8:33 A.M.
March 1
Snowfall 3
Thornfield, Veotera
The approach to this new city was much like Limeroom, but consulting the map in his mind’s eye and judging by the fact the rolling hills were practically filthy with the beginning blooms of flowers; this could only be Thornfield. Gary had elected to travel in his armor past the first day and he’d made a pretty good time going cross-country. The journey was usually a couple of weeks between cities in Ridiana by following the winding roads but being strong and fast enough to avoid troubles in the wilderness that separated major population centers meant Gary could traverse the kingdom much faster.
He was also in possession of the knowledge that a pair of dungeons were in the area. Thanks to Jack’s information this had become his next port of call on his journey since it was the physically closest to Limeroom and the next major stop for anyone moving the span of the nation. That more generalized map of the kingdom as a whole had revealed to Gary that Ridiana was nestled into a natural fortress the size of roughly the Earth country of Uzbekistan in surface area if he had his map scales right. This was an insane amount of land to claim for one nation at this level of development, but the geography let them get away with it.
The northern and eastern borders were a solid and nigh-impenetrable wall of mountains. Limeroom stood in spitting distance of the only known passage through the range. Named the Cragspine Mountains, Gary thought he could squint to the east and make out the outline of earthen fangs jutting up in the distance back towards Limeroom as well. A total of eleven major cities were within the natural border that ended in the south and west in the equally impenetrable open ocean. There were doubtless a splattering of smaller settlements throughout but with the threats of monsters Gary figured there wouldn’t be as many since people naturally sought safety in numbers behind fortifications.
Gary made sure to have his Delver medallion on full display and his crimson cloak thrown back over his shoulders to reveal himself clad in armor and bearing his small armory of daggers, tomahawks, and throwing knives. This time he wasn’t challenged and drawn aside; just a number of strong looks and someone at the gate furiously scribbling notes. Moving past without issues, his silvery eyes flicked to and fro as he gauged where a decent place to stay would be located. Everywhere he looked there was evidence of Thornfield being an agriculture city.
The pickings were kind of slim for vegetables and the like since they’d just hit March but the stalls and what looked like warehouses were in place and ready to be filled. Gary didn’t know the yields they expected when things were ready but it looked like they kept busy in growing and harvest seasons judging by the flow of the infrastructure. Unlike Limeroom’s ward-style city divisions, Thornfield sported a more modern grid system to the roads and overall layout. The structures’ aesthetic was up from Renaissance to something more 1600s-looking, though the clothing of the people on the streets remained an eclectic mix of anachronistic styles from said Middle Ages era all the way up to something he’d expect in the 1700s but with fantasy spins on it here and there.
It was still a bit of cultural whiplash that he’d yet to get over. Being in a new city had perks and drawbacks, however. He was on his journey properly at last, and he got away from the bad memories that lingered in the border city. He closed his cloak back around his form as he began walking further into the city. He also had a problem in the fact he had a significant amount of money on him and he couldn’t just safely leave it in his base of operations like Saint Shepherd’s, but that would come later. Gary also resisted the urge to use his Skills to jump to the rooftops and get a better view of his surroundings.
He’d begun noticing he was subtly getting used to the new nature of his body and his slowly-expanding arsenal of power. The System was insidious, and he only noticed it because he’d only had it for a couple of months. Veotera’s people didn’t see the trap because they’d been steeped in it for a couple dozen generations at this point. He tried not to let the tone of his thoughts show on his face of his stride as he moved further into the city and looked around for a tavern. He wasn’t eager to find an alcoholic drink by any stretch, but the local watering holes were good places to search for useful information; like where the local Delvers branch was.
Gary wasn’t sure he trusted his voice around other people but he simply had to man up. He fished out a couple of the smaller denomination runees from the coin purse he kept at ready access on his belt and held them snugly in his palm. This time he could pay for information and that thought made him feel a little better. He spotted a middle-aged woman sweeping the steps of a flower shop and approached her with as heartfelt a smile as he could muster.
