The Mountain Grotto Dungeon, Slopes of Mount Gursway, 20th day of Sol, 1661

Marta commented, “I think that the rooms are laid out in a spiral.”

Bess said, “Yes, I agree.”

After trotting for a while, they arrived at the entrance to the next room.

Marisol commented, “Well, this is not ominous in any way, shape or form.”

Bess said, “What makes you say that? The complete lack of any light?”

Marta said, “Torches?”

Bess replied, “Yes. I’d normally not, using a straight ‘light’ spell, but I want to see the Dungeon like a new Delver.”

All three of them got out torches and Marisol lit them.

They walked into another round room with a large tree in the middle. This one was a little different, with the tree in the middle being lower to the ground and only covered about two-thirds of the room. So, with the room being about 11 metres in diameter, the tree was about 8 metres wide.

Marta said, “I feel bats, they’re not very big. I think there are less than 10.”

Bess spotted a pair of bats in front of them, “There, two in front of us. I don’t recognise the type, though.”

The pair of bats each launched a small fireball at Bess.

“Fireballs, really?”

Bess side-stepped the fireballs and advanced on the bats, knives out.

Suddenly, there was a massive explosion behind the girls and fire enveloped them.

Marisol said, “What in all the hells and heavens was that?”

Marta said, “One of the fireballs from one of the oil bats hit a bush behind us and that bush blew up.”

Bess threw one dagger and killed one of the bats. The other one fired another fireball at Bess, who automatically dodged it. She shouted, “Incoming!”

Bess stabbed the second bat, that was hovering over a particular bush. She realised immediately that the bush has a really strong smell of eucalyptus.

Marisol shouted, “Bess, fireballs behind you!”

Bess turned and ducked and then was blown across the room as the bush behind her exploded.

Marisol launched a fireball of her own at the two bats that had fired at Bess, except that her fireball was significantly larger than the bats.

Marta’s eyed grew wide and shouted, “Down! Hit the ground!”

The fireball exploded, immolating the two bats, who both exploded, taking the third flameberry bush with them. The resulting explosion killed the last two oil bats.

Once everyone confirmed nothing more was moving, Marisol rushed over the Bess, seeing her lying face-down, partly under the central tree’s canopy.

“Bess!”, she cried, as she turned her over.

It took her a minute to realise what she was seeing. There was a dishevelled Bess, her outfit singed, and her hair partly burnt away, grinning up at her.

“That was fun!”

Marisol’s jaw dropped open and she was speechless for a moment, allowing Bess to continue.

“Imagine the Dungeon Monty will be designing once he gets up into higher levels.”

Marisol sighed and asked, “Are you OK?”

“Not really. But I was never in real danger. So, did we kill everything?”

Marta said, having walked up behind the other two, “I don’t think so. There’s been an explosion at three out of four sides to the room, well, as much as you can have sides to a round room.”

Bess pulled out a potion from her pouch, checked that it was a healing potion with two black bands painted around its neck, unstoppered it and sculled it in one motion. Leaving the bottle and cork on the floor for Monty to analyse.

Over the next few seconds, all the hair and skin damage on Bess repaired itself. A spell from Bess and her armour looked good as new as well.

“Let’s go look at this last bush. I noticed, just before I was blown up, a strong smell of eucalyptus.”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

They quickly located the last bush. Marisol pulled a reference book out of her storage ring and quickly flipped through the pages. “Here, the bush is called a ‘flameberry bush’ and it’s quite valuable to an Alchemist.”

Bess nodded, got out a large sack from her storage and covered the whole bush. She then used a small saw she pulled from her storage to saw off the bush at ground level and put the whole thing into her storage.

They went around the room and collected a copper piece for each of the dead bats and a potion bottle from each of the three spots where a bush had ignited.

Bess found the chest in the central tree, “Only a trap on opening the box itself. There, disarmed. It was an ice trap, launching an ice needle. We’ve got 17 copper pieces, 3 bronze pieces, 1 silver piece and an onyx cabochon.”

Marisol said, “Is this dungeon too hard?”

Bess shook her head, “No. It’s dangerous, really dangerous, but even that bush wouldn’t kill a first level Delver. It’s going to injure them, the whole team may have to turn back at that point and go find some healing, but unless the delver was just unlucky and was breathing in when the explosion happened, they should not die.”

“So, an irresponsible or foolish Delver team would have casualties.”

“Oh, yes. This dungeon will have many more people die in it than Jessica's. I am sure that by the time we reach the end of this level we will be seeing situations where first, second and probably third level delvers could be one-shotted.”

“I’ve been in some of those Dungeons. They were dangerous, but the rewards were always better.”

Bess just held up the Onyx gem in answer to Marta.

They spend another five minutes searching the room but came up with nothing else.

After a quick rest and a drink or water, the three girls continued on.

Marisol said, “Yes, definitely a spiral. Noticed how each room has been getting bigger as well?”

