Baron Montmour came to greet us in person. I guessed it was the sensible option when the two most powerful people in the region came to visit.

On the way to the plantation, I heard that a Herald went ahead to put the good Baron up to speed regarding the fast-moving development. When securing a wild Dungeon, you had to either be fast or be so powerful that no one would dare interfere.

The Baron would be pissed that a Dungeon was found in his territory and the finder did what the law dictated without suffering what the law left unsaid. He made a point of not making eye contact with me. I was okay with that.

I could see that he was divided. On one hand, he wouldn't lose a huge chunk of his lands to eminent domain. On the other hand, he was denied the opportunity to do backroom deals and steal the Dungeon Core for himself.

Was a man forced to be righteous just as worthy? Baron Montmour was the least capable person to answer that. His irritation was understandable. People in power seldom like to lose agency.

I tuned off their exchange of forced pleasantries. I heard the Lord mention my name a few times, let time pass, and come back. Once everyone had their ducks in a row, we went on our way.

Sleepy was fully recovered from our encounter with the Redscale Basilisk. Except for a lack of pointy stuff poking out of their heads, my bonds were as healthy as they could be.

To get to the island proper, Alice used her magic to make two arched stone bridges. One crossing over the near river arm, the other from the island to the other side. The construction felt solid and it was permanent. Regardless of the Dungeon's fate, the island would no longer be an isolated piece of wilderness. Sorry, birds and critters. Your home has been demolished to make way for progress. Well, not entirely but we had to see the outcome of this raid.

The caravan of fancy carriages and sturdy wagons crossed the bridge. I moved to the front, walking ahead of the horses. My eyes and ears were open to detect any threats ahead.

Floating by my side, Alice kept paving the path as I led everyone to the still-covered Dungeon entrance. The trail left by the Basilisk meant we didn't have to cut any trees. Any intact trees, I mean. A lot of cracked and damaged ones were on the way. While we could save those trees, Alice just conjured giant stone hands to uproot them and toss them to the side. The hands then morphed into cobblestone and paved our path.

Though the Scholars had no consensus on the matter, the mainstream belief was that Dungeons only opened access to the outside world when they were ready to. Whether it was because it believed itself strong enough, boredom, or just claustrophobia, it depended on the Dungeon's peculiar personality. Some even said that Dungeons were once people, bad people who were punished by the Gods in the afterlife. These believed that breaking them was to grant the tormented soul respite. That's why the reward for doing so was so inflated.

"It's here," I said. "In the middle of that clearing."

"Stand back!" The Guild Master commanded. Nobody complained.

Alice paved the site around the entrance too, using deft Earth manipulation to move the nearby trees without damaging the roots, a feat only truly appreciated by those who knew tree roots reached far out like a spiderweb in contrast to those idiots who thought trees were just a stick stuck in the ground.

And she claimed to be an Archmage of Destruction. Is this how the retired old monsters spend their time? To think there were older and more monstrous entities out there like the Demon King. We don't talk about the Demon King.

*

*

We stood around the circular patch of earth left in the middle of the now-paved clearing. People were nervous, especially us, low-level peasants. If the aristocrats shared the sentiment, they were too good at hiding it. I wanted to believe Alice had it handled but the fear of the unknown, of what would happen next was overpowering.

"It's indeed a Dungeon," Alice said after she cast a few spells. "And it knows we are here. It is spawning monsters at a fast pace already."

"What kind of monsters?" The Lord and Baron Montmour asked in unison.

Alice spoke more to our enlightenment than to the Nobles. I bet they knew it already.

"No idea. Dungeons usually only spawn the monster species that died inside of it, the full corpses it fed on, and sometimes a whole category, as if it had gained them as a pack, say, goblinoids, from a System feature. The Dungeon isn't very old, maybe less than a century old. They grow really slowly most of the time but accumulate deep stockpiles of mana. It may lead to explosive growth spurts or monster stampedes. As agreed, I will keep anything from spilling out while the delve group hunts for the Core."

*

*

Everyone scattered as Alice started to gather a lot of magic around her. I knew that altering the terrain around a Dungeon was nigh impossible. But she started to raise pillars around the edges of the clearing, then connect those to create a sturdy wall.

It was standard procedure. The first concern when securing a wild Dungeon was to prevent it from spewing monsters like an erupting volcano. The second concern was to keep said spewed monsters from going everywhere and destroying civilization.

I went to a corner of the expanded clearing to perform my rigorous equipment check. We were betting our lives and I wouldn't move a finger without maximum preparedness.