“Good morning, ma’am. Might I make an inquiry of you?” The woman looked up from her work to the tall teenager, and Gary saw her clock his Delvers medallion before she met his gray eyes with her own hazel ones. She seemed to startle a tiny bit before she caught herself and freed a hand from her broom to hook an errant lock of dirty blond hair behind an ear.
“Good morning, Delver. What is the question?”
“Would you happen to know where Thornfield’s Delver branch is located? I just arrived and need to get in touch with them.” The woman’s expression lightened a little as she leaned slightly forward and pointed down the street they were currently on.
“Aye! Go five roads down and turn west. Should be three more roads down that way.”
Gary tilted his head in thanks, and stepped up to her calmly. She eyed him suspiciously before he turned his palm with the runees tucked into it up so she could see the hexagonal coin. He was making it obvious to her without trying to draw too much attention to it. She looked at him again, nodded her head very slightly, and the hand that was freed from the broom swept past his to relieve him of the coinage. He gave her a very tiny bend of the waist as he put a hand over his heart - a very informal and mostly subtle bow - and turned towards his new objective.
The instructions were accurate. Here in Thornfield it seemed that the Delvers didn’t operate inside a tavern but instead had their own dedicated two-story building. Their emblem occupied a proud spot above the front door but was quickly dismissed mentally as Gary opened the door to step into the structure. Once his eyes adjusted to the light difference between outside and inside his gaze swept over the interior. There were stairs over to the side presumably leading up to the second story, then the surprisingly stately furniture and decorations caught his attention. A number of the seats looked well-used but the use actually gave them a bit of character that showed this place was frequented by a healthy amount of people. This had a cozy feel to it, and Gary found himself digging the aesthetic a bit.
He stepped further into the structure reaching the counter where he recognized the women stationed there were dressed just like Dina had been in Limeroom. So it was a proper uniform for the women, then. A black-haired young woman with her hair upswept into a loose bun secured by a nearly-identical black ribbon looked directly at him and seemed to stand up a little straighter as he stepped in front of her part of the counter.
“Good morning. My name is Gary Zavon, and I wanted to register my presence for this branch. I have a letter of introduction from the branch in Limeroom, if I could get you to bring it to your leader?”
“Ah! You’re that Delver that has been clearing so many contracts over there,” she said in that light British-like accent of Ridianan upbringing. Gary shrugged a little and produced the marked but unsealed letter before handing it over to her. Apparently the news of his Plundering a dungeon hadn’t spread yet. Hopefully this branch’s leader believed Jack’s words. She held up the letter and waved it with a slight waggle of the wrist to the other women manning the counter before she turned with a swish of skirt and disappeared into a back room via a door behind the counter.
Gary moved to lean onto the counter and was clearly content to wait. He made sure his armor wasn’t scratching the wood, and waited. A minute later, he heard a muffled noise of startlement from the closed door, and noted with a smirk that the other women receptionists actually turned their heads in the direction of the door in surprise at the sound. A little bit more time passed before the door opened and a man emerged. He was dressed in a richly-dyed orange long-sleeved tunic and equally silky oak brown trousers, cinched with a wide black leather belt and a sturdy-looking brass buckle. His thinning hair, lined face, and heavily graying remaining hair marked him as someone in their later years of life.
Brown eyes locked onto Gary, and the semi-incredulous look on the man’s face just made Gary’s smirk grow. Jack’s words made an impression, then. Without saying a word, Gary again put his right hand over his heart and bowed slightly from his position; offering that informal bow to the man before coming back up with that smirk still on his face. He didn’t think he’d ever get tired of seeing expressions like that, especially not with his Class purring approval in the back of his head.
“Is this letter’s contents true?” Right into it then. The man’s voice was a strong masculine one that showed he was used to being respected when he spoke. Gary nodded.
“If it’s what I suspect in that letter, then yes. Word simply hasn’t reached you folks yet.”
The man’s face folded into a slight frown at Gary’s continued smirk but pressed on. “So I take it you’re here for the nearby dungeons?”
