Chapter 10: Guild Branches All Over
“What the hell?” DM was flabbergasted. Did Shiba somehow manage to sneak the cat out of his dungeon? No, he was sure he remembered dismissing it along with the other companion-monsters from the night before. “Could she have grabbed another one without me noticing? That doesn’t make sense either. I didn’t instruct any other to be so friendly towards her…”
DM figured he may need to wait until his next opportunity and just ask her. First Lupy was giving him trouble, now Shiba? A new thought suddenly occurred to DM. Could Shiba have somehow summoned the cat? The idea of summoning a low-level monster wasn’t all that odd, even if DM hadn’t seen adventurers do such a thing before. It was conceivable.
If Shiba could summon the cat she snuggled with last night, does that mean the other girls could too? Other than Bandit, they had all been in close contact with monsters for hours. Perhaps Kat could summon a dog-type monster and Vulp could summon a fox. Depending on how the Guild and others in the city reacted, being able to summon a companion monster might not be such a bad thing. Could the requirement for learning the ability be to maintain close physical contact with the type of monster for a while—longer than any adventurer would normally be able to pull off?
“Oh yeah, Lupy too. Perhaps she could summon a… Oh crap.”
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DM decided to keep a close eye on Shiba and Lupy, limiting his ability to accomplish much of anything else. He wanted to observe them when they woke up and make sure they didn’t do anything that caused a commotion. Worst comes to worst, he’d summon a tentacle to restrain one of them and prevent a catastrophe.
After a two-hour wait that felt like two days, Shiba woke up.
“Huh?” She was surprised, although not startled, that a cat was occupying the bed with her. “How did you get here?”
The words woke Lupy up. “What are you talking about?” She rolled over to get a look at Shiba and noticed the cat. “Why is that here!?”
Shiba placed a finger in front of her mouth, shushing Lupy. She whispered, “I don’t know.”
Matching Shiba’s volume, Lupy asked, “Can you get the cat whenever you want now?”
“Maybe?”
“Oh, let me see if I can too.”
“Wait!” It was a whispered yell, but Shiba succeeded in delaying Lupy from trying to summon a minotaur to their room at the inn.
“Oh.” Realizing her silliness, she proposed the pair go outside the city to gather some herbs and hunt some low-level monsters. Shiba agreed, recognizing it as a good opportunity to test this all out.
“How do I… How do I make the cat go away?”
“Can’t you uh, unsummon it?” Lupy offered.
“But I don’t even remember how I summoned it…”
As the two racked their brains, eventually two tentacles rose out of the floor. One gestured towards the door, while the other one scooped up the cat and put it to sleep with magic.
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DM received an alert. “At least I took care of that cat problem first. I wonder who this is.” After waiting a minute, several humans, including Olivia, entered the dungeon. He sent a morphling to meet them.
“…Olivia.”
“Hi DM. Let me introduce you to—“
“Olivia, this is important, just ask the questions.” Olivia had been somewhat rudely interrupted by Guild staff that DM was not acquainted with. He thought he recognized one of the other three from monitoring people in passing, but he hadn’t communicated with them.
“Oh, fine. We’re here to ask what you did with the dungeon after I went home yesterday evening.”
“…What do you mean by did?”
“You see… The Guild has something called a Dungeon Crystal which allows us to monitor the status of nearby dungeons. This dungeon and quite a few others are all in range.”
“…I see.” That confirmed some of what DM already suspected or heard about before.
“Someone checks the Dungeon Crystal every morning to look for changes. Well, we didn’t used to check it so often, but, you know.”
“…Me?”
“Yes. Ever since your dungeon came we’ve been more careful. Anyway, this morning we noticed a change to the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest.”
“…What change?” DM was feigning ignorance, seeing how much they knew.
“You don’t know?”
“…Olivia, I don’t know what your Dungeon Crystal or whatever told you. Please get to the point.”
“Eek.” Olivia took a deep breath and continued. “The dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest is now called the Upper Gordu Dungeon. This dungeon is referred to as the Lower Gordu Dungeon. Both dungeons are marked as connected and that’s never happened before, to our knowledge.”
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“…And?”
“Didn’t you tell me you were traveling to the forest north of here?”
“…Yes. I conquered the dungeon in the Upper Gordu Forest and seized it.”
“You can do that!?”
“…Isn’t that exactly what your Dungeon Crystal told you?”
“Well, yes…”
“…I was curious to see what would happen if I defeated the other dungeon master and accessed his console. I was able to take control of that dungeon and now I am the dungeon master of both. That minotaur is still available for adventurers to fight if they want.”
“My God…”
“Olivia, ask him what he intends to do with the dungeon!”
DM was getting fed up with these other Guild staff rudely demanding Olivia serve as their intermediary. “…If the three of you aren’t going to speak with me yourselves, then leave.”
They each took a step back but kept quiet.
“…Olivia, I intend for the Upper Gordu Dungeon to stay the same, at least for now.”
“That’s okay with me,” Olivia explained. “But the problem is other Guild branches. They will have seen the same thing.”
“…What is the range on that Dungeon Crystal? Who can see these changes?”
“Probably most of the continent?”
“…Crap. How far are we talking?”
“I think pretty much the entire Holy State of Whites to the west, the majority of the Zarakhelese Empire to the east, the Grand Duchy of Chrystand to the south, most of the Nar Union to the north, and maybe a corner of the Eranamean Theocracy to the far northeast?”
