Tacos had to wait. Fighting in the sewers was not conducive to an appetizing smell. Once they left the underground they went back to the apartment and took turns cleaning up in the apartment's single bathroom. Then it was out the door again and down the road. On the way they got those tacos. The stand they stopped at was the same one owned by Diego. Dean thought it was fitting since he had been instrumental in their victory a year ago.
Pulling up to the window to collect their order Dean recognizes the woman there. She is one of the naga women that fought with them when the evil elf gang came calling. Recognition lights her eyes when she sees who is in the car and she gives a little wave after handing over the food. He waves back as Nadira pulls away. They didn’t go to the guild building right away though. Dean had Nadira make a quick pit stop first.
In some random alley that Nadira found, they exit the car. Nadira waits there and Dean goes hunting. It doesn’t take long to find what he is looking for under a dumpster behind a Chinese food restaurant. A rat, big and fat, scurried around the backside looking for morsels. A friend poked its head out from underneath the green metal dumpster a moment later.
Dean sends mana from the pool in the core of his body through his arms, changing it to electrical energy just as it reaches his hands. He keeps the energy low to cause as little damage as possible to the body, while still allowing the spell to work. Soon an Arc leaps from both hands. Each one strikes a single rat to stop its heart instantly. They were large for regular rats, but they weren’t supernatural. The low powered spells were all that was needed to stop the tiny hearts of the two common vermin.
More mana flows as Dean snags the remaining life energy from the corpses to turn it back on the dead, reanimating them.With his current wisdom he could have twice this many undead under his control, but for now, the two little spies would have to be enough. Plus, it was always good to have some fodder for Corpse Explosion in case of emergency. He led them back to the car and ignored the disgusted look from Nadira as he commanded the two minions to hop in the trunk for the short trip.
When they arrive at the motel/adventurers guild, both exit the car. Nadira turns to Dean as they stand there. “Now what?”
Looking into the crappy motel, Dean doesn’t respond for a minute. “Now we try to find this team that took our friend.” Without another word he starts walking. He can hear her heels click on the asphalt so Dean knows Nadira is following, but he doesn’t say any more. They walk past the pool and into the plain door for the guild. By now it had been dark for some time and the place had plenty of people there.
The roar of a room full of people all having their own conversations washes over them. The renovated motel building is full of people, none of them human, drinking and carousing. As they make their way toward the bar Dean gets a few odd looks from the other patrons. By now the council’s decree regarding him had gotten around, but it was still the first time for Dean to be in public like this since then so it was to be expected.
A little unnerved by it all, Dean tries to ignore the creepy feeling of being watched all the time. Instead he marches forward with Nadira to the bar, where she orders a beer for both of them. Leaning against the polished wood of the bar, Dean takes a look around the room. There are still a few people glancing his way but the novelty of a human in the guild building is wearing off quickly.
“Try to talk to some people and ask about that group,” Nadira says as she leans into him. Then she stands and walks over to a table of men, swaying her hips exaggeratedly as she goes. They welcomed her to their table and she expertly plied a little small talk to get things started. Dean can’t help but feel a little envious at the easy manner in which she fits right in.
As he was thinking about how he was supposed to strike up a conversation with someone, a large hairy man plops down in the seat Nadira just vacated. He must have been seven feet tall and Dean just stares for a moment. If he was to liken the creature's appearance to anything it would have been a brown furred yeti. On top of being tall, it was exceptionally wide and strong looking.
Bigfoot streams across Dean’s brain as he stares. If anything could spark the legends of the mythical bigfoot it was this creature’s race. After a minute, during which the furry guy ignores Dean, he is able to reign in his fangirl. Regaining his composure, he decides to give it a shot. Clearing his throat Dean sticks out his hand. “I’m Dean.”
Looking over to him, the big guy stopped for a moment to look Dean over. After a pause, he reaches over and envelopes the proffered hand in a big hairy mitt. “Tonns.” His reply is in a deep, gravelly voice. Turning back to the bar, Tonns raises a hand at the werewolf bartender, who nods back in acknowledgment. Soon the werewolf drops off a tall thirty two ounce glass with a golden liquid inside.
Trying to think of something to talk about, Dean lands on the purpose of this building. “So are you here to pick up work or just drink?”
Tonns turns back to him. Dena expected him to be annoyed at the interruption but he couldn’t tell if that was the case by his expression. If he was to guess what emotion Tonns was regarding him with, Dean would have guessed curiosity. That seemed odd to him as the bigfoot only seemed annoyed at his interruption the first time. He gets the answer a moment later when the furry guy responds.
“You’re the human the council put out a notice on. Haven’t seen you around before.”
Dean nods, happy that Tonns seems willing to talk instead of ignoring him like he was afraid would happen. “Yeah that’s me. I was out of town for awhile. Up north apprenticing with a gnome.”
Tonns takes a big gulp of the golden nectar of the gods and Dean does the same. “I’m just here to drink. hard to be comfortable in most places,” he says, waving to his body. “No one cares if I let loose here and have a few. Plus I do some work off the boards to keep me in money when I need it.”