“Yes, sir. Jack’s information stated that they’re not of economic or strategic importance, so I’m here to deal with them. Permanently.” The way Gary stressed that last word sent a visible shiver down the spines of those within earshot; which was the branch leader and the receptionists, mostly. His smirk never broke or wavered, even as he felt a predatory shift in his own demeanor as Plunderer whispered sweet nothings in his brain at gaining more power. “I would appreciate it if you could recommend a place for me to set up my home base for a couple of weeks, as well as more detailed information about the dungeons in the immediate area. At your convenience, of course.”
A hand ran across the man’s thinning head hair as he looked at the letter still dangling in his other hand’s grip. “Well, we do have a couple of small rooms upstairs you could stay in. They’re not really set up for sleeping or anything, but I can promise their security.”
“A room with a door is fine. I have no issues with sleeping on the floor, since I have a quality bedroll. It’s mostly for me to sleep and keep my non-essentials from getting damaged during my work.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“Then a room you shall have. Annie,” he addressed the black-haired receptionist who stepped forward and partially turned so he could see her and she him, “would you take our good Delver here upstairs and to one of the spare little rooms?” Without speaking, she bobbed her head and made her way around the counter to let Gary follow her. “When you get settled in, come back to me. I want to speak with you privately.”
“Understood.”
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His gear stowed away, Gary made his way back down to the first floor. He’d shed his cloak as well, electing to move around without it since he planned to be in town for at least most of the day. Once he got back to the counter Annie waved him back towards the door and without speaking Gary slid around the open end and came up to the door. A pair of short and sharp knocks preceded a muffled reply to enter, which Gary did as he closed the door quietly behind him.
The leader’s office was what Gary would call a comfortable size for an important administrative office. Certain taxidermied heads, paws, and other monster body parts rimmed the upper parts of the wall around the room; pointing to past glories perhaps? The hardwood floor was freshly varnished by the look of it, with a large carpet defining the space around the solid maple desk the man sat behind. Shelves lined most of the remaining territory of the room and contained books, scroll cubby holes, and a couple of objects that looked either decorative or contained a visible gemstone here or there denoting some as relqa. His brown eyes noted Gary’s appraising gaze and he had a little smile on his own lips at the approving nods the teenager gave at the decor.
“A storied history, it seems.” Gary decided to start off conversationally as he moved to one of the chairs in front of the desk and with a silent nod sat down in it. “I hope my efforts won’t cause the locals to suffer from a lack of work.”
Rueful chuckling met Gary’s statement. “They’ll be happy for the reprieve, boy.” The man tapped the letter on his desk and spoke up again. “I’ve known Jack for many years but he’s never spoken with such fervor about a Delver.. Nor has he ever made a claim that one has killed a dungeon. He is not one for hyperbole, so I must take his words as truth and yet I have doubt. As the branch leader here in Thornfield I; Tarrence Swey; must ask you directly. Did you really destroy a dungeon?”
Gary sat up straight, and solemnly nodded. “I have. To answer your next few questions; I am a Plunderer of exceptional power, I have the ability to pinpoint the rifts and their exact locations provided I get close enough, and I possess a Skill that takes a significant part of my Mana Reserves but allows me to take a dungeon’s power away thus collapsing it. It’s why I’ve requested a place to stay for a couple of weeks. The Skill in question locks up my Reserves so I can only do it about once a week. I used it recently, and so I have a couple of days left before it becomes available again.”
Tarrence listened intently, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth as he leaned forward and put his elbows on the desk. The man looked deep in thought as he did the math and some extra calculations in his head. Gary’s confident tone and smooth presentation had obviously soothed a lot of the man’s worries. “Interesting. Jack warned me about your slick tongue, too.” Gary smirked at that.
“It might be slick, but I strive to tell the truth whenever possible. It opens far more doors than it closes.”
“That’s the right of it. I hope you’ll leave a few contracts for the local Delvers so they don’t go hungry.” Gary laughed quietly at that and waved the thought away.
“I’ve gotten plenty of runees from Limeroom. I should be good for the time being. Though I would reiterate my request about information on the dungeons. Some of what’s in there may require preparations on my part to help clear out before I plunder the rift.”
