All the people in the room stared at Astrid in disbelief. She herself couldn’t quite believe she had just told them, but she had been desperate to stop Walter from trying to clear it. Despite only having interacted with him and his team a couple times, she was starting to care about them. She didn’t want them all to die because they entered the dungeon unprepared.

“What do you mean you have been in the dungeon? The location is kept secret to stop anyone from going there,” Mayor Tuva said.

“I stumbled upon it one day when I was out in the forest. I tried to seek refuge inside when I was being chased by a group of monsters.

“Then how are you here?” Jerrik asked. “I thought you had to clear it to get out. Did you do that?”

"No, I didn’t clear it, but you don’t have to. You just have to get all the way through to find the exit, so you don’t necessarily have to kill every monster. If that was the case, I wouldn’t have made it. The strongest monster I saw in there was above level two, but I couldn’t tell by tell much as my own monster-slaying level is too low. Luckily, it was sleeping when I was there, so I could walk around it.

“And you’re sure the dungeon is a trap and puzzle type? It couldn’t be just one of them? Or maybe something else?”

“I’m still not sure what you mean by types, but I would say I encountered traps and puzzles.”

"Well, dungeons are made by one or more of the gods, and they design the challenges around their domain,” Tuva said. “A trap and puzzle type would indicate a dungeon created by the god of deception and the goddess of education. It’s considered one of the most dangerous combinations. If you tell us what you experienced there, we might be able to determine the type.

“My memories of it are a little hazy,” Astrid admitted. “But I remember one of the rooms had a locked treasure chest that would spring a trap if you didn’t open it the right way. You had to open it though, as it contained the key needed to open the door. There was no other way out of the room. There was also a monster lurking around the room, and everything was dark. In another room, I had to rearrange some tiles on the ground to open the door. That room was also really dark, and it took me a long time to find the tiles.”

“Sounds like it's at least a puzzle type and probably a combination, Tuva mused.”

“How do you know the treasure chest was trapped?” Ina asked.

Astrid had long feared these questions so had planned a response for them a while ago. There were a few skills like hunting and fishing where sensing and setting traps were acceptable, so she just had to allude that she had one of those. People already knew she had many skills, so pretending to have one more wouldn’t raise suspicion. If she had to prove it, she could likely fake a hunting skill. It couldn’t be that different from sneaking up on a monster and stabbing it in the back. “When I was young, I sometimes set traps in the forest to catch small birds and rabbits when food was scarce, so now I have the ability to sense traps.” It wasn’t something she had done, but it sounded believable enough. Food had never really been a problem until the monsters arrived. Even then, she couldn’t say she had gone hungry. The food had just been blander than she was used to.

“I think then it’s best to assume the worst,” Tuva said. “The dungeon is a combination.

“Then how do we clear it?” Jerrik asked.

“We don’t,” Tuva said, in a tone that didn’t leave room for arguing. “I’ll send another messenger to the capital. Maybe once the king hears this new information, he’ll send help.”

*

It was an exhausted Astrid who finally made it back to her room at the inn. Luckily, this part of the city had not been wrecked by the spidermonsters. The other inn had not been so lucky, and a lot more people would be sleeping on the streets for the foreseeable future while repairs were made. She quickly undressed before lying down on her bed and immediately falling asleep.

A knock on the door woke her up. Sunlight poured in through her window, and she sat up groggily, rubbing her eyes. The knock sounded again, and Astrid stumbled out of bed, pulled on her dress, and went to open the door.

In the hallway stood Walter and Astrid, straightening up immediately.

“Sigrid, good to see you. I want to talk to you about yesterday’s event. I asked your sister to tell you to meet me, but you didn’t show, so I got worried you had been hurt.” Astrid had completely forgotten that she was supposed to meet with Walter at noon to debrief.

“I’m sorry. I just woke up. What time is it?

Two in the afternoon,” Walter answered, and Astrid felt breath quicken her. Had she really slept for over twelve hours? She had missed the window to rent the room another night. It had to be done before noon. Now it was likely already rented out to someone else. That meant she had nowhere to stay tonight or any other night. What was she going to do now?

“Don’t worry about it,” Walter said, and for a second, she thought he had read her thoughts and were referring to her living situation but then remembered what they had been talking about. He had just assumed she had panicked over the missed meeting. “We can have the meeting now. Can I come in?”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Astrid nodded and stepped aside. She sat down on the bed, trying to regain her composure as Walter sat on the only chair in the small room.

“I have already talked to Filip, and he informed me how Gorm blackmailed you.

“I promised not to tell on him.” Astrid said her panic was returning.

“It alright. I just want to let you know that he has been apprehended earlier today and will be charged for skipping his duties, amongst other things. Any rumors he tries to spread about you won’t be taken seriously.

“Thank you. Why did he leave guard duty to begin with?”

“You’re too young to worry about that. But maybe you can tell me more about what happened yesterday. You and Filip were the first ones at the scene of the monster breach.”

Astrid told the story as accurately as she could without giving away any of the information she was trying to keep secret.

“What made you engage in a fight with the monsters in the first place? That was very dangerous.”

