Chapter 1

The next day after waking up and eating breakfast Bors handed me a huge backpack and told me to follow him, almost dragging me away from the inn and leading me into a small gathering of rough looking men.

The first guy was about my size but build like a wardrobe with wide shoulders and bulging muscles wearing some fur and a single sword at his hip, the second was much taller had even more muscle, either that or they were more evident since he didn’t wear a shirt, had a huge shield at his back with a mace by his hip, the last man looked like a classic rogue thin and with only a long dagger as a weapon but holding several pouches by his hip.

“Yoh Bors this the newbie you were telling us about” asked the first guy with his hands at his hip.

“Yep, this is Roland Synclar, Roland thats Mord Latro the party leader” Bors pushed me away from him and waved “Well I’m done here good luck”

“So you’re the newbie the bossman was telling us about huh” Mord looked me over with a critical eye then snorted “I suppose if you’re not fighting it could work but we’re not waiting for you if we have to run”

Looking at my out of shape and slightly overweight body I blushed causing the three of them to burst out laughing, the skinny guy shook his head and waved me over “Ha, don’t worry kid we weren’t like this when we started too, anyway I’m Scott Olds and that’s Guile India over there”

“yeah, yeah, now he’re how this is gonna work” Mord told me with a serious expression “We’re not going much deeper only to the 19th floor and we’ll avoid the more dangerous monsters, our goal is to hunt Battle boars for Boar meat so things are gonna get heavy for you, just stay out of our way and try not to lag too far behind, if we find a monster party drop everything and run away Understand?”

“Understood” I nodded, quite happy with the instructions even if I’d prefer a lighter load than meat. At least the party leader seemed more or less competent.

My initial load turned out to be an extra bag with potions and antidotes, a few meters of rope, some rations, three thick spears, an extra sword and mace and two sets of extra throwing knives for Scott in case they were needed leaving the adventurers with as little extra weight as possible so they could fight better.

We left Rivia behind us and made our way towards one of the walls while making some small talk “So, how did you turn up down here alone anyway newbie, did your party die on the way down?”

“Shut up Mord what if that really happened” chided Scott

“Heh, he’s an adventurer if he can’t take it he shouldn’t even be in the dungeon” the man boasted “And it’s not like one can’t make a living outside Oratio, my cousin is only level 1 and he lives quite comfortable, I hear he only has to fight monsters once a month in his city”

“No, I didn’t lose my team” I told them and thought about it a little before deciding to play along with Villi’s idea, it was as good an explanation as any “My familia played a prank on me, they dumped me down here on the safe floor while recovering from a night of drinking”

“Assholes” Mord said and the other two nodded before he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “If you put on some muscle you can come find me later, Ogma is a great god.”

“Thanks”

Soon we arrived at a huge, uneven hole in the ground where I could see the lower floor almost 30 meters down “alright guys you know what to do, Guile goes first and secures the landing while the newbie jumps last”

Then they proceeded to make their way down the edges of the hole taking care not to slip on the rocks until they stood ten meters from the ground floor and just let themselves drop down, I followed them as best as I could then looked at the party searching for enemies down on the ground and towards the walls, shit that’s a long drop.

Taking as much care as I could I found some holds at the edge of the wall and lowered myself letting my body dangle down in the air, glancing down again I gulped and let myself drop, the ground hit me hard sending a jolt of pain up my knees and I forcing me to bend them until I lost footing and fell on my ass but it was nowhere near as painful as I thought it would be, shit I didn’t think I could make this jump before without breaking some bones.

Giving me a hand Guile pulled me to my feet before pulling out his mace and started to walk in front of our little party.

The 19th floor was filled with strange trees and everything around was made from wood covered in a glowing blue moss or green foliage making it hard to see too far away from our location and leaving large shadows growing towards the ceiling, suddenly my eyes caught movement to our right and, before I could shout a warning, Mord turned towards the right and swung his sword in a devastating doward blow cleaving a centipede like monster in two and all hell broke loose.

From above us in the trees a dozen clawed centipedes started revealing themselves, their carapaces had acted as camouflage but now they pounced down on us with two sickle like from legs, Guile lifted his shield and bated the first four aside with a mighty swing before smashing another against a tree with his mace, Mord acted like a brute swinging his sword with all his strength but not completely without skill parring a blow aside before cleaving a second monster’s head and dodging yet a third one.