“Can’t you just take it as is? Just walk up and steal the power away?”
Gary wobbled his head back and forth as he grimaced, clearly indicating his apprehension on the subject. “In theory, yes. My concern is that if I.. To use an analogy, I’m concerned that if I destroy a full bag, the contents will spill out all at once.” Tarrence’s expression darkened for a moment as Gary’s voiced concern sunk in. He leaned a little harder into his steepled fingers as he lost himself in thought. “Indeed. I’m not comfortable with the idea of unleashing a flood of monsters on the area, so I want to get the lay of the land and figure out things. Maybe get some assistance rallied to clear it in one go like we did in Limeroom.”
“I assume the dungeon in Jack’s area was newly-formed?” Gary nodded, earning a dispirited grunt from Tarrence. “Then it’ll be a bit more of a problem for ours. They’ve been established for a few years now, and dungeons grow in size and population the longer they exist. It’s slow, but over the years the expansions become evident. You were able to rush a new one and clear it out in a single day. It’ll take roughly a week to clear each one here out.”
Gary nodded. “Sounds like the math works out. I still have some of my Reserves available once I use that Skill, and I’m still more than capable of melee combat even without magic to draw on. We get some resources together, rally the local Delvers and maybe some guards, and we can knock them out in a couple of weeks. Or we can test my worry about not clearing one out first, and just set up a giant ambush with traps and fire and such.”
“..Let’s go with the first one. I’m not confident in either dungeon being suitable for that latter scenario. We have a Goblin dungeon and a Rockdigger dungeon as the ones nearby. The guard is stricter on the Rockdiggers because they like to tear up the ground as they burrow, which is obviously bad for Thornfield as we grow a lot of crops here.”
“I’ve fought Goblins already. I have a proven strategy for dealing with them, and frankly just need enough strong bodies to deal with it. The Rockdiggers are new to me. Given you describe them as burrowing, are they worms of some sort?”
Tarrence shook his head. “No. They’re four-legged beasts. Short, stubby things with armored backs and an uncanny ability to know where you are as you move around them even when they burrow.” That struck Gary as sounding like a bulette; a monster made popular in the Dungeons and Dragons game. The whole knowing where you were while underground thing was sounding like ‘tremorsense’, according to his quick mental search of the materials he had in his Virtual Network. “You need heavy blunt weapons to crack their carapaces so you can get at their fleshy bits. So fighting them is a slow and painful slog.”
“What are the dungeons like internally? Like, the terrain?”
“The Goblins are in a cave network. The Rockdiggers are in a narrow valley with very high cliffs on either side. Honestly, most people prefer the Goblins to fight.” Gary was already thinking of how he could exploit the Rockdiggers’ tremorsense, since he already knew how to deal with Goblins in caves. “You look like you’re already forming a plan of some sort.”
“That obvious?” Tarrence nodded and Gary shrugged. “I’m trying to figure out how to counter the Rockdiggers. It sounds like their main gimmick is attacking from unexpected angles; which is something I’m very familiar with. If we could find a way to force them to stay on the surface, that’s their main trick dealt with. It’s just a matter of flipping them and going for the underbelly after that.”
Tarrence finally sat back in his seat and regarded the younger Delver. Not five minutes into a conversation and he was already working on plans to conquer the dungeons that had plagued this city for years at this point.
“I appreciate your work ethic, but their armor isn’t so easily defeated.”
“Oh, I know. Creatures that burrow go one of two routes with body durability: supremely squishy or solid as the rock they dig through. The flipping part is to get the damn things to stay still for a few seconds as people wind up a swing. I’m not stupid enough to try and fight these things in bulk by myself. Taking out the dungeons is going to be a team effort. And for the record, I want the rewards for clearing them to be split evenly among the participants.”
Tarrence waved the words to one side as he spoke up with authoritative concern. “That assumes people are going to want to fight in the dungeons. The strategy for years has been delve enough to curb any reasonable chance of the monsters spilling out and leaving guards just in case. It’ll be a tough sell to convince them of clearing out a whole dungeon.”
