POV Pyter Synder
Pyter was on the journey of a lifetime, an absolute career maker. Though it certainly didn’t feel like it. Who knew that having consistent sea sickness would put a damper on things? But it is worth it if he proves to be right about it.
‘Haha, I’ll prove those naysayers wrong. Didn’t believe me about it, but I’ll prove them wrong.’ though Pyter queasily as he clung to the side of the ship after another bout of vomiting. He stilled for a moment, letting the nausea pass, before reaching into his backpack of holding and pulling out a vial of sea-sickness reliever potion. He quickly uncorked the glass vial and downed the potion, and finally sat back and relaxed as the nausea disappeared completely. As he stared into the cloudy sky, he thought back to how this whole adventure started.
Eight months ago, during a tedious workday, a dungeon seismograph, an object that latches onto the unique mana signature, records and collects the signature released during the birth of a dungeon, started moving. Seeing the movement, Pyter quickly rushed to grab the dungeon bell. The dungeon bell is a hollow silver sphere on a long silver chain with a needle-like spike right in the middle of the bottom of the bell that attaches to the dungeon seismograph and takes that unique mana signature within it. He quickly grabbed the most complete map of the world and started slowly spinning the dungeon bell around the map. Each time he circled the bell, he got closer and closer to the general area where the new dungeon resided. Soon, the dungeon bell stopped and locked onto a location within the Ponosonee Ocean, where it is tough to travel to.
As his job as a dungeon locater, and in Pyter's opinion, dungeon scholar, he was supposed to report his find to the dungeon guild. It was not all that unusual to have a dungeon underwater or in a previously unknown or undiscovered place. Still, he had a gut feeling that this dungeon was different.
So, Pyter decided to put the letter x in ink where on the map that the dungeon bell initially locked onto and left it hanging on a metal chain holed over the world map. With that, he went back to work and left the bell chain hanging there.
A couple of days later, Pyter went back to look at the map and dungeon, and he noticed something. The dungeon bell had moved a couple of millimetres, this surprised him, but he thought that maybe he had bumped it or that map moved. So he marked the map with a small circle at where it was now located.
Over the next couple of weeks, Pyter checked where the dungeon bell now pointed and marked down with a small dot on the map where it pointed too.
If where the dungeon was located was closer and more accessible, Pyter knew that his curiosity about this unique situation would force him to go and seek the dungeon out. But, it was too far to see if this was even true. So, he kept an eye on the ever-changing location of the dungeon, but one day, it started to rapidly move. And it quickly moved South to a more accessible location near the Ridgeleche Archipelago.
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With the information that he had, Pyter decided to show what he had found to his colleagues. That did not turn out well. They laughed in his face and called him a mockery of a dungeon finder. Told him that moving dungeons do not exist, and there has never been a case of it occurring.
Deeply humiliated, Pyter decided to screw it all and go find this dungeon. He wanted to prove that what he observed was true, that there was a dungeon moving around out there. So he counted all of the coins he saved up, and there was just enough to hire a boat and a small D-rank team of adventurers to come with him.
And that’s how he ended up clutching the side of a boat, green in the face. They have been travelling for weeks, everyone was tired, and Pyter was a couple of days of being unable to pay for the next week.
Then, the dungeon bell that he had brought with him started moving. This time, it was not pulled towards a map but in a direction. Realizing this, Pyter ran to the captain and told him to turn the ship in the direction that the bell was pointing to. The captain gave a big sigh, shot him a look that basically told him, ‘what are you doing?’, and did what he wanted.
The closer that the ship got to that direction, the more that the dungeon bell pulled. After a couple of hours, something appeared in the distance. That something was an iceberg, which was not uncommon around the Ridgeleche Archipelago. But the dungeon bell went absolutely insane the closer the ship got to the iceberg.
Pyter pointed to the iceberg and turned to the captain’s ship. “Captain, can you anchor next to that iceberg?”
“Why,” asked the captain, who didn’t seem to understand why this was so exciting. Before the captain could answer, Pyter cut him off.
“I think I found it,” said Pyter with a bright smile. “I got to tell the adventurers,” he said as he rushed off to find the trio of adventurers that he had hired for the trip.
Pyter ran towards the group. “Guys! Get ready. I think I found the dungeon!”
As Pyter ran to grab his backpack, he could hear the adventurers sigh and murmur about a crazy professor hiring them.
Soon, the sailors had used an anchor to attach the ship onto a flat portion of the iceberg, and Pyter and the adventurers started climbing onto the ice. Following the pull of the dungeon bell towards a small hole in the ice, he gestured to the whole and asked, “are you coming?”
With a sigh, the adventurers followed after him into the tunnel. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was really only like 15 minutes, they entered a room.
As soon as Pyter entered the room, and saw a swirly portal. He was ecstatic that he was right. He honestly thought that he was wrong. But he was right! Well, somewhat right. It might not be a dungeon, but there was something here. In pursuit of proving that he was right, Pyter walked towards the portal and stepped through.
Just as he entered through the portal, he heard somebody yell, “stop!!!!!!!”
When Pyter exited wherever the portal lead through, he plummeted like a rock into a large body of water. Panicking, he tried to get back to the surface because he couldn’t swim. After about 30 seconds of struggling to reach the surface, the world started to go blurry.
‘Well,’ he thought to himself. ‘At least I discovered something.’ Then, as the world went dark, he could slightly see a person within the water coming towards him. Then, with one last strangled breath, he closed his eyes one last time.