Martin left to procure the items I needed the next morning. By the time he returned I should be back at one hundred percent. Fiona in the meantime was scouting the surrounding for more dungeons.

If Martin agreed to join us my first goal was to hit the Grove dungeon. I think with the three of us we could take the boss, especially if I created a fire element weapon for Martin. I didn't know what kind of weapons he was skilled with so that would need to wait a bit.

As I was alone I decided to walk around the building and plan the layout for where I was going to add the mithril reinforcement.

As I walked around the front I noticed one man watching me from down the street. Curious to see what he wanted I waved and started to walk over. He turned and walked around a corner.

'Hmm, one of the Constable's people? She must be wondering what I am up to.'

Ever since I had been selling those enchanted weapons to the townsfolk she had increased her scrutiny towards me. I ignored the man as I saw him return in a different spot. Let the woman wonder what I was doing. By the time she figured out what I was up to it should be too late for her to do anything about it.

Three more days went by before Fiona returned from scouting. She had gone west and south, even though the south was desert as far as we could see it was still worth checking for dungeons.

"How was the scouting?" I asked.

"Your world is weird with how many dungeons it has."

"You think so? Does that mean you found some?"

She nodded, "yes, I found four."

I sat up straighter at this news. With the three others we located, that meant this area was ripe with opportunities to level. It also meant a greater chance to run into hostile monsters when the creatures started spilling from the dungeons. There was nothing that kept these creatures contained within dungeons. I had seen that on my very first day when I ran into the goblin dungeon, then again with the rock centipede dungeon.

Constantly clearing them out would reduce the chances of the monsters wandering too far from their dungeons.

"So what did you find?"

"The first one I found is about four hours west. It took me a bit to find it as it was located in a tight cleft of rocks. It was a level eight dungeon called the Crystal Grotto."

"Interesting. What type of creatures?"

"Mud golems and lesser earth elementals mostly, there were also some vampire bats. It shouldn't be too hard to tackle."

I nodded as she continued.

"The next one I found was a little over a day's travel from here. It was not hard to spot from a few miles out. It was an enormous dead tree called the Hag's Hideaway."

"Hag's?"

"Yea, nasty magical creatures. I had to be extremely careful to avoid them. Some of the creatures inside could detect my presence. The hag will be the boss since they don't like their own kind. The rest of the enemies consisted of swamp critters and poisonous plants."

I grunted in response, the plants would be annoying but Cleanse should be able to deal with most of it.

"What level?"

"Twelve."

"Ok, so not terrible but annoying. What about the other two?"

"Both of those I found in the desert. It's going to be a pain to find them since there are no landmarks to speak of."

"As long as you have a general idea of where they are located, we should be able to find them."

"I can probably get us within a few miles. The first one I found was called the Citadel of the Sun, it was a partially exposed pyramid. There weren't any monsters though."

"Abandoned?" I asked.

"I don't think so, the system recognized it as an active level twenty-one dungeon."

"Maybe it was cleared by the locals," I added.

"Maybe... or it could be a dungeon that only has monsters during a certain time. I heard about dungeons like that but had never seen one in person."

"Well, anyway it's a bit on the higher level spectrum so we may need to wait to attack it. What about the last one."

She smiled. "The last one is a horde dungeon," she said grinning.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Finally, I had been searching for another one since my first encounter. It was obvious from her grin that Fiona knew how important horde dungeons were. I decided to play along.

"Oh? What's a horde dungeon?" I asked, concealing my smile.

She must have caught my ghost of a smile because she stopped and crossed her arms. "You already know about horde dungeons, don't you?"

Darn, the jig was up. "Yes, remember when I told you I found a dungeon after my fall down the cliff?"

I didn't really want to bring up the past, especially this specific incident.

"Oh..." she said quietly, letting her arms drop to her side.

I quickly continued, "well, that dungeon was a horde dungeon."

"You never told me that? How many skill points did you earn?"

I had to think back, that was half a year ago. "Six I believe."

"Six!" she yelled, "you gained more points than you get for an entire level and never told me?"

"Sorry, I was going to but then..."

"Right, then I died... well, at least this explains how you are so ridiculous at stuff."

"I'm not that ridiculous," I proclaimed.

"Uh, huh... and it's perfectly normal for a person to take out forty people with one attack?"

"Touché," I replied, not able to argue with her logic.

"Anyway," she said, glaring at me while she continued, "you probably don't know everything about horde dungeons. You can only claim a maximum of ten skill points from the dungeon and you only have a week to do that. These are well documented in my world as they are so rare. After a month the dungeon collapses on its own."

"Ten points, not bad," I said interrupting her.

