Before we had returned downhill last night, I had taken the time to ask Carmine to draw us a map of the first floor, as we had been right in the Dungeon and she had been staring at the whole layout of the place in her head anyway, so she had also gained the [Cartographer] Skill by doing just that, which then allowed her to subsequently “spawn” even more maps, if any drawing materials were available. Of course, we had plenty of those inside of Will-E’s storage, so she had produced a map for each person that was on guard duty at the Temple, in case it might be needed.
Her “conjured” maps were rather precise, because she had that Clockwork Engineer subclass, so she knew how to use accurate measurement units to depict something, and once she had given me my own copy of the floor plans, the damn thing simply got auto-added by Timmy to my internal “known maps” library, which would allow me to use it on my minimap as a navigational resource for the first level of the Dungeon, which was quite wonderful. No more bumbling in the dark for our party, hell yeah!
Another thing that we had found out while we had been digging was that demons really don’t like any loud noises like pickaxing or dragging large stone pieces. We had almost constantly been assaulted by groups of 2 or 3 small red demons all throughout our digging spree, but even a single Guardsman could have killed all of those pests by himself, so it had not been an issue of security, as we had plenty of people to guard us.
In the process of protecting us though, we had discovered the fact that the XP the Guardsmen were receiving from the kills was getting a large penalty based on the total number of persons that were currently in the Dungeon, irregardless if they were in the same party or not. Basically, you could have had 5 people going in 5 separate directions and do their own thing inside, but as long as they were within the Dungeon’s walls, they still got the XP bonuses or penalties as if they were partied together. Also, 5 seemed to be the “magical” number once again, where penalties were reduced to zero and the gains were maxed out, with any fewer or more people in the party becoming less “efficient” from a mathematical point of view.
Therefore, if we really wanted to seriously start training all of the Guardsmen, War-Monks, and Villagers in the nearby future, we would probably need to create many well-balanced 5-man parties, and then have them take turns inside of the Dungeon to Level-Up, especially since they had “awakened” recently.
But before that, the Dungeon still needed some detailed exploring, and I was not going to let any of the inexperienced villagers go down there together and then blindly get themselves killed by some random trap or surprise monster attack. Instead, I was going to take my party down there first, and then begin to explore whole the place on our own terms as an advanced scouting unit, since we were simply the most skilled and the most geared team at the moment, compared to any of the other personnel available from the Village.
After I had returned to the inn though, I had still been forced to confront the problem that kept arising from the idiot-trio’s existence, as they were obviously planning to defy my warnings and rush into the Dungeon tomorrow morning, even after I had told them to stay away from it.
I began even contemplating about simply breaking their legs and then taking them to Ping for some “intensive care”, but that wouldn’t have solved the underlying problem, which was the fact that they THOUGHT they could handle the Dungeon, which was very erroneous. No, I had to let them bump their heads against the Dungeon’s powers on their own and realize how weak they truly were, but without killing themselves in the process somehow. Therefore, I had to go with my improvised plan B, which in truth, might not have been the smartest plan overall, but it was the best that I had been able to could cook up on such a short notice.
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I barely got about 5 hours of rest before I had to wake-up again, as I knew I had to intercept the numbskull group before they got themselves killed. I went and swiftly woke up all of my fellow party members as well including the High-Level ones, which I then asked to go and remain in stand-by mode at the Temple together with the other Guardsmen, just in case I would need their help. I told them about the idiot-trio’s intentions, and what I wanted to do about it, so they had agreed to help me out, as we would remain in constant contact via the Raid-Chat. I sadly had to go and wake Carmine up as well, because I needed her to customise a couple of gear pieces for me.
I told her what I wanted, so she swiftly headed to the Smithy building to craft me the stuff that I had requested, since I knew that the items would be required later on. Asides from that, I went to Will-E and I dumped most of my spatial ring’s contents into his large storage space, because I currently needed the extra room in my own inventory, so I only kept a large amount of arrows with me, alongside with half of the healing pills and potions together with the Regeneration ones, plus a bunch of extra minor “utility” pills like the run-speed ones that could come in handy during a nasty situation.
