At the crack of dawn, Meslocicas’s party anxiously began preparing for the dungeon invasion. After about half an hour, they were prepared to enter the dungeon. Since people were still nervous over last night’s attack, as the party leader, Meslocicas decided to give a rousing speech to boost morale.

“My fellow brethren. Last night, during the ferocious battle, our comrade Aldsoren died a valiant death in battle. Let’s give a moment of silence.”

“…”

“He was a brave man who sacrificed his life to protect his party members, his countrymen. And today, we will not let his sacrifice go in vain. We will avenge his death and slay all the bloodthirsty murders that dared kill him!”

““Aye!””

“And not only that, we all have witnessed firsthand how savage those monsters are. Do you think they will be content with just attacking any stray adventure that comes wandering by? No! Of course not! Once they get wind of where we live, they will come swarming into our villages, our cities, and slaughter our precious countrymen, our families! Brothers and sisters! Let us join arms and protect our loved ones! Onward to victory!”

““Aye!””

And thus, the group of adventures, now motivated, began to swarm to the dungeon like locusts after a field of crops.

“Where are all the monsters?” Meslocicas asked.

“Dunno. Maybe we killed them all? That would make this so much easier,” replied Slodutraka.

At this point, since there were so many forks in the path, the group of 63 has split so now that Meslocicas was only with his original party members. Although they do want to forge ahead as fast as possible to secure the loot, the lack of enemies put the party on edge, as they cautiously advanced.

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“STOP!” Slodutraka suddenly yelled.

“What’s up?” asked Meslocicas.

“That looks like a trap ahead. Let me test it out,” Slodutraka replied as she plucked an arrow from her quiver and began to draw her bow. She seemed to have fired at nothing but the ground, but suddenly, the floor in front of them gave way to a pit of sharpened stakes.

“Well, looks like there’s probably treasure nearby then. Now where could it be hiding…” Slodutraka said as she started closely inspecting the walls around her. She tapped on the walls, until she noticed that it sounded hollow. “Aha, a fake wall!”

“Great,” said Meslocicas as he bashed the fake wall in with his sword. Suddenly, a rusty dagger was thrust at his face as soon as the wall came down, but he managed to step back and block it with his sword through instinct. What faced him was a weak, old goblin who was thrown back with the simple parry. Meslocicas quickly beheaded the goblin, and then looked around the room for more potential ambushes. He didn’t see anything, although something else did catch his eye.

“Ooh, look at that, a treasure chest. Let’s open it!” Meslocicas said as he walked over to open it.

“Wait! The chest might also be booby trapped! Let me check…. Oh, besides the fact that if you blindly try to lift the clasp, you’d probably prick yourself on a poisoned needle, there’s nothing. And, ei!” she said as she exerted some force to lift the heavy lid. “Not a bad haul! There is this expensive looking sword, some flasks of what probably are high grade potions, a Damascus ingot, a gold bar, and a notebook?” she said uncertainly as she started flipping through the notebook. “What in tarnation is this? It looks like some kid scribbled in it and tried to write something in a foreign language. And I thought it was some kind of special spell book or something. At least the rest of the loot is nice,” she said as she emptied the contents of the chest sans the notebook into her expandable magic bag.

“That’s nice of you, leaving that notebook as a consolation prize for anyone coming after us,” remarked Paprufreci.

“For the quality of the loot, I’d expected a stronger monster guarding it,” remarked Frehotreha.

“Alright, enough chatter,” yelled Meslocicas. “We still have a dungeon to explore and loot.”

And so they pressed on, diving deeper into the dungeon.