The Knights did the same with the help of their squires. These young lads wouldn't come with us.

The supplies were taken off the wagons. Our group had six noncombatant porters. Each of them had a wheelbarrow with containers tied on top of it. Two of them were special. These wheelbarrows had a metal box instead, one enchanted with a space expansion and ice enchantments to hold perishables. The other had a similarly-sized metal box but it was a huge water reservoir.

Meanwhile, Hector talked to the Baron. Kara stood alone and afraid, clad in metal Guard armor more suited to fighting people than monsters. Her armament was composed of a longsword and a kite shield, with four daggers as side arms. She carried a small backpack with her essential supplies.

Back in the city, I fetched the first one of the club-chests and placed it in my quiver. Kara's camping gear and spare clothes were with me.

Once everyone was ready to delve, Alice stepped closer to the entrance. She wore that ephemeral and otherworldly grace of elves, a clear display, at least to me, that she was very annoyed. Alice spent centuries among the other races and had long lost those immortal airs of the forest people.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

The Archmage wrenched the plug of earth and rock that the Dungeon covered its entrance with and violently flung it away, over the walls and forest. It splashed in the river many seconds later.

She pointed a hand at the tunnel wall and we all heard a loud "Whoomp" sound. The wall cracked and a shower of dust and debris shot out of the hole. Wind magic carried the dust away.

"Yup, it's a Dungeon, no doubt about it." She clicked her tongue.

I guessed that she was still bitter about the deal. But Josephine secured a good set of concessions for the Guild.

"What? But Dungeon walls were supposed to be indestructible!" Baron Montmour protested.

Alice cackled haughtily. "This concussive bolt spell would have carved the island in half all the way to the river and a few hundred meters beyond it if that wasn't a Dungeon wall," she explained.

An invisible presence came from within the hole, covering the area around the entrance and striking at Alice. The civilian porters and some squires fell to the ground. The rest of us braced in time but it was a powerful magical attack.

The Elf's white dress fluttered as if that massive magical attack was just a breeze. Alice engaged back. She wrestled against the Dungeon in a magical duel. Sparks flew and waves of mana became visible like a localized Aurora Borealis.

"The pitiful thing is fighting against me with its domain," She said with a labored breath. "I think it's scary. Fool. Wasting your energy for… Naught!"

With a shout, she forced the slanted tunnel floor to bend and turn into stone stairs. The Dungeon's presence withdrew back into the depths. The pitch-black depths.

Wait. If the Dungeon was strong enough to wrestle magic with a level five hundred Archmage and make her show that much effort…

It was all a ruse, wasn't it? I was glad I was too shocked to laugh. Meddling with Alice's theatrical performance was the worst I could do right now. At least it seemed that everyone bought it, including the slack-jawed Baron and the grimacing Lord.

Maybe the latter was thinking about the strength of the knights he was sending. All of them were army officers. If the Dungeon was that strong, what chance did they have? The contract had a clause he could use to concede the Core to Alice. Could he be thinking about using it?

He shook his head and took a step closer to his son, to show support.

"All yours, Lord Hector," Alice said.

The young lordling was despondent. The pressure he was under was nothing to scoff at.

*

*

Another wave of magic came from below. Monsters started to appear in thin air above the walls. Everyone gasped but the real warriors drew their weapons. That was the knights and me if anyone didn't get the memo.

It was going to rain monsters. Dozens appeared within seconds and then… they didn't fall on our heads.

Instead, all the monsters floated in Force magic bubbles, just like the Guards a few weeks ago. Alice closed her hand with a warcry and all the bubbles shrunk to a tenth of their previous diameter. The monsters became flesh smoothies.

"Sleepy, lunchtime!" Alice chirped as she conjured a bowl of stone outside the clearing and deposited the smoothie there. Sleepy rushed there on bounds three meters long, each.

She made us wait until Sleepy slurped all he could eat. At least she cleaned the gore off his fur and feathers with a murky ball of water. It was transparent when she summoned it.

Leave it to Alice to piss off a Dungeon and everyone else on our first encounter. She noticed my disappointment and winked. I understood why she did it on purpose, though. She was making the Dungeon waste its resources.

"Okay, it doesn't seem like the Dungeon will attempt to spawn stuff out here again. You are cleared to start. Good luck."

"Thank you, Guild Master. Men, to me!" The lordling said.

We lined up to descend the stairs. Nobody said a peep. The marching order was six knights in front, Hector, two knights, Kara, me, and my pets, the porters pushing wheelbarrows with our supplies, and then four knights closing the formation. I had to remind myself once again that these ten men were battle-tested elites. None of them would hesitate to die for the glory of their Lordling.

