“By the way, does anyone know where we’re going?” Karsten asked the group as they resumed traveling through the woods.

“Erh, I’m pretty sure we are headed towards Beladden.” Haressy answered, unsure herself.

“Beladden’s still way off,” Henry interjected calmly. “We are headed in its general direction, though.”

“What’s Beladden?” Karsten asked. He got glances from the others in the group, but ignored them.

“It’s a city to the south-east of Cerdansk, by the border. It’s on the other side of the forest.”

“Hmm,” Otis grumbled. “I don’t think we should go to a city so soon. At least not one as close to Cerdansk as Beladden is.”

“You think so?”

“I do. We should cross the border and lay low in Korythia for a while, is my idea.”

“I agree with the sentiment,” Malek said.

“I’m guessing ‘Korythia’ is a country, and not some Eldritch Dimension of Doom?” Karsten asked.

Haressy sighed. “It’s not, but at the same time, it might as well be. From what I’ve heard from my grandpa, there’s a lot of human experimentation that goes on there. It’s played off as ‘testing new healing concoctions’ and ‘furthering Alchemy’. Their government has more relaxed laws when it comes to stuff like that.”

“Really…”

“Yeah.” Henry answered, a hint of a scowl on his face. “They’re worse than my dad and his ‘friends’ were, and that says a lot.”

“We should probably turn a bit to the left, then, if we're headed to Korythia.” Otis commented.

“And cut straight through the forest? Isn’t it crawling with Adventurers there?” Henry asked.

“Because of the Star dungeon? Yes, it is. But I know a way around. We’ll have to sneak, but it shouldn’t be too difficult. Trust your resident Rogue! Ho, ho.”

“Star dungeon? Are there star monsters in there?” Haressy asked, but Otis shook his head, answering as he waved his beard out of his face as he ran, “Sadly not, miss! There are crystal turtles, though.”

“C-crystal turtles? Circle save me, that’s amazing! I always wanted to see one of those,” She hummed.

“Crystal turtles? Let me guess, their shells sell for a lot,” Karsten said.

Otis chuckled, “Indeed they do, my lad.”

“More than ‘a lot’,” Henry commented, “There are some dungeons that can be bought for less than five of those shells.”

Karsten whistled. “So a lot lot, then. Noted! We’ll have to go there some time, you know, when we stop being fugitives.”

“...Will we ever stop being fugitives?” Haressy asked, a bit fretfully.

“Oh, don’t have such a negative mindset, miss Haressy! You know how the law is. We only have to make enough money off of venturin’, and it’ll fix itself. I bet it won’t even take a month before we’re legal again!”

