I came to a fork in the path. With no indication of which path would be the better option to take, I contemplated my options.
“Arvin, do you know which one we should take?” I asked.
He hopped off my shoulder and investigated both paths. At each, he listened for any noise, looked around with a critical eye, and even sniffed at the floor. Eventually he pointed to the left-hand fork. Trusting his judgement, I waited for him to hop back on my shoulder, then headed down the left fork. After a few minutes, the path widened and I could hear something up ahead. It was not the yipping or barking of dogs. Unable to place it, I glanced at Arvin, who seemed totally at ease.
As I was about to round another corner, an awful stench had me covering my nose and trying not to gag. ‘That reeks so bad. Ugh, I hate fighting smelly monsters.’ I rounded the corner and saw what could only be a troll in front of me. ‘Great, these are a pain in the rear, even when I can fight properly. Stupid regenerating monsters. Now if only I had some gas and a match.’ Before I could check my inventory for flammable substances, Arvin jumped off my shoulder and started fighting the troll. I was not sure what I had expected, but it was not for the sword to hover in front of him and start slashing at the troll’s legs. As Arvin fought the troll, the rest of the cats began yowling and struggling to escape.
Quest: Keep the party alive while they defeat the troll.
Completion Criteria: Defeat the troll with no casualties.
The quest notification had me sighing in frustration. After I went to the trouble of capturing the cats to keep them together, I had to let them go and hope they didn’t split up. Sighing in resignation, I release Daivan and Rehna first. As they somehow started hacking at the troll with their now hovering swords, I released Bren and Mai, who immediately joined in the fight. Finally I released Sol, who immediately cast a fireball, killing the troll. ‘WTF Sol, that will hit your party too.’
Quest complete: no further penalties enacted.
All three fighters were sporting singed fur, which smelled almost as bad as the troll, and annoyed expressions. With the troll dead, I used a holy channel to heal the party of all damage. After making sure that everyone was alright, I turned to Sol.
“Sol, you need to think before you act, you could have easily killed Daivan, Rehna, and Arvin.” He hung his head in shame as I continued to lecture him.
My mom-mode had been activated, and I was full on lecturing Sol like he was an unruly child that had broken the rules.
Quest Failed.
Penalty: Vision range is reduced by 5 feet, your new range of sight is 15 feet.
Remedial Quest: gather the party.
Time limit: 5 minutes.
I broke off my lecture mid-sentence and looked around. I saw that Mai was missing. ‘Damn it, you should know better than to let the damn thief out of sight. They will always find trouble.’ With no time to waste, I scooped up the rest of the cats and looked around for clues to where she had gone. I spotted paw prints going out of the room. It looked like she had walked through some of the troll’s blood. Thankful for the lucky break, I started sprinting down the hall. An open doorway quickly drew my eye, and I spotted Mai. She was laying sprawled out on a pile of gold coins as if trying to claim them all for herself.
Remedial quest complete: no further penalties enacted.
Resume quest: keep the party together and alive.
‘That dang thief-cat found a hidden room.’ Before looking at the room, I placed each of the cats, except for Arvin, back into a grenade pouch to make sure they could not run away. With the cats secured, I looked around at the treasure room. The first thing I noticed was that I could not clearly see the far side of the room. Past the 15 foot mark, everything was an indistinct blur. From the area I could see, there were numerous piles of coins all over the room with jewels, and items made of valuable materials scattered throughout the piles. A plain wooden chest at the edge of my range of sight caught my eye.
I closely examined the chest and saw nothing that would indicate a trap or mechanism to harm me. I cracked the lid open and when nothing happened, threw the lid fully open. The inside of the chest was lined with a rich violet padding and nestled in the padding was a sphere swirling with colors. I picked up the sphere to examine it more closely.
Dungeon core acquired.
It was the dungeon’s core. Closing the chest, I placed it in my inventory for safekeeping and paused, expecting to receive a notification that my quest was complete. After a minute, with no notification, I realized that the dungeon was being annoying. If I didn’t complete the quests on my way out, the penalties would leave me blind and unable to find the dungeon entrance again. ‘Since I have to do the quest, let’s do it right.’
“Okay, let’s gather the treasure up. Maybe there is something here to turn you back to people.” I commented to the cats.
