POV Raid Dungeon camp guard

I looked up at the sun and wanted to sigh but I hold it in because I never know if our commanders were watching us. The guard next to me didn’t care. He was just sitting on his stool and barely paying attention, but he also wasn't a part of the adventurer guild.

He was one of the city state's guards. Every organization that was given access to the dungeon had to put up a certain number of guards to keep the peace but I wish that our guild had full authority here but that wasn't going to happen.

At least it seems like he was properly trained and had good equipment. Some of the guards looked more like farmers than anything else. The good news is that there hasn’t been any trouble. There simply weren’t enough people around here that might cause any trouble except nobles. We were far from any population centre which I was glad about but that meant we had to live mostly on rations.

It was good that I could see a few carts of food coming over the hill. It will still take them half an hour to get here but at least tonight we will have a good stew to eat. I looked back towards the camp and just happened to see a noble that looked at us disapprovingly. I have long since gotten used to their looks but after this winter they were really bad.

If I understand it correctly a lot of the nobles that had low levels were killed off by peasant mobs. Now over half the surviving city-states are no longer under noble control which was at least one thing that we could throw in their faces when we ran into them while drinking in the bar.

I looked up at the sun again, but the fucker hadn’t moved or if it did it was too little to notice. The good news was that at least the carts were almost here. I move to hit the other guard in the shin but before I could do that, I noticed someone else on top of the hill.

The cart driver greeted me, and I greeted him back but when I looked at the hill again the man wasn't there anymore. At first, I was puzzled but then I saw him a lot closer than he should be.

I used my sense danger ability which made cold sweat run down my back I had not felt that ever since I achieved the true gold rank. That person would be able to kill me quite easily. “Hey idiot, get up we might have trouble coming.” I kicked him hard so he would start paying attention. My actions also alerted the cart drivers. He was getting closer a lot faster so he must have some movement ability that he could use constantly.

He was finally close enough so I could see him quite well. He was fully armoured although the chest piece did look kind of weird having leather covering it, but I could see the metal on the edges. Full chain mail as well but it didn't look like it was enchanted or upgraded.

I took a quick glance at the guard next to me and saw that he had become serious which was good. I sent an alert through one of my rings of possible trouble and that a dangerous person has arrived.

I had only taken my attention off him for a few seconds but when I looked back at him I had to tamp down my moment of fright as he was again a lot closer than I expected him to be. That was a weird movement skill that I wasn’t familiar with.

He was now close enough that I identified him but like always identify was mostly useless. I used all my abilities to figure out his strength. That helped me estimate how much energy and mana he had but that made my racing mind stop.

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He didn’t have any mana and the energy I could sense was only at a high silver level. The guard next to me asked me. “Are you also only seeing him as high silver? I looked again and answer. “Yes, but my other ability says that he could kill us easily.” After a few moments, he answered back. “Yep, same here I hope you alerted the shift commander.” I nodded back to him. He was already here, and I expected him to approach us any moment, but he stopped behind the carts waiting for his turn.

We both looked at each other again completely confused. Why would he wait? It made zero sense. The time ticked by, and I had to do something. Not knowing what to do I did what my job told me to do. I went to check the carts so there wouldn't be any contraband or someone trying to sneak people in. I was glad that today at least I had a competent partner as it took him only a few moments to figure out what I was doing.

While doing our jobs we always kept one eye on the man. He was tall and his eyes pierced like nothing else. I still couldn’t figure out why I was having the discrepancy among my abilities but perhaps he was trying to hide his real strength.

That was of course quite stupid because any decent guard had multiple abilities to detect a person's strength level. At least he was waiting for his turn so this might not become a problem and hopefully, this will give enough time that people will notice the alert and come and see what is happening.

I was not so stupid to activate the emergency alert I didn’t want the paperwork or the dressing down if this didn't turn out to be a problem. We were done with the second cart and only two remained when I noticed that four horses were coming down the road. Why were they so close already? God damn it. I had to fight to hold back my reaction when I noticed that there were nobles. Oh, this could not get any worse. Shit why the fuck did I think that.

I looked towards the other guard and saw his white face and knew that he had thought the same thing as I did. I had to clear my head so I could remember which ring was for notifying that nobles were arriving. Activating the ring I hoped to water the noble welcomer was not busy and hurried here.

What I could do was make our inspection as slow as possible. But this time my partner was ahead of me as he took a few steps back scratch his head a bit and acted like he might have missed something or forgotten something. Nice one. Everyone knew that it was fake, but they couldn't say anything.

The last cart driver and his guard were looking at us with open hostility. They didn't want anything to do with the nobles or the person behind them, but we had kept them there for long enough that the nobles were almost here. I steadied myself and got back in position and waved him over. He had waited for so long and still looked completely at ease. Honestly, that scared me more than anything else.

“What is your purpose here and please identify yourself with your adventurer card.” Shit, I tried to be as steady as possible, but I think there was a bit of a tremble in my voice. Then the man tilted his head sideways a bit in a completely eerie way and I had to do everything possible to not grab my sword. Then quiet a deep voice answered my enquiry.

“I was invited here by the Thorn Rose Company to join them in a delve of the raid dungeon. But I do not have an adventuring card or any other identifier. Will that be a problem" The man said that with complete calmness?

Of course, that was going to be a problem. For earth’s sake, why didn’t he have any identifiers? I looked towards my partner but he was just standing still and looking forward. I wasn’t going to get any help from him.

My mind picked up that he had been invited by the Thorn Rose Company. That could be a lie but even with an invitation I couldn’t let him in, but I could give that information to my higher-ups so they could solve this problem. But before I could do anything the nobles arrived.

Usually, the nobles did stop at least for a moment but the truly bad ones always tried to push their authority by going straight through. This time my partner did his job and tried to stop them, but I already knew that they were not going to stop. They were going to just trample down the man that was waiting for my answer.