“Now that I think about it, our party was only legal for a day…” She sulked. Otis only laughed, and the others did too. Even Henry and Malek chuckled a little.

~~~

After having traveled for three days, only stopping to rest twice, the party currently stood in a ring behind a small cliff around five miles away from the Star dungeon. Otis was giving them a run-down on the route around it as he and the party ate a small lunch.

“It’ll add a day to our travels, but I assume that’s alright?” He said after suggesting they take the long way around.

“I mean, yeah, we’re not exactly on a schedule. We’re being pursued, but I think we’ve already got a lot of distance on them,” Karsten responded.

Otis nodded. “Then I suggest we proceed slowly. We’ll circle around the dungeon on the southern side, then go straight east. After a two-day run, we should be at the border.”

“Isn’t there a border control? Or a big wall, or something?” Karsten asked.

“There is a wall, but there are some points in the forest where it’s degraded. The security is pretty lax as well, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Sounds like a plan, then.”

Finishing their meal consisting of bread and vegetables, the party started moving south.

During the past three days, the party had encountered other adventuring parties a handful of times, but it had always been rather easy to evade them.

As opposed to the Adventurers that were hired by the Guild to hunt them down, the Adventurers they encountered here weren’t actively trying to hunt them down; so as long as they didn’t show themselves to them, they’d be safe.

It would be better when they got out of the country, Otis promised, as a murder of a single person, unless that person was the Prime Minister, or something, wouldn’t be big news in Korythia.

The party was counting on this being the case. They were all looking forward to sleeping in a proper Inn again.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

After easily avoiding yet another Adventuring party by crouching down in the tall grass, Karsten turned to his party and mused in a whisper, “Are we hidden dragons at sneaking, or are the Adventurers in the Cerdansk region just blind?”

Otis chortled. “Not really. They’re just used to people prowling around this particular dungeon. It’s a veritable golden egg, after all. Unless they sense real killing intent or something, they’ll leave us alone, even if they do notice us.”

“Did they?” the Bard asked, jerking his head towards the passing Adventurers.

“Probably, they seem pretty strong. And I think I made eye-contact with one of them. I winked and they left, ho, ho.”

Karsten exhaled a laugh, then they all resumed walking.

The terrain in the middle of the forest had more roots than dirt, and the farther they traveled into the Primordial forest, the more water seeped up from the ground. Soon, they were forced to jump from root arch to root arch. For all the Dexterity and Stamina of a Bard, Karsten still felt his legs burn with the effort.

Karsten was worried for their shortest party member, but it seemed Otis’ level-ups as a result of killing a level 6 monster had been more beneficial than Karsten had expected.

Otis had leveled up a whole of two times, from level 2 to level 4, and Karsten couldn’t help but feel a tinge of envy at the ease at which the guy got them. He couldn’t believe how much XP a single level 6 monster gave the Dwarf, and he couldn’t believe that that monster was only the first, and supposedly the weakest monster in that dungeon.

They had been able to subdue it rather quickly, yes, but that was because of the unique nature of mimics.

Karsten didn’t know much about them from his time playing D&D, but from what he saw of ‘Monster Karsten’, he felt that mimics were strong monsters, but if you found out their tricks, they were relatively weak. Sure, they had powerful regenerative abilities, but if you so much as stomped on their vital spot, as Haressy demonstrated, they were quickly overpowered.

In short, mimics were like illusion-based assassins that specialized in one-on-one battles where they would largely rely on surprise attacking the victim, then consequently rely on deceiving the target by manipulating the location of their vital point to receive as little damage as possible.

Thus, under certain circumstances, the mimics were truly overpowered. Luckily, the mimic had held off on its attack until the whole party was present - if not, it would likely not have ended nearly as neatly as it did.

This fact confused Karsten, however.

‘Why did it wait? To be polite?’

He quickly shook his head, forgoing the notion. Thoughts and conjectures were tossed around as he jumped from tree to tree like Tarzan; Then, five minutes later, it was as if a light-bulb had lit up over his head. He had tried thinking from the mimic’s perspective, and when he did, he realized why the monster had shown such behavior.

Mimics, as could be gleaned from their names, were deception-based monsters. They mimicked other life-forms, and only attacked when a lone victim came close enough. They seemed to have a certain level of intelligence, or rather instinct, so it likely wouldn’t have attacked us if I hadn’t been there, and if the others had simply acted as if everything was normal and treated the mimic as a real person.

‘It only started attacking when it saw me, and instinctively understood that its cover had been blown. It might even have been trying to run away when it realized it was going to be overpowered by us…’

‘It would have waited until it it had a chance to be with one of us alone, then…’

‘Then it would repeat the process until it had eaten us all.’

‘If I had been alone, though…’

Karsten shivered when the realization hit him, but quickly tossed the idea from his mind. What he did keep in mind, however, was that he needed to be vigilant if he ever found himself alone in a dungeon.

He then promptly slapped his forehead at his own stupidity, because obviously he’d have to be vigil if he was alone in a dungeon.

Sighing, he noticed he’d fallen slightly behind the others during his reflections, and quickened his pace.

~~~

“We’re coming back here someday, right?” Haressy asked the group, looking back over her shoulder as they started going in the direction of the Korythian border, the party having successfully circled around the Star dungeon.

“I’m not not gonna see a crystal turtle baby in my life!”

Karsten laughed, “We’ll be back here someday, I imagine. Maybe on the return trip, who knows? What level is the Star dungeon, anyway?”

“Level 10,” Henry answered.

Karsten coughed. “Level 10? Right.”

“Yeah.”

“Maybe not on the return trip, then…”

Haressy sulked.

“...But who knows! Maybe we’ll have a chance the next time we become fugitives.” Karsten said merrily

“Next time?”

"Of course! When it comes to being a fugitive, there’s always a next time.”

Haressy sighed inwardly, but felt slightly better.

At a certain point, Otis called out in a whisper from the back of the group.

“Hey! We should slow down, the wall is right up ahead.”

The party slowed to a halt, each hiding behind their own tree. Otis went on ahead to scout, and after a few minutes, ducked up from where he had been crouching and waved his hand in an ‘all clear’ sign.

The party ducked out of where they’d been hiding, and slowly snuck over to join the Rogue Dwarf, carefully making their way across the decrepit stone wall together.

The border wall was like a miniature version of the grand wall of Cerdansk. Not to say it was small, it was just that any wall Karsten would ever see would likely feel lack-luster in comparison to the monolith.

The stones that made up the wall were old, and most of them were displaced, cracked, and littering the surrounding area. It looked like an ancient ruin more than anything else.

Karsten found it hard to believe that the wall that was meant to act as a barrier between two countries, that were supposedly not on the best of terms with each other, could be so dilapidated. It had evidently been years since the last time this place had seen any repairs, if ever.

Just by looking at the bustling city of Cerdansk, Karsten had thought the country of Camarillon was prosperous… He knew the people in the ‘golden castle’ were corrupt, just like the top Guild Officials and Councilmen, but this was really too much.

Or, perhaps the situation really was that bad. Looking at the proof of both Camarillon and Korythia’s mirrored laziness, Karsten was just surprised he hadn’t seen any protests in the streets up until now.

Then again, as was a common theme in countries with corrupt leaderships, perhaps the citizens capitalized on the weaknesses instead of grieving over them, like Karsten and his party were doing right now, illegally crossing the border.

Why try to heal a corruption that is impossible to heal, when joining it is so much more lucrative?

Karsten shook his head and turned his attention back to the dark swamp ahead of him.

‘None of my business, anyway.’