<~> CHAPTER 69

Our weary group climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. We were so close to getting out of here, this should be our last day in the dungeon. Cross your fingers. I looked at the back of Aria's head as we climbed. She had been kind of a wreck when she finally woke up but her words were too frantic and panicked for me to be able to understand easily. All I could really understand was that the floor had ended up being much harder for her than it had been in the past and that it had something to do with her missing party members. She had a bit of a haunted look on her now.

Piper and Maxwell both seemed dreary when I woke up but they were slowly getting back to being themselves again. I could totally understand why people wouldn't be able to navigate a floor like that. It attacked your insecurities and weaknesses and left you vulnerable to the monsters on that floor. Since the floor changed for everyone, there was no way of knowing how bad it would be for you unless you already experienced it before. Going through that floor would be risky unless you were confident that you were at peace with yourself. Or were desperate enough to go through it anyway... I have a feeling that's what my friends had been their first time through here.

I clearly still had some issues to unpack but the floor hadn't been as bad for me as it seems like it had been for the others. Or maybe my altered instincts made me less vulnerable than I would have otherwise been. I'm not sure really. The illusions it showed me seemed confused like it didn't know how to make sense of what it was seeing, making the entire place bizarre. I'm glad that even if we stay here and reenter the dungeon at some point I won't have to go through that again. I'm not sure I could handle returning to this place again though. As wonderous as some of the floors had been, it also felt like a prison I couldn't escape from. I've been in constant danger for weeks now, ever since I fell through that hole on the mountain...

The first thing I noticed as we got close to the top of the stairs was the noise. There was so much... chattering. When we reached the top of the stairs there was a large expedition of people there with rows of tents near the stairway. It was a bit overwhelming with my improved hearing, I wasn't used to this much background noise bouncing around the walls. This floor looked like another cave floor like the one I had first stepped foot in, except the walls were made of dark brown dirt rather than solid stone. The room we were in was really large, something like a hundred people were milling about, chatting, eating, or staring at us.

"Hail." A human man called out as he approached us with his hands open, showing us the flat of his palms.

Maxwell returned the gesture, opening his palms while walking ahead of us to speak with him. "Hail. We're returning from a trip down below the lost halls."

The man had blond hair and brown eyes and was wearing a well-worn breastplate over otherwise normal clothes. He looked over our group and paused as he stopped on me. I lowered my axe off of my shoulder and gently placed its head on the ground in an attempt to look less threatening. He raised an eyebrow at the gesture before focusing back on Maxwell.

"Is there any news from down there? We've gotten a few odd reports from the dungeon lately. Stronger monsters in places they shouldn't be and other odd things like that."

Maxwell visibly hesitated which made the man's eyes narrow. Maxwell looked around before focusing back on the man. "Are you the one in charge of this expedition?"

The man glanced at us again before looking back at Maxwell and shaking his head. "No, I'm second in command. Do you have important news?"

After a brief pause, Maxwell nodded. "Something you'd likely find out soon enough but would probably save you some trouble if our suspicions prove correct."

"Information worth selling to the hunter's association?" he asked.

"Yes, I would prefer not to share it in the open," Maxwell replied.

"Fine. All of you can follow me." He turned around and started to lead us through the camp.

("Is all of this normal?") I asked Luna through the rings.

("Well, there aren't always expeditions preparing to go to the lower floors right when you come back but this kind of thing happens sometimes,") Luna replied.

("I meant this meeting we're about to attend.")

("Oh... well no. But considering the state of the next floor it's appropriate to tell them. If the floor is truly dead then these people wouldn't need to spend as much time preparing. Now that it isn't as much of a blockade they could set up a large camp even deeper, probably on the tenth floor.")

("Why are we bothering to tell them at all?") I asked.

("They'll pay us.") She turned back and winked at me.

I laughed which got me an odd look from the man escorting us.

"Is your friend back there truly blind? She's carrying an axe that looks larger than she is," the man whispered to Maxwell.

"She's not blind, she has a different kind of sight," Maxwell replied at full volume.

The man shrugged. "I won't .... any further then."

We were led to a tent where they took Maxwell alone inside to speak with him. None of my friends looked perturbed by it so I didn't say anything even if I felt a bit testy around all of these people. I'm not exactly misanthropic or anything but there were a lot of armed people I didn't know walking around as we waited. I tried to listen into their conversation but once Maxwell dropped the information that the lost halls were broken and seemed to be a dead floor for the moment, I wasn't able to follow the excited chattering anymore. When Maxwell finished up in the tent the same guy who led us there escorted us to the edge of their encampment.

"So, was the detour worth it?" Piper asked.

Maxwell nodded. "Twenty deers."

"Deers?" I asked.

Piper gestured to Luna who responded through the rings. ("Deers are a denomination of silver used in the hunter's association. It goes copper rabbits, silver deers, silver pumas, silver bears, gold tigers, gold wyverns. There's a story that the coinage used to be based on real animal pelts but that would have had to be a long time ago. A lot of places accept hunter coins, like Fallow and Ironcastle, but some places force you to change money at a banker. Not every place likes or trusts foreign coins, and some places even make it illegal for anyone but the country to mint coins, so you need to make sure you know the laws around coinage whenever you travel. I'll ask Maxwell to show you the coins when we make it to the surface.")

