The rising sun makes its way over the buildings, shining its rays over the many people lined outside, warming us all from the winter nip in the air.
The door of the Dungeoneer’s Guild opens up, a human clerk stepping out of it as the bell above it jingles, sheets of paper in her hands.
“Finally,” a dwarven man’s voice says from further down the back of the line, “We’ve been waiting for you for hours.”
“Shut the fuck up, Matt. She’s just doing her job.” The dwarven woman in front of the complaining man turns to face him, an annoyed look on her face.
“Oh, you shut up.”
This goes on for a while, the two people in the line bickering back and forth with one another.
The clerk rolls her eyes, pinning the many notes to the different boards as she does so, paying no mind to the two people. After finally pinning everything she turns to her right, facing the front of the line, a very practiced, professional smile on her face.
“Good morning, everybody,” she begins, speaking loud enough to be heard over the two arguing, “First come, first served, as all of you know. Nobody is allowed to push anybody else in the line. Anyone caught doing so will be fined in accordance to the Dungeoneering Laws and Regulations enforced here in Tryndaveid states.” She bows a full 90 degrees, returning to an upright posture as she continues, “We hope for all of your successful returns from the Womb of the Earth Dungeon.”
The clerk walks back to the door, the bell chiming once again as she closes it behind her, the two still arguing.
At last, the line moves forward.
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“Excuse me.”
The elven clerk lady looks up from her logbook, idly rotating her chair a bit, turning it left and right before abruptly stopping, adjusting the glasses on her face as she looks at me.
Never seen that type of chair before. Tiny wheels on the bottom. Rotates. That’s neat.
“I’d like to enlist some help for this particular quest.”
She raises her left hand, turned in a way so her palm is facing up, and holds it out in front of me.
I give her the quest and my dungeoneer’s necklace.
“How many people are you looking for...” She takes a second to look at my name on the necklace, “Arthur?” She holds the quest post in her hand as she looks at her logbook, looking comparatively between them to find the same quest.
As she looks at the logbook, I see script being written not by her hand, but just magically appearing out of nowhere. A look to my left shows another clerk — the one from earlier outside — talking to another Dungeoneer. She’s on the same page of the logbook.
Linked logbooks? That must cost a fortune to enchant.
The clerk in front of me finally ticks the box that correlated with my quest and writes my name beside it, setting the things in her hands down before raising her head back up to look at me, a smile on her face.
She looks at me for a while before slight confusion settles on her face.
“Sir? How many people are you looking for?”
Oh.
“Sorry, preferably just one, but I don’t mind two.”
She jots the numbers down on her logbook and writes an addition to the bottom of the quest, before fishing out a message stone from the drawer on her table, infusing some of the intrinsic mana in my necklace into it, binding me to the message stone.
“Here’s your message stone,” she hands me the item and a thumb pin, along with everything else I gave her. “We will contact you if we find someone who is looking to be enlisted. Please repin the quest back onto the board.” She bows slightly, before returning to an upright position. “We hope for your successful return from the Womb of the Earth Dungeon.”
I walk past a granite obelisk and out of the door of the building. I turn back to look at the clerk, still walking, “Thank you, you too!”
I stop myself as the bell jingles and chimes, my body halfway outside.
Fuck...
I walk out of the Dungeoneer’s Guild, shaking my head free of the embarrassment I caused myself, and taking another look at the quest to distract myself from my inability to talk like a normal person.
Stone-Rank: Slaying & Gathering Quest
Due to the outcome of many of yesterday’s Slaying quotas, today’s quests will have to pick up the slack. We cannot have a dungeon break, people.
Also, a client wants as many NATURE-based woods as you can get your hands on — must be long enough to be shaped into a staff. Thick roots, saplings. Chop it down if need be.
Refer to the Dungeoneering guidelines if you don’t know what monsters you need to find and fight or if you don’t know what length is being needed for a staff.
Guild rates apply for anything that isn’t part of the quest that you sell to us.
Best of luck.
- Guild-Mistress Salazar
Slay Quest: 25 Wood-Rank Monsters & 5 Stone-Rank Monsters — must harvest the proper item of proof from the slain monsters, as listed by the guidelines, and hand them off to one of the clerks.
