“I found it! The safe room is over here!” Celeste led the way while casually using Slave Communication.

Of course, Calypso had already seen them sneak into the 1st floor safe room. It was only too much to hope that she didn’t notice. It wasn’t that we didn’t make an attempt. Shao’s compatibility with miasma could allow her to hide her movements from the Dungeon Master, but it was too much to think that Calypso wouldn’t have seen her at all. She would have been on high alert last night with this new group. At the very least, I wasn’t going to assume the possibility.

Likewise, our mad dash to the 5th level saferoom also seemed suspicious, but I couldn’t do anything about that. Ultimately, we needed to enter the safe rooms. However, it turned out that she didn’t make that something easy to do. All of the safe rooms were hidden. While the rules of dungeons seemed to require regular safe rooms, and their entrances to not be blocked, that didn’t mean that the Dungeon Master couldn’t put them in some difficult to find and reach places.

In this case, the room was in a large, thick tree. The hole to the room was high up, above several massive branches which completely obscured it. Without Celeste being able to fly up and look around, it would have been impossible to find the safe room. To get there, Terra created steps using the earth so the group was able to walk up to the pocket. We entered the safe room.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

The familiar environment with the mural and the transport relay appeared before us. Of course, no two safe rooms were exactly the same. This one had a small spring running through the center. It also had the appearance of a tree. Every safe room took up a theme given by the dungeon. I wasn’t sure if trees were always the theme, but this environment had an earthy scent and felt natural. Since we had battled various types of dinosaurs and ape-like monsters on the way down, I had a feeling that the theme of this dungeon before it got turned into a bandit dungeon had to do with some kind of primordial world, like the Mysterious Island.

“Finally, Master, we can speak!” Celeste exclaimed excitedly, and then covered her mouth. “Oops! We can, right?”

I had ordered them to keep their mouths shut until we could get into the safe room, but Celeste had already been holding it in and it burst out the second that she got inside. I shrugged as the rest of the girls piled in the room.

“Master!”

“We missed you!”

“Do you need your potion!”

The girls all leaped on me giving me hugs as soon as I gave the okay. Terra offered me a potion, which was the one that turned me back into a man. I shook my head and denied it. As much as I didn’t like to continue masquerading as a girl, I had no choice if I wanted to keep fooling Calypso. At least, in the safe room, she wouldn’t be able to see anything we could do.

“Master, are you forgetting about someone?” A voice suddenly broke through all of our revery.

Salicia was standing there were her arms crossed. She had followed along so quietly and only fought when she absolutely had to. It was to the point I had completely forgotten she was with us. She had followed our group right into the safe room, and now she was looking at us with a raised eyebrow.