After that, I put my game face on, and then knocked on the Huntress’ room door under the pretense that I had come to “awaken” her, as she had previously requested last night. She welcomed me inside, and I then proceeded to “awaken” her just like the rest, but immediately after I had finished the actual job, I began to knock my branch-tentacles against some of her meridians, causing her to spasm in shock at the unwelcomed sensation and become frightened.
I told her to hold still, as this was a rather unusual development, and that she could suffer from a Qi deviation or have her roots damaged if she did not listen to my advice. Of course, I was bullshitting major time, as there was no actual problem with her at all. I then immediately retracted my tentacles, and told her to drink the potion that I was handing over to her, which was supposed to help with relaxing the “spirit tension” that had built up within her meridians. She immediately slurped my guaranteed-knockout Alchemical potion, and then promptly fell asleep like a brick within a minute under the effects of the sedative, finally being taken out of the picture for the rest of the day. Sorry, Miss Huntress, but you gotta take one for the Team today.
I then immediately stole all of her clothes and her bow, leaving her asleep in the inn’s room under some warm bed sheets with a letter of apology plus some grand spirit stones as compensation for the stolen gear on a nightstand nearby, for when she finally woke up, which would probably be waaay later in the evening during this day, if not outright tomorrow.
I then ran to the Smithy, and told Carmine to “rune the bow” with Sanctified runes which would increase its damage against “unnatural” beings like undead, ghosts, demons, devils, and aliens, and then I picked up the rest of my requested gear which was a hood, a ninja-like face mask, a sanctified Rare mace, and a very small left-handed buckler-shield that could be used for deflecting all sorts of unwelcomed blows if I ever got into a melee.
I had specifically asked for it to be that small, so it would not prevent me from shooting my bow even if it was still strapped to my left hand, as I usually shot from the right-side of the bow anyways because of my rapid-fire techniques, so the shield wouldn't have gotten in the path of the arrows at all, as I was basically using “hip fire” for most of my shots nowadays, instead of slowly aiming down sight, where the shield would have indeed gotten into the line of sight.
After that, I swapped my own Monk Kasaya that I was still wearing for the Huntress’s clothes which fit me just fine, as she was barely a few centimeters taller than myself, and then I painted my eyes with eyeblack grease, which was a rather common technique that rangers used to prevent light-glare from getting into their eyes, and would also mask my face against further detection from the idiots. Because indeed, I was planning to replace the Huntress during this particular Dungeon stint, and keep an eye on the morons directly. She wasn’t THAT far away from me when it came to build and look, so I hoped that I could fool the idiots into thinking that I was her without any problems with my acting skills.
As I began to chew on a Spirit Herb known as “Donkey’s Brayweed” that caused the vocal cords of anyone eating it to constrict in a weird way and cause them to sound like they had laryngitis, I then swiftly headed for the rendezvous place that they had agreed upon last night and waited for the other two persons to show up. Jin arrived first and raised an eyebrow at my “new look”, but I simply waved in dismissal at him. Five minutes later the Lordling showed up as well, and then he posted the same inquiry about my weird getup. I told them in a strained sore throat voice that I had drank too much last night and had puked all of the contents, so my throat was burning and I did not feel like talking that much, and that this was my “combat” gear setup for the Dungeon.
With a “whatever” shrug, the Lordling then took us around the Temple, and near one of the fortification’s outer walls, where we could now spot a gap that had been wisely hidden by the architecture itself, and you wouldn’t have noticed that it was there unless you had purposely known what to look for.
We went inside, and I immediately received the Dungeon-Entry prompt from Timmy. Sneaking inside the long corridor one by one, we then finally reached another room that had a very dusty look and a lever-on-the-wall that looked like some sort of a corny copy-paste from an RPG game. Pulling on the lever caused a wall to slide away with a harsh grinding noise, and then reveal a set of dark steps that led directly to the Dungeon’s first layer, and right behind a very large vertical Sarcophagus that hosted one of the Old Monastery's many dead bodies of the former Monks that had been buried here over the ages. We had been forced to push the whole thing away to gain access to the first floor, but now we were truly inside the Dungen's first level.