“…How do you think they will react?”
“I don’t know. This dungeon is in our territory so we can control what happens for the most part, but the Upper Gordu Dungeon is in the Nar Union.”
“…So another Guild Branch has cognizance?”
“Yes. Even though the Guild is in theory an international organization, our ties to the branches in the surrounding countries aren’t that strong.”
“…Your ties to the Capital Branch don’t even seem that strong.”
“That’s true…”
“…How independent is the Guild from the country as a whole?”
“Oh! Here in the Holy State, the Guild is considered to be fairly independent.”
“…And in the Union?”
“I’m not sure, but I think they’re… less independent.”
“…Things could get interesting.”
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Lupy and Shiba moved away from the city and confirmed nobody was watching them. Lupy watched as Shiba concentrated and then summoned a cat. This confirmed that Shiba must have inadvertently summoned the cat as she was going to sleep earlier that day. Now that she understood how to summon it, she found unsummoning it less challenging. Checking, some of her MP was depleted, but not enough that she wouldn’t still be able to cast some spells.
“My turn!” Lupy concentrated. It took longer, but eventually she was successful. A minotaur rose out of the ground, looking exactly like the minions DM could summon. Lupy cheered and then climbed up the minotaur to ride on its shoulder. At her command, it marched around in circles parading her around the area.
“Can you also summon a wolf?” asked Shiba.
Lupy had the minotaur put her down and then concentrated again. After all, the wolf also joined Lupy for a few hours of sleep last night. However, try as she might, she couldn’t feel her mind getting any closer to summoning a wolf-type monster.
“No, I don’t think so. Only the minotaur. Can I summon a second one!?” She concentrated, but didn’t have any luck there either. Shiba also tried, but couldn’t bring forth a second cat. “Oh well. Let’s have our monsters fight!”
“What? Why!?” Apparently, Shiba didn’t appreciate the idea of her fluffy cat friend, monster or not, getting its head bashed in by a minotaur’s ax.
“Oh, you’re no fun! Maybe I can tell it to attack the city so we can see what happens?”
“No! DM will get really mad if you do that without permission!”
“I think he’s already mad at me…” Lupy trailed off.
“No he’s not! But he will be if you have a minotaur attack the city!”
“Okay, fine.” Lupy gave up on her idea, entertaining as it was.
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DM monitored Lupy and Shiba’s shenanigans while Olivia’s party returned to the Twin Cities, most likely to report their findings to the rest of the Guild. For now, DM would avoid doing anything else that would be visible to distant Guild branches. He would continue to offer a safe training environment in the Lower Gordu Dungeon, but for now he would not do anything similar with the Upper Gordu Dungeon.
As daylight waned he turned his attention to Thaw and Nina. He wanted to keep a close eye on her while she was on her first mission, just in case something went horribly wrong.
“Oh that reminds me, she didn’t maintain close contact with any monsters yet. I’m guessing Kat is already able to summon a dog-type monster, although she better not try it while training in the Church. Also, Vulp better not summon any foxes while meeting with Rufus’s family.”
If all the other girls could summon monsters from now on, fairness dictated that Nina should be able to as well. Now that DM was fairly sure of what the condition was for triggering it all, they could decide on the monster ahead of time. Should Nina learn to summon a monsters from the current roster, or perhaps wait for a new monster to get unlocked when the dungeon leveled up? There was no rush to decide.
DM had a twisted thought that it would be funny to teach Vera how to summon undead, given her strong connection to the Church. That would be a tough one for her to explain! On the other hand, DM didn’t dislike Vera and had no desire to cause her such problems. Based on her conversation with the priest, she was going to be visiting again real soon.
“Ah, there they go.” Thaw and Nina were atop a building, wearing enchanted cloaks and peering down at a pair from the rooftop. A boy of 16 or so handed something to a man, who turned on his heel. As the man departed the immediate vicinity, Thaw gestured to Nina with a hand signal and then moved out with an impressive vanishing act.
Nina continued monitoring the boy, waiting for him to move.
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The boy waited for the man to be entirely out of sight before so much as moving a muscle. He then exhaled and relaxed. Just as he started walking out of the dark alley, he took a blow to the inside of his knee and fell down, catching himself in a crouch. Before he could turn, a dagger was wrapped around his neck, releasing a sinister clink.
“Don’t move,” a voice, muffled by magical enchantments, commanded. In response, the boy’s eyes went wide but he rapidly nodded with very small head movements. It probably wasn’t the smartest way to react to having a blade so close to his neck, but he was fortunate not to receive wounds for the moment.
“Did you think we wouldn’t find out?” the boy was asked, the last two words annunciated menacingly.
His mouth wasn’t covered, but he chose not to respond. Even if he opened his mouth, he probably wouldn’t be able to say anything anyway.
“How hard do you think it is to dispose of one or two bodies?”
The boy did not appreciate the question and chose that moment to relieve himself.
The scary person behind him seemed to notice but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, they threatened, “If you don’t remember your loyalties, you’ll end up like him.” The boy didn’t need to think hard to figure out who ‘him’ probably was.
“You will pay back our good will with… exemplary service… or you will die.” The boy just barely noticed an odd pause as though the speaker was struggling to recite some difficult words, but he didn’t pay it any mind.
“Not a word of this to anyone. I might join you for a quest sometime, who knows?”
The dagger was removed from the boy’s neck. He waited several minutes before slowly turning his head and realizing he was alone.