You’d be surprised how a constant landscape of tight corridors and caverns of rough stone can chip away at any fun or entertainment a situation can have. I was at least.

Whether because of some natural inbuilt instinct that I still retained from before, or because I spent most of my time out on the open water I would never know. Regardless, it was all I had to look at for quite a while.

Though the random conversations with Malcolm and Rayner were nice distractions. Mainly asking things you might expect of a researcher when talking with the equivalent of someone from a foreign nation, with it intermittently being broken by random blunt questions from Malcolm.

I say questions, by the way he would phrase them almost made them feel more like statements. Atkin had kept quiet for the entire walk so far, his character seemingly fitting the solemn and stoic archetype.

From what they had mentioned that morning, I knew that the area we would properly begin the dive into the crypt was due north where we would hit a small offshoot of the main structure.

The crypt in question being an infamous place to die in recent times given its nature. That being how it appeared in the first place. They gave me a brief overview of its history that roughly boiled down to it appearing about a decade ago with seemingly no warning in the gods grave north-west of the main continents.

Briefly skirting over the intimidating name of where we were, they further explained that the reason for its infamy was because of its deceptive cover picture. When crypts first appear, they go through a period of hesitation where people don’t want to explore it because of the fact that everything about it is unknown, resulting in only higher skilled groups exploring it for a while and then selling the information they find before others start to flock to the crypt in hopes of being the first to find something.

Back to the point, because of its location and a plethora of other reasons, people believed that the crypt was on the weaker side, resulting in that start period being far shorter than average, resulting in the not fully explored crypt being underestimated.

The part about its deceiving front only becoming known after hundreds of groups entered the crypt only to completely fall off the map and be presumed dead. After a few months of this repeating over and over, it gained the attention of some of the better divers and gained its reputation.

The final nail in the coffin being the return of those groups, and with them the word that the crypt people thought to be a simple one with only a handful of floors and weak enemies was one that had easily over one hundred, and later being recognized as the third strongest crypt to date.

So, what did that mean? It meant that there was absolutely no pressure whatsoever that fell upon my shoulders at my own fault to perform well.

Continuing the idle chatter with Rayner for a while, Atkin, who was at the front of the group, eventually called out our attention. “We will be arriving at the entrance soon. So we are clear, we will have a window of time to get accustomed to the sharp change in terrain. Erja, we went over it before, but for the time being we will proceed with myself at the front, Malcolm at the back with you and Rayner in the middle. Any questions?” Atkin says while glancing between the three of us. Waiting for a moment to confirm there was no confusion, he gives a resolute nod before unsheathing his sword.

Following a similar suit, Rayner and Malcolm ready themselves. Not really having any expectations, I set my senses to alert and start paying closer attention to our surroundings. After barely a few seconds more of walking, we hit a long smoothly curved section of cave that quickly transitioned into being more uniform.

Remembering the rough carvings me and the kobolds had shared, I gave myself a final resolution that this was real and that there was almost certainly going to be combat.

We slowly come down to a crawl before coming to a stop at Atkin raising his hand in a signal to hold. A tense few seconds draw out as he seemingly concentrates on concentrating his senses to see if there was anything nearby.

After a moment of waiting, he lowers his hand and continues forward at a cautious pace. Rounding the final part of the tunnel, I’m caught off guard by the abrupt transition to a grey stone brick hallway with high ceilings and intervals of unlit torches dotting the walls.

I knew that there was something like this from our previous conversations, but I wasn't expecting the caves to just stop and turn into a proper building. Calling it a building was a bit strained mind you, as all I could see was a long corridor stretching on before branching at a few different points a ways down.

Continuing our slow crawl forward, we come to the first branch of the path and stop again. With Atkin in the lead I couldn’t see down the hall from where I was, but he gave it a quick survey before backing up a bit looking towards Rayner.

“The map we have seems to follow our path correctly, however, I can’t help but express worry. We may not be very far into this floor, but not hearing anything puts me to worry.” He says.

Taking a moment to consider his words, Rayner seems to lose himself in thought for a moment before looking up to him. “I trust your judgement. Do we want to continue to the unmapped part of the floor, or do we want to try finding another way around?”

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Looking around the group, they all seem fairly relaxed. At the ready yes, but they held themselves with an air of confidence.

“I’m okay to stick to the plan.” Malcolm says first, with the other two nodding along shortly after. With the attention now on me, they turn to me to get my opinion. “I don’t have enough knowledge to question or make judgment right now, I’m fine either way.” I say, gaining a pat on the back from Malcolm and a light grin from Rayner.

“Alright. We will continue down this path before entering another stretch of open cave for now.” Atkin says.