"Argh!" *Tumble*Clong*
"You alright there, Jaden?" Jin asked.
"Sorry, I took a misstep, just a small slip-up."
Hrr...way to start off the adventure on the left-foot there, Jaden. Of course, I immediately pinged Lingfeng over the Raid-chat, and told him to send a team of Guardsmen over to this location from the outside and create another barricade, as we now obviously had a second “crack” in the Dungeon’s perimeter that we would have to worry about.
Jaden then pulled out his sword and shield, I strung my bow, and Jin readied his fire.
Timmy: UU! UU! Tap me! Tap me!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cH8ZwL3A7Q
Seriously, Timmy? Do you have to do that right now?
Timmy: What? I thought it would be fitting, given your current circumstances.
"The sanctity of this place has been tainted!" Jaden suddenly proclaimed.
"Don’t you mean fouled?"
"What?" Both of the boys asked back at me
MOTHER SYSTEM, WAY TO SAVE US FROM THE WRATH OF THE COPYRIGHT LAWYERS! I thought to myself.
"Nothing! Pay attention! Demons ahead!"
*Screech*
"Die, evil beast!" Jaden immediately swung his sword and bisected one of those skinless rabbits, sending its body crumbling to the floor.
*WAKA-MODO!*
*NA-TE-DI-TU!*
Immediately alerted by the sudden fighting noise, a pack of those Hellbound immediately rushed towards our position while yelling their unintelligible war cries. It was strange, not even my universal translator module was converting those yells, so I had no idea what they were saying. It did not matter though, as I immediately began to pump the little pests full of arrows, as Jaden was holding them back with his shield and sometimes was stabbing away at their frames whenever he had the chance. The ones that were trying to circle around us had immediately found themselves become barbecued by Jin instead, so we were currently holding up decently well. It would have been quite a good combination if only Jaden would have stopped getting into the path of my arrows so often. It was almost like he was asking for an arrow up his bum-hole on purpose.
After clearing that first wave, I went to recover my arrows, only to see Jaden rush to one of the nearby Sarcophagi and slide open its stone-door.
Immediately, a dead skeletal hand then reached out from within the confines of the stone coffin, and grasped the Lordling by his neck and began to squeeze really hard.
"FUCK!" I immediately rushed there with my Sanctified mace, and smashed the fucking daylight of the unfortunate reanimated skeleton that probably used to belong to some poor Monk, causing it to release Jaden as it crumbled into a pile of bones.
Great! Now we also have Undead to worry about besides the Demons and the weird rabbits!
"WHY DID YOU OPEN THAT?" I yelled at Jaden. "You could have died!"
"My [Lord’s Avarice] detection Skill told me that there was some sort of a treasure hidden in there, so I had to see what it was."
Indeed, inside the Sarcophagus there were 2 silver coins that had probably been used to keep the eyes of the dead person shut during the burial ceremony.
"You almost got yourself killed because of 2 silver coins?"
*Headslap*
"AU! I’m broke, Ok? Didn’t you say that you wanted to get paid even more? How do you expect me to get any more money if I don’t loot everything?"
"Why do you even think that there's going to be any loot inside of this place? This used to be a Buddhist Monastery, and the Monks are well renowned for being some of the poorest people in the world. What could there possibly be down here except weathered old bones?" I asked him in my hoarse voice tone.
"That might have been true if this Old Monastery had belonged to a group of regular old Buddhists, but this whole place is the burial site of an Ancient Sect that was made-up out of Warrior-Monks, the type that took the “fight against evil” to a more literal sense, and they were usually buried together with their weapons and armors once they perished. While it is true that the more recent wave of Monks from 100 years ago have indeed retrieved a very large amount of treasure from this place, they probably did not have it in their hearts to disturb the resting peace of all of their predecessors just to scrounge up for some extra income. On the other hand, I have no qualms about doing that, because even if I am indeed “tomb-robbing”, I am going to be using all of the acquired gear to fight against all of this unleashed evil, so I don't think that even the Ancient Monks would complain about me stealing one of their items to kill demons with it. It would be silly to leave all of these items forgotten down here, when they could be very well recycled or repurposed for the greater good."
