Chapter 100 The Lost Tail
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"Ugh… I think I messed up my sleeping schedule." Alistar groaned as he woke up feeling languid.
"What? Can't sleep except in your comfy wooden bed?" Sig snickered. Alistar was mingling together with the dwarves well. He adapted to their crude behavior even faster than Lily and no longer minded even when the king made a snide remark and even retaliated with his own subdued comments.
"Sleeping outside is certainly a luxury not affordable by dwarves. No wonder you guys are called moles." He retaliated smugly, which earned him a few laughs as we replenished our water supply and even took a bath with water from the narrow river this rest zone provided us.
"Alright! Jokes over. What's next?" Alistar turned into work mode.
"The same thing as before. But this time with more traps."
"Who made these traps?" Lily asked
"Hellspawn chaos. They are red-like creatures made in dungeons. Basically goblin version of this hell. That's why hellspawn." Helmet replied.
We marched on toward the dimly light cave. The river has already disappeared beneath the wall of the cave. The glowing cave stretches on left and right with an occasional Shadowcreeper, Salamander, and needle shooter attacking us.
"Hmm…."
"What?" Alistar asked.
"I don't remember this path… I remember about the river. But it was said that the river was more like a pond instead of a stream. I wonder if we went the wrong way?"
"Huh?" The group was shocked at the realization.
"Are you saying we are lost? Hey, Ugrek. Where is the map? Try to draw the path we just ventured!" Helmet was panicking.
"Mark, Rick. Joseph?" Rhegar said as they tried to verify the map. The map was provided by King Sig, which he claimed has memorized in its entirety, so we didn't bother to check, but now that his memory seemed to fail him, we looked into our maps in much more detail.
"On it." Both groups were working based on Sig's predecessor's progress. However, even then, they drew blank.
"Huh? This section should not exist. After we go to the sticky fire, we should go directly to the boiling lake area…." The dwarf group reported. Our group also said the same.
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"Right? I am quite confident in my memory. We didn't take any wrong path!"
"Let us return! Joseph, lead the way. It is impossible to map a dungeon this large. We probably ventured into some random path. We should analyze again from the sticky biome." Alistar said.
"Hmm? We only traveled for less than an hour. Why aren't we back yet? Where is the stream or our rest stop?" King Sig exclaimed.
"Lhorne? You are a forest ranger. How come you got lost?" Edelweiss said exasperated.
"No, this path wasn't here before! Ask other scouts!" Lhorne turned towards the other dwarves and Rhegar, and they nodded.
"Hmm? Adapting dungeon? But there are no sound or any mechanism." Edelweiss held her chin while thinking. Everyone also folded their hands in confusion.
"King SIg? Is this one of those changing dungeons? If yes, then we are unprepared for this."
"I don't know about this! The dungeon was like this ever since I went here with my dead father fifteen years ago. And the notes and map from my ancestors didn't mention this!"
"Do we have enough paper? We need to mark every path we face now and figure out how the dungeon changes." Alistar murmured.
"Thor! You will be in charge. You have a cartography lesson, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"We couldn't return…." Nora whined after four hours of wandering in the dungeon. The meandering path didn't seem to end. Even though Lhorne and Thor were busy making maps and guiding our way, we could not seem to return back to the small stream and sticky cave from before.
"Are we fucked?" Mattheus started to panic, but Alistar quieted him down. "There is no use panicking now. The best action we should take is to analyze our path. We have enough food for weeks in this dungeon, there is water, and we can rest by taking turns doing night watch. We are lost, but we are still okay."
"Alright. Sorry about that. This is the first time I've gone into the dangerous dungeon."
"No worries there, kiddo. Even my son here cried when I took him into other dungeons and got lost for two days! Hahaha! This deep mountain won't be feared if we can just straddle our way in and escape without problems."
"Are we good on feystones?" Alistar asked.
"Yes! My mana is full, and no empty feystones." Lily and Edelweiss reported.
"Where do we go next?" Sig asked. But our scouts only drew a blank. They marked the path until here, but the way abruptly changed at the distance of about twenty minutes of our walking pace.
"Anybody brought a compass?" Alistar asked.
"The compass doesn't work. The walls sometimes have magnets in them." Lhorne confirmed.
"Damn…."
"Nothing else to go but relying on guts then." Sig said, "We will try to wander deeper. And then when after we got the Titan ore, we tried to climb out."
Whenever we found a crossroad or T-Junction, we tried to pick the path that led downward. Lhorne and Thor still tried to make sense of the way we crossed, but since the direction changed, we could only rely on our instinct. As we walked further and further, we heard sounds reverberating inside the caves.
"AARGH!!"
"Edel!!" Alistar jumped at the falling Edelweiss, barely catching her hands at the corner of the hole.
"Help... I am slipping!"
"Lord Alistar!" Rhegar and Lhorne jumped in and pulled the duo out of the hole.
"Watch out!" Lily shouted. A bunch of needles came flying at us from the darkness, which was captured with my buckler. My wooden shield quickly turned into porcupines as Rhander retaliated with fireballs toward the source.
"Damn it! They fled!" Sig chased the creepers and lizard but came back a minute later.
"This is the first time I have seen monsters in dungeon fled," Lhorne muttered.
"It is the first time, alright." Alistar nodded. Our journey got more dangerous now.