*We highly recommend harvesting kills as a top priority and making it a habit. Remember, the Dungeoneer’s Guild will increase your standing if you sell what you harvest to us, not to mention the competitive Guild rates we offer for anything sold to us.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
Reward: 25 Silver.
OPTIONAL Gather Quest: As much NATURE-based woods as you can get (must be long enough for a staff) — hand them off to one of the clerks.
Reward: Varies (currency & further additional standing) based on quality and quantity of items gathered.
[Currently held by Arthur Patten, looking for 1~2 enlistees, talk to the clerks at the front to enlist]
My first quest in the 26 years I’ve been alive.
I look up to where the quest board is, face still a bit blush from embarrassment. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem too out of place with winter amongst us. I walk forward, thumb pin in hand.
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“How did it go?” His voice was loud, speaking over many other voices in the inn, wiping a glass dry.
“It went fine,” I lied. “Just have to wait for up to 2 hours for someone to enlist, or go solo if no one responds.”
I seat myself on one of the bar stools in front of my uncle, immediately leaning forward on the counter, past and above the underhang below the counter, and resting my head with my arms placed under me. The underhang was a bit too low compared to the proper counter.
All the noise around me quietened.
I sluggishly lift my body from against the counter and turned around, wondering why the inn had gone dead silent. Everyone’s eyes were looking behind me. I turn around.
“Nobody,” Uncle Mathals says sternly, his whole body paused in the middle of wiping the glass dry, his deep hazel brown eyes burrowing into my own. An inkling of the rage I saw those weeks ago in him, before he continued, “And I mean nobody — leans on my counter.”
“Oh. Sorry.” I straighten myself casually, before leaning forward onto the low underhang, resting my eyes. Everything settles back to normal, the inn returning to its almost deafening atmosphere.
My back hurts.
“I’ll just go take a nap in my room.”
“Alright. You still have the key right?”
“Yep.”
“Good lad.”
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Breathing heavily as I run through the streets of Tryndaveid, I make my way to the Dungeoneer’s Guild.
Somebody responded.
I make a right turn, nearly bowling over a pair of kids before I quickly pivot my body around them, running past them.
“Oi, stop running, ya’ fuckhead!” An elven man with a mullet and a bizarre accent shouted at me as I ran past him, “Ya’ nearly fuckin’ ran those kids over, cunt!”
Somebody responded.
I keep running.
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Catching my breath right outside of the Dungeoneer’s Guild building, I lean against its outer wall for support.
My knees are killing me.
I take out my water canteen from my backpack and gulp a good amount down, breathing less heavily after doing so.
I stay like this for a bit, slowing down my breathing as best as I can.
Good first impressions, Arthur. Good first impressions.
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I enter the building, no longer breathing hard, the bell above me chiming.
You are now entering the Dungeoneer’s Guild – Tryndaveid Branch.
Tryndaveid’s very own Dungeoneer’s Guild, located on the southern edge of the city.
This branch, and city, were created due to the sudden appearance of the Last Stand Dungeon. A HOLY affinity dungeon, of which the War God of Attrition, Ovurbek, had domain over for twenty-three years.
It was forcibly de-cored two years ago due to the dungeon break that arose from it, which had ended many of the city’s inhabitants’ lives at the time.
Fortunately, in its place came the Womb of the Earth Dungeon — a NATURE affinity dungeon, a more peaceful dungeon compared to its predecessor.
This branch is now well-known for keeping an eye on, maintaining, and keeping its dungeon population at bay, setting a standard for all other branches.
The centerpiece of the building is a rectangular, granite obelisk. On it are all of the names of the souls whose lives were lost, memorialised for eternity. A reminder.
The Dungeoneer’s Guild will never let it happen again.
It is almost empty, save for the two clerks that man the building. I walk past the obelisk quickly, making a beeline for where the clerks are. They are thankfully not busy, just chatting with one another, laughing as the human clerk makes a joke.
“Hello again.”
The elven clerk turns her head to me mid-sentence, her laughter and smile disappearing. She scoots forward to her table and rotates her chair to face me straight ahead, a different type of smile forming on her face as she puts on her glasses.