"Maybe for the greater good of your own pockets. Hehe..." Jin snickered.
Still, I had to somewhat agree with Lord Jaden's point of view, because it was indeed a waste to leave any hypothetically-valuable items lying around down here and doing nothing with them, when we had an entire village that needed equipment uptop.
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The little demons also seemed to have gotten the same idea though, as they had ransacked most of the mummified remains of the Ancient Monks, and had retrieved most of the usable stuff, causing them to be armed with actual weapons from time to time, instead of just the makeshift leg-femur or broken-bone shanks that they generally wielded as weapons. Of course, most of the gear-remains were just horribly rusted old items that had no value whatsoever outside of smelting to recover the base material, but I still looted even those things because I knew that Carmine would be able to do something else with the metals.
But because the demons had savaged all of the local mummified remains, we were now facing against a whole horde of reanimated skeletons that used to belong to the Ancient Monks, which had seemingly been “awakened” by some dark power that was emanating from below which was causing any of the humanoid bodily-remains to rise out from their graves and attack the living. Fortunately, it did not affect the bodies of the dead Hellbound demons, nor the corpses of the weird rabbits either, otherwise we would have been forced to kill each one of them twice.
Magically Reanimated skeletons are rather weird, just like any of the other Mother System's creations. I mean, based on a normal-life logic, there is no way that a bunch of bones should be able to stand up like that. Since they have no more connective tissues nor muscles, which are the things that keep the osseous matter together and move it inside of a living being while it’s still alive, the bones should simply remain as inert objects once the flesh has decayed. And even if we were to ignore that problem, how the hell did they even manage to maintain balance and stand upright without a vestibular system which is usually based on the inner ear, or without a sense of touch which is commonly based on the skin.
Of course, things weren't as simple when it came to the Mother System. When I stared at the “reanimated” skeletons with my Qi vision instead of my regular one, I could see the obvious traces of those meridian-like “magic” structures which were now basically wrapping themselves around the bones and were the real things that were actually maintaining the entire skeletal structures together and upright, like the strings puppeteering a marionette from behind the scenes, or in this case, from the fourth dimension, and were also the strings that were purposely causing the bones to attack us.
Fortunately, I had been rather inspired this morning when I had asked Carmine to enhance my gear against “unnatural” beings, as a couple of strategically placed whacks with my Sanctified mace to the skeletal joints, especially the ones connecting the skull with the rest of the body, was enough to disrupt the magic that was holding the bones together and sent the whole structure crumbling down onto the floor. I didn't even have to smash them into dust to prevent them from moving any further, as it was the case with most regular weapons.
In the end, I had decided to lend my mace to Jaden, because it made a whole lot more sense to have him wield it as he was our frontliner, so we began plowing our way through the masses of reanimated skeletons and demons that were coming our way at a steady pace after that.
Fortunately, the guys were so focused ahead on fighting whatever was targeting us, that they did not even pay any attention to me as I was looting all of the leftover stuff from the fallen bodies and storing the random items inside of my spatial ring for further processing. I was getting quite a lot of reusable materials from this trip.
Carmine will become so excited when she will see this pile of reusables! Sure, we will probably have to melt down all of this rusted junk, but the resulting iron or other metal-alloys the dwarf Smith will most assuredly be able to reforge into something good.
"Uuu...look...the Hellbound have gathered some magic stuff into a chest over there!" I suddenly saw Jin rush off.
"No! Jin! Don't you dare touch that chest!"
*Creeek*Jtung*
"AAAAUCH! Who shot me! HISS! There's a bolt stuck in my ass! AAARGH! Get it out! Get it out!"
"Moron! Why'd you open it? Can't you see the obvious tripwire?"
*Yank*Fleshrip* I pulled out the small iron bolt.
"Ayeee! Be more gentle, I'm butthurt...I didn't think that the demons would be smart enough to trap it…"
"This chest probably contains all of the magic items that they have pilfered from around this whole area. Of course there would be increased security measures attached to it! Guarding sources of magic is like guarding their own lifelines for these creatures! Just be glad that the bolt only caught you in the ass! What if it had been placed higher and it had gone right through your eye or something? Bleh! Since you already opened it, let's see what's inside."
