I had moved on from the Western movie-esque village. By my side trotted my new bag carrier. Although I would have preferred it to be a horse, it was not. Trotting next to me was a donkey. A short, grey-haired donkey, with bags thrown over its back.

Currently, I was closing in on my next location in the Dulin border march. Rukuk village. A village that was close to the Sand and Stone Labyrinth. This place would have monsters for me to fight, although not as many as a dungeon. From what I understood, a labyrinth was simply the echo of a dead dungeon. Weaker. A still warm corpse, if you will.

The surrounding environment became warmer as I went south to the border. And along with the added heat, the grass and silt turned to sand. Not desert levels of sand, but there were grains of the stuff mixing in with the dirt, and grass turning into patches of grass.

Squinting, I could see a cloud of dust coming up from the road ahead. Soon enough, I could see the source of the dust cloud. Five people on horses were riding my way.

I kept up my pace until we met. The five people surrounded me, forming a cloud of dust around me. A cloud of dust that got in my fucking mouth! “Fuck.” I took a swig out of my waterskin, swishing it in my mouth before spitting it on the ground.

“What’s a kid like you doing out on this road?” The seeming leader questioned. Unlike the rest who wore metal and cloth armour, his was obviously of better quality, with some artistry worked into the metal.

“I’m going to Rukuk.”

“Rukuk? Trying to be an adventurer? I’m afraid you're a bit too young for that yet.”

“I’m not an adventurer, nor am I planning to be one.”

“Oh.” The man's eyes narrowed. “I’ll have to ask you to lower your hood.” His hand moved from the reigns to grip the pommel of his sword.

I flipped my hood down and back, and the man relaxed.

“Well then, carry on. Do be careful, you never know when a mouse beast-kin might show up.” The man and his posse continued on down the road.

Mouse beast-kin?

…

Rukuk village was large. Really large, almost the size of a city. But as I walked down the streets with my donkey, there were only a few people here and there.

I tied my donkey up outside an inn and went inside. The saloon doors creaked back and forth behind me. Inside the inn was desolate. There was one person eating at the bar, wearing leather armour and a sword strapped to their side. On the other side of the bar counter was a woman in robes reading a book. Both looked fairly young, not as young as me obviously, but in their mid-teens. They both looked up at me as I entered, with the man's face turning back to his food after a second.

The woman put her book down and stood from her stool. “Looking for a room?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Room for one, and at least a week's stay for now.”

The woman nodded and I handed over the copper’s. It was surprisingly cheap. After all was said and done, I bought a meal of meat and bread. As I ate, I expected more people to come in, but no one did. It was just the two.

“Is it just you two here?” I asked.

The woman nodded her head. “Yeah. I only spend half my time here. Not too many customers. The other half I spend in the labyrinth with my cousin here.” The aforementioned cousin had finished his meal and was practicing sword swings on a straw dummy out the back.

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The woman put her book back down. “So what’s your story? Little kid run away to be an adventurer?”

“Yeah.” I lied. “My parents were alchemists, but it wasn’t for me.”

She raised her eyebrow. “Alchemists. Hm.”

“Yup. Are you interested in any potions? I may seem young, but I picked up quite a bit from my folks.” Nobody ever said I wasn’t a good liar.

The woman held out her hand. “The name’s Alexia, and that doof out there’s Stephen.”

We shook hands.

“Perhaps we could use a few health potions.”

I nodded. That was common enough. And I had not been idle on my trip here. Using Creap, I managed to forage quite a few materials for alchemy during the walk. It seemed that the little bugger was good at reacting to nearby alchemic ingredients. Combining the foraging with the trial and error alchemy every night, I managed to reproduce a few similar potions.

Unfortunately, I was low on funds and had to use myself as a test subject. Thankfully with pinpointed and smart use of [Flesh Cauldron], I managed to mitigate the adverse effects. The [Concocted Body] skill also had a few benefits in that regard. It was an odd skill. It seemed to partially adapt to alchemic effects, and provide me with some odd mutations/skills of a sort.

For example, that heated drowsy potion I had first created. When I drank it, I could feel the heat in my body. I was able to gather it in my breath, causing my breath to be slightly warmer than average. Which is basically worthless. But when I cupped my hand to smell my own breath, I was hit with a second wave of drowsiness.

So It seemed that my breath had a weak drowsy effect. But the drowsy breath lasted only a little longer than the potion itself. But further experimentation proved that the negative effects could be removed, such as the drowsy potion making me drowsy at all. Of course, it had the negative effect of being useless to anybody else without the [Concocted Body] skill. I also had yet to remove the heat effect, which caused me to get really thirsty.

“I do have some health potions. 25 copper a piece.”

“Wow.” Alexia seemed surprised. “That’s pretty cheap.”

I nodded. “Yes, well, they are not regular health potions per se. But if you don’t mind the spicy flavour and a burning sensation around the healing wounds, then they’re just like normal.”

“Uhh, I guess I don’t mind.” Alexia handed over the coins, buying two potions.

I put the 50 copper away in my pocket, then adjourned to my room.

…

After a good night's rest, I was ready to enter the labyrinth. I had left my bags in my room, booby-trapped of course. The donkey, whom I had named Key, was probably eating hay in the inn’s stable if I were to guess.

The walk to the labyrinth was actually the only time the streets seemed somewhat populated. Although the place still seemed abandoned. I also noticed that there weren’t a lot of adventurers around, despite this being a labyrinth. Adventurers were not subtle, so I doubt there was any hiding in the crowd. They always wore their ranks in plain sight, and I didn’t see any swinging medallions on any necks.

The entrance to the labyrinth was a hole in the ground, framed by derelict blocks of sandstone. I noted that the entrance was unregulated and went down.

The sunlight faded only to be replaced by the light from torches that were being lit around me. Getting the picture, I also lit my own torch, creating a circle of light around me. Aside from the initial plume of smoke from lighting it, no smoke came from the torch. It was specially made for lighting areas underground. Commonly known as a miner’s torch, it lasted a good while and didn’t give off smoke.

The stairs and tunnel were made of the same sandstone as the entrance. I noticed divots in the wall, evenly spaced down the tunnel. Perhaps that was where the labyrinth used to have torches for lighting. I heard that personal torches were unnecessary in dungeons, as all their areas were fairly well-lit. Of course, it is a different story when they die. I was essentially inside a corpse right now.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, there were three paths ahead of me, with my fellow delvers splitting into all of them. Was this a maze? I fuckin hate mazes.

I picked the right-most path and walked forward. Then a right. Another right. Now a left. Aaand I’m lost. Perhaps I should have bought a map.

Thankfully, there were sections of the wall that were ruined, creating new paths, essentially skipping parts of the maze. After ten minutes of wandering, I came across my first monster. It was a lizard. A large brown scaly lizard with six legs and a bright red tongue. When I saw the monster, my left hand gave a little twitch. That meant something in this lizard was an ingredient. And I wanted it!

I unsheathed my dagger. It's stabbing time!