------------- Dungeon Entrance -------------

"You're relieved", the lesser noble said to Branch and Caelum. "My own people will guard the entrance during the dungeon's inspection and classification." The man that had traveled with him in the back of the wagon, the woman with the staff adorned with dangling gems, and the other woman holding a book stood firm but with a slight forward angle, showing the Exterminators that had guarded the dungeon for so long that they weren't asking permission nor allowing for backtalk.

The Exterminator merchant glanced at the Exterminator rogue, and the two of them nodded to the lesser noble and his party behind him as they began their walk to their outpost in Bogsreach.

The inspector with the staff turned and walked a few feet away, making a wide arc in a half-circle around the dungeon's entrance. She didn't know its exact range, especially after reading the reports, but staying away from the awning was probably a good idea, in her reasoning. She stood on the highest part of the hill, claiming the vantage point.

The inspector with the axe, on the other hand, walked over to the awning and stood under it, resting his axe's head on the ground, aimed forward. If anything came close, he'd deal with it easily enough, or so he thought. He hadn't dealt with any young dungeons that attracted anything more than random wild animals, and didn't expect to.

'What the-? More invaders? Not as many as I've felt before, but it's still an obnoxious crowd glaring at me from behind my back. What are you fools even doing? Leave me alone. Zombies! It's your job to dig out this room now. Just make sure you get this hole to the big room I have planned over there. Can you see what I'm thinking? Shit, you can't answer. Okay then, I need to figure out how to... oh yeah, I can make copies of that book now.'

"You can wander around the cave, but don't go into the dungeon, and don't bump into me. Let me know if there's a monster attack, but don't start anything." The inspector woman with the book commanded the lesser noble as she undid her overbelt and swung it forward into her other hand.

The lesser noble had already been trained to understand this procedure, and the fact that he was nothing more than a face to receive any arguments from the exterminators, townsfolk, passing adventurers, or vagrants. His instructors had made it very clear. How could the inspectors identify a dungeon's mana if they were being crowded and yelled at? How could a fifth son of a fifth cousin of the royal line inherit anything or be worth the kingdom's time?

The best he could hope for, was to do a good job keeping the peasants away from the adventurers ascended to Royal Dungeon Inspectors. They, at least, were keeping the kingdom's resources and infrastructure intact. They were at least useful.

The lesser noble felt defeated and hated by the other royals, and though he had no choice whether or not to go with the group, he lied to himself, hoping that he could get recognition as an adventurer and be an inspector himself one day. He paid attention to where he was, and looked up at the giant rock monster glaring at him.

Before he had a chance to yell in surprise, the woman said something. "It isn't a rock dungeon, either."

He didn't feel the need to scream anymore, but did get away quickly. Standing in front of the woman, he looked down at her crouching on the dirt floor of the cave with a wooden contraption with a lot of beads on varying horizontal strings. Some of the beads on the top string were on the right side, but most were on the left. All of the beads on the other strings were on the left as well.

"I'm sorry?", he asked.

"This isn't a rock dungeon. I thought it would be a rock dungeon, but that isn't what its mana reacts to." She moved all the beads on the top string from right to left, and pulled half of them on the second string from right to left before moving one back to the right. "That's odd."

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"What's happening now?", the lesser noble asked.

"This isn't an undead dungeon."

"A lot of people said there was a zombie."

"It might not have been a zombie. It might have been something else that looked the same."

"I don't understand. I wasn't taught this stuff."

The woman sighed, and held her book out to the almost-man.

He took it, and opened it up to the wrong page. Though, how could he know?

"Flip through the book to find where it says 'Magic Spheres', and find the page on necromancy. It has a picture of a skeletal hand coming out of the ground in front of a grave on it."

He flipped through the book, finding various pages on various things, with all sorts of pictures of different things on each page. Just below the picture, he saw the same wooden tool the inspector had, but the beads were in different positions on the strings. After a few moments, he found the page. "I have it."

"Good. Do you see this bead?" She pointed at the bead sitting on the third string, in between the other beads on the left and right.

"Yes, I do."

"Is it glowing?"

"No, it isn't."

"And that page shows this bead pattern?"

"Yes, it does."

"Then this is not an undead dungeon. It isn't a rock dungeon, either."

"So, the dungeon has monsters that aren't... dungeons can only make monsters that... I'm sorry, I'm confused."

"Dungeons often have rooms or upgrades or monsters or treasure or decorations or whatever else that don't fit their theme." It sounded like she was speaking more from experience than inspector training, but then again, she used to be an adventurer. "It's like finding a fire dungeon that has a room with an underground lake and water birds in it. It happens, and no one knows why. Maybe this dungeon is too young to start using its own theme, that's all."

The lesser noble had a few questions, but he didn't ask them.

The inspector reached her hand out, and her book was given back to her. She moved all the beads back to the left side, and started moving one at a time to the center of the string, waiting a moment before moving it to the right and getting the next bead from the left to the center before continuing the process across most of the rest of the entire first string. "This dungeon either doesn't have an element, or it doesn't have one that's been discovered yet."

"The last two beads you moved at the same time. How come you didn't check both?"

"A holy dungeon? That's stupid. I think we only have those beads attuned that way so we can identify holy artifacts."

She was getting visibly frustrated, though whether it was because of her identification tool, the dungeon, or the conversation, the lesser noble didn't know.

"Fine." She moved the beads she didn't check back to the left, and moved one to the right. Nothing happened. She moved the final runically carved hexagonal wooden bead, and it began glowing as brightly as a flashlight with a weak lightbulb and a dying battery.

The two of them were silent and immobile. Once they got a hold of themselves, they looked at each other, then the glowing bead, then back at each other.

"It wasn't bright enough to account for everything. Just keep me safe while I'm figuring out what else this dungeon's theme is", the woman commanded the lesser noble as she started moving beads on the other strings around.

The lesser noble was bored despite being in a dungeon, and uncomfortable with the giant rock monster hatefully staring at him. At least it didn't move, so it wasn't a threat despite how huge it was. After awhile, the woman called to him. "We're going. Come, and look like you're the leader in case someone comes by."

He bowed, and took point, walking in front of the woman as she packed her wooden contraption back into the rigid rectangular box-like leather bag that fit snugly on her lower back.

The inspectors with the axe and staff stayed at their ranges from the dungeon, and the woman looked relieved to see the other two emerge.

"So, what do we have here? Anything interesting?", the inspector with the staff asked.

The man snorted, apparently waking up from a nap. "Worth anything?"

The woman with the book answered both at once. "We're returning to Mountainthrone now. Let's get back to Plainsheart and we'll sleep in the wagon."

Looking around, she saw no one had been able to hear her low voice or see her. She shoved the lesser noble in the small of his back, pushing him forward.

He got the message. "Everyone, move out! We will fetch food and supplies from Hearth... Plainsheart, and make haste!" He didn't know if anyone was listening either, but he did at least have his training to account for it.

"Most dungeons make more sense than this thing does. Holy Humor Puppet is not something I would have thought to see. That's even more nonsensical than the Forest Goblin Fruit dungeon on the other side of the kingdom", the inspector with the book thought to herself.