After retrieving a bag from my inventory, I stuffed it as full as I could. This did not even make a dent in the room’s contents. Switching that bag out for a second, larger bag, I filled that to the brim as well. The cats were all quiet and looked at me as if I had grown a second head. Unsure what they were surprised about, I cocked my head to the side and asked.
“What has you so shocked?” The cacophony of meows reminded me that I currently couldn’t understand them. “Right, I can’t understand you. We’ll try using yes or no questions. If the answer is yes, give me one meow, two for a no.”
The cats agreed, and after numerous dead ends, I finally understood that they were shocked at my use of my inventory. ‘Dang it, I don’t even know if spatial magic is a thing in this dungeon. Whatever, I’m almost done, anyway.’ I kept it simple and just said I had a family ability to store a few items in a magic pocket. They looked confused, but accepted my explanation. Changing the subject, I asked Arvin if the bag currently on the ground was enough or if they needed more treasure from the room. Mai immediately started meowing and given her earlier behavior, it seemed likely that she was demanding we take everything from the room.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Ignoring her, I watched Arvin survey the room. He went over to some of the treasure piles and pulled a few items out. He brought them back and made a pile next to the bag of gold. After about five minutes, he finished. After confirming that was everything they wanted to take, I put it all in my inventory. Arvin climbed onto my shoulder and we exited the treasure room. I made sure to close the door behind us, once again hiding the treasure room.
Leaving the dungeon was much easier than getting through it had been. Now that I did not have to chase the cats, all I had to do was kick the little dogs out of the way as I walked. After a while, the sounds of kicking and splattering of dogs against the walls of the dungeon were almost therapeutic. In what seemed like only a few minutes, I was back at the dungeon entrance. Just before I reached the exit, we were surrounded by a thick green smoke.
Quest completed no further penalties enacted.
I held my breath and tried not to breathe as the scent of caramel apples filled my nose for some reason. I couldn’t avoid breathing any longer, and my first breath devolved into a coughing fit. At some point, Arvin hopped off my shoulder. The grenade belt suddenly grew heavier and pressed into my waist, further restricting my breathing. Just as I thought I would pass out from lack of oxygen, a loud tearing sound was accompanied by the pressure disappearing. I gasped for breath instinctively before I was suddenly squished between several people who had previously been cats. I fell to the ground in a pile of tangled limbs. Arvin stood a few feet away, grinning at our misfortune.
“Don’t just stand there, help us up.” Mai demanded.
“Fine, fine, I’ll help.” He started helping to untangle people from the pile, “But just so you knew, it’s absolutely adorable to see all of you tangled together like when you were kids. Remember when you decided to-”
“NO!” Five voices rang out at once.
“Do go on. What did they do?” I asked, egging Arvin on.
“Well, they decided to make a kids only fort by a small stream. Of course, they were only about five at the time, but anyway, they decided to play in the water and naturally got soaked.” He paused for effect. “Being kids, they decided that clothes were too much of a hassle and stripped. It was such a sunny day that all of them ended up sunburned and had several painful days where they had to stay inside because it hurt too much to wear anything.”
The story had spurred the others to work on untangling themselves in an effort to silence Arvin from spreading embarrassing tales. Once everyone was untangled, I was able to stand up. ‘There goes my grenade belt. Dang it, it was really useful too.’ With everyone human again, we headed out of the dungeon. No one wanted to risk turning into another animal.
Quest: Return to town and collect your reward
Time limit: 4 hours.
‘Fan-freaking-tastic, now I not only do I have to get the party back to town, but I have to make sure they hurry too.’ I thought about it for a minute before I told a slight fib to get them moving faster.
“We need to get back to town within the next three hours.” At the chorus of why’s, I explained. “My family magic will only let me store heavy items for a limited time. Since the treasure is rather heavy, it uses more magic to store and thus if I don’t take it out in time, it will be violently expelled and could get scattered or damaged.”
Immediately Mai grabbed my arm and started to drag me back to town. Clearly the thought of lost treasure was enough to spur her on.
“Hurry up!” she called back to the rest of the party. “There was no way I will risk my treasure.”
“It’s our treasure, not just yours.” Rehna snapped.
“Calm down, of course Mai knows that the treasure is everyone’s.” Sol tried to diffuse the situation before it could become an argument.