That was the wrong thing to do, I realized after she slapped me. I rubbed my sore cheek as she continued.

"As I was going to say before I was rudely interrupted... those ten points are split among the entire party. Usually, teams of five will enter, giving each two points at the end. If the dungeon is found by a reputable source, four full teams can go through, before it collapses."

I didn't need to guess what would happen if less than reputable people entered. They would kill off the boss at the end and the dungeon would be no more.

"The dungeon is level eleven though, and since I activated it, we only have a little over three weeks to take advantage of it before it disappears."

I waited to make sure she was done before commenting, I had no desire to be slapped again. "We can take a look as soon as Martin returns. What kind of monster are we looking at?"

"Sand scorpions, about the size of a dog."

"Ugh, why is it always bugs," I said, shivering. "Wait... won't you going in affect your chances of getting points?"

"No, you can enter the dungeon as many times as you want but you can only earn the attribute bonus one time. Also, I'm not sure I will be eligible for the bonus since I can't access my attributes."

I hadn't known that she didn't have access to her attributes. It must be another side effect to her being undead, the same as how she didn't have any of her previous skills.

"Ok, thanks for doing the hard work. Martin should be back in the next week."

If Martin returned in the next week we would have to travel to that dungeon before I could complete my plans with the house.

It was four more days before Martin returned from Biloxi. Of course, he got into a shouting match with his sister for being gone for so long.

"Sorry, I heard that you and your sister got into it again," I said as Martin entered the building.

He sighed, "not your fault. I think I will take you up on your offer. I have tried to talk sense into her but every day she seems further entrenched in her belief that the city doesn't need or want outside help. Did you know that another five people left the city?"

"No, when was this?"

Martin shrugged, "sometime after I left for Biloxi. I talked to them on my way back, they said they no longer felt safe in Arman, even though they were all carrying weapons and armor you had enhanced for them. I think they just didn't want to badmouth my sister and her lack of leadership," he said, sounding tired.

"Anyway, enough moping about... I got pretty much everything you wanted."

"Ran out of money?" I guessed.

"Yeah, finding a mana heart of the size you wanted, took most of my time and money," he said, pulling a gem the size of my big toe from his ring. He handed it to me with great care, "that beauty cost eight thousand credits and can store six thousand mana."

I winced at the price tag, pocketing the gem.

"We may want to avoid this Bazaar as well, some people were starting to ask questions."

I was mildly alarmed by this news, "what kind of questions?"

"Mostly about what I needed such a large gem for, why I needed so much mithril, and asking about the strange weapons I was selling. More and more people are becoming aware of the possibilities of our planet."

I nodded, "fair enough, what did we fall short on?"

"Mithril, there was enough to get all the plates but not enough to cover the other mithril you wanted. I was only able to secure half of what you wanted."

"Hmmm, I will make it work. Thanks for doing this for me."

"No problem, man, you've done so much for the town despite my sister being... well, herself."

"Oh, before I forget, Fiona found a special dungeon."

"Special?" Martin asked.

"Yeah, so it's called a horde dungeon, and the more waves of enemies you can kill and survive the better your reward. These types of dungeons give out attribute points as rewards, split amongst the party."

"Really?" Martin replied excitedly.

I explained the rest to Martin, then told him to take a day to rest before we left to tackle the challenge. Martin agreed to take a day to rest. I could see he was excited for the chance to gain some more attribute points. I did ask him what sort of weapon he could use. Turns out his class didn't give him anything other than basic weapons. So like clubs and generic bashing weapons.

I asked him about the crossbow I saw him with. He said he could use it, but not well. It seemed ridiculous to rune enchant a club but perhaps we could find one that wasn't so shitty.

We ended up waiting a full day until the next morning to leave, sneaking out of town without being spotted. I'll be honest it was weird seeing a quad disappear into a ring. All of the plates and gear I asked Martin to purchase, were stacked in one of the rooms. I didn't trust his sister not to snoop when she realized we were gone so I carved runes into that door that would prevent anyone other than me from opening it. I also left the teleportation scrambler inside, even though I hadn't seen anyone around town able to teleport.

This wouldn't stop her if she was determined to see what I was up to, but I figured she wouldn't risk alerting me of her snooping.

Once we were well clear of the town Martin got his quad out and I released Bella from her cage. We followed Fiona through the border of the swamp and desert for most of the day. We had to stop a few times for her to check our position.

Fiona floated back down while we rested. "Were in the correct spot, now we can go straight south and we should be able to locate it."

"Sounds good, lets rest for the night and make the trip in the morning. I don't want to have to try and deal with those sandworms in the dark."

The others nodded and I pulled out my tent. Fiona and Bella would alert us if anything came to bother us during the night.