Sure enough, in the interior of the old funerary chest in front of us that would have usually housed stuff like incense and other ritual items, we could now spot a decently large pile of small magic items like gold-or-silver enchanted rings and amulets, decorative wrist or ankle bracelets with runes upon them, and even a couple of small letter-opener-like inscribed daggers that had a strange glow about them. They were all minor magical items, which boosted only a single attribute by one or two points, but they were still useful stuff to have as equipment.
I gave the Constitution-Strength ring and amulet to Jaden, the Intellect amulet to Jin, and I took an Adroitness ring and bracelet, since I was acting as the Huntress, and that would have been her pick. These were not hard to identify items, since the enchants were not that complex and anyone that had ever handled magical items or had even read about them would have been able to tell what they generally did, so we did not require the services of someone like Lingfeng to tell us the properties on the items as of yet.
After equipping our newfound treasures, we then headed to the next room, only to stumble upon even more Hellbound and skeletons that were guarding a bunch of barrels. Oh Gods, please tell me that Mom System did not implement that corny exploding-barrel mechanic into this place as well!
"Jaden! Jin! Do NOT hit the barrels, even by mistake! We don’t know what’s inside them!" I immediately warned them.
We then lured the mobs one by one outside of the doorframe by pullintg them with my bow, and then we whacked them over the head as soon as they stepped out of the room. With the whole chamber cleared, we finally got to see what was inside of the barrels, and it turned out they were full of rice. Hmm...this could be very useful for the village, I thought to myself as I messaged Lingfeng uptop so he could tell the rest of the Guardsmen where these barrels were located at on the map. They should probably come down here and retrieve them later, after we finished exploring.
I could have really used some chicken-rice servings right about now. I began to wonder, do they have any sort of soy-sauce in this world? I knew for a fact that plain old Soybeans were available everywhere, but the sauce took a lot-more-of-a-complex process to create, so I did not know if anyone had discovered the recipe for that yet. I should ask the villagers once we returned to the surface about it. Damnit, I was now beginning to sound like every other isekai protag, but I really did miss the comforts of modern life.
While I was thinking about condiments, Jaden opened the right door of the corridor we were currently exploring.
"Gah!"
*M-WERGH! WAKA-MODO!*
Jin also opened the left door exactly at the same time.
"Aw…"
*Hrrr*bone clatter clatter*
Suddenly, the passageway we were currently mapping got filled with more than 30 mobs, all which began chasing down after our arses.
"Eeek! Why the fuck did you open both doors at the same time! Just pick a single one the next time!"
*Bowshot*Bowshot*
"Pull back! Get to the barrel room!"
Once again, we used the narrow frame of the doorway that led to the barrel room as a bottleneck to keep all of the monsters at bay, but about 10 minutes later, we had a veritable pile of corpses at the entrance, as the now-smoldering bodies of the demons were getting mixed together with the smashed bones of the reanimated in a rather disgusting way.
Fortunately, nobody had been hurt too badly, but Jaden had been shanked about three times by the small demons in his limbs.
"You're bleeding. Use a potion or something…"
"I can't. I'm out already…"
"Jin, give him yours."
"I don't have any more either. I used the last one on my butt-wound.“
"So, you're telling me that you two came down here with only a couple of potions each? Are you both out of your minds?!!"
"I....didn't have any more money to buy any extra potions after you took my amulet away…"
"What about you, didn't you have that Alchemist girl in your disciple group?"
"I...don't dare and go ask her for any...we're not on very good speaking terms with eachother…"
"In Mother Earth's name, I don't know how you guys have managed to survive up to this day! Here...use mine. And Jaden, that's 5 silver coins for each potion! I'm keeping count! "
"Uuggghhhh... Sure, you can keep some of the loot as payback…"
Hohoho...don't you worry about that, “Lord” Jaden, I have already been plundering everything in this Dungeon when you weren't looking. I must have looted more than two-thirds of all of the drops already, but you two idiots did not even seem to notice. Fortunately, I had been smart enough to load myself with a decent amount of healing items, so we were still able to push forwards for a little while. We had barely explored a third of the entire floor as of yet, and we had not even found the staircase that led to the next level.