“No arguing,” Arvin commanded, clearly sick of the petty fights. “We will decide what to do with the remaining treasure once we get back to town.”
That seemed to settle the situation for the moment. A reminder about the time limit from Mai got the rest of the party moving, and we set a brisk pace back to the town. We arrived at the edge of the town just under the three-hour time limit. I pulled all of the items from the treasure room out of my inventory, except for the chest with the dungeon core, and placed them on the road. Daivan quickly assessed what was there and separated out a portion of the treasure and handed it to me. They then transferred everything else to their bags and gave me back my empty bags. I made a show of looking exhausted, as if the magic to store the treasure had taken a lot out of me. Only Arvin did not seem fooled, but he held his tongue. We entered the town and went towards the tavern.
Quest completed no further penalties enacted.
“Care to join us for a celebratory drink?” Daivan asked.
“I would, but I have to get back on the road, so this is where I leave you.” I looked at each of the party members, “I wish you many successes in the future, and please remember that splitting the party never works.”
That got a few chuckles from the group, and with a final wave, I headed out of town and back to the road. ‘I’m so glad to be done with that. Herding cats was way more difficult than I ever imagined it could be. I can’t wait to get back to Bob’s and enjoy the rest of my sake. Maybe I’ll even order a second bottle. I think I will need it tonight.’ Picking up the pace to a brisk walk, I backtracked to the dungeon entrance. Once in the general area, I pulled the dungeon core out of my inventory, not wanting to lose access to it and have failed the dungeon on a technicality. Carrying the chest with the core under one arm, I continued walking.
While I did not see any differences with the road, I felt it the instant I had made it back to the dungeon entrance. As the landscape swirled around me, my range of vision rapidly expanded back to normal, which left me slightly dizzy. While the world was solidifying back into the bar, I received my dungeon completion notification.
Dungeon core retrieved.
Congratulations, you have cleared the Never Split the Party dungeon.
No level up received, please clear a dungeon of level 16 or higher to level up.
Dungeon clearance reward: Amulet of summoning. You may use this amulet once per authorized dungeon to summon the party to assist you for one hour per diver’s level. Current time allocation was 15 hours.
‘Why on earth would I want to summon that party again?’ I placed the cat shaped amulet in an empty storage slot in my inventory. I was relieved to see that my normal clothes were back. It would have been a pain to explain the goo that had covered me. I looked in the mirror, and saw that my hair was free of the goo as well, which made me slightly happy. While the dungeon had been on the shorter side, it felt more exhausting due to the constant running around and having to babysit the party as the only human adult for the majority of the dungeon. I was more than ready to relax and enjoy some downtime.
The box had yet to disappear, so I opened it to see that the orb had been replaced by a sticker featuring bright pink silhouettes of the party outlined in green. ‘That is so freaking ugly.’ I exited the bathroom as the last notes of the song faded and headed to the far side of the jukebox where the rest of my stickers were. I slapped the newest one in the furthest corner possible to avoid seeing the hideous sight.
With that over with, I headed back to my seat at the bar. I took my seat again, then took a large sip of my still warm sake, enjoying the flavor. Refilling my cup with the last of the bottle, I savored the flavor. With most of the Army divers on deployment, the bar was calmer than normal. While it was a nice change of pace, I knew that we would soon miss the ribbing between the Air Force and Army.
“Another bottle of hot sake please, Bob.”
“Coming right up.”
“Could I get some wings too? It feels like a wing night.”
“Sure thing.”
“Thanks.”
I still don’t know how Bob does it, but within minutes I had another bottle of hot sake and a large platter of mouthwatering wings in front of me. I grabbed a handful of napkins and dug into the wings. They were Korean BBQ flavored today. I enjoyed the slight heat and combination of spices on my tongue. Before I knew it, I had devoured almost half the wings, more hungry than I thought after diving.
Slowing down, I savored the remaining wings before cleaning my hands and sitting back to savor my sake. I spent the next several hours sitting there talking to the other regulars and unwinding. ‘I think I’ll just socialize next time and take a break from diving.’ As it got closer to midnight, I bid goodnight to Bob and the regulars I had been chatting with. On my way out the door, Bob handed me my pay for the dungeon. I accepted with a smile and thanked him. I headed out the door, ready to go home and snuggle with Andrew until the kids inevitably woke me up far too early.