Of the three Scott was the most skilled, his reflexes were top notch as he pulled two daggers and threw then lodging the projectiles on the pouncing centipede’s unprotected bellies causing them to screech like mad, then he jumped up and kicked a monster towards Guile and bounced off a tree to slam on top of another pinning it down against the tree with his dagger between the joint of its carapace.

My eyes caught it all at the same time but my reaction felt slow and heavy I barely managed to pull out my sword and block two sickles from piercing my head, the monster released a screech in my face and used its superior strength to push me down to my knees and slowly overcome my arm’s resistance until one of the sickles drew blood from my cheek, gritting my teeth I released a scream and put as much strength as I could manage to push the beast to the left while throwing my body to the right, the roll dislodged most of the extra weapons I carried at my back but allowed me to survive.

Acting on instinct I slashed at the beast only for my sword to bounce of its carapace and almost fall off my numb hands as the impact left them trembling, my eyes caught the second monster attacking me but it was just too fast, with my arms still a little numb I couldn’t block the blow and barely managed to dodge one of its sickles before the second one hit me right in the heart, the armor managed to save my life but it drove all the air out of my lungs and sent me thumbing through the ground, thankfully away from any of the attackers.

The distance gave me just enough time to recover my breath and get back on my feet even if my chest was still hurting like hell, coughing a couple of times I looked at the two giant insects coming towards me, their black eyes glinting and sharp mandibles clicking in eagerness at an easy meal, shit I could die here, I could really die and not the immediate painless death of my previous life but I could actually get eaten alive piece by piece.

Breathing hard I stopped being stupid, stoped trying to copy my companions or study the beasts and focused entirely on what was important, surviving against a monster who completely beat me in status.

A kind of calm state feel over me as my eyes focused on the monster’s movements and my mind started working overtime, in the few seconds I had I did my best to regain my breath and come up with a plan of action, after that single exchange I knew there was no way I was gonna kill any of the creatures by myself they were so far above my level it wasn’t even a contest but at least they weren’t so fast as to become blurs to my new eyes, my heart started beating harder against my chest as excitement filled me and I moved.

Running to the left I put the monsters behind each other so that they would come one at a time and observed them as close as I could, my body couldn’t compete with their speed but my eyes caught their every movement noticing the second one of the beasts lifted its front from the ground and attacked, twisting aside I parried one of its sickles trying to slash at me and kicked its head away from me causing it to lose balance and smash into a tree then I rolled under the second beast’s pounce as it smashed the wood on the ground.

I still wasn’t fast enough and one of its blades nicked my leg leaving a gash the size of my hand but I managed to get at the creature’s back and turned away to run back towards my party, not my best decision since the beast swung its body back bludgeoning me with its carapace and sending me flying before twisting around and spewing liquid towards me.

Covering my head I did my best to let the liquid fall on the backpack while desperately trying to find the second beast, thankfully it had gotten its sickles stuck to a tree and was still trying to pull it out, turning back to the immediate treat I moved the second I saw it’s attack start and managed to parry another two sickle blows aside before my hands became too numb from the cheer strength of them and the monster managed to beat the sword out of them with the third hit then it flew forward to bite me opening its mouth wide, I knew I was done, it was just too fast.

A throwing knife flew over my shoulder and buried itself deep in the monster mouth causing it to hear back in pain and splashing me with green ichor then Mord was there cutting of the creature’s head with a single blow before kicking the second so hard it was flattened against the tree it had been stuck into, he took the time to get his sword point between its carapace and pierced it until it stopped moving “Good job keeping two of the things occupied newbie but try to stay a little closer next time”

As I stood there breathing hard Mord cleaned his sword on a piece of cloth tied to his waist and snorted “Come on get harvesting already we don’t have all day”

Still recovering from the scare, I took a few seconds to regain my breath before slowly lifting my hand to my face and wiping the ichor away from my mouth… Strange, why was I smiling? I took one last glance around before grabbing my sword and looking it over, it didn’t have any ichor so I put it at my back and straightened myself “fuck so that’s the diference between a level 1 and level 2”

“Level two, what’re you talking about, those things are all level 1” Mord kicked a centipede over rolling on its back “Sure they’re a little strong but nowhere near a level 2 monster, if we find a group of those we’re running away”

“Shit”, taking a few more breaths I managed to find the smaller dagger Bors had lent me and pull it out before looking at the centipede “shit where’s the magic stone in this one again?”

