Zoe walked back through the golden gates and sat down on one of the tables set up outside of a restaurant to spread out her map. She chuckled at her arrogance as she looked through her lists. There was a lodestone dungeon at level two thirty eight that she had marked down, but it might have been better to note down more in that level range. For some variety at least, if nothing else.
She looked around the small town outside the dungeon for a royal office, or something similar. But there was nothing. The only building of a similar style was the dungeoneering guild at the entrance. Would they have transportation back for her?
On the sheet Frederick had given her, Zoe arranged for a return trip the following day. But that was assuming she’d be spending a day raiding the dungeon, rather than just relaxing outside of it. How did the return trip work, anyway? If she left the dungeon, would Frederick appear wherever she ended up to take her back? Or would Frederick appear here, where she was left, and if she wasn’t there just go back to the office?
Maybe they left a mark on Zoe, and she’d be teleported back autonomously after a day? She turned her attention inwards, looking for a sign of anything left on her but found nothing. Though, she didn’t think herself to be much of an expert on soul magic shenanigans, anyway. At the very least, there was nothing similar to the Spacial Weave left on her anywhere, as far as she could tell.
It would make much more sense for somebody to come show up to pick her up anyway, than to use some high level magic that might rip her out of something she wanted to continue doing, anyway.
Which left her with three options, as far as she could see. Either she could loiter in town for a day and head somewhere else the next day, make her way back to the north eastern entrance and find a royal office to send her to a new dungeon, or try her hand at the dungeon again while she waited.
Was it really that dangerous? Her health had only drained about a quarter — quite significant, but not a risk of immediate death at least. With as much mana as she could pump into her Restoration, she could heal herself for about a thousand health per second.
Zoe bit her lip. Was it worth it? They didn’t seem to be able to hit her when she was in the air — but when they did it felt like she was being hit by a truck and could potentially far out damage her ability to heal herself. If they could hit her in the air, she could be dead in another four or five hits.
She shook her head. As tempting as the massive boost in levels she’d get was, the risk was just too high. A slower, steadier path fit much better for somebody with as much time as her. Maybe if she found a group and joined them, but Zoe wasn’t sure she wanted to do that yet. The responsibility of being a healer in a group, in a dungeon where a moment of distraction could lead to people dying was too great.
That left her with sticking around in the town, or making her way back to the capital and finding another royal office — or just a dungeon nearby that would be more suitable. She looked back at the map spread out on the table in front of her and checked all the dungeons near the north east of the city.
Most were circles and stars, but there were two dungeons that stood out to Zoe. A level two hundred thirty four ruin dungeon a few dozen kilometers away by the looks of it, outside of town. As well as a level two hundred forty eight lodestone dungeon within the town’s walls a short walk from the north eastern gate.
Zoe decided the lower level one made more sense. The lodestone dungeon would probably be doable, but she’d bled enough of her gold at this point and needed to at least find something she could to do make it back. She walked out of the shanty town, then Cosmic Stepped to the south-east towards the Scalding Marsh dungeon.
In a few seconds, floated just outside another similar looking town, with a vast swamp extending into the horizon behind it. Several guards stood at the edge of the town, looking up at Zoe with waves of curiosity and interest washing out over Zoe’s Empathy.
She landed outside the town and walked up to them. “Hello,” she said as she walked past them into the white stone covered centre of the town. One of the guards nodded as she passed.
Passing the golden gate into the dungeon proper was much the same as the previous dungeon, though the line to get in was a fair bit longer. She showed her license, pushed mana into a crystal sphere, paid the twenty gold fee and was let through the gates into the marsh beyond.
Even back at the previous dungeon, the gates seemed like pageantry than anything else. Physically, nothing stopped Zoe from just walking around the building and stepping past the illusion. But at the Scalding Marsh?
There was just a single tiny gate she had to pass through to enter the sprawling swamp behind. No walls blocked her from walking around, no fence, no magical barrier stopping her. Just the threat of repercussions from the royals. Zoe didn’t get the point of the gate at all.
It would make much more sense, she imagined, to just have a kiosk of some kind. Come verify your mana, pay your fee, and enter the dungeon. But no, for some reason they needed a gate.
Maybe it was like Joe’s inn classes? Without an inn, his skills were useless. Without a gate, the gate defenders were worthless? Zoe shrugged. Seemed just as likely as some stuck up royals putting on a show for the sake of it, anyway.
Zoe walked out into the marshes, her feet sinking into the very warm, wet mud with muffled squelches. Patches of tall reeds covered the wet swampland as far as her eyes could see, with groups of people fighting an enormous variety of different animals. Colourful birds that dove down at incredible speeds, swarms of bugs that split apart as groups launched balls of flame at them. Massive lobsters that wandered through the swamp, spitting powerful blasts of water that pushed aside the reeds at anything they saw.
It seemed like a normal swamp that Zoe would imagine when she thought of a swamp, only with much larger more violent creatures filling it. What would the boss be then, she wondered? A large alligator? A little swimming rabbit? A mosquito?
Zoe covered herself in a suit of earth and floated off the disgusting feeling mud, drifting across the surface of the water deeper into the dungeon. She didn’t get very far before something grabbed her right leg and tried to pull her down into the water.
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A toad, about the size of Zoe’s head had wrapped its fur covered tongue around her foot. She felt the furs digging into her earth as she pushed back against it with mana and identified the toad.
A level two hundred seventeen dark red Fur Tongued Toad. She almost felt bad looking at it as mana rushed down its tongue trying to cut into her leg. It was just a, well a rather ugly toad trying to live its life. It was almost cute in its feebleness.