Dean nods in understanding. Do you have a team? After my extended absence, I’m looking for some work to do with a couple friends too.”
“Nah, just me. I take odd jobs that can be done solo. Every once-and-awhile I team up with a group looking to fill a spot though.”
The big guy was surprisingly friendly and Dean found himself relaxing a little as they talked. “I heard about a team that might be taking on a few people to help out with some dungeon runs, but I don’t know much about the local scene. Have you heard of The Lost Sheep before. That is what they call their group.”
Tonns doesn’t react, but something in his eyes makes Dean uneasy. Tonns shakes his head that he hasn’t heard of them, but Dean doesn’t believe the obvious lie. He may have had a little trouble recognising facial expressions on the wookie-like creature, but the fear made his lie obvious to anyone paying attention. Dean only waits, looking Tonns directly in the eye.
The knowing expression from Dean finally wears down on Tonns and he heaves a big sigh. “Fine. I don’t know much, but there have been disappearances lately and everyone that disappeared was seen talking to that group beforehand.”
Dean looks up to the large man as Tonns leans in. Lowering his voice as though he is afraid for others to hear, he whispers. “I met with them once. It was … odd. They were way too excited at the prospect of me joining them. It was like they were sizing me up like a piece of meat, and not in the good kind of way.”
Dean isn’t happy about what he hears. It all bodes ill for Sandy. He isn’t deterred though. So far there is nothing to think that Sandy is dead. There are a number of things that they could want from her, and some of them are even worse than dying. Shaking off the foul thoughts invading his mind, he focuses on Tonns once more. “Any idea where I might find them?”
It’s disappointing when the hairy guy shakes his head in the negative. “No idea. Whenever they meet up with people it’s in a public place like here. No one I have talked to has any clue as to where they stay.”
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Something about the way that he said that makes Dean curious. He takes a moment to think about it and realizes what piqued his interest. It sounds like Tonns has been asking around about this group. Dean feels that it’s just a little too lucky he randomly bumped into a guy that was watching the very people he was looking for. Still, he didn’t have much to go on yet so anything would be an improvement. Even false information could be checked, and if false, Dean would know that Tonns was working with The Lost Sheep. Trust, but verify!
“You seem to know a lot about this group. Why?”
Turning back to his drink for a second, Tonns pick up the large mug and drains half of it. “Yeah, after our meeting I looking into them a bit. A lot of the disappearances that have been rumored about lately are of people that talked to them. I wasn’t able to link all of the disappearances to The Lost Sheep though. In the end, they just creeped me out so I asked around. After I learned enough I just stayed away from them. I suggest you do the same.”
With a serious moment of eye contact, Tonns then turns back to his drink. Dean does the same and waits for a few minutes as he enjoys his libation. It sounded like Tonns had been doing everything he could to investigate The Lost Sheep. What else could he do? He starts talking to Tonns about other things, but the whole time he is working out a plan in his head that might work. It wasn’t a complicated plan and he figured that was why it would work.
A couple drinks later he was much looser and the plan was only a niggling whisper in the back of his mind. That is when a laughing Nadira comes stumbling back over. “Hey Dean. I was talking to these guys over there and they were super nice, like...super...nice. Anyways, they didn’t know anything about that group of people we were looking for, whoever that was.”
The cat girl plopped down into a seat next to him and leaned in. When next she speaks it’s far more articulate than the drunken ramblings of just a moment ago. “Seriously though, they don’t know anything. I hope you had better luck.” She waves to the bartender for another drink. Annoyingly, it arrives only moments later as the bartender rushes to fulfill her request. Raising her pint to the man, she then takes a big gulp and turns back to hear what Dean has to say.
“Some,” he starts. “Don’t know if it’s helpful though. I have an idea for what to do next. Let’s go get something to do off the board and I’ll tell you what I heard on the way.” Both of them get off the bar stools and walk to one side of the large room. Along the wall are cork boards with papers pinned to them. Some of them are even cut at the bottom, allowing members to tear a tab off so multiple people can get the same job at the same time. It’s one of these that Nadira stops in front of.
Dean steps up next to her and reads over her shoulder. The notice is for a number of things. All of the items look like things Dean would expect an alchemy profession to use in one of the fantasy games he has played in the past. Herbs, moss, mushrooms and slime cores were listed on the flyer and the tabs that Nadira took one of. It said they could all be found in a place called Galgorath.
“What is this Galgorath place where it says all this stuff can be found?”
Nadira turns back to him with a smile, holding up the tab of paper she pulled off the flyer. “I’ll tell you about it on the way. Let’s go.” It didn’t escape Dean that it was the same thing he told her just a few minutes ago. She then twirls to the side, hair flipping out as she does, and purposefully walks to the exit.
Shrugging his shoulders in confusion is all Dean can do before following after. As they step out of the door Dean holds it for an extra moment to get his plan started. Following after the cat-girl leads him to the car. When they’re in, Dean reaches over to stop Nadira from leaving. “Just give me a moment and then I’ll explain.” She gives him an impatient look but waits for the promised explanation. That look said he would be hurting if he didn’t get on with the explanation soon.
