The next morning we awoke with the sun. My bags of holding allowed us to pack all of our items up efficiently so we didn't need to carry large packs with us or leave anything behind in our rooms when we left that might get stolen. Not sleeping outdoors also meant we didn't need to get out anything like a bedroll or tent also, so packing up was a breeze. We got ourselves ready, put on our gear, and went down to the main room. Patsy was already up and serving. She must get very little sleep at night. I wondered if there were special innkeeper skills that allowed her to sleep less or stay invigorated longer.

"Morning lads! Great to see ye getting an early start to the day. Early bird catching the worm and all that. Grab a seat and we can get ye some breakfast."

We made our way over to one of the tables. It was busier this morning than normal, so we ended up sitting closer to the fireplace than the bar. But Patsy brought out what looked like a ham steak with some scrambled eggs and bread along with a couple of mugs of beer. It was odd drinking beer so early in the morning, but I wasn't going to complain. They probably don't have all the kinds of juices and drinks that earth did.

We ate heartily and then bid Patsy farewell. We let her know we were going to a shop then headed out on the quest so she would know she could use our room until we returned.

"Stay safe lads. I'll have a room for ye when ye return. Best of luck to ye."

"Thanks, Patsy. You have done a lot for us and we won't forget it."

I took her hand in mine and handed her a gold piece. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh no lads, I can't accept this, it's too much."

"Don't worry about it, Patsy. You have done right by us, so we want to return the favor."

"This is a lot though. I can't accept it."

"I insist. We have more. We will see you when we return. Thank you, Patsy, we don't know what we'd do without you."

"Bless ye lads and safe travels."

We left the inn and headed back toward the market and the shops we saw on the first trip here. We found the shop we were looking for, Madam Julie's Magical Mysteries, and we went inside.

"Welcome to Madam Julie's Magical Mysteries, where we have all of your magical needs, what can I help you two with?" Said a woman from the back of the building.

There were shelves lining either side of the shop from floor to ceiling. On the right side seemed to be magical items, and on the left was a bunch of scrolls. There were pillars in the middle of the room that seemed to be holding up the roof, and around each pillar were small tables with what appeared to be magical items on each of the tables and banners with some kind of symbols that I didn't understand hung above the items on the pillars themselves.

"We are looking to see if you have some spells for sale."

"I certainly do. I have almost any spell you could want. I have a contact in the magical society who can help me with spell scrolls. Are you looking to learn a spell or just a one-time cast scroll?"

"That depends. What are the price differences between the two?"

"Well, let's take a look."

She moved out from behind the counter and other to the left side of the store and grabbed a few scrolls. She came back to the counter and laid them out.

"The main and most obvious difference is that with the one-time cast scrolls you only get to use it once, vs the actual spell scrolls that will teach you how to cast the spell so you can use it over and over. There are a lot more intricacies involved with it, but suffice it to say, if you cast it once and it's done, it's a lot less expensive than the full spell."

She motioned to the ones on the table.

"This one here is a one-cast Fireball. One of the most popular spell scrolls. An adventurer can buy this scroll with no affinity for magic, or a build with all their points in physical attributes and still cast it at someone in a fight. It goes for three gold pieces. It is the most popular spell because it is used as a nasty surprise if a fight isn't going the way someone originally wanted. This one here is the full Fireball spell. With it, you will learn the intricacies of casting the spell from start to finish so that you can cast it yourself anytime you want. It costs fifty gold."

That was insane. It was almost twenty times more expensive for the full spell scroll. Though it did make more sense to charge that much for someone who would never need to come back to buy a scroll again. I would want to get the most out of it as well.

"Fireball is very tempting. Let's leave it here for now, but we need to see about a few other spells. And I will be wanting to look at only the full spell scrolls, not one-time cast spells."

"Of course! Which spells are you looking for?"

"I know we want to see Bark Armor, Banshee Scream, and Wind Blast. Tristan, are there any other spells you would like to learn?"

He looked at me in shock for a moment, and it looked like the woman behind the counter was a little shocked as well. She likely wasn't used to hearing people just offer to buy spells for someone.

