we need to go on the defensive. Make sure to divide everyone into shifts.”

Urnmor sighed. “An hour isn’t too long to say alert, but we might have to keep this up for much longer. If Serenal doesn’t find Councillor Hammond’s dungeon, then we’re back to the start of the maze.”

He looked at me. “I hope you enjoyed our hospitality, Councillor, because it looks like you will be enjoying it for a little while longer.”