Dean closes his eyes and turns his focus inward. There he finds the tethers of magic for his undead rats. They would remain attached to him for a long distance, but the farther he got from them the less he could do with them. They would follow instructions he had already given them though, if they were given before he got passed out of range. Within a few hundred feet like they were now, he could manually take control of them.
Following the energy of one of the tethers brings his mind into the raised vermin. It was right next to the other one at the moment and under the table closest to the door of the guild. Exactly where he told them to go when he held the door open so they could enter as he left. Taking the driver's seat of his little minion, Dean guides it from table to table, until he can get it to the stairs that lead to the balcony area above. When he thought it was clear, he directed the undead rat up and then to a hiding spot in a dark corner where it could look through the bars of the iron railing to the floor below.
With his experiments over the last year, he figured out that the intelligence of the creature in life determined how well it understood his commands during its unlife. The rat he was controlling had a tiny brain, so he knew it could only take simple commands. The first thing he told it was to stay hidden. Next, he told it to look for a group of people with horns like Nadira told him The Lost Sheep all had. This wasn’t hard to explain since he could just implant the image directly into the rat’s mind. Basically the command just said “Look for this [image of ram horn] and tell me when you see it.”
The command was at the limit of its ability, but when it saw people with those horns it would let him know through the tether. Now he could just leave it on autopilot. Leaving the first one, he then takes control of the second. This one he pushes behind the bar. With some careful maneuvering he is able to get it on a high shelf with the more expensive liquor. Dean figures that it is probably not often that someone gets a look up there. From the thick dust he sees through the rats eyes his assumption is correct.
Giving this rat the same commands as his undead friend, Dean pulls back to his own body. A wave of dizziness rushes over him and he keeps his eyes closed until it passes. Nadira is watching for when he opened his eyes. “Can we go now?”
Shaking off his disorientation, Dean nods to her. “Yeah, we can do that. So where is it we are headed?”
“Uh uh. You first. You said there was a plan so spill it.”
“Okay.” Dean chuckles a little. “You win. I left the rats back at the guild. I have them hiding there in case The Lost Sheep show up again. If they do, my minions can let me know.”
She glances at him, taking her eyes off the road for a second to nod with respect. “Not bad. We are going to Galgorath, as you read from the flyer. It’s a Dungeon like the ones I told you Sandy and I were doing before you got back. This one is a lower difficulty one. We can do it alone, and collect some money. The ingredients aren’t hard to collect and it was one of the first places we went with those guys that have Sandy. They said it would be a good way to train our team work. If they are doing the same thing to others that they did with Sandy then maybe we will run into them there.”
“About that,” he starts. “I was talking to a hairy guy at the bar and he said he talked to them about joining their party for a few quests. They gave him the creeps and he didn’t join, but he did keep tabs on them. Apparently adventurers have been going missing and a good portion of them were seen talking to The Lost Sheep not too long before they up and vanished. Sounds like a coincidence to you?”
She doesn’t need to answer. As they drive, Nadira gives a little more information on the dungeon they were going to. “Galgorath is one of the easier dungeons, but the creatures in it are still stronger than normal like I told you is the case in dungeons. This dungeon is farmed regularly so the spawns stay pretty week. Usually we still wouldn’t go into a place like that with just the two of us, but I’m not too keen on joining up with anyone else at this moment in time. Besides, you are a good match for this place.”
“What do you mean I’m a good match?”
“Your skills. There are only slimes in there. Do you know what those are?” His experience with video games had given him a good background on the gelatinous monsters so Dean motioned for her to continue. “They’re extremely resilient to physical damage. Almost immune altogether. The only way to hurt one that way is by hitting the core. Unfortunately they can move it around their bodies wherever they want, making it hard to locate.”
By this point Dean has no idea where they are. It’s dark and he wasn’t paying attention to where they were going. Dilapidated buildings could be seen outside his window, but he didn’t pay it much mind as he was listening closely to what Nadira was telling him.
“They are particularly weak against magic attacks though. Perfect for you. Fire and such also work, but magic attacks are the most effective. There are multiple kinds and you can tell the difference by their color. A red slime, for instance, is called a fire slime. It won’t take any damage from fire, and it might even heal it. Any other magic will work though.” Nadira turns off the road they are on and into an alley behind some old brick buildings. They look like factories or something to Dean.
“What about electricity? What color are slimes that are immune to that?” Dean is curious since his two main attacks are fire and lightning.
“Yellow. Those ones are rare, and I never saw any like that in Galgorath. Another thing though, a slime’s touch is acidic in nature as it eats anything organic that it touches. Whatever element the slime is, that form or damage is added to their touch as well. We are here.” She says a moment later.
At the end of the alley they pulled into the courtyard of another factory building. With the car in park, they get out and Dean stretches his legs. “Before we go in there I want to try something. If we are going up against things that are immune to some of my attacks I would feel better to have another type to work with.”
Nadira nods in understanding. “They can’t be immune to both lightning and fire at the same time. Plus, like I said, I never saw a lightning one before. I get it though. Better safe than sorry right? Let’s go inside. The entrance to the dungeon is in the basement so we can use the ground floor to practice. It’s a little more private there.”