The Door opens onto the image of a not terribly old mage sitting behind a desk quietly working at some paperwork. To the left of him, sitting in a chair and kicking her legs in boredom was a young Demi-human girl dressed in a sack-cloth tunic and with a metal collar around her neck.
The sight of the obvious slave girl reminds you why you hate working so close to the border with Cultch, the heavy slave usage common there keep’s you on edge whenever you think of it, but you are slightly surprised that you can’t tell what type of Demi-human the girl is, the pointed ears covered in yellow fur with black tips and flat zig-zaging yellow tail mark her as some sort of beast-kin but for the life of you, you have no idea what beast she’s kin too. This is strange since your Class is Dungeon Chronicler so it’s kind of your job to know these things.
Before you can get any further with that train of thought the guild master looks up from his work.
“Oh, hello there, do you happen to be Chronicler…” he stops to search through his papers, likely looking for your letter of transfer ”Ash?” he asks, after finding what he was looking for.
“Yes sir!”
The Guild branch head gives you a inquisitive look, and you can feel the question coming before he says it.
“Just how old are you?”
You let out a soft sigh at the expected question. “Thirty three, sir. And before you ask, I might have some Halfling blood in me somewhere, never know who my father was so I can’t say for certain.”
You’re thankful that all he did was nod to that.
“Greeting Chronicler Ash, my name is Samuel Oak, I’m the head of this branch of the adventures guild. Before I explain the reason you were summoned, could I ask you to Identify this girl for me.” He motioned to the slave girl on the chair.
Identify is one of the key skills of a Dungeon Chronicler, the first thing a Chronicler can do after gaining the class. The ability to glean basic information on just about anything one looks at. You have no problem using the skill on the girl; you were going to do so anyway to slate your own burning curiosity.
“IDENTIFY”
Unnamed lvl 5 'Unknown Monster#025'-kin
You flinch back in surprise. “Her race is unknown!?!” you shout out the most surprising thing, well, maybe second most surprising, that twenty five tacked on the end is hinting at something even more outrageous.
Oak sighs. “I was afraid of that. I also suspect she has a level despite not having a class or even a name.”
You nod “Meaning this girl is a Dungeon monster, one with a monster core so she can exist outside her Dungeon. But why the slave collar then, I thought even Cultch didn’t enslave dungeon monsters.”
“For the most part your correct, dungeon monsters make bad slaves, even ones with monster core because monster cores evenly run out of power and die if the monster doesn’t return to the dungeon soon enough..” Old man Oak said. “But see the mana stone in her slave collar, how it’s half red and half white. We think it’s a hybrid of a normal mana stone fond in magic items and a still living monster core. This thing, like regular magic slave collars, recharges from it ‘master’ mana pool.” Oak then took on a face of disgust “making this a monster slave that one doesn’t have to return to its home, and will die if their collar is removed or they go without a master for too long.”
“Who made it?” you ask “Who in the world could make something like this?”
“If my theory is correct, the same dungeon that made her did, it is also the dungeon I called you in to scout. Now back to business, you said her race is still un-named, well as the first Chronicler to see her it up to name this type of monster in the ‘Log’, got any ideas?”
You cringe; you’ve always been terrible at naming things and you explain that to him, but he is correct, you do have the ability to ‘Log’ a new name for a new kind of monster, this will add info to the Identify for future Chroniclers.
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“LOG”
A thick leather bound book appears and lands in your lap. This is the first time you’ve ever used this skill so your personal log book is completely blank, but instead of using the first page you, remembering the mysterious number in her place holder of a name, turn to page twenty five instead.
“Do any of the local adventures have any nick-names that might work? I’d prefer to use something the locals are comfortable with than just making one up on the spot.”
Oak scratches his chin. “A few might have some ideas, mostly about personal name for this particular little one, but seeing how she need one of those too I’ll start asking around.”
A quill appears in your hand and your body starts moving on your own, it begins with a detailed sketch of the girl, colors change to match the yellow fur of her ears and the brown of her eyes and specific detail is given to the vivid red blushes on her cheeks, than it was your turn to blush as the magic of the skill starts to draw your model sans clothing. You don’t stop because this is giving you important information like the fact that her race has two brown stripes on her mid back, but it doesn’t stop it from being embarrassing.