Hector avoided me as he went to his spot. Since yesterday, he kept our interactions to the socially minimum acceptable, acting more like a military leader than the friend he once pretended we could be. He also treated Kara with distance and detachment.

The only thing that kept me from thinking he was plotting to kill us down there was the ironclad and System-enforced contract. It was anathema to the mission's goal if he got struck with an Oathbreaker debuff. He couldn't evade it through one of the knights either; the System could judge intent and was nigh-omniscient.

*

*

Down we marched. The stairs had a narrow ramp in the middle for the wheelbarrows. That too was standard Guild procedure. It was either one groove for wheelbarrows or two for minecarts.

Gemstones artistically embedded on the knight's helmets provided all-around magical light. This Dungeon had no light source whatsoever. Stealth was a foregone option. The Dungeon knew we were coming and where we were.

The contract conspicuously left out a duty to scout for traps and ambushes out of my duties. I was still doing so but from the seventh row.

We spent hours walking down an irregularly excavated tunnel. The rock was cracked and scratched, still showing the white fracture marks where the material was stressed. The air was stale but only smelled of rock dust. I caught no musk, mold, or excrement scents in the air.

No bifurcations, alcoves, or side tunnels either. It seemed like it was a single tunnel dug in a hurry to connect a deeper location to the surface. No speleothems either, not even signs of infiltration despite the river raging above us. The separation between the walls and roof was impossible to discern. Despite that, the tunnel floor was roughly flat and wide enough for two armored men to fight side-by-side.

No traps or ambushes either. We reached a large cavern filled with a hazy thin dust in suspension, the light failed to reach the walls and the echo of the knight's armor told me said walls were at least twenty or more meters away.

As we entered, the knights formed a protective circle.

"I wish we had secured the services of a mage," Hector lamented to one of the officers. "But we couldn't find one trustworthy enough."

I understood that as such; either they couldn't pay the asked price or didn't find one suicidal enough to come.

"I'm going to scout the room," I said. Taking Sleepy by his collar, I set him next to Kara. "Guard!" I ordered. Sleepy sat down by her feet and kept watch. "William, heel."

We moved without making a sound. William's hooves only clopped when he wanted them to. I lit my magic lantern and set the shutters to project a cone pointing forward. It hung from a belt strap over my pants. It was the most convenient spot that wouldn't hinder my archery. Going past the knights, we followed the left wall as I made a mental map of the room. The knights vanished but I could still see the light bubble behind me. It meant that whatever monsters were set in ambush ahead of me would see my lantern before it illuminated them but the alternative was to never see them at all.

I heard the sounds of dozens of hard things scuttling over the rock and stopped. William moved to my side and I readied an arrow, three others between my other fingers.

Then they came, a swarm of a dozen. The monsters, one and a half meters tall each, stood on brown hairy arthropod legs but only four. They were mostly upright, with a square maw with two rows of pearly white incisor teeth mounted on their stomach, crab claws on the end of similarly hairy chitin arms, and two slug eyes on rubbery tentacles on top. No visible head, or no torso if they were heads with four legs and arms coming out of the temples.

The monsters became maddening. Mouths garbled gibberish sounded like a soprano trying to make a political speech while choking on water. The eyes spun around as the claws clacked furiously.

"Contact!" I shouted and put the four arrows in the air at the same time. One for each monster. Before I could assess the damage, I was already pumping more arrows at the others.

William charged and rammed two. These two flew away, crashing out of sight. William moved backward before the other monsters could fill the gap.

I managed to put seven out of commission before the rest reached us. William rammed another but this one only fell and skidded back two meters. Two left standing.

I shot one and the last one clawed at me but kept moving as if it would climb me with those heinous hairy insect legs. With no room to shoot, I swung for the rafters. The monster grabbed Scout's Oath and yanked it off my hands. I let it and drew my secondary bow. The curse took over as I shot the wounded ones trying to stand up.

> For killing level 19 Spider Half-Gibbermouth, you gained 64 Experience points.

…

> For killing level 17 Spider Half-Gibbermouth, you gained 40 Experience points.

I had never heard of these monsters. Their levels ranged from 19 the highest to 15 the lowest. Once more I forgot to get their names with my Perk. But until I trained to make it take no time, concentration, or effort, I wouldn't risk using it in combat.

"George!" Hector called. The lack of hurried steps and plate armor clanging told me they didn't move from the entrance.