“I know. But as a security guard, it felt like it was part of my role to protect the civilians.”

“We would never ask our first-year students to risk themselves like that. You could have just helped your teammate evacuate.”

“Maybe I could, but then more people would have been killed. The spiders weren’t going to stand around while we freed their captives. They had already started to eat people.”

“And you decided you should fight the monsters and not your teammate, who has more experience.”

“He may have more mana and know more spells than me, but not enough to fight three level two monsters at once.” Astrid said. She wasn’t going to mention that Filip was too scared of monsters to be of any help in a fight. “I at least have the speed to keep up with them and the health to survive a few hits. I figured I had the best chance at distracting the monsters until help arrived.”

“Seems reasonable. I’m glad to hear that your actions were based on risk assessment and not recklessness. You have potential to become a good monster slayer. We need people like that.

“Thanks.”

Silence fell over the room, and Walter studied it with a frown.

“Do you and your sister really live here?”

“Yes, we do.” She wasn’t going to tell the leader that by dinnertime she would be homeless unless a miracle happened before then. "We were looking for an apartment a while back, but everything was either already rented out or too expensive.

“I’ll see if I can arrange something for you. It won’t do for the heroes of the city to live in this place. I’m sure Mayor Tuva will agree.”

*

After the leader had left, Astrid went down to the innkeeper, but just as she had thought, her room had already been rented out to someone else. The innkeeper told her to be out as soon as possible, so she went back up to her room to pack. She didn’t have much already stored in her bag, so she was ready to leave a few minutes later.

As she left the inn, fear filled her. She had no idea what to do now. Walter had said he would try to find a home for her, but she doubted he would be able to do so before nightfall, so it wouldn’t help her tonight. Would she have to sleep on the streets until then? That was what most of the other refugees did. The thought alone made her spirit drop. Aside from a single night when she had had to survive twenty-four hours in the wild, she had always had a bed to sleep in. Tears began to burn in the corners of her eyes, and she wiped them away angrily. She refused to cry over this. It wouldn’t do her any good. She pushed the thoughts away before they could drain her spirit completely.

Astrid wandered the streets for a while looking at the destruction and the people busy cleaning up and doing repairs. The harvest festival was supposed to have lasted a couple more days, but no one was in the mood to celebrate after last night's monster breach.

To pass the time, she disguised herself as an adult and went to the job hall. Maybe there were some new quests she could take. There was one from the high priest of the healer asking for a number of different plants that she had come to learn were used in healing potions and ointments. She already had everything the quest asked for and more, so she accepted it and went to deliver the plants.

As she made it to the temple square, she noticed a long line in front of the god of medicine’s temple. It seemed that there were far more injured than the city had the ability to handle, and the priest and priestesses scrambled around trying to help as many as they could. She walked up to the door, receiving angry looks and comments from the people waiting in line. She ignored them and quickly made her way to the door.

“Miss, you have to wait your turn like everyone else. We’ll be with you as soon as we can.” A priestess said, sounding like she had already had this conversation a hundred times today.

“I’m here to complete this quest,” Astrid said.

“Oh wonderful. The high priest is inside tending to the critically injured. Go in and turn right, and then you’ll find him. I have to get back to work.” The priestess left, and Astrid stepped inside the temple and looked around. The walls were polished stone, and along the far wall stood the altar. On it there was a bowl with a handful of copper coins, some incense burners, and a few lit candles.

There were a lot of people in the room. Some praying by the altar and some resting on benches along the walls.

She turned right and walked through a door into a long room lined with beds. All of them were occupied. Astrid hadn’t realized how many had been grievously hurt last night, but this room held at least fifty injured and a dozen healers tending to them. They wore white ropes with different hem colors to symbolize their rank. All the healers were followers of the god of healing, as no one was allowed to practice more than basic first aid if they weren’t, and she recognized a few of them as she had delivered plants to them as part of her quests.

Astrid went over to the high priest, easily recognizable with the gold-colored hem, who was in the middle of assigning work to the other healers.

"I'm here to deliver the plants you requested,” Astrid said.

“That’s wonderful. Our stocks are almost depleted.”

Astrid pulled the plants out of her bag and handed them to the high priest. It barely made a dent in her stored supplies.

“Seems in order.” The high priest said he was pulling a large copper from his belt pouch. Astrid took the coin and looked around the room at all the injured people. What she had just given didn’t seem like enough to help all of them.

“I still have quite a bit of those plants, so if you need more, you can have them.”

“We could sure use it, but we can’t afford it right now.” The high priest answered.

“Why not?” Astrid had assumed all the temples were rich as they received offerings and donations constantly.

“Many of the injured are refugees who won’t be able to donate anything for their treatment, and I have everyone working overtime that needs to be compensated as well.”

“Don’t worry about payment.” Astrid emptied several slots in her inventory out on a table beside her. After all, Kelan, one of the healers, had saved her life yesterday, so this seemed like the least she could do to repay the favor.

“This is too much. I can’t possibly accept this.”

“I have no need for it myself, but a lot of people here do.”

“I’ll pray for your good health,” the high priest said.