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I nodded and continued to follow Maxwell. Walking through this stretch of dungeon was... surreal. I could hear noises coming from nearly every path that we crossed. There were groups of three to five people walking around talking in the language my friends used and even in a few languages I didn't recognize.

("Luna, what language do you guys speak?") I asked.

("We speak Draconic,") she casually replied.

I stopped in my tracks much to the confusion of the others. ("Draconic?! There are dragons?")

Luna tilts her head. ("Of course there are? Draconic is a common language in this part of the world.")

I pinch the bridge of my nose. ("We're speaking the language of dragons? Are there a lot of dragons?")

("Uh, I'm not sure what you mean by a lot. There are fewer dragons than most of the smallfolk but there are more dragons than after the Corbex-Tatianna war. Oh uh, that was a large-scale war between two major dragon territories.")

"Is something wrong, Helena?" Piper asked.

"I asked the name of your... words. I did not expect the answer..." I replied.

"Language. We speak Draconic," Piper helpfully added.

I sighed. "Thanks."

"What did you not expect?" Piper asked.

I reverse-engineered the word dragon from the word draconic. "Do dragons really exist?" I asked.

Piper glanced at her brother before shrugging. "Yeah? They're real. We got to see one in person once but we never got close enough to talk with her."

"And they're giant flying lizards?" I asked.

"Really, Helena?" Aria asked deadpan.

Luna cleared her raspy throat. ("Calling dragons lizards is incredibly insulting... but to answer your question, they do look similar at a glance. I wouldn't ask that question out loud again, some dragons have awful tempers.")

Piper patted Aria on the shoulder. "Anyway, yes. We speak Draconic. It's the most common language in this region since it's so close to Ironcastle, a dragon city-state. There are a lot of .... and .... hunters and .... up in the town above too. Not as numerous and humans and beastkin though."

("There are a lot of Draco and Drakken hunters and villagers up in the town above,") Luna helpfully translated for me.

I shook my head. "I have no idea what Draco or Drakken are," I said to Piper.

She shrugged. "You'll meet some eventually."

("That alchemist I told you about is a Drakken,") Luna said.

"Come on, let's get moving again... I want to get out of here," Aria grumbled.

We continued on and... just kept walking. There aren't any monsters to fight. The only ones that I can even hear are always already being killed by the other hunters in the tunnels that we're walking past. The floor is... boring. In basically no time at all we made it to the stairs going up. Not surprising since there were signs posted leading the entire way. It felt more like I was walking through one of those cave tours than an actual dungeon anymore. I shook my head and started walking up the stairs with my friends. All of the tension and caution were gone from them. They still rested their hands on their weapons but not because they were afraid of anything anymore.

("Is there anything I should know about the next floor... or the next few?") I asked Luna as we ascended the stairs.

("Nope, they're the same. The first five floors of this dungeon are basically identical except for the monsters you come across. It's fairly common for dungeons to be like this. A quirk of how they grow and get stronger or something,") she replied.

I sighed and continued up the stairs. Maybe I was getting addicted to fighting. It was something I never would have expected from myself. It could be the instincts influencing me but... I wasn't sure about that. I kind of got really into running and cycling while I was training for the triathlon too... it feels kind of like that. I gripped the handle of my axe and looked across my friends' weapons. It's not like we'll have any shortage of fighting going forward. It will just probably be elsewhere. I felt really conflicted about it, on one hand, I didn't like it when I lost control or made stupid mistakes like with the clockwork ballerina fight. But hunting and ripping apart prey felt really so good. I shivered as I realized the influence of the umber wolf instincts on my thoughts. They... felt natural. It was getting harder to tell them apart from how I normally felt anymore...

I'm not a monster. I sometimes look like one, but I'm not one. As long as I stay in control of myself and protect the ones I love, I will be okay. These instincts have guided me well so far and I am becoming a stronger more capable person every day... And sure... sometimes I longed for home, or longed for a burrito from my favorite Mexican joint, but giving all of that up is worth it... for her. Luna's cute tail bounced back and forth up the stairs in front of me and the sight made me smile.

Eventually, we made it to the fourth floor, and like Luna had said it looked the same as the last one. We continued to walk through the corridors where even more groups of people were walking through. There were so many people that we even had to squeeze past some groups in the tunnel. Many of them gave me a wary look as I towered above them while holding my huge axe. It was kind of wild that I was taller than so many people now. I used to be pretty tall for a woman but now I'm kind of tall for a man and not even when I'm in my werewolf form.

Piper elbowed me in the side. "That's a draco," she whispered while nodding to one of the groups that we were walking by. He looked like a large bulky man with a dragon's head and scaled skin. He noticed me immediately since the two of us towered over everyone else. My eyes wandered over him taking in the differences. He had the general shape of a bodybuilder but looked svelte instead of ripped despite his larger torso and arms. The guy was wearing simple clothes despite his sword and shield, he seemed to have enough natural armor in his scales that he didn't need anything more practical at this stage. His clothes looked a bit torn in places but his scales were unmarred.

The draco noticed me staring and gave me a wide grin and a wink. Ugh. He probably thought I was admiring him and he totally misread my signals. Not into that, even if he does have a dragon's head. I wonder what a female draco looks like... I dismissed the thought, I'm already dating slash engaged to Luna. Best not fantasize about a muscular dragon lady too...