Chapter 8: Sitrep

High Priority Target - Research Team

Robert and Ivy were still wearing leather armor and carrying large bags full of provisions and equipment. Their boots were covered in mud and they were visibly sweaty. They were the very model of someone bringing trouble to your village. Several villagers visibly grimaced at being interrupted from their discussions.

"Chose a real bad day for a visit. Best you head north to Rosewood instead if you're looking for a place to stay." said one of them. A middle-aged man with a short beard and long hair. An old woman smacked her cane against his leg, causing him to jump and rapidly alternate between outrage and the look of an admonished child.

"Eyes as sharp as an eagle, but still blind." she said in a raspy voice, before gesturing at them to speak. "Has been many years since I last saw a [Paladin]. No need for the light show to introduce yourself, seen too many of you to be fooled.", she pointed to her eyes and smiled widely. They had no color, her irises an even grey with no visible pupil, but she was not blind. Several people perked up at the mention of the class. Others mumbled expletives. A paladin rarely meant good news.

"Robert of Stonewall, [Paladin] of the Church of Kynara. And Ivy Anaris, [Squire]" He was grateful she had confirmed his class to the villagers, meaning he did not have to make a formal greeting. The only true way to ensure he was not an imposter, was to gather a tiny part of the gods power as display. It was not dangerous, but he always wondered if the denizens of Ira had thought the same before the gods annihilated their island and every single one of their people. He would much rather use the Skill to avoid their attention rather than invite it. "We saw the warning in the swamp. One of yours?" Ivy asked.

The old woman nodded and introduced herself. "Melissa of Esterland. [Wisewoman], [Elder] and [Moonfall Hunter]." Robert considered that she might be the most dangerous person in the room, at least until the exertion killed her. While the body faded, Skills did not. He had seen a surviving moon fragment once, paraded around by the king and held in check by runes made of thousands of cores. Its every step had made the earth shake. Hunting them at their height seemed unthinkable, and yet Melissa was old enough to have lived through it and have a class for it. "What attacks my village? Do the gods speak against it?" she said, the smile fading from her face.

"It is a dungeon." came the answer from Robert.

"Bullshit!" came a response from the middle-aged man. "A dungeon spawn doesn't dodge [Siege Arrows] it can't fucking see." he touched the back of his neck. "I don't know what it is, but it's not a dungeon." he sighed and looked at the core sitting on the table. "And dungeon spawn don't chase people and stab them in the back." He sat down, with a look of contemplation on his face. "We found that next to Marcus' corpse."

"You really think it's a dungeon out there?" said a young woman.

Robert nodded to the woman, and looked to the middle-aged man. "I'm certain. A newborn, level 3."

"It's actually the reason we travelled here. I was not expecting...whatever it was doing." he continued. Melissa let out a sigh of relief in response. "So not here because of the gods." she said, calming the villagers. Robert had his suspicions, but nothing he was certain about. He did not feel the gods paying attention here. He hoped they wouldn't, even if it would have given him answers.

He spoke further with the villagers. Apparently there had been no strange happenings, only the three dead young, who had gone off in search of "something shifting" in the woods. The middle-aged man went by the name of Kalen and seemed the most knowledgeable. He spoke of the grey spikes of stone, and pointed out that they were all exactly the same height. Apparently he had tried to go into the dungeons domain and a dagger had been thrown at his head in the split-second he looked away. He had been a soldier before retiring, and according to him, you needed a Skill or many levels to have reflexes that fast. It was not unheard of for some goblins to be smarter and faster, but not to that extent. Must be an aspect affecting them, but a single aspect wouldn't warp it by this much. Especially because the core on the table did not have an aspect, but was just as dangerous. Apparently made before the dungeon reached its third level.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Robert grabbed it regardless, hoping for a hint of anything. Usually aspectless cores felt hollow, like they were empty and waiting to be filled by something. This was different, as if a dozen aspects had been crammed inside it, leaving a tangled mess without any of them manifesting. It felt like the mana around a person before they gained a Class. He needed to investigate this. He could expose the core to the dungeon mana to make it fill out its aspect and hopefully give some hint about what made it so dangerous, even though it would put him in danger. If it reached higher-tier monsters, then it would become exponentially more deadly and it might be nearly impossible to study it.