"Are you sure? These are expensive!"

"I'm sure Tristan. I found a bit of money on my last dungeon dive and I'd rather it be used to keep us safe on this next one than to keep it in my pocket for when we die."

"Ummm...Drain would be a really helpful spell if you have it."

"Any others? Come on! Get one more. that makes it three for the day for you."

"Oh, uh, Give me a minute to think on it."

"Sounds good. I will take the Fireball, Bark Armor, and Wind Blast. Can you recommend any other spells to us? Something for good in a dungeon?"

"Let me see...Grease is a really popular spell. And it goes well with fire usually. Or maybe grasping Vines?"

"Can I see all of those and how much they are?"

Her eyes went wide at this and she seemed to get excited.

"Y-yes, sir!"

She ran off to get all the spells I had asked for.

"Thought of your last spell? Maybe something defensive?"

"I think...I think I'll go with Dark Shroud. That is a defensive spell, but it can also hide me in darkness."

"Great idea! Ma'am, can you get Dark Shroud as well?"

She came back over to the counter a few minutes later and dumped a bunch of scrolls on the counter. She started laying them out in order one at a time for us.

"Let's see, Fireball is fifty gold, Banshee Scream is eighty gold, Bark Armor is forty, Wind Blast is seventy-five, Drain is ninety, Dark Shroud is one hundred and twenty, Grease is fifty, and Grasping Vines is seventy. That brings your total to five hundred and seventy-five gold. Are you sure you are wanting all of these spells? It seems like a lot of money to spend all at one time."

"I truly appreciate your honesty. It makes me feel much more comfortable doing business with you knowing you are concerned about my money and not just the sale. You never know what kind of situation you will be in when dungeon diving. I would rather spend a lot of money to come back alive, than horde it all and die. Can't spend money if you're dead," I said to her with a wink, leaning in slightly.

"That is very true, good sir. Very well, would you like to use a learning room here in the shop? We offer private rooms for learning the spells so not everyone knows you are gaining a bunch of new spells all at once. There is no charge after buying this many spells."

"That would be wonderful! Thank you!"

She showed us back behind the counter to a hallway with doors on either side of the hall. We were set up in the first room on the right.

"This one is bigger so you can both use it if you would like."

It was a sparsely furnished room, but with plenty of room to walk around in. There were no windows in the room for privacy, but there were lamps lit around the room, with a chandelier hanging in the middle of the room over a table with candles in it lit as well. The table in the middle of the room had a few chairs around it for sitting in as well and this was where she laid the scrolls I wanted and I handed her the gold in payment. She inspected the gold closely and lit up like a Christmas tree when she felt it was real.

"Thank you so much for your patronage! I will be at the front counter should you need anything from me at all."

She left and closed the door. I looked over to Tristan.

"Would you like to go first?"

"Um, sure."

"Don't worry, I have a healing spell if you need it."

Tristan picked up one of the scrolls and looked at it for a moment. He broke the seal and opened the scroll and began to read. I had never been on this side of the learning of a scroll part. It was fairly intense looking. First, light shone onto his face from the scroll as he was reading it. Then his eyes began to shine with a light from within, then his head flew back and the light shone from his mouth and nostrils as well. Then the light went out and the paper crumbled into dust. I ran over and caught him as he was about to fall. I put him in one of the chairs around the table.

"Well, maybe I should go next. How do you feel?"

"Pretty good. That was Banshee Scream and I have it now! That was amazing!"

"Then do you think you can go again?"

"Absolutely, I just kinda blacked out for a second in the end. I should just do it sitting down next time."

"Yeah and now I see why they offer these rooms. All that light would draw a lot of attention on the street."

"What light?"

"Ha! You'll see when it's my turn. Here, this is Drain. Let's go!"