Of course, what these two morons did not know was that on the opposite side to our current position on the map, Fung, Liliam and Xibei were also in the Dungeon as a group and were clearing up all of the rooms on their own side at a whole lot faster pace, because they actually knew how to work together without hampering eachother and used much better gear and potions at hand. I had been monitoring their separate progress over the Raid-chat, and they were performing rather admirably.
Sure, that meant that there were currently 6 people down here in the Dungeon, but that only got us a penalty of about 2% XP loss on the overall for each kill because of the extra one person, and I could live with that. Jaden and Jin did not even know that the penalty even existed in the first place, and I wasn't just about to come out and tell them about it either.
I kept nudging my own group to head in a certain direction, as we were currently exploring the southwestern corner of the whole level, while Fungus's group was mapping the upper northeastern corner, clearing all of the mobs at that location instead. The downwards stairway was somewhere in the middle of the map, and I was trying to leave it for last, as Carmine had warned me that there was a monster with a stronger “treasure glow” near that location that never seemed to stray too far away from the staircase itself.
Still, after clearing more and more rooms for the next two hours, I was geting sick of both of the dumbasses, because they kept doing one stupid thing after another without any rhyme or reason, and it was really dangerous, for both my own wellbeing and for themselves.
They were both like a couple of badly programmed bots that were currently queued for a farm-run but kept walking into walls or ignored how many mobs they pulled. I had hoped that after running into one or two life-threatening problems they would wake up and stop doing stupid shit, but they were like those “bad matchup” team mates that I often used to get partenered with while using the random LFG tools in some of the MMO’s or Shooters back on Earth, which were people so incurable of their own stupidity that they couldn't have been fixed short of a bullet to the head.
Sadly, compared to those games where you could simply “respawn” and try again with a different team, I was stuck with these two morons, and I had only one life as the whole planet played in “hardcore mode” all of the time, so I decided to end the Dungeon exploration for today and go and kill that Guardian Boss as I called Fung’s team over to join us for the increased safety-in-numbers. Because that way, at least SOME of the people present would have been competent.
What I did not predict was that my “dumbass” team would reach the Boss-Room first, because in our woefully unstealthy ways we had literally attracted all of the mobs with our fighting noises to the edges of the map, so now all of the rooms that had led towards the Boss Room were all empty. On the other hand, Fungus’s team was still clearing one room after another, and would probably take about 15 or more minutes to get to us.
Unfortunately, “waiting” did not seem to be in the vocabulary of Jaden, as he simply rushed to attack the huge-ass bipedal blood-rabbit that was almost two meters tall which currently guarded the staircase downwards just as soon as he saw it.
"FOR THE MAGISTRATE! FOR THE EMPIRE!"
*CHARGE*
"MOTHERF…!"
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By the time Fung’s group had arrived to join us, we had already killed the creature, since it had fortunately not manifested any special abilities outside of its sheer mass and strength, but Jaden now looked like shit, as his shield was totally bent, my Sanctified mace was cracked, and half of his body was charcoal-singed because Jin had friendly-barbecued him by mistake. The only intact gear on his body was that decorated pauldron of his, as the rest of his clothes had been torn to shreds by the bipedal rabbit’s claws, causing his gambeson to turn to rags. Jin had been smacked unconscious by the creature halfway into the fight, and now only his legs were sticking out from a nearby empty barrel in which he had been forcibly stuffed by the beast, so I had to ask the other guys to pull him out of there before he suffocated or something.
"Ok, I have had enough of this! Jin, are you awake yet? Good, let's get the hell out of here everybody!" I yelled as I pulled down my hood and facemask.
"T...Trina? What the HELLS! Was that you all along?" Jin sprang back up to life and jumped on his feet.