Zoe pushed mana into her earthen suit and expanded a small shell of earth around her leg, letting her slip out of the toad’s grasp. The chunk of earth shot back, knocking the toad onto its back when she stopped pulling against the toad’s tongue.
“Sorry buddy. I’m not food.” Zoe said as she floated a little higher above the marsh.
The dungeon didn’t seem very fun, to her. Hunting was an enjoyable process and even one she’d done many times. But that was for food. This felt different somehow. Like she was invading their home, threatening their livelihoods.
It was a dungeon, of course. But did that mean it was okay for her to come in and slaughter all of the animals that lived within it? She wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Things were much easier when the creatures were obvious monsters. Bears and freakish moles, not just somewhat odd toads going about their existence. Maybe she would have felt different if the toad managed to actually overwhelm her.
Either way, Zoe decided she’d just try and find the boss, clear the dungeon and move on somewhere less morally ambiguous for her. She drifted through the swamp for a while, dodging more of the fur tongued toads and teleporting away from swarms of mosquitos that rose up from patches of drooping reeds when she approached and avoiding the explosions of steam from crabs that skittered along the bottom of the swamp.
Where would the boss of a marsh be, anyway, she wondered. On Moaning Point it was simple. At the top. In Kliggig, there was an end to the dungeon. In Flester’s Might there was an obvious arena in the library. But a swamp was just a swamp.
Eventually, something new appeared on the horizon. A forest, different from the ones she’d normally been seeing outside of the dungeon at the edges. Drooping trees with bright green leaves and a mess of vines hanging from the branches. Bits of land covered in fallen branches and even more vines crawling across it, with channels of slow moving water cutting through.
Were they called mangrove forests, Zoe wondered? It had been a while since she’d thought of them. What kinds of animals lived in mangrove forests? Much the same as in swamps, she imagined but she thought she remembered hearing about a specific apex predator that thrived in mangrove forests. Hawks? Crocodiles?
Zoe drifted towards the forest and looked through it. There were much fewer tracks on the land in the forest than there were on the small patches of somewhat dry land in the rest of the swamp. People tended to stay away from the mangrove forest, for some reason then?
She floated into the forest, the trees towering over her pushing her down so her feet dragged across the surface of the water, sending ripples through the near still stream that travelled down the channel. At points, the trees opened to reveal a wet, muddy patch of land only for the stream to continue down into the dense cluster of trees.
A few minutes in, Zoe found a trail cutting across the stream she was following. Dozens of human footsteps travelling through the trees — the most recent only a few minutes prior to Zoe’s eye. Zoe followed along the worn trail, and in a few short minutes, she arrived at another muddy patch of land. A few groups sat around on summoned chairs and floating platforms of wood or other elements in the clearing, chatting amongst each other.
Some of the people in the groups turned and looked at Zoe when she stepped out of the dense covering of trees then turned back to continue chatting with each other. Zoe walked up to the group nearest her, three individuals with heavy metal armour who sat on rotting wooden chairs that sunk into the muddy ground beneath their weight.
“Hey,” Zoe said. “This the line for the boss fight?”
“Yup.” The man closest to Zoe said.
“First time?” The woman farthest from Zoe said.
“Yeah it is. How long do you think it’ll be?" Zoe asked.
“An hour or two probably. We just got here a few minutes ago ourselves. Usually isn’t this bad.” The man in the middle said.
“Alright, cool. I can wait then. Thanks.” Zoe said.
“No problem. Want some tips?" The woman asked.
“No, no. I think I’ll be fine. It’s fun to try things out on your own too, y’know?" Zoe asked.
The man closest to Zoe scoffed. “That’s how you die, lady.”
“I think I’ll be alright. We can leave if we want, right? Doesn’t lock us in the arena? Never found a dungeon that did, but it’s always a little bit of a concern.” Zoe said.
“Nah. You’re good.” The man in the middle said.
“Alright, cool. Thanks then. Best of luck.” Zoe said.
“You too!” The woman said.
Zoe moved a bit away and summoned a gnarled wooden chair that she sat in as it floated above the dirty ground. A few minutes later, she heard a familiar bell sound out and a group at the other side got up to walk deeper into the grove of trees and everybody lurched forward a bit, dragging their chairs or magic across the muddy ground.
It didn’t take long before the group Zoe spoke to rung the bell and Zoe walked down the well worn trail through the dense grove of trees. A short walk from the opening was a shimmering opaque blue barrier blocking her from seeing what happened on the other side, with a bell hanging from a nearby branch. Zoe sat down and waited just over twenty minutes for the barrier to fall away and the group to walk out. Their once pristine metal armour was covered in blood and dirt, and they walked past Zoe with big smiles on their faces.
“Good luck!" The woman called out.
“Thanks!" Zoe called back as she rang the bell and stepped past the boundary.
The blue barrier slammed into existence behind Zoe, and a deafening roar echoed through the forest, followed by an eerie silence as though everything in the forest had been frozen in place. Zoe summoned an earthen suit around herself, and drifted along beneath the branches as she lifted her feet from the mud below.
Every moment she spent scouring everything around her with her sphere of perception. Every movement, every twig, every fish that scurried underneath the roots of the trees. And then she saw a flash of movement, a blur of orange race through the edge of her perception.
Zoe Cosmic Stepped to the side and watched as a tiger flew through where she was a moment prior, its sharp teeth gnashing as it turned and snarled at her. Steam poured from its lips, wrapping around its body and obscuring Zoe’s normal vision.
“Ah, right.” Zoe said to herself. “It was a tiger.”