A long silence stretched across the room and the guild master slowly looked up from a stack of papers. “I don’t think I heard you correctly. Could you please repeat yourself?”
Cassius nodded, “The dungeon has both angels and demons.”
“You’re joking.”
Julien gave a small smile leaned across the table and whispered, “Afraid not.”
The guild master slumped backwards, a look of exhaustion covering his face. The guild master finally gave a small sigh and said, “Well on the bright side I’ll be very wealthy after the decade long headache this is going to cause.” He shook his head as if to shake off the thought, “What is the estimated rank of the core? Also what exactly is it?”
Cassius shot the party a look for confirmation before saying, “Our guess is mid to high crystal. And while I never personally saw the core, the two of us did say it appeared to be an ornate sword.”
The guild master gave a nod before opening up a drawer in his desk and pulling out a small crystal. He looked at it for a moment before tossing it to Cassius. “I’ll be in touch, my name is Connor and I assume you know how to use one of those things.” He said with a gesture toward the small crystal. Cassius nodded and Connor continued, “I want you to lead hired guards to the entrance to the dungeon and I want you to set up a checkpoint. When that is done tell the guards to make the cost of entering the dungeon at ten copper with entries ten minutes apart with the exit tax at ten percent of earnings for registered guild members and sixty percent for unregistered divers.”
At those words Cassius frowned, “Excuse me, aren’t those rates a bit low? Especially for a crystal rank dungeon dubblie so for one with actual treasure?”
A grin spread across Connors face, “Is it? Because I thought that would be the perfect rate to feed this cash cow. Make sure that the guards know to allow night dives and don’t set a minimum entry rank.”
Cassius nodded understanding what the guild master ment. If there was no minimum entry rank people would flood the dungeon many of whom would not be nearly strong enough to survive even the first floor. The guild master wanted to “legally” sacrifice the local commoners and attract merchants and guild members.
Connor broke Cassius out of his thoughts by standing up and walking over to a chest at the back corner of the room. Runes on the chest glowed briefly before Connor opened it and pulled out two objects. The first was a sack likely holding a variety of common monster parts ranging from goblins to cobalds. The other was a small ornate box with a lock on the front. Connor tossed the sack to Julien and handed the box to Cassius, “Bring these to the dungeon and leave them at least ten meters in and out of sight from the entrance. Don’t open the box and take amnestics after you finish. We wouldn't want you to remember giving the dungeon something that went missing from the Atricet empire treasury.”
Julien gulped and Cassius looked nervous, but nodded.
“Then, do be off now.” The party quickly got to their feet and left the room leaving a grinning Connor behind them.
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Cet smiled, a moment of clarity spreading across his mind. With it he reached out manipulating the minds of the humans on the land nearby. He needed them to bring the dungeon something special. Something no sane human would have the bright idea of doing. Everything was working perfectly. This would be the one, the lifeblood that would feed his legacy. The dungeon would be like an egg housing Cet’s legacy until it was ready to break free.
Dungeons were inelegant beings however they were still easy to predict and manipulate. The dungeon would raise it’s own demise.
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Sanctus watched curiously as the adventurers from earlier returned only to leave a couple items around the bend of a tunnel and leave. Sanctus thought for a moment before having Markus retrieve the items. Once they were in the core room Sanctus had Markus dump the contents of the sack onto the floor. Organs, eyes, fingers, and other miscellaneous pieces of monster spilled onto the floor. Sanctus stared at it all for a moment before happily dissolving them to learn their blueprints. Markus just patiently waited for all of the blood and guts to be cleaned. When Sanctus had finished with the monster parts it turned its attention to the box.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
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Cassius and his team walked away from the dungeon having placed the sack of monster bits inside.
“Why did he have to send us to drop off some sack of monster bits in the dungeon? Don’t they have interns for that?” Hanna complained loudly.
Cassius and Mya shrugged, but Sidney and Julien frowned and glanced at each other. “I’m not so sure that’s all we did,” Replied Sidney slowly.
Cassius froze, “What do you mean?”