Gary smiled warmly at that assessment. “If you can convince them to make the effort for the Goblin dungeon, I can give them a demonstration that’ll convince them to gang up on the Rockdigger one. We’re not going for fancy or anything about who the bigger hero is; my only concern is clearing it out so I can safely destroy it.”
Tarrence sighed as he looked at the person sitting across from him in armor as though he were ready to go immediately. The earnest tone Gary spoke with was wearing down the man’s hesitations, which finally ended with a wary nod. “It’ll take a bit of convincing, but Jack’s word carries weight around here beyond just me. We should see what happens in a few days, so rest up until then.”
“Thank you. Truly. I’m going to go back to my room and have a good long think on how to deal with those Rockdiggers. Might need to poke my head into the dungeon to get a lay of the land real quick, so if I need permission for that?”
“You’ll have a written missive waiting for you if you want to do that tomorrow. I’ll leave it with the women out front. What will we need for the Goblin dungeon, in your opinion?”
Gary gave a vague and sweeping gesture with his right hand as he answered the question. “The guards should have some nice sturdy metal tower shields. We get enough to have two or three shield walls worth and a bunch of spears and other stabby weapons, then we march in. At each intersection we form shield walls and clear out a section of tunnel at a time. It’s slower but you don’t have to worry about being backstabbed because you leave something alive behind you. It also lets the Delvers rotate bodies so people don’t tire out as quickly. Maybe see if you can wrangle up anyone with Emerald relqa for attacking or convince some of the local clergy with healing relqa to follow in our wake as well?”
Tarrence sat in silence, pondering the strategy and who he might be able to get involved from the outside. “I’m sure the local lord would authorize the use of those shields you’re talking about if we’re going for a full clearing of the dungeon. I can see where you’re going with the shield wall idea since the tunnels are narrow enough to effectively block them off and stab through gaps, so that shouldn’t be an issue. You’re expecting injuries?”
“There were some in Limeroom. Larger dungeon means larger chances of casualties. I know how to do pretty extensive non-magical tending to wounds but I’d feel better with some magical assistance for the more severe cases. I’m hesitant to call for anyone with Ruby relqa to use them in enclosed caves since it ruins the air and there’s basically no air flow to replace it, but Emerald ones should be fantastic for attacking with so much sto..ne.. Actually, scratch that last bit. If we can get Emerald and Ruby relqas into play we might be able to clear the dungeon even faster.”
“..Seal off sections and burn the air out?”
“Exactly. I know they’re not exactly super common. Maybe just someone with each type of magic? Now that I’m thinking on it using a full relqa is overkill.”
“We have a couple of each here. I can get them into this pretty easily, though it’ll take a little convincing.”
“Use my portion of the theoretical dungeon clearing as extra payment if you need to. I’m good on coin for now.”
Tarrence made a gesture of approval at the suggestion. “That’ll go a long way in securing their assistance. I never thought about doing it this way, but now it’s so damned obvious. You know this won’t work for the Rockdiggers, right? Open skies.”
“Indeed. Which is why I’m going to look inside their dungeon tomorrow and formulate a plan based on the results of a few tests I’m going to conduct. Silly question on my part, but are there any alchemists in Thornfield?”
“Plenty, actually. Look for any shop with a sign bearing a round bottle filled with liquid.” Plans were already forming in his mind, and articles were flitting by in his gaze as he immediately started cross-referencing substances and chemicals that could defeat carapaces. Several of the more virulent options were discarded to the ‘pipe dream’ category since he didn’t know how advanced chemistry was in this world yet. In the end, he decided to sit down and figure out his options once he had a better understanding of what he was fighting. It was literally a problem for future Gary.
“I think I have plans forming, so I’ll leave you to your work and get to checking the Rockdigger dungeon tomorrow. Thank you for your considerations.”
As Gary stood and gave that slight respectful bow, Tarrence gave him a solemn look and spoke. “Get your rest, boy. Even with whatever Skills you have that dungeon is no joke. Tread lightly and be ready to run. Rockdiggers are fast.” The teenager nodded at the warning and made his way out of the office.