"You! You are the Awakener girl? What happened to Rheina? How the hell can you even shoot a bow so well if you are a Monk?" Jaden stuttered at the discovery of my true identity.
"Long story short, I drugged her and took her clothes."
"But...WHY?"
"Because somebody needed to keep an eye on you morons! You two have stepped in 20 traps so far, you almost got yourself killed 5 times from pulling too many mobs, and I had to yank your asses out of the fire during 34 other diverse occasions.
"I would rather party with Leeroy Jenkins then continue down there with you, Jaden! You have no idea what you are doing, which way you are going, and what is happening around you most of the time. Sure, your sword arm is quite strong, but that is absolutely pointless if you do not know how to use it properly! You are more muscle than brains, and you never listen to anything that I have to say! And Jin? You almost set me on fire a couple of times already! I am not fireproof like yourself! You need to mind where you are pointing those flame jets of yours! We are all stopping right here. Pack it up everybody, and let's go back to the surface."
"But there are Evils that are awaiting for us down there!" Jaden pointed to the staircase that led to the second floor of the Dungeon.
"You are right, AWAITING is the correct term to use at the moment. They aren't going anywhere! So far, this staircase is the only way any creature can take from the bowels of the Earth while going upwards, which means that we can simply barricade it just in the same way we have blocked the entrance to the surface, and then kill whatever tries to come up from down there if we can get the Village's Guardsmen to cooperate with us once more.
"Mother Earth wants us to play a certain game, but I am not going to do that. There is absolutely no reason as to why only a single team of Adventurers needs to head down there and face whatever lurks beneath the Earth on their own. We have an entire village-worth of people that can level up now, and I'm going to do exactly that. Since all of these creatures seem to keep on respawning and reanimating continuously, then I am going to use their constant influx of numbers to Level-Up each and every combat-capable villager until we have a veritable army that we will be able to take down there, and finally take out the true source of this problem. Even if our overall levels will be lower, the firepower which an entire army of Cultivators will be able to unleash cannot even remotey be compared to that of a single team of Adventures.
"So far, I have not seen any restrictions about how many people can physically come down here at the same time except for maybe the narrowing of some corridor spaces, but that is the least of our concerns. Sure, the XP will become totally crap, but you don’t go and fight an Ancient Evil for the XP, you fight it to save the World.
"The smartest thing we can do at the moment is to slowly but surely clean our way downwards by using an entire army's worth of people to fight-off these seemingly unintelligent creatures, so there is no current reason for us to rush anything.
"The largest magic signature, which probably belongs to that Ancient Evil End-Boss of this Dungeon has been moving left and right quite often, but I have never seen it go up and down, which means that until proven otherwise, that Boss is indeed stuck down there and it cannot get out. The floors of this place cannot be broken by simple brute force either, as I have already tried doing that last night. Otherwise, this entire Temple and Village would have been reduced to rubble already, if that thing could have managed to somehow get out from below.
"So yes, let it spawn these things continuously and reanimate all of the bones, I do not care. We will simply use them to create a powerful army of Cultivators for ourselves instead.
"Now shut up, and let's get out of here. We must now have a long talk with all of the Village Elders and the Senior Monks about what to do in the future."
"But my Father and Brother are still down there, waiting for me to rescue them! "
*Facepalm* "Ok...I did not want to tell you this directly because I knew that it would hurt badly, but even you cannot be that stupid to fail and realise that they are both already dead by now. If what you say is true and they have been stuck down there for more than a week, there is no way that they are still alive. Even if they had managed by some miracle to fight off the influx of all of these strange creatures, they would have run out of water and food a long time ago instead. This is not going to be a rescue mission, Jaden, but a corpse retrieval run at best. You'd better prepare yourself mentally for that."
"NO! It cannot be! My family!"
"Jaden! Don’t you dare rush down those steps! Fung! Stop him!"
"Too late, Trina...he’s gone down already."
"DAMNIT!" I immediately rushed after the moron to the second Dungeon level before he got himself killed. If this was the same copy-pasted story that I knew of, then the second level had a very nasty Boss that we would be forced to go against, and we were woefully underprepared for such an encounter, even with Fung’s group being together with us now.