Chapter 21

There was a hushed aura of excitement on the morning of our level 2 dungeon run. All adventurers were gathered in their parties and talking quietly.

The first thing on my mind was my newly learned respect for the dangers of higher level dungeons. I was confident yet nervous. Not to mention that this would be the last dungeon run of the year. At least under the beginner’s guild tutelage.

We were gathered around a small bonfire in one of the gardens around the guild. The bushes were bare, and the wind wiffled through, arriving in shredded threads at our feet. A brick pit confined our bonfire, and other adventurers took up the same activity in other corners of the garden.

Erik addressed our curiosity first. “You guys still gonna dungeon crawl over the rest of autumn and winter?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “I really want to build up my mana pool. I still feel like a beginner and I want that feeling to go away. Did you know that Axthose used about 700,000 mana points to create the Gourd of Healing?” A few eyebrows rose, but no one seemed too interested in talking about Axthose. “What about you, Lep?”

Lep had agreed to dungeon run with us and currently lay back on the ground, propped on an elbow, watching the fire.

“For sure,” he said. “I’ll probably visit the folks, then quest for specific items. I might hit up a trading post in my town and see if anyone could use the services of little ol’ me.”

“I’m gonna solo some level 1s I think,” Watt said, smiling wistfully at his endeavor.

“On your own?” Arris said.

Watt responded with an evil-ish laugh.

All he wanted to do was grind. His older brothers had left him with the advice to grind as much as he could, even if the lower level dungeons bored him. He was after “experience and mana crystals.”

I took the lull in our conversation to cast open my mana bar. I decided to blind level Five of Gryf, the Life-steal rune, the flagstaff, and Zekaidean’s Anvil. My mana pool fell to a max of 40, and my flagstaff level rose to 11.

Each leveling took a few minutes and before I knew it, the fire had dwindled and the autumn sun was cresting the trees. My companions had cast their mana bars to address items they wanted to level as well, and we all shared the contents of our inventory one last time. It was good to know what we could rely on from each other.

“There’s actually one more thing I wanna do,” I said, and gathered my things together.

“Gonna get that spearhead you’ve been on the fence about?” Arris said.

That’s exactly what I did. The blacksmith was a pleasant fellow, extra curious about how I’d use an item he intended to sell me.

“I like to understand its purpose so that I can forge what I think ought to suit you best,” he’d said.

In exchange for 4 silver, he forged and installed a basic leaf shaped spearhead on the flagstaff.

“For an extra 10 silver, I’ll give it a sharpness rune so you can level that up over time,” he offered. “It’ll hold a sharper edge when you get it sharpened and honed. For longer too.”

“I’ll have to pass for now,” I said, wanting to carefully spend my money.

That would have left me with not a single silver, and I still needed to buy some mana potions. 5 to be exact, at a silver per bottle, leaving me with only 5 silver remaining.

After lunch, we set out for high altitude. We traveled by foot where the autumn foliage was at peak. Fallen leaves paved our path with colors of leather. Crisps of cooling winds played with the fabrics of my flagstaff, and the hairs, robes, and tunics of fellow adventurers.

The five of us walked abreast, like almost every other party. Watt’s chainmail rang softly in a rhythmic sway of scraping chains. Sheathed upon his back was the crude battle axe he’d taken quite a liking too.

“I bet you leveled a bunch of stuff up,” Arris said, gesturing to the warrior’s armor and weapon.

“Level 32 chainmail shirt,” he said, proud of his mana point allocation.

“Son of Felke,” Lep said. “You’ve gotta have, like, barely any mana points left.”

“I’ve got 6 left. Just enough.”

On we marched up the winding footpath towards the dungeon, further than we’d traveled so far. We passed dungeons on the way, all of which were new to me.

We came to a stretch of climbing stone steps that put us even with trees that were almost bare. The autumn wind was sharper here. Wilder.

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“How much farther, do you think?” Erik said, panting from the trek uphill.

“We don’t actually know how far we’re traveling, I just realized,” Lep said. “Tosin, you don’t even look a bit tired right now.”

“It’s the chains he had to train with,” Watt said. “Now that he doesn’t have them anymore, I’m sure he feels light as air.”

That was exactly it. I had carried my weighty flagstaff with me over several dungeon runs, trained everyday with it, and walked the guild grounds with it. Moran had detached the chains for my level 2 dungeon run and boy was it a different story.

Our long trek up the mountain side and into the tundra was a breeze. It was still rigorous, but I fared better after my training.

Conversations died around us. Our energy was conserved for the unending travel. Shouting against the increasingly loud wind was too taxing. The higher we climbed, the colder it was. I donned my sheepskin lined gloves and squinted against the tear shearing winds.

