The next day, I came back to Alex’s room. I knocked on the door four times, like what we discussed yesterday, as a countermeasure for them to know that it was me instead of someone else.

The door opened slightly, and once Chelsie saw who I was, she opened the door to let me in.

“Good morning; has anything of note happened?”

I asked Chelsie if anything had happened because she was the one who was guarding Alice for the night while everyone slept. We made a plan to determine who would guard Alice on a 24/7 basis and let the others be free.

Today I will be joining Alex’s party. I have nothing better to do because it would take a few days for Mila to finish making the prototype I had drawn up.

I’m going with just Alex, Wendy, and Lucia today because Maria is next on watch with Chelsie sleeping and as backup, since Maria can’t fight that much.

“Wait what?!”

Alex and Wendy shouted at the same time when I said I was going to join them, looking like they were scared of something. Are they afraid of going inside the dungeon? No, they made massive progress in the dungeon, so it’s not that. Either way, I am more excited to see how much they would improve and maybe a sparring match after we finish our quest for today.

Lucia, wondering why Alex and Wendy were shivering at me, said.

“What’s the big deal?”

Then she began dragging them out of the room.

I followed suit, and we went on our way to the adventurer guild. Strangely, Alex and Wendy were meekly walking behind me, and Lucia had to drag them to keep up like they didn’t want to go for some reason.

At the adventurer guild, I entered the adventurer guild first because I didn’t want to be associated with Alex’s party or get attention placed on me. They had made a big entrance despite it being unintentional; a lot of people were talking about them, and I didn’t want to stand out, so I entered first.

A moment or two later they came in, and all eyes were on them. There was a short silence, and people immediately began muttering about them.

“Is that them?”

“Ya, it’s them.”

“That bastard.”

“Not fair; why does he get all the girls to himself?”

Being immune to the glares coming his way, Alex made his way to the counter to enter into the same quest as me.

However, some of the people looking at him were looking at Lucia and Wendy. Most of them were guys gazing at their bodies, and some female adventurers looked at them with admiration. Those gazes didn’t really bother them too much except for one or two gazes from some female adventurers who were looking at Alex with lustful eyes. Lucia gave them a glare that could kill a person, and Wendy growled to make sure they backed off of Alex.

Once we both entered our quests and were inside the dungeon, for some reason Alex and Wendy suddenly became enthusiastic, and they were adamant that I didn’t fight because, in their words, they wanted to show off how much stronger they had gotten.

I stayed in the back with Lucia, which got boring very quickly because Lucia, being a tsundere, still hates me for some reason and gave me the silent treatment, so she wasn’t a really good conversation partner. However, she wasn’t yelling at me anymore or getting angry, which kind of evens out.

Eventually, we were on the 10th floor, and I asked them if they wanted to fight the boss or use a bypass ring instead.

To my surprise, Lucia wants to go in and fight it.

“I don’t think that's a good idea.”

Alex said it to Lucia fearfully, glancing at me repeatedly as he said it.

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“Jeezus, what's wrong with you today? You’ve been acting weird, and you too, Wendy.”

Lucia huffs and opens the door to the boss room.

“I haven’t done anything, and there is nothing to worry about, so let's go already.”

Going in, the Latrodec spider spawned in like the countless times I fought it.

As it was spawning in, Lucia walked up in front of the group, and her hair began to glow a fiery red. Then she raised her right hand to begin casting a spell, making a small ball of fire appear and grow to about one meter in size.

Once the Latrodec spider was done spawning, Lucia fired off her spell at the Latrodec spider, causing a big explosion and killing the Latrodec spider in one hit.

It was honestly very anticlimactic, but seeing how powerful Lucia’s spell was, I stared at Lucia back, and the slightest glimpse of a grin started to appear. For some reason, Alex and Wendy were holding each other, and I could hear their teeth chattering.

Were they afraid of the explosion caused by Lucia's spell, probably not because it became even worse when my eyes landed on them.

With a bright and merry voice, like all her anger and stress were gone, Lucia said.

“Come on, let's go.”

Picking up the drops, Lucia went to the door to the second stratum.

I followed Lucia to the next floor; I could hear or it was just my imagination that Alex and Wendy said.

“Thank god.”

“She’s scary.”

As we made our way down in the second stratum, Alex and Wendy seemed to be straining themselves fighting off the monsters attacking us, especially with the monsters being stronger each floor we go down.

They were fighting these plant-like monsters called Corpse Flowers, which are giant flowers around the size of a person. They attack with these tentacle-like vines used to strangle their prey, so fighting them tends to be quite the hassle.

From reading the Dradevow dungeon book, some monsters have much higher drop rates for parts than others, and the Corpse Flower is one of them. They drop their flower petals on occasion, which have a restorative effect if you consume them or put them on a wound, equivalent to a low-grade healing potion. Additionally, these petals are one of the ways to upgrade your low-grade healing potion to a mid-grade healing potion if you give it to an alchemist.

"Hey, are you sure you don’t want me to step in?”

Panting heavily, they both shouted at the same time no and proceeded to fight even harder than before.

Once we were done collecting the medium magical shards for the quest, Alex and Wendy were on the ground, arms spread out, sweating all over in complete exhaustion.

I told them they did a great job and that I would be fighting so they could take it easy on the way up because they looked exhausted. Plus, I really want to fight something because I just watch them all day. However, when I said I would be fighting, they immediately got right back up and said.

“What? I’m not tired. We can fight, right, Wendy?”

“Ya Ya Ya Ya, that that was just a break.”

Disappointed that I wasn’t able to fight, I sulked a bit in my mind as we went up.

As we were going to the guild, I was getting the feeling that we were being watched.

I look at Alex, Wendy, and Lucia, and they don’t seem to get the feeling of being watched, probably because they are just tired, causing them to have their guard down.

I approached them and asked if they felt like they were being watched.

“What do you think, Wendy? Can you find him?”

“No, there are too many people.”

“Okay, why don’t we finish our quest to make sure they don’t know that we notice them, then we walk to someplace more secluded with fewer people to see if anyone is tailing us.”

They all nodded and followed through with the instructions I gave them.

We exchange our shards to complete our quest, then regroup and walk to a place with fewer people.

“Do you recognize anyone following us?”

I whispered to them, and Wendy said she smelled the scent of someone following us and had already spotted them.

I sighed as Wendy described the person because I thought it was just my imagination, but somebody was following us.

"Okay, bye; see you tomorrow.”

“Ya, see you tomorrow, Nyx.”

I fake a goodbye with Alex and proceed to walk in a separate direction from Alex’s party.

In reality, I began tailing the person tailing us.

It was a plain-looking guy with brown hair and blue eyes, wearing normal commoner clothes.

The guy followed Alex, Wendy, and Lucia without noticing me.

They led the guy into the bad part of the city, the same place the kidnappers ran in an attempt to shake us off. The overall lack of people and maze-like alleys were a good place to capture someone without causing too much of a disturbance.

As for me, I manage to get on top of a roof, looking down at the person tailing us. I was waiting for an opportunity to jump and land on him so that we could capture him.

It didn’t take too long for the opportunity to come, in which I jumped down from a one-story house. I landed on his back to cushion the fall, causing him to fall face-first onto the cold hard ground.

He was knocked out, and Alex helped me drag him to an alley so that nobody would see us.