The other two nodded. It was about twice the distance to room 4, but soon the three stood at the entrance to the room.

They walked into another round room with a large tree in the middle. This one was different again, with the tree in the middle being high enough for them to be able to easily walk under. The tree extended to just short of the walls but was a deciduous tree this time. Both the tree and the ground had a deep snow cover. The various mounds across the ground probably pointed to bushes. The room was about 14 metres wide.

Marisol said, “This room leaves me cold.”

Bess said, “Your ‘snow’ right.”

Marta rolled her eyes at the pair. “I actually do find it fascinating that even though we’re probably not in any real danger yet, our instincts are causing us to react to the threats as being a lot more dangerous than they actually are.”

Bess replied, “Do you want our instincts not to react?”

With a snort, Marta said, “Gods, no. It’s our instincts that keep us alive when they really need too. Shall, we?”

Bess crept into the room, then held up her hand to stop the others joining her. She pointed to a branch on the tree.

Marisol said, “Ice lizard.”

Marta said, “So, what sort of friends should we expect them to have? My vote would be ice-berry vines.”

Bess nodded, as she launched a dagger at the arm-length long lizard.

It died, falling off the branch and into the pile of snow under it. When the lizard hit, it produced a blizzard of tiny icicles that engulfed Bess.

“Yep,” said Marisol, “ice-berry vines.”

Shaking the ice of her, Bess said, “Even though they’re rated the same as the fire-berry bushes, I don’t think they’re anywhere near as dangerous.”

The three of them quickly dispatched the remaining lizards and bushes.

Marisol said, “They will be for the low-level teams.”

“I suppose so. Let’s see if there is a treasure chest.”

“10 copper pieces, 9 bronze, 6 silver and 2 garnets. The treasure in Monty’s dungeon is certainly good.”

Marisol and Marta agreed with Bess.

Again, the passage to the next room was longer, as the spiral got further away from the centre.

Room number 5 was about 16 metres in diameter and the tree only took up about half of the room. The whole ground was covered in knee-high grass with wildflowers mixed in throughout.

Six giant dandelions were scattered throughout the room.

Marta said, “Well, this room seems to be continuing the theme. Giant dandelions and look, in the central tree, at least one chimpanzee.”

Bess said, “At least the dandelions shoot out their quills randomly, and neither should have poison.”

Marisol nodded. “Together, or split up?”

Marta replied, “Lets split up this time.”

Bess said, “Right, let’s go then.”

Bess ran to the left, Marisol ran straight for the central tree and Marta ran right.”

The chimpanzee launched something that looked like a coconut at a dandelion that was near each of the girls, hitting them. Each dandelion exploded, shooting twenty arrow sized quills randomly. Of the 60 quills, two found targets, with both hitting Marta.

Marta grunted, and then continued on to a second chimpanzee she had spotted in the tree.

The chimp launched a projectile at Marta and Marta used her bat to smash it away. It was at this point that she discovered that the projectiles were actually wasp nests. The 6 air wasps from this nest, joined the other six that had finally caught up with Marta and buzzed her.

Marta yelled to the others, “Those chimps are throwing wasp nests full of air wasps.”

Each swipe of her club would kill one, two and sometimes three of them. Each hit, accompanied by a faint ‘pffft’ sound.

A minute later, she realised that she had killed many more wasps than she could account for.

The stings from the ones that had made it through to her, had got her annoyed. At one point, one of the chimpanzees launched at her, teeth bared and claws reaching. She ignored the wasps for the moment and hit the chimpanzee with a restrained blow.

There was a ‘fwppt’ sound, and the chimpanzee body went flying off and collected the second one she had been aiming for. This one died as well, again with a ‘fwppt’ sound.

Another ten minutes and the room was cleared.

The three met at the central trunk, where Bess was disabling the traps on the small treasure chest.

Marta said, while stripping off her armour, “I hope this dungeon scales the difficulty up, based on delver levels, otherwise this dungeon is much too difficult.”

“Probably, yes,” agreed Marisol.

Marta made up a cream and began applying it to all of her stings. “That feels better, next?”

Marisol stripped her armour off, and Marta repeated the treatment. Once Marisol was equipped again, Bess stripped her armour off. Again, Marta applied the ointment she had crafted to Bess’ stings and then they all redressed.

Bess said, “Assuming one monkey for a starter group, this room would probably still be a party wipe.”

Marisol said, “Probably. But any level 1 party that pushed all the way through to this room, well, really needed to have given up before here.”

Marta said, “So the prideful idiots are going to die.”

Bess replied, “Yes. I can see this getting an A7+ or an A8+ rating, so long as the difficulty escalation is what we expect it is.”

“Well, quite the haul from the treasure chest. 39 copper coins, 20 bronze, 16 silver and 11 semi-precious stones.”

Marta and Marisol gathered around Bess to admire the gems, a mixture of onyx, garnets, topaz, and zircons.