Before we knew it, evening was darkening the sky and a shroud of night and stars and cold fell upon us. We crested the slope and arrived at a meadow. Formations of rocks encircled the meadow and waist-high evergreens survived in the break of rocks and among patches of drying grass. The terrain offered some barriers to the wind.

The procession of students stopped until we arrived before a few of the trainers; Garmar among them. Each of them were dressed properly for the weather. Most of us weren’t. The rogue trainer raised two hands to halt us and ask for our attention.

“Adventurers. We’re halfway there. Set camp and rest the night. We continue early tomorrow morning.”

The trainers went about pitching tents, while the students panicked.

“Wasn’t expecting this,” Watt said. His brows converged with worry.

“Help me gather any broken tree limbs, anything flammable,” Lep said. “I have an idea.”

Within the hour we gathered enough tundra debris to satisfy him. We deliberated on where to sleep. The meadow had patches of yellowed grass but it was mostly broken rock. We did find a patch of grass and earth and decided to relocate to it, near a wall of rock that provided a better buffer against the wind.

“The idea,” Lep said, “is to burn all this to embers and bury it beneath a few layers of dirt. We’ll get residual heat for at least half of the night. What do you guys think?”

“I’ve got nothing better,” Watt said.

Neither did I, nor Erik, nor Arris.

With our hands and weapons, we dug a shallow pit and packed all the tundra debris into it. Lep opened his mana bar and cast Hand of Flames. He puppeted the hand to gently burrow into the pit over all the debris. Flames erupted in a hundred dances. The warm light drew everyone’s curiosity our way.

“Let it burn for a few minutes,” Arris said.

Lep massaged the Hand of Flames into the pit, pressing it into the earth as gently as he could. We watched the knuckles rise and fall, and the hand undulate in its burning massage. The heat was delightful and others drew near to share in it too. The meadow was subsequently filled with flowing mana bars and bright colors of cast spells. Ingenuity was exercised throughout all the parties.

“Alright, let’s bury the embers,” Arris said.

As quickly as we could, we rushed to cover the embers and flatten the earth. Watt was the first to set himself down atop the buried heat.

“My butt’s warm,” he said and gave a hearty laugh.

The ground was warm and toasty. The smell of burning matter rose from beneath us. Without cover, we huddled close together and sat against the rock wall.

Sleep would still be challenging. Especially since the meadow glowed with a show of casting mana and spells.

The heat beneath us lasted long into the night. We had fallen asleep where we sat, now toppled over one another. I’d woken at some dark hour and shivered in the cold. I pulled myself out from between my companions and laid flat upon the heated earth.

With my ears close to the ground, I could hear the buried crinkle of embers. I felt the warmth climb through the dirt and dead grass to radiate around me. As my flagstaff was beside me, I pulled the flag of Zekaidean’s Anvil over me as a meager blanket.

Other adventurers were still up. I could pick up whispered conversations as their voices rose every now and then. Some were miserable. Others couldn’t sleep. There was even a party who debated going back to the guild for camping materials, then returning straight away. Yet another party debated sleeping in the mouth of a nearby level 1 dungeon until dawn.

None of us knew we’d be marching more than a day.

“Better start thinking of these things,” I muttered to the sky, to the night, and to the stars. I fell asleep in that same dark hour and the dreams I had, occurred between a world of dying heat, and a world of building ice and winter.

“Tosin. Hey. Psst. Wake up, buddy.”

“I can’t move,” I complained.

“You’re just stiff. C’mon, I’ll help you up.”

It was Watt who lifted me to my feet. I was tense and trembling from the cold. I could barely form a fist. Arris and Lep were just waking as well, and cursing the day they were born.

“Gotta feeling they’re gonna have us move on out as soon as they wake up,” Watt said. “I thought we could beat-em to it and have a few minutes to warm up and stuff.”

The earth was barely warm as we sat upon it. The heat was almost completely leached out.

In our groggy existence, not a word more was shared amongst ourselves. Erik pulled out some spare sandwiches and fruit he’d kept from yesterday’s lunch and we shared the impromptu breakfast companionably.

Mere moments after we’d eaten and gotten to our feet, the trainers went around waking everyone up. As Watt correctly guessed, we were expected to move out immediately.

The trek today was mostly flat. We followed the ridge of the mountain, climbed where necessary, and descended where necessary as we kept on. Level 2 dungeons began to show up every now and then.

“We were so dumb to try a level 5 dungeon last week,” I said to Arris.

“Turns out what we fought was a mini boss,” he said. “We weren’t even a quarter of the way through the dungeon.”

“You’re kidding?” I said.

“Nope.”

By midday we all had warmed up to the arduous trek and acclimated somewhat to the cold. Our pace began to slow until coming to a stop before a path that veered off the main trail. A slope of tumbled rock and dirt provided the only descent. A long, wide cavern sat like a gash at the far end of the path.

“No two ways about it,” Watt said, pushing past us.

We were the first to enter.