Chapter Four

John was huffing and red in the face as He, Camille, Sam, and Bjorn dragged a weeping willow to the clearing outside the dungeon. “I’m going to go talk with the dungeon so we aren’t bombarded by fish while dragging this in. I’ll be back in a bit.”

John walked into the dungeon and waited. After about half an hour Mav walked in “You have trade for holy tree?”

John nodded. “I just wanted to make sure we weren’t getting pelted by fish while bringing it in here. If you tell me it’s okay I can bring it in now.”

“That okay. Bring in now.”

John walked back out and looked down at the weeping willow. The few branches they left on it were still trying to grab anything that got close. He called out “Dungeon says we won’t be bothered going in.” and then grabbed his rope and started to pull it forward. The other three picked up their ropes as well and soon they had the tree inside the dungeon. As soon as they backed away from it nearly twenty drybolds came out of the shadows and started to drag it away. All four of them backed off seeing so many drybolds. They were about to leave the dungeon when Mav called out.

“Wait. Holy tree considered previous request. Thought of easy tasks to finish paying off debt. You want to know?” John nodded so Mav continued “Holy tree has two tasks. You complete both and debt is paid off. First task is getting more tusked defenders. First two tusked defenders fled here after humans attack. You make more flee here and task is complete. Second task is making a map. You make holy tree a detailed map for five miles from holy tree and second task complete. You agree?”

“After I’ve completed these tasks I can raid the dungeon again?”

“Holy tree says you can raid again. Also says you can make more trades. If you decide to raid holy tree not go easy on you.”

John looked back at his companions “Any of you have problems with those deals? I’m inclined to accept.”

Sam and Camille shook their heads but Bjorn responded “Those tusked defenders were pretty hard to fight. If we give the dungeon more of those it could cause issues in the future.”

“I know they're tough to fight, but the dungeon hasn’t put them anywhere we should be raiding anyway.” John paused for a second while he thought. “Plus those things are giant. How many of them is the dungeon going to be able to feed anyway.”

Bjorn didn’t look quite satisfied, but instead of making anymore arguments he just grunted so John decided it was okay to go ahead. “Alright. We should be able to do that. We’ll get started on it now and decide if we want to keep raiding or trade more once we are done.”

With the deal made the four of them left the dungeon and started to figure out the best way to complete the two tasks. They already knew where the tusked defenders were and they had driven them up to the dungeon on accident in the past, so they decided it would be easy to start with that. They gathered up a bunch of the lowest quality arrows they could find before heading off to the tusked defenders habitat. When they got there they scared the herd into the water and then waited for small groups to come back inland. Then they got between the smaller groups and did their best to drive them away from shore.

Since there were only four of them herding the defenders a lot of them managed to slip past them, but after a full day of work they still managed to direct plenty inland. They figured that would be plenty so they started following the tracks into the forest to make sure they were making it all the way to the dungeon. Every once in a while they would find tusked defenders resting in sunny clearings and use a few arrows to get them moving towards the dungeon once again.

John’s favorite scene that they found while driving the tusked defenders was a weeping willow. The branches that it would normally use to grab its unsuspecting prey were broken and there were clear tracks right under it. John could envision the scene of the tree thinking it got an easy meal just to have its annoyingly dangerous branches broken after picking on something that was above its weight class. Despite the broken branches they circled far out of reach of the tree and then kept following the tracks. They had to herd the tusked defenders a few more times before they finally reached the dungeon.

With that done they could get started on their second task. Making a map of the surrounding area for the dungeon was easy to agree to since it benefited the settlement as well. Sam and Camille took the west side of the dungeon while John and Bjorn explored the east side. They hiked through in silence, taking note of every landmark they passed. The most notable of which was a smaller river with a very strange bank that they only saw after cresting a ridge. Immediately to the side of the river was sand, but once you were a few feet from the river it was replaced by large hexagonal stones that were tightly placed together yet uneven. As they went away from the river they kept going up until there was a hill that they could walk up.

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Once they were at the top John turned to Bjorn and asked

“How do you think stuff like this is made?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? Maybe it was made by some demihumans, or maybe a god made it. Does it really matter?”

“I guess not, but aren’t you curious where it all came from? Even if it doesn’t matter?”

Bjorn shook his head. “I don’t. Right now I’m more worried about finishing up this mapping and then getting back to camp before it gets too dark.” He gestured towards a mountain in the distance “let’s start heading towards there. It’ll be easier to orient ourselves from a landmark.”

