For Susan, this is one of the most outlandish missions she has ever been on. Hunting sandworms in the desert, that had sucked. Escorting ambassador Zarrin through enemy territory, that had been a serious annoyance, the Noble man complaining at every slight inconvenience and constantly trying to sexually harass her. Exterminating a tribe of Goblins living in a massive cave system had left her wanting to rip off her own nose and left her with a deep hatred for the little green bastards. Clearing sewers of a Slime infestation? She’s never doing that again, even if she were to go back to being some broke kid with nothing but a dream again. That just wasn’t worth the pay, and Susan swears that she can still smell the sewage in her hair even seven years later, and Slime does not play nice with clothing… That made for an embarrassing afternoon, sneaking out of the sewers with barely a shred of clothing on her body and covered in slime. Had to steal a towel from someone’s laundry line and rush back to her inn while people pointed and laughed…

Looking back on it now, she can laugh at her older self, but she can’t help but cringe at how many dirty jobs she has had to do in her life and how they usually ended with her wishing and praying for a hot bath. But those undesirable jobs had led to her reaching the point she is at now. A renowned swordswoman that acts as the posterchild of the Golden Mare. When young girls are thinking about joining them, they do so while dreaming of becoming like her. When young boys join, they do so while sneaking shy peeks at her, probably dreaming of one day being the lucky man to finally bed her.

She has money, skill, valuable equipment, and fame. As far as any adventurer is concerned, she has made it. But this isn’t enough. This isn’t what Susan wanted out of becoming an adventurer.

No, what she always wanted is a proper challenge. A great challenge. One that would be her mark on history. Daniel and the Dragon. Flint and the Bloody Twenty-Year War. Xenia and the Great Terror! Legends, each and every one of them, and each marked by a battle against an impossible foe.

Susan wants to have a fight that will be recorded in history. The sort of fight that is sang about by bards for generations to come and dreamed about by little kids as they drift off to sleep at night, imagining their futures.

This Necromancer might be her chance at finally getting that fight.

Susan and the Necromancer! A tale of how the heroine saved the city of Silest from an Undead threat. That is her dream. And once she gets the reward from this bounty, she could even pay people to write her story. Her very own book! Now that would be a hell of a way to retire from being an adventurer. A dream come true.

But first, she has to get through one more dirty job…

Susan cringes as another mushroom infested zombie falls in half to her blade, its rotted insides spilling out as a slurry of mushy meat and juices mixed with colorful fungus, spores flying out in every direction like she just popped a balloon full of confetti.

She doesn’t even get the chance to whip the fresh mess off of her suit before she has to cut down another and another again, the zombies seemingly having endless numbers to pull from.

After leaving the second floor, a grueling crawl that took eight hours of moving at a slug's pace and that cost them their first casualty, the raid party finally managed to reach the third floor after having to hack their way through a staircase full of mushrooms so thick that it might have well been a wall.

Eight hours to reach the third floor and one casualty. Utterly ridiculous. Before this happened, everyone here could have reached the first boss by themselves in under three hours, four tops, with most of the time just being dedicated towards walking. The first layer of any Dungeon is nothing but beginner level stuff after all, Gremlins and Goblins and the rare trap, and you are more likely to find treasure than you are to stumble into a pitfall here.

But now, a full raid party of twenty, regretfully now nineteen, well trained adventurers are nearing almost a whole day of travel without even reaching the first boss. All because of the metric shit load of mushrooms that are blocking their path and the constant harassment from the Undead.

To make matters somehow worse, it appears the third floor has an even higher density of Undead enemies, which Susan is assuming is because they couldn’t reach the entrance like those on the first two floors. Instead, the numbers on this floor and probably those further down as well, have just been steadily increasing with each passing day.

“Ma’am, people are getting tired. We’re going to need to find a place to rest for a while.”

“How far until we reach the next Safe Room?” Susan asks even though she knows that the Safe Rooms aren’t actually safe anymore. The Undead and mushrooms don’t exactly care about the Dungeon’s rules, but they are still a good place for refilling their water.

“At the pace we’re moving, not a for a couple more hours, ma’am.” He reports as Susan slices another Goblin in half, its corpse exploding into a rainbow of spores and gore.

“Eehhhh… Alright, lets grab a room and take a break.”

Susan doesn’t mention the fact that she could use a break herself.

This suit is so uncomfortable. With these fat gloves, I can’t even properly hold my sword, the neck doesn’t turn far enough, and I think this damn thing is going to give me a rash…

“Let’s not take too long, I want us to keep moving as much as possible.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The group makes for the nearest room, hacking though mushroom stalks as they go and fending off the Undead. Once they arrive, they look inside to find the room to be, unsurprising to nobody at all, filled with even more mushrooms.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

“Ben, Vinny, clear it out.”

“Got it.” “Yes Ma’am!”

Two of the Golden Mares few mages move forward under the guard of the others as the hold back the Undead, giving them the space they need to work.

With a quickly chanted incantation, Vinny brings his hands down and pushes Earth mana into the dirt floor, a wall suddenly springing forth and blocking off the room’s entrance with nothing but a small hole leading in. Ben quickly moves over to stick his hand in the hole and finishes his own chant, Fire mana spilling off his body and warming those around him as his spell launches into the sealed off room.

What follows is a muffled explosion as Ben quickly pulls his hand back out and Vinny seals the wall, the Dungeon around them just barely shaking by the explosion going off.

When Vinny brings the wall back down, a curtain of black smoke comes billowing out of the room and flooding into the hall. They have to give it some time for the smoke to clear out before people can start to enter. The once mushroom filled room now looking like a charred black oven full of ash.

“I wish we could just burn the whole Dungeon clear of these things. Would be so much simpler.”