He peered at its runes. All of them looked like a standard goblin, with the exception of the one signifying the dungeon itself. It was yet unnamed, but the rune had a strange pattern of lines and dots overlapping it. He also looked at the marks inside its semi-transparent surface, but they gave no further hints beyond the fact that it was responsible for three deaths.

By this point the villagers had gotten used to his and Ivy's presence, and were returning to their previous argument. Some were in favour of going into the forest en masse and killing whatever it was before it could spread. Some thought it wiser to seek help from neighbouring villages and towns and seeking their high-level individuals. Some thought it had spread as far as it would, and if more fools stumbled there it was their own fault for ignoring the warnings. And finally there were those who wanted to simply leave, their group strengthened by the presence of a paladin. Each group thought the others were fools.

In the end, it was the falling of the sun that made the villagers scatter. Robert and Ivy had walked into the village late in the day, and it had slowly been turning to night. A blacksmith was willing to provide them shelter for the night, under the condition they would stay and investigate the dungeon. Something they were already intending to do, making it an easy thing to promise.

Ivy had been relatively quiet while in the central hall. When they were left alone in the room the blacksmith had given them, she finally spoke with suspicion visible on her face. "How did you know there would be something like this here?"

Robert was taken aback by the accusatory tone "What do you mean?"

Ivy sat down and looked at Robert with piercing eyes. "You've been looking for something, there has been speculation at the monastery about what it is. And if I'm right, you just found it." Robert was quiet for a moment. No wonder she had a level of [Tracker], if she was this perceptive.

He sighed and finally spoke about what he feared. "I think Kynara is going to burn this place to the ground."

Ivy seemed surprised at the statement. "Because of the dungeon?"

Robert nodded, and spoke. "My grandmother used to tell me stories when I was little. She used to be a [Delver], one of the few that actually retired without debts to their name."

"One time she told me the story of why she retired. Her team had been traveling in the mountains to the west, when they came across a dungeon. It was so isolated they imagined it had never been looted. They went inside looking for a dangerous payday."

"Instead what they found was a simple tunnel leading to the core chamber, as if it had never even tried to dig. The whole chamber was filled to the brim with cores. The dream of every delver come true. It even kept making more. They tossed their equipment in there, and it just kept making more and more cores and nothing else. They were rich."

"So in the end they made a decision. My grandmother and another member of their party would take the finest of the cores, sell them and return with a caravan and guards to carry and bring all of them to the city. Meanwhile the rest would camp and make sure nobody else tried to claim it all."

"So off she went to sell the cores. She had more money than she had ever seen, but that was just a pittance, so she did as they planned. On the way back, there was a storm with thunder so strong it would make you deaf unless you covered your ears, but she thought nothing of it. She had seen weirder things in her travels."

"When she finally reached the mountains, they looked different. There was no road anymore, only debris and cracked ground. She had to let her Skills guide her to the dungeon. But instead of a dungeon, there was only an enormous crater, still burning with white flame. There was nothing left of the rest of her party. Just a tiny shard of the core crystal left, glowing bright enough to blind."

"She gave the crystal to the church for safekeeping, instead of letting something stumble upon it, and thought it a sign to retire with the money she had. She had always thought the dungeons were something that could eventually be tamed, but it seemed like the gods had other plans for them."

"So..." Ivy said "You think the same might happen here?"

Robert nodded grimly. "It's not acting like dungeons are supposed to, and it's still spreading." He looked out of a window, at the rapidly darkening woods around them. "If the gods do take offense to its actions, then this whole province will burn. Maybe more."

That was the thought Ivy carried when she fell asleep that night. And in her dreams she saw herself dashing between spikes of stone, dodging something chasing her while she made her way towards a glowing cave. Robert was still awake, and watched as strands of mana weaved themselves around her while she slept. They could use every level they could get.