Without waiting for John to respond he started climbing down the columns and walking towards the mountain. Ever since they crossed the ridge the landscape had turned much more barren. It was rolling hills that just had shrubs and grass growing instead of the large trees they had been passing through. After they had walked a few miles towards the mountain they crested a hill and John went to the ground

“Stop Bjorn. I see smoke up ahead. There could be another drybold tribe or something.”

Bjorn peered over the hill and saw the smoke before saying “That’s still pretty far away. Let's get a closer look before we start making assumptions.”

John looked up and saw that the smoke was a bit farther away than he first thought, and was a bit embarrassed as he stood up. Then they walked through the hills while keeping silent to make sure whatever was making the smoke didn’t hear them. As they got closer they could hear voices yelling from the distance. They were too far away to understand them, but they certainly weren’t noises from a demi-human tribe. When they got to the next hilltop they laid down on the ground and crawled to the peak to make sure that they weren’t visible on the horizon. From there they could see something being built.

They couldn’t get an exact count from so far away, but it looked like there were ten or fifteen men building houses. John did his best to burn everything about the settlement into his memory before crawling back down the hill. He kept going until he realized that Bjorn wasn’t following him.

“What are you doing? Let's get out of here and tell Olivia what we found. She can probably call back to the main continent and figure out who that is.”

Bjorn stayed on the crest of the hill and whispered back “ They have to be from the Sanguine empire. We should slaughter all their carpenters now while they don’t have any adventurers guarding them. It will set their settlement back by months. Give us more time to prepare.”

John really wanted to raise his voice, unfortunately he also really wanted to avoid whoever was building the settlement knowing they were there so he whispered back “What do you mean slaughter them all? We can’t be sure it’s the Sanguine empire’s settlement. Plus even if it was we wouldn’t actually be lowering their combat power at all. We would just make them sleep in tents and give up the element of surprise.”

To John’s surprise Bjorn capitulated. “Fine, we can head back for now, but as soon as we get back we are sending someone else out here to keep tabs on the camp. I know they’re going to be the bastards from the Sanguine empire. Once the lookout confirms that we can launch a full scale attack.”

They both crawled down the hill before hurrying back to the settlement. They got there about an hour before dark and rushed to Olivia’s office. They burst through the doors without knocking and found her in a meeting with Adrian and Lou. As he saw they were intruding on a meeting John paused. That gave Olivia time to glare at him.

“What is so important that you ran into my office without even knocking?” Thankfully Olivia’s voice was calm despite the glare.

“Ah, well, we found another settlement. We don’t have any proof but we are worried that it is from the Sanguine empire. We wanted to perform a stakeout so we can figure it out for sure, but we didn’t have the gear so we came to ask you about it. We also wanted to make sure that it wasn’t some settlement you already knew about before sitting in the cold all night.”

Olivia turned to look at Lou and Adrian “I think I’d be aware, but just to be safe, you guys haven’t heard of plans for any other settlements right?” Both Lou and Adrian shook their heads so she continued “In that case I agree with John and Bjorn. Adrian can you get the best scouts we have and get them ready for a stakeout?”

Adrian said “That’s a simple enough task. I’ll have them ready to send out first thing tomorrow.”

With that confirmation she turned to Lou “Can you start training our adventurers in antipersonal combat instead of dungeon raiding? I know it might lower our yield somewhat, but I’d rather be behind on our quota than dead to an attack from the Sanguine empire.”

Lou sighed as he responded “I was hoping to avoid the war when I came over here. I guess I just don’t have good luck. I’ll start mixing up the training schedule tomorrow.”

“Thanks for your help. I’ll contact the settlement department tomorrow and see if they know if it is the Sanguine empire. Hopefully they’ll be able to send us reinforcements specialized in fighting people. Other than that I think we just keep our guard up. Anyone else have any ideas they would like to add?”

This time it was John’s turn to speak up. “I think we should start raiding the dungeon aggressively again. I am just about done paying it back for its help and we will need more blood river flowers if we are going to be fighting the Sanguine empire. Also it looked like they were in the very beginning stages of making a settlement. We should go ahead and raid aggressively now while we don’t need the extra defenders at camp.”

Olivia nodded “I’ll do my best to free up some adventurers for raiding. Adrian can you do the same?”

“I can. Now if you’ll excuse me I have scouts to find and a schedule to reorganize before morning so I’ll be off.”

As he walked out of the room Olivia dismissed the rest of them as well. “He’s right that we should get to work. Let’s work on our own for now and meetup again once we have more information.”