“The chest newbie, it's always the chest”

“Right… shit” taking the first magic stone out was complicated and took me nearly a minute of cutting at the things belly but it became much easier after that and in a few seconds I had 13 magic stones and two centipede carapaces on my bag, Mord saying there was no sense leaving drops even if they weren’t what we were waiting for and the carapaces were light enough.

Things weren’t so hard after that, we didn’t get ambushed by any more large groups and Scott managed to find most other mobs before they were even close allowing Guile to tank them much easier to the point I only had to defend myself when a firebird showed up and tried to fry me from range, thankfully my eyes noticed the gathering of mana, acting fast I managed to hide behind a tree when the bird washed my location with a breath of fire in the shape of an arrow and Scott managed to snipe its wing with a throwing knife, he lost the knife but we got three fire feathers in exchange.

Once we had to hide from a group of four bugbears, giant bears capable of walking on two legs and far too agile for their large bodies but the party had some herbs to mask our scent and our scout saw them from far enough away we had time to hide, we still stayed in place for almost ten minutes after they passed us just to make sure before Mord patted me on the shoulder “Lucky you, we’d probably get away but no way could you outrun those things if we got into a fight”

Then we finally made our way outside the forest and I saw a large stretch of land with wooden corridors running all over the place forming cliffs covered in glowing blue moss and a large carpet of hip high grass, without the trees to block vision we were immediately noticed by a group of seven lizardman wielding metallic flowers, four of them had long spears made from rose stalks, their blades a sharp red rose bud while another two had large wooden clubs and the last one had a blooming flower as a shield and a large sword.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

After a second of hesitation the lizardman with a shield released a loud roar and they all charged us in a mad rush, Scott threw a few daggers at him but the lizard blocked them all with ease so he changed targets and managed to hit the eye of a spear wielder causing it to stumble and slow the others down giving our tank time to get ready, when they were very close Guile hid his head behind his shield and released a counter charge, exploding into movement so fast even my eyes couldn’t keep up he smashed straight into one of them like a bowling ball while sending two others sprawling the blow so hard he broke the one he had aimed for leaving it twitching into the ground.

Mord dashed ahead of the group and engaged the shield wielder in single combat while Scott finished off one of the fallen lizards before they could recover and engaged another dancing around its stabs he used the dagger to parry the spear letting it pass his side before grabbing the shaft and getting in close with the beast, the Lizard dropped the spear and attempted to bite him but it was too late his dagger piercing right through the beast’s neck.

Guile started trading blows with a club wielding lizard when the last one managed to flank him, remembering everything I had seen from both blade wielders I pulled my sword out of my back and corrected my grip then used Scott’s footword to dash across the field and release a devastating downward slash on the Lizard’s lifted arm, the blow was perfect cutting deep into the lizard’s biceps to the point I felt it’s bones breaking but not cutting all the way through, the beast reacted faster than I thought possible twisting around to claw at me and yanking my sword out of my hands, with a sore wrist I avoided a new scar by millimeters as I kicked away from the lizard and found two of Scott’s throwing daggers on my belt.

My sharingan had watched the man throw the things more than a hundred times by now so I let instinct take over not thinking about my actions, swinging both arms the daggers flew towards the irate lizard one of them hitting it in the snout and bouncing away as I didn’t have enough strength to pierce its hide but the other pierced its eye causing it to thrash and scream in pain then start running away.

“hey!” I screamed seeing my sword still stuck on its arm, thankfully Guile had managed to finish his opponent, dropping his shield the nearly nacked man dashed after the beast and pounced, using both hands he swung his mace and pulverized the lizard’s knee actually sending its leg flying then caving it’s head in when it fell down.

Grabbing the dead Lizard by its remaining leg Guile happily waved at me and dragged the corpse through the grass leaving a large train of blood behind him, then he grabbed the sword and pulled it loose before throwing it to me “Thanks for the save newbie, careful with your weapon, its from average materials but well made”

“Thanks” putting the sword away I picked my knife and started digging for the magic stone, cutting at an humanoid’s chest left me with a queasy feeling in my stomach, they were a little too close to humans for my liking but I ignored it and by the third one it barely affected me, turning to the resting Guile by my side I asked “why’re we after Battle boars anyway, if we want money wouldn’t any monster do?”