Following his words, the next few hours continue on at a steady pace, moving forward from hallway to hallway and briefly scanning side rooms from time to time.

I’d question why things were moving so slowly if I didn’t already have a hunch. Thinking about the entire situation as a whole, it makes a lot of sense given that the day before a powerful creature was found not only deviating from its normal habitat, but also its habits.

Regardless, to say I didn’t feel even a slight bit of annoyance at our pace would be a lie even if I did understand the reason for it. Ever since getting brain blasted by that tree in my previous life, the slight bit of calm I had found over the last collective eight months of ‘living’ was thrown into disarray, and not in a subtle way.

Which was in and of itself another thing to tack onto the mental to do list, what exactly did it expect me to do after being told to quote ‘find’ with no information, and should I even consider it? Thoughts for another time given the active situation.

After continuing the loop of slowly moving forward with periodic stops to see if we were about to be jumped, we finally came to the section of natural cave we’d been heading towards.

“Alright, we should be in the clear for the most part. It's not perfectly safe yet, it never is in crypts, but we should be past the rough of it.” Rayner speaks up.

A bit confused as to why the increased caution for the structure part of the caves, I follow up on his statement. “Was there a reason for higher concern with the uniform halls opposed to the rest of the caves?”

“Yes, several in truth. The first of course being whatever made the halls, and possibly even other groups. As you might imagine, people can be… Jumpy, when it comes to running into other explorers while traveling.” Atkin mentions.

Makes sense, I could only imagine what might happen if a group who just made some sort of major discovery was walked in on by another group also trying to find loot. Though that did bring up another question.

“What exactly is it that you’re looking for down here?” I ask. They might have mentioned it before, but if they did I had completely missed it.

“Mainly just tryin’ to get as deep down as we can. Ray’s trying to find some kinda unique monster to make a book about, kinda ironic when you think ‘bout it. Meanwhile Atkin’s following him around to protect him, and I owed the two of ‘em a favor.” Malcolm says while leaning forward on the hilt of his sword.

“That and it’s fun.” If you ever needed a reason to do something, that was as good a reason as any.

“Makes sense. Though I have to agree, the reason being to find a ‘unique’ monster is a bit humorous given the circumstances.” I chime in.

Even if I still had apprehensions when it came to making connections, it’s concerningly difficult to dislike these three for me. Something about the way they interact with each other reminds me of my original life…

Sad thoughts aside, we chatted a bit more to tie up the conversation before continuing our trek deeper and in search of anything of interest.

This pattern continued for the rest of the day before our internal clocks made us aware that it was getting late. While there was no such thing as sunlight or day and night cycles, rest was very much still a thing. More so for the others than myself seemingly.

Spending a bit longer looking for an alcove to base in for the night, we came across a little nook in a smaller tunnel not that dissimilar to the one I woke up in. Watching the others unfurl three mats, a decent pouch of rations and a frying pan from what could be considered a normal sized backpack, still with inventory space left over was definitely a confusing experience, so much so that I ended up asking if it was spatially expanded. My confusion grew when they said it wasn’t.

After a few minutes of setup, they had a temporary resting spot. Still sticking my arrogance and declining any items or food to help pass the night was definitely an interesting move on my part, but for some reason I simply couldn’t bring myself to accept or agree to help from them.

That coupled with the fact that I wasn’t only not tired, but also not hungry left me with no reason to even reconsider my answer. Which was another thing to look into: How long could I go without food, water, and sleep. At this point it was at two days for the first two.

“Seeing as the translation spell is about to wear off, do you want to work on the common language right now or no?” Rayner asked. He’d been casting it consistently for the entire day, with the time between said cast being roughly one hour, which was a surprisingly good way to keep track of time.

I’d asked several times if it was too much to keep going, but everytime he said that it wasn’t much of a strain and fairly good practice. Not knowing enough to counter him, and also seeing that he was seemingly telling the truth, I stopped pressing him on the matter after the seventh cast.

“I’d be fine with that. How should we begin?” I respond.

“We can start with basic words and greetings for now. At least enough so that you can ask for directions.” Raynor began, with the next few minutes going over how we would be doing things while we waited for the last little bit of the spell to wear off.

It luckily didn’t take too long, with the indicator being Raynor suddenly speaking gibberish halfway through a sentence. It was a bit funny, but it wasn’t the time to be laughing and him looking like a fool. Also because me laughing would probably sound terrifying.

After a bit of trial and error getting some simple things like generally what confirmation and what would roughly be translated as some word to get someone's attention were, we moved onto the most prevalent issue before actually trying words.

Me not sounding like Satan waking up on the wrong side of the bed.