After that the magic of the skill jots down a few tide-bit of information about her species that it has somehow learned just by you being in her presence for a few moments. Your skill has left the name blank for now, you’ll have to come back to it and fill more in latter you don’t really have much to go on yet.
Oak shuffles around his papers for a report. ”I’m going to give you a quick background on how this new dungeon was located. It all started with a sudden up swing of Demi-human slave of unknown breeds being sold in Cultch city near our border in the kanto mountain range; an investigation on the local mountain bandit with a history of slaving was launched and dispatch of city guards was able to find the remains of a recently decimated group bandits, where it was discovered said bandits were raiding an unknown Dungeon for items and enslave-able monster girls until something happened to them.”
“Through the questioning of the sole remaining slave in their camp” Oak motions to the girl again “it was quickly deduced the mountain bandits stumbled upon a newly forming Dungeon core and the leader of the bandits was just skilled enough in magic to partly enslave the new core. He was able to lay down some commands and restriction on the core such as restricting the dungeon to only summon female Demi-humans as defending monsters, and forbidding it from making traps.”
“We think the bandits were also trying to force the core to form a connection to the Lady of the first circle.”
You shiver at the thought, demon aligned Dungeons were bad news, and while the Lady of Lust was the weakest and lest hateful of the seven demon lords, she was still extremely harmful to all around her in her own way. Her dungeons tended to have a lot Succubui, you give a sidelong look at the strange beast-girl again.
“We think however, the core somehow ended up connecting to Phabel Queen of stories instead.”
You nod your head, Phabel is a Fay Queen with power over stories, and she is known to empower Dungeons that tell a tale of one kind or another. Her story Dungeons start quite a bit larger than normal for a young dungeon but unlike other dungeons don’t grow, instead a story dungeon that gains enough power will spawn a ‘sequel’ dungeon nearby. They tend to be safer than most other dungeons too, as long as you stick to your role, but if you don’t…
“Do you think the bandits ignored the story line so Queen Phabel sent an enforcer that wiped them out?”
“The Bad-men didn’t want to play by the rules of the game so the game broke and the story queen sent the Missing One to play with them instead.” The Beast-girl chose that moment to speak up, which sort of surprised you, though you’re not sure why, almost all beast-kin can speak the common tongue even dungeon born ones. Still, that pretty much answered your question.
“Quite, well that’s the story, and the fact is we are going to need more information the normal before we send anyone into this dungeon.” Said Oak, he then pulled open a drawer of desk and handed you a magic item known as a messaging tube, put a rolled up scroll in one and it will appear in a matching one you think Oak is keeping somewhere in his office. “We need you, if your willing, to go room by room, documenting all you can as you go; we need to know the bound of the story line, the types of mobs in each area and what kind of loot there is. Even if you can only scout out the first few areas before retreating any information you can provided will be needed. Do you think you can you do that for us?”
“Yes sir!” you can’t say you’re not excited, being the first document a new dungeon is what dungeon chronicler dream of, and one with a large amount unnamed monster will be super prestigious even if you do outsourcing the naming to the local community. “Who will my escort team be sir?”
“She’s right here of course.” Oak motioned to the Beast-girl once again
“What?” you ask in total confusion from the nonsense of his response.
“Well, as you might already know standard protocol is to send the Chronicler in with a team of high level adventurers as defenders, but… this Phabel dungeon like serval other Phabel dungeons has a strict party limit, this one a variant of a solo dungeon.”
“But I’m not a Warrior Chronicler, I haven’t duel-classed with anything, let alone a combat class, I won’t be able to defend myself!” your starting to panic a little at the thought of being thrown into a dungeon to fend for yourself.
“Calm yourself, I said it was a variant of a solo dungeon. While only one human can seem to enter any intent, he can bring up to six monsters waring this type of collar with them. We only have this one to give you right now, but you should be able to capture more monster girls as you go. Besides, she’s not exactly helpless.” Oak turns towards the beat-girl, you turn too.
The young girl raises her hands, and with not even a word, a small but brilliant bolt of lightning arcs between her open palms.