"Usually yeah” the barbarian said and spilled some cold water over his head to refresh himself “but with the Goliath holding up the way for the last two days Rivira is bound to run out of food soon and Battle Boars are one of the few beasts to drop meat”

“Hey Newbie, less talking, more harvesting!” Screamed Mord from the shade of a tree while Scott kept an eye out for new threats “Come on I could do a better job!”

“Asshole” I cursed again but I was already starting to get the impression the bastard just liked messing with people.

“Don’t mind the boss he’s a softy inside” Guile confessed while I gathered a few Lizardman’s nails that had dropped and kept them in the bag, “Come on our goal is just ahead”

Another two lizardman parties latter and we reached our target, a large wooden clif wall with a dozen ropes hanging from it, before reaching the top there were two small huts hanging halfway off the cliff like bird’s nests with large spikes in a circular position protecting the base, the spikes were made from tree trunks and positioned with just enough space between them for a human to pass comfortably, some of the spikes were rotted and one had fallen down and started to be decomposed by the blue moss while vines were trying to claim the suspended houses with the wall itself seeming to eat at the structures.

“Yeah it seems we’re gonna have to tell Bors to put some new spikes in, come on newbie get cutting” Mord shouted and all four of us started to clear the place of vines and check that everything was alright “Damn dungeon keeps trying to fix the terrain so Bors has to fix things every week of two but monster farms like this are how the city is still standing”

I could see it, despite the decrepit look the location had been giving me. I could see how three to five people could hold this location against a lot of monsters if there were not too many flying ones “Aren’t the fire birds a problem?”

“All wood on the 19 floor is fire resistance and we treat the covers making them almost impossible to burn so, as long as we kill the birds fast they aren’t a threat” Scott answered while Guile and Mord picked the spears from my pack laying one of the ground at their backs and hold one each, then Scott shouted from one of the houses “Come on kid climb in”

Pulling myself up with one of the ropes I used my dagger to clear the vines from the second house and saw the wall was really eating the little building, slowly dragging the structure inside itself. It'd probably take another month but the house would eventually be consumed by the wooden clif.

Inside the house was a small bag with two small potions and a large crossbow with a lot of bolts spread on the floor, some of them were even engulfed by the wall already, gathering the mess of ammunition I pilled them all against the window and turned towards my companion watching him load the crossbow just by pulling it’s string, shaking my head I lowered the crossbow and used my entire body to arm it not wanting to tire myself out trying to imitate the level 2.

“Everything ready boss?”

“Ready!” Mord shouted back while stretching his arm and I watched as he pulled one of his pouches off his belt and threw it behind the two warriors, it immediately started smoking and, soon after I started hearing roars “Aha here they come!”

Turning my head towards the horizon my increased vision soon caught sight of the monsters, they were spread out and in small groups but there were a lot of them running our way, at least 40 lizardman were leading the charge but they soon got outpaced by a group of large Bugbears and at least 20 Battle Boars, the swines were almost two meters tall with tusks the size of swords and must have weighed almost a ton, then came the centipedes and other insects.

The dragonfly’s made it to our spot first, large and with long bodies only a little smaller than a man there were 10 of them and they started pelting our position making Guile raise his shield for protection, Scott immediately started sniping them down taking out two of the things before they even noticed but I didn’t feel comfortable wasting ammunition on the things since they were too thing and agile, then the first bolt of fire hit his position making him duck down as three Firebirds took turns bombarding his position.

Lifting my own crossbow I aimed at one of the birds flying lazily in the air and shoot hitting it squarely in the chest, my sharingan making the feat easy, the other two birds scattered and, while I took my time reloading, Scott took out a second and another two dragonflies.

I missed the second shoot since every enemy had started flying as fast as it could but at least they had started focusing on us allowing the two on the ground to focus on receiving the first charge, Battle Boars and Bugbears reached first, their large and fast bodies punishing the ground when a battle boar got one of its legs stuck in a hole and flipped, I could hear the sound of it’s leg breaking even a kilometer away and then a bugbear hit his fallen body sending them both sprawling.

Another five of the large monsters fell in the small holes while two bugbears actually got impaled in large spike traps on the ground, the wooden spikes weren’t enough to immediately kill the muscled beasts but they were quickly stomped to death by those behind them.

The first Bugbear to reach the circle triet to jump over the spikes but choose one of the better ones and it didn’t snap under the beast’s weight, the monster was stuck there trying to climb up long enough that I just took my time and used my third shoot to pierce one of it’s large eyes, the crossbow having enough strength to drive the bolt right into its brain.