“Hello again, Arthur,” She adjusts her glasses as she flips through the thick logbook before settling on one. “We found two people — two gnomes — willing to enlist, and they said that they’d be waiting at the Ivory Swigs Inn.”
“Oh... They didn’t wait here?”
“No, they did not.” She sits up and looks at me, setting her glasses back down, her well-practiced smile still on her face as she sticks her hand out to me with her palm up. “Please return our message stone.”
I return it, standing there as she opens her drawer and places the stone back inside, wondering why they couldn’t just tell me through the message stone.
She looks back up at me, her smile still plastered on. “Our message stones only vibrate and make a noise, as well as show your general location. We can’t communicate with you through them.”
Oh. That makes sense.
An uncomfortable moment passes between us.
“Thank you,” I manage to finally say, quickly turning around before anything more embarrassing could happen. “Have a good day!” I run past the centerpiece, nearly tripping over the long, red carpet in front of the door.
“We wish for your successful return from the Womb of the Earth Dungeon,” I hear behind me.
This is the worst day of my life.
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You are now entering the Ivory Swigs Inn.
“It was YOU!”
A high-pitched voice comes from below me as I close the door to the inn, finally having made my way back.
“You nearly ran us over!” Another voice, this time more feminine but equally as high-pitched as the other one. “Why would you do that to us, man?”
I look down.
Two gnomes, blue light twinkling in their hands, both holding a wand made purely of some metal in their hands.
I blink rapidly three times.
They’re still there.
I want to die.
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“So,” Orny begins, “You’re an NPC?” He massages his butt, the place where he landed when Uncle Mathals threw them both out for taking out their wands.
We are walking to the dungeon, which we could see from our end of the road. Still far-off in the distance, but slowly getting closer. Even from this far, we could hear its humming, the slight vibration in the ground of roots, mycelium, and the wriggling worms making their way under our very own feet. Even the sensation of being alive was resonating within me. I feel like I’m in a place untouched by man.
That last part is very much not the truth, however, but dungeon magic can be a bit reality-bending at times.
“Yeah,” I reply as I took a deep breath, relishing the purity of the air around me before the reality of the question dawned on me.
Oh. Right.
The other gnome, she called herself B, slaps Orny on the shoulder before quickly and harshly whispering to him, to which I do not hear well enough to make out a single word. She eyes Orny, staring daggers at him.
“It’s okay,” I continue, “It’s been 18 years — if I remember correctly — since the Shifting began,” I rub the back of my neck, “I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.”
B looks up at me, a tinge of sadness on her face. She opens her mouth to speak.
“It doesn’t make you feel weird, or anything?” she asks, a mixture of curiosity and what I assume is genuine concern in her expression before she continues, “Knowing that things aren’t what they are?”
I shrug my shoulders and shake my head.
“It’s no different to the Divines, really. We’re all just pawns in their games, being used and manipulated.” I look down at her, “I guess it’s a bit of a relief, knowing that even the Divines are... Just like me.”
B turns her head, looking down at the ground. Perhaps contemplating.
“Sorry,” she said.
I don’t say anything for a while as we walk closer and closer to the dungeon. It is no longer far away, only being metres ahead. I speak up.
“You have nothing to be sorry for. Though I may be nothing but... What did that one person call me—” I think for a second, “Oh, a ‘collection of 0’s and 1’s’, that was what it was. Though I may be whatever that is, I’m still alive. I feel alive. That’s all I need to know.”
A brief silence passes between us three, our steps and the other dungeoneering groups’ talking amongst themselves filling the air around us. People are in good spirits today.
“I think, therefore I am,” she says out of the blue.
That sounds nice, I like that saying.
“I think, therefore I am, yeah,” I echoed.
We stand outside of the dungeon gate. In comparison to the few other dungeon gates I’ve seen, this one is just a cave opening. Critters of all types lurk around the underbrush, living their lives. A tiny frog hops out of a pond right outside the gate, its long tongue whipping at some type of fly. It misses its mark, the fly escaping.
We enter the dungeon.
You are now challenging the Womb of the Earth Dungeon.