“Well I think we took amnestics,” Sidney responded, glancing at Julien for confirmation.
Julien nodded, “I agree with Sidney there are a few blank spots in my memory that shouldn’t be there considering my intelligence stat.”
It was now Sidney’s turn to nod in agreement. As the others looked at them in confusion.
“So you think we purposely decided to forget what happened?” Maya asked skeptically.
“Umm, yes,” replied Sidney in a confused tone.
Hanna scrunched up her face, “That’s so weird. Why would we want to forget something? Actually, never mind, I can think of a few.”
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Sanctus and Markus had tried to open the small box for nearly four hours before they finally gave up and just put it in the corner of Sanctus’s core room. They had decided that if it was something important it would eventually do something and it was a better use of Sanctus’s time to start working on a new floor. Markus had said that it would be ideal to have at least three floors before a large number of adventurers arrived. However he also said they would probably have to make dew with two and a half. Apparently Sanctus was growing a bit slower than the average dungeon who could generally make their first four floors within a month or two. That was the other thing that Markus said. After four floors Sanctus would have to do something special. When Sanctus had asked him what he meant Markus had told him that all he knew was that the creation of the fifth floor was what truly defined a dungeon. And that many lesser cores only ever made four. Markus had also told Sanctus not to worry about it and just focus on the third floor.
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Chase ran off the boat the second it reached land. Not because he disliked boats, but because he had finally made it to a town with a dungeon. It had taken him two years to make enough money to buy gear and afford a guild membership. He had always wanted to be an adventure, the thought of glory and riches was an alluring one.
As he ran through the town he thought of all the stories he had read of the hero’s of old. Once every five hundred years or so a person was born who would eventually develop the hero class and go on to accomplish incredible feats. Briefly he fantasized about being the next hero, thinking of all the incredible feats he would accomplish. He promptly ran into a wall and realized that he had made it to the guild hall.
Sheepishly Chase pushed open the doors to the guild hall and stepped inside. He was expecting there to be tons of high ranked adventurers milling around and glaring at newbies, but instead it was mostly people around his age with shoddy armor standing around chatting.
He walked up to one of the receptionists and asked if he could register with the guild. The board receptionist brought out a contract and a registration form and told him to begin signing up. Then she brought out an ornate stone and placed it in front of him.
“Place your hand on the stone and try not to flinch or pass out.” The receptionist finally said in a broad tone.
Chase quickly placed his hand on the stone and gasped as he felt something leave him. The receptionist's eyes widened slightly, “huh, you have a good affinity for profane and a decent affinity for fire. Not bad, kid.”
Chase beamed and quickly handed over the registration fee of five silver and handed back the papers. The receptionist gave a small smile and said, “Be careful, people with your level of talent don’t turn up every day.”
Chase practically floated away from the reception desk. Everything was going like he had imagined.
“Hey, excuse me, we overheard what the receptionist said and we were wondering if you wanted to join our party.”
Chase whirled around to see a girl around his age looking at him expectantly, “umm-“
“Don’t worry we’re not just trying to get you on our team because we think you’ll carry us. My name is Tessa and I’m the party leader. I'm a fighter with good physical stats and a resilience trait. The two behind me are Jace and Lilly. Jace has an excellent lightning affinity and Lilly already has a rogue class and multiple traits.”
Chase wanted to jump with excitement. Everything truly was going to plan, “Thanks for inviting me into your party. I promise not to let you down.”
“Great! Are you ready to hit the dungeon?”
Chase nodded and the group headed out. The group used the walk to the dungeon to finish introducing themselves. Jace and Lilly were siblings who had just recently come to the island once word of a dungeon came out and Tessa was born on the island and thought of the dungeon as an opportunity. Chase explained how he had been heading toward a different dungeon before he found out that one had appeared here and wanted to be one of the first to explore it. When they made it to the dungeon they were excited to see that there was almost no line. After half an hour the group made it to the front and handed over the entrance fee. The man sitting at the toll booth counted the coins and then let them through.