“Not without killing all of us in the process. Hurry up and get in here, we’re sealing it behind us!”

People quickly pull back from fighting off the zombies and get into the room, the last few fighters pushing back the Undead at the door as Vinny goes to raise the wall again, leaving it slightly open up at the top to let air flow.

A plan to use fire to clear a path had been put forward earlier, but was quickly discarded when it was discovered just how violently these mushrooms react to fire. To put it simply, they explode.

Out in the open, this isn’t too dangerous so long as one is willing to ignore that the explosion causes more spores to be spread, but underground, it becomes far deadlier with each explosion setting off more and more explosions and spreading fires everywhere. But this isn’t the primary concern as the adventurers could theoretically just hide in a room and ride out the destruction. No, the problem is the smoke and the poisonous air that is left behind. Given a few hours, the Dungeon should be able to clean it and replace it all with breathable air again, but before then, they would have all died gasping for air. Even with their air filters, they know that they won’t be able to breathe the deadly air.

“Everyone accounted for? No one’s missing, right?”

A quick head count shows they are good, so Susan keeps speaking.

“Alright, we’re taking a quick break. Check over each other’s suits for damage, recharge them, and then take some time to eat and rest. I know the food sucks ass, but you guys better get used to eating through a straw for the foreseeable future. If you want to get back to eating solids again, let’s make this quick and clear this mission.”

She gets a bunch of mumbled yes ma’ams and other affirmatives as everyone moves to check over their neighbor’s suit for any little damages. One of the two healers they brought with them, Elaine, a little Light Mage that ran away from home because her parents tried to sell her to the Church to pay off their debts, comes over and quickly checks over Susan’s suit. She then does the same for her.

“Alright, you look good.”

“Thanks. Uhm, boss?”

“Yeah, what is it, Elaine?”

“Could I do some fighting to? My Light magic would do short work of these zombies if you let me.” The girl asks nervously, shyly playing with her hands. Her shy motions look funny with her wearing the big bulky suit, like an alien trying to act like a hamster.

“No. I know you can handle them just fine, but we aren’t going to take the risk of you getting hurt. Besides, the rest of us have the combat side of things covered, just focus on keeping us all alive. Besides, without a good source of proper light, your mana regeneration will be too slow. We don’t need you draining yourself if we can avoid it.”

“Mmm, alright.”

“Don’t worry, just having you here is already a big help. Knowing that we have a healer at our backs helps us frontliners fighter harder, knowing that we can take more risks.”

“Not that I can do anything to heal a sword through a skull…”

“Yeah… Poor Kenny. But we all knew what we’re signing up for when we accepted this mission. Don’t let it weigh on you too much. Come on, get some food in ya.”

Elaine nods in what looks like a sad way, Susan can’t tell because she can’t see her face through the tinted visor, but body language is more than enough. Digging out some of their rations from their sealed packs, Susan grimaces as she pops her straw in and then hooks it up to the feeding slot in the suit that leads into a little feeding nipple just under her visor.

Biting down on the thing, Susan sucks the liquified food into her mouth and tries not gag as she swallows it.

Elaine is clearly not enjoying it either and is visibly reeling at the flavor and texture, clenching her arms and hands and visibly shuddering.

“Ah, this tastes like shit!” Elain curses after swallowing a mouthful, something that the normally very polite girl would never do, even after a couple of years of having adventurers rubbing off their bad habits onto her.

“Yeah, whoever made this, they didn’t bother with flavor at all... From what I was told, they made this stuff purely for long term survival. Has everything a person needs to stay alive. Supposedly, you can last for ten years or so just eating this stuff or whatever. They had a long list of illnesses that it keeps you from getting, but I stopped listening halfway through the explanation. All I caught was that it can keep you from catching scurvy and that it will probably never go bad.”

“Scurvy?”

“Sailer’s disease. From not eating your fruits and vegetables.”

“Oh… Well it certainly tastes like it’s gone bad…”

“Yeah…”

The two of them finish gagging down the rest of their ‘meal,’ if it can be called that, and then reconnect their water containers to the nipple so they can drink. To minimize points of entry into the suit, there is only one feeding port that must be used for both food and water, but not at the same time. This sadly causes their first couple sips of water to still carry the taste of the slop they just ate as the two are trying to wash down the flavor.

Crushing the disposable container for the ‘food,’ Susan tosses it into a corner of the room like trash. Others are already doing the same, tossing away the emptied things with clear disdain and plenty of curses.

After changing out her filter and feeding a fresh mana shard into her suit, Susan calls out to everybody.

“Ten more minutes, then we’re getting back to work. Wrap up your business and make sure you’re good to go!”

Beside her, Elaine is squirming on the floor and looking down, embarrassed?

“What’s wrong?” Susan asks the younger girl curiously.

Elaine quickly looks up at her before looking away again, the motion would have normally been rather cute, but wearing the bulky hazmat suit, it just looks silly.

“I…”

“Yes?”

“I… I need to use the restroom…”

“Oh…”

“Yeah…”

“Well, I would recommend doing it before we get going, doing it while we’re on the move wouldn’t be good.”

“Right, I just… It’s so gross, and embarrassing…”

“Sorry, just going to have to get used to it. Just think about having a hot bath once we’re done here.”

“Right, right…”

The embarrassed girl gets up and moves to the corner of the room and proceeds to just awkwardly stand there, facing away from everyone. Susan tries to give her some decency by not watching the poor girl…

“Ahh! Why does it feel like its licking me clean!? Euhhh! Grossgrossgross, I hate this!!!”

“Uhhh, I hate dirty jobs…” Susan sighs as Elaine is experiencing the suit’s self-cleaning enchantments for the first time. “This Necromancer better be worth it.”