Tristan took his next two turns learning Drain and then Dark Shroud. At the end of each, he seemed to pass out for a moment before coming back to himself, but he did a lot better in the chair. He seemed to be tired though at the end of learning the spells, but we pulled out some food and water and he seemed to perk up after getting something to eat and drink. After he recovered a bit with the sustenance, it was my turn. I had five to learn though. Hopefully, it goes as smoothly as Tristan's did. I sat in a chair with Tristan watching over me and opened the first one. I began reading the spell as I had done before and the words seemed to fly off of the page and into my mind where they imprinted themselves, showing me all the secrets of what was required to cast the spell. Suddenly I was looking into Tristan's face as he hovered over me.

"Now I see what you mean by light. That was really bright."

I sat there for a moment panting slightly. I didn't remember passing out like this the last time I learned a spell, but then again I was just in a dungeon without much change of scenery or someone to watch over me when I did it. It always made my brain feel full for a minute after learning a new scroll. But the feeling passed fairly quickly after my brain took the time it needed to sort the new knowledge.

"Yeah...that is rougher than I remember it. But it should be worth it."

I took my time taking the remaining scrolls and when we were finished, we opened the door and went out to the front of the store. I noticed I had some blinking notifications and pulled them up fast to review them.

Congratulations:

Spell Learned: Bark Armor

Casting Bark Armor on a person will cause their skin to become rough and thickened. It adds +10 armor to their natural armor rating.

Casting Time: 1 second

Mana Cost: 25

Cooldown: 1 hour

Spell School: Earth

Spell Range: 30 feet

Spell Level: 1

Spell Rank: Beginner

Congratulations:

Spell Learned: Grasping Vines

Casting Grasping Vines causes a set of roots to shoot out of the ground in a twenty-foot diameter circle around enemies binding them in place for 20 seconds.

Casting Time: 3 seconds

Mana Cost: 40

Cooldown: 30 mins

Spell School: Earth

Spell Range: 60 feet

Spell Level: 1

Spell Rank: Beginner

Congratulations:

Spell Learned: Grease

Casting Grease will cause a puddle of grease to appear that is 20 feet in diameter at the location of your choice within range. Grease is very slippery causing most to lose their balance while in the circle.

Casting Time: 1 second

Mana Cost: 20

Cooldown: 10 mins

Spell School: Earth

Spell Range: 60 feet

Spell Level: 1

Spell Rank: Beginner

Congratulations:

Spell Learned: Fireball

Casting Fireball causes a large sphere of fire to be created at the end of your hand and then projected towards your enemies. It detonates on impact spreading the fire to those around it.

Casting Time: 6 seconds

Mana Cost: 50

Cooldown: 5 mins

Spell School: Fire

Spell Range: 120 feet

Damage: 50-80 fire damage

Spell Level: 1

Spell Rank: Beginner

Congratulations:

Spell Learned: Wind Blast

Casting Wind Blast sends out a powerful torrent of air that spirals into a miniature tornado catching all around it in its swirling force.

Casting Time: 3 seconds

Mana Cost: 50

Cooldown: 10 mins

Spell School: Air

Spell Range: 60 feet

Damage: 2-4 per second

Duration: 30 seconds

Spell Level: 1

Spell Rank: Beginner

"How are you feeling?" The woman at the front desk asked us.

"We are a little muddled, but our heads are clearing fast."

"That is normal. Your brain has to process all the new information for casting the spell. But it will pass. Can I help you with anything else?"

"Are there any items you might recommend to someone who is about to go into a dungeon?"

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

She thought for a moment.

"I do have one thing that might help."

She went to the right side of the room, picked up an item off a shelf, and brought it to the counter. She set it down gently.

"This is a pretty rare item. It's not always super easy to use, and it is quite expensive."

It was a small round item made of thin metal with some kind of arrow inside of it and a piece of glass covering the top. If I didn't know better I'd have said it was a compass.

"Is it a compass?" Tristan asked, voicing my own thoughts.

"Of sorts. It's an intention compass. If you hold it, it will reveal a direction for your intentions. Beware though that it will only reveal your true intentions so do not try to deceive it."

"How much is it?"

"As I said it is expensive. The enchantment on it is very high level. It is five hundred gold."

Tristan almost literally choked at the price, and I wasn't super thrilled with it either. It sounded so useful though. If I intended to find the body of the adventurer, I wouldn't have to go wandering around aimlessly to find it and hope I stumbled on it. How could I say no?

"Can you give me any kind of deal for buying all the spells?"

"Unfortunately not. This item is almost one of a kind."

I groaned inwardly at the price but realized I would likely never see an item like this again. And how useful would something be that could show me where to go to get what I was after? I just had to have it.

"Fine. I'll take it."

I paid the woman and put the item in my bag of holding.

"A pleasure doing business with you. Come back to see me anytime you need magical goods!"

With a polite farewell, we turned and left the shop. We walked down the street, past all the stalls, through the market to the main entrance, and out into the countryside. When we had gone just a bit down the road, I pulled the scroll from my bag that Al'Doran gave me and broke the seal. A small light shone from the broken seal and some sparkles seemed to spray out from the center at the same time, then the seal turned from a red color to black and shriveled in on itself slightly. I opened the scroll, but it seemed to just be a blank piece of paper. Apparently, the magic was all held in the seal, and the paper was just something to keep it on. Maybe to hide it or make it seem unassuming? I could ask Al'Doran later about it.

We continued on the path talking about the spells we got from the magic shop. Knowing more about what the spells could do would help with formulating fighting strategies. Drain sounded like a really great spell to help with healing. That would take a load off of me needing to heal him in a pinch. Dark Shroud also seemed very helpful. It would coat the user in shadow protecting them similarly to the other shield spells, but instead of a bubble it was right on your skin, and would also help obscure the user in darkness, making them harder to see. Finally, Banshee Scream is a spell that allows the caster to emit a high-pitched, extremely loud scream that causes audible damage as well as the possibility of inflicting status effects like confusion or deaf onto the enemy. It could hurt allies though, so we would have to watch out for friendly fire. Even with the possibility of hurting teammates, it sounded really useful.

We also talked about my spells and I gave Tristan the descriptions. We formulated some new strategies for using these spells to disable enemies as well as what to watch out for when using them near each other. I did not want to get caught in that Banshee Scream. We thought of a few ways to use the spells so that we could make the most of them with Aeolith's help.

We continued walking until we reached the edge of the trees and turned east to follow the treeline until we reached the place we exited from. We had come up with a good number of new strategies when we reached the entry point of the forest. We arrived just as Al'Doran was landing in the clearing and we increased our pace to get to the meeting point.

When we arrived I was tackled by a blur. Aeolith was quickly on top of me snuggling my face and loving on me. I had missed her as well. It was hard to put into words how I felt, but the best I could come up with was it was like a part of me was missing. Being back together I felt whole again. As though a puzzle piece I had been searching for was found and placed satisfyingly into place in a puzzle I had been working on since I was born. I hugged her around the neck and scratched her scales.

"I missed you so much!" I projected to her through our bond.

"I thought you would die without me to protect you. It is good to see you did not." She sent back to me.

"I'm not that weak. I can fend for myself. I did protect you while you were an egg after all."

"That is true, but now we are in a much bigger and more dangerous world. I should be there to protect you."

"It's too dangerous for you to be with me all the time. Plus, you need to learn from Al'Doran just as much as I do."

Al'Doran looked on seeming to enjoy the bond we were sharing.

"What quest did you decide to pick up?"

"We found a quest to go to the Bat Cave dungeon to find a missing adventurer."

"Why would you pick up a quest in which someone could find out about Aeolith?"

"Because the guild said that the quest had been up for a few weeks and no one had succeeded so they assumed the adventurer to be dead, so all we have to do is find a body or some trace of him to complete the quest."

"That is good. Very well, in that case, we can go to the dungeon for you to get the XP for the dungeon and the quest."

"Do you know where it is at?"

"I have a general idea."

"We did pick up a map if seeing that would help you at all."

"That would be helpful. I can see things from the sky so it will help with landmarks."

I took out the map and help it up so that Al'Doran could see it. He swung his head over with his huge eye and took a look at the map that looked tiny compared to the large dragon.

"Very good. I believe I know where that is and we can make haste to get there."

We climbed onto the dragon's back and he and Aeolith took off. They soared up into the air to try to remain out of sight. Once they had gained a significant height they turned and took off toward where the dungeon was located. We didn't have to fly for long as we could cover so much ground so quickly. Al'Doran found a place to land well out of the way and within a set of trees again. We dismounted and got ready for the dungeon.

"Dungeons are fickle things," Al'Doran said to us. "You must be cautious as they are also living things."

"Dungeons are alive?!" I asked incredulously.

"Yes. That is how they grow. They take in monsters or adventurers that die within them and gain XP to level up in the same way you can kill monsters to level. They are beings that can sense and feel things. At the heart of every dungeon is a core. If you desired you could claim the core. It will kill the dungeon however and they will protect that core with everything they have."

"Is there any kind of bonus for claiming a core?"

"It will give you additional XP as well as a stat boost. And if you have a settlement you can take the core to that settlement to have it added as a part of your land."

"What would be the benefit of that?"

"Having the ability to run a dungeon for XP whenever you like, and protection of the area in that it will eat monsters that wander into it and it can kill are the primary benefits."

"Should I claim the core?"

"I would say that at this time we are not wanting attention. So, not for now. You can always come back to claim it later if you wish."

"You also said the dungeon takes in the adventurers that die inside of it for XP. Does that mean we won't find this adventurer if he died inside?"

"No, you can still find some remnant. Dungeons are bound by a code of honor from the gods that requires that they leave some memento of the deceased that can be found to return to the family of the adventurer to give them solace and something to bury or remember them by."

Al'Doran then gave me another seal on a scroll to contact him when we were finished so he could take Aeolith with him before we went to turn in the quest. He wished us good luck and then took off again. We set off toward the dungeon as we had seen it from the air. As we got closer we could see it was a cave set into a large hill. It was by no means a mountain, but it was a really large hill that seemed to plateau across the top of it. Though it didn't seem large enough to house a whole dungeon. That must have meant that the dungeon was in large part underground.

The entrance to the cage was fairly unassuming. It wasn't the large skull entrance some people would expect or something menacing and dark. It wasn't some portal to another dimension as some video games had shown them to be. It wasn't set in some spooky graveyard with a huge stone door you had to open. It was just a cave entrance that looked to be about ten feet tall and fifteen feet wide allowing people of all sizes to enter and if the tunnels were the same size there would be no issues with fighting space.

We tried to enter quickly so as to minimize the chance that someone would see Aeolith, but as we were going into the cave a swarm of tiny bats screeched and flew out of the cave entrance into the sky. Aeolith jumped up and grabbed one out of the air in her mouth.

"How fitting."

"Well, it is called the Bat Cave," Brutus chimed in.

"Brutus, I'm glad you're with me in this dungeon again. You were a big help last time."

"Happy to help, now get inside before someone sees you all. When you enter the dungeon a door will close behind you so that no one else can come in after you. You can choose to leave when you want, but Dungeons are meant to be run by parties so it keeps others out to keep things fair."

"There are a lot of rules to dungeons aren't there?"

"There is a lot that we know and more we don't, but yes it is a complex setup."

"Speaking of things I don't know, you said that when you enter a dungeon a door closes behind you. If this adventurer entered the dungeon, then why is the door not closed still?"

"That could be for several reasons. First, if he is dead, there is no reason to leave the door closed. Since he is assumed dead that is the most likely reason. Second, there is a time limit on most dungeons to complete them. Not wanting groups of people to just stay inside and keep killing monsters indefinitely, the doors will open after a certain time period to allow other adventurers to come in. This prevents one team from getting some kind of monopoly on the dungeon."

"Ah, I see. It prevents camping and farming."

"I don't think it actually prevents those things. One could still enjoy the great outdoors camping or setting up a farm, though I have no idea why you would want to do that in a dungeon. Not much sun for the crops."

"No, no," I said, trying not to laugh. "Camping and farming in this case are gaming terms from earth. Camping is when