The spike circle funneled the beasts right to the only opening being guarded by the two warriors and they braced themselves receiving the first two battle boars right on their spears and killing the monsters instantly, kicking their bodies away they had time to receive a second charge killing another bugbear and wounding a battle boar before one of their spears snapped and they had to retreat a little, Mord picked up the second spear and the fight truly started as the warriors fought to keep too many monsters from entering the protected circle.

Scott finally took out the last firebird and I actually managed to clip a dragonfly’s wing causing it to fall down on top of some monster, the first centipedes started arriving and climbing over the larger beasts to get to the humans inside forcing Guile to exchange his own spear for the mace and keep the bugs away while his party leader killed the larger monsters.

With only a few dragonflies still alive I had the time to look at the wave of monsters, there were still quite a few bugbears trying to destroy the spikes and having some success with the more deteriorated ones but, without the room for a charge, the battle boars were less than effective, unfortunately the lizards had started arriving now and they could fit between spikes if they could get through the rest of the monsters.

Deciding to experiment I concentrated into one of the more effective bugbears and tried to send it an illusion of a human by his side, casting lesser ilusion took a little effort and I felt some energy leave me but was kind of instinctive, unfortunatly I saw no effect, I also saw no fluctuation on the things magic with my eyes, I was concentrating on the beast for almost 40 seconds when I finished arming my crossbow and shot it in the neck not killing it but wounding it enough that other beasts forced it away.

Then I saw another bugbear looking at me, its face filled with rage and changed tactics, meeting its eyes I cast Major Visual Illusion instead feeling a large drain on my magic and having to grab the edge of the window to steady myself, I made the thing see and smell every monster around itself as a human, the effect was instant, I saw some of my mana entering the beast’s body from its eyes and almost… infecting it before it went absolutely feral killing three bugs and even caving another bugbear’s head in before the other monsters noticed and turned against it.

Scott was mostly ignoring the four remaining dragonflies now and instead aiming for the lizardman squeezing through the spikes and keeping them from succeeding, monsters and bug corpses were starting to act as obstacles to the lizardman and a few were even killed by mistake by the larger monsters.

Noticing how effective my little sharingan trick had been I started looking for another beast to trick catching the eyes of another bugbear and a wounded battle boar the result was… impressive even if it left me panting in exhaustion, the first bugbear had just been killed when the second one went insane, as for the battle boar it had been forced back and allowed to retreat building space to gather a strong charge so, even wounded it came back moving at 60 km/h, using its tusks it gored the first bugbear it hit while simply stomping on six lizardman and a few bugs continuing to attack everything in a straight line until it was stopped by the cheer amount of corpses in its way, then it proceed to stomp or try to gore anything that came even close.

Stumbling away I put my back against the wall and cradled my head almost falling down from the headache, I could feel myself being just short of a mind down, shit I had gotten cocky and almost fucked up.

Pushing myself away from the wall I grabbed my discarded crossbow and tried to arm it again but my arms were shaking from the effort, I didn’t even notice my own sharingans had deactivated so, when a blur flew through the window and hit me in the leg with a shot I was caught completely by surprise and released a scream of pain.

Looking at my tight I saw the dragonfly’s projectile piercing me almost all the way through and nearly pulled it out before remembering blood loss was a thing, with some effort and a lot of gritted teeth I managed to ignore the pain and load another bolt before looking at the fight bellow, without my sharingan for help I could barely make out what was happening in the confusion so I just aimed at the mass of monsters and shoot hoping to hit something, then another dragonfly almost took my head off and I just ducked down.

A minute later I remembered the small bag of potions and found the health one, pulling the projectile off I splashed the potion on my tight and saw it knitting back together at enormous speed, a few minutes later I was completely healed and the noise from fighting had disappeared.

“Hey… huff, hufff… you alive there newbie?” came Mord’s voice from below so I gathered myself and answered.

“More or less!” noticing my headache getting better and my sharingan reactivating I released a breath of relief “had to use a potion”

“Eh what can you do, they're cheap ones anyways, come down here, time to get harvesting!” With a sight I managed to push myself back on my feet to see Mord posing above the body of a large bugbear and giving a roar of triumph “take that you overgrown rug who’s your boss now huh!”

Scott just palmed his face while Guile was sitting down and laughing loudly, covering a large claw mark on his chest with bandages

Using one of the remaining ropes hanging from the safehouse I lowered myself back to the ground and looked around at the massacre, blood painted the floor completely red and there were literal piles of monster corpses where they had tried to climb over each other to get to the warriors, seeing as nobody else was moving I pulled my dagger and resigned myself to harvesting everything by myself, still a little shaken I had to ask “Shit wasn’t this too dangerous?”

“Naa, it was a little harder than usual but that's just because some of the things went berserk and Mord took the opportunity to save some Valis” Scott told me with a smile while I ripped a magic stone from a crushed centipede.

Finishing the easier monsters I gathered the dropped items in a spot without blood or ichor and approached my first bugbear, getting to the muscular beast’s magic stone was a pain in the ass leaving me elbow deep in its gut, thank the gods the monsters dissolved into dust after I took the stone away making my job easier with each one I finished “What do you mean?”

“Heh, this isn’t the first time we do this newbie” Mord bragged, then kicked the body of a lizardman away and cleaned a spot for himself to sit “we must have done this what, a hundred times before we dared even try with only three people”

“A hundred and fifteen” Scott corrected “then we did it another five times with an extra party looking over to save our asses in case we messed up”

“Yeah that seems about right, pass me the water Guile” Grabbing the bag of water Mord took a long drink and sighed in happiness “sure Rivira lost some adventurers when it first started doing this but we got it down to a routine”

Looking around I couldn’t see how the warriors would have survived without my illusions driving monsters insane, the lizardman or centipedes would have eventually gotten into the clearing and overcome them with numbers.

Releasing a laugh Mord decided to explain “You don’t really think we usually fight everything here do you? Let me tell you newbie the secret to surviving the dungeon is to work smarter not harder, you saw how the battle boars and bugbears were the first to arrive and blocked the patch for the others right?”

“Yeah, they were pretty disorganized”

“Well this won’t work on the deeper floors but here we just have to survive long enough to get the biggest amount of monsters in a small area then Scott there start throwing two or three magic bombs to kill most of them, after that we just have to finish off the stragglers, groups with a powerful mage have it even easier since they can chant without interruption inside the safehouse”

Turning towards the rogue I saw him patting one of his larger pouches at his waist, thinking about what I had seen I nodded, yeah I could see it working, the larger monsters get funneled into a smaller area trying to get to the warriors while the smaller ones are forced to climb over or squeeze between them, when they were as concentrated as the party could manage someone just blows them all up.

“Worst case scenario the explosions buy us enough time to climb the ropes to safety” nodded Guile while pointing at the cliff with his thumb.

“Wouldn’t that be a little too… easy?” I questioned, from what I remembered Adventurers only gained levels when they went through challenges

“Well… not easy, it took a lot of training” Mord told me and grabbed a piece of ration “newbie let me tell you a secret, not everything has to be about gaining levels, sometimes it's alright to just make a living, sure I’d get more excelia if I was constantly putting my life at risk but, the thing with taking risks is that sometimes they don’t pay off and, if it’s your life on the line…”

“Yep” said Scott sitting besides his party members and taking the water from Mord’s hand “they say Oratio is the city of adventurers but a better name would be the city of the corpses, for every Sword Princess or King there are tens of thousands who die”

Continuing to harvest crystals and drops I spent the next hour and a half just slashing open monsters and watching them decompose into dust, when I was finally done my arms were aching and my back was killing me from having to lean over so many corpses but we had three pouches full of magic stones, a nice pile of smaller monster drops and almost 70 kilos of boar meat, it would have to be washed and cooked at the town but would feed us for a few days.

“Great, that should be enough, we're going back before it gets too dark” Mord told the group as I finished putting everything inside the giant backpack.

Carrying everything was hard and left me huffing and puffing to the point I had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other or risk falling down but, surprisingly, I made it all the way, the bonus from being a level 1 being impressive, thankfully we only got into another two small fights and I didn’t have to engage since the dungeon hadn’t spawned things back yet.

We reached the town when the lights were almost gone and the party decided to celebrate the delve in the pub but I was just too tired, my entire body was aching and my back was killing me, I didn’t even know how I hadn’t fallen down yet so I just handed the entire haul of drops to Bors for safekeeping and distribution, handed the magic stone pouches to Mord and ignored everything else until I saw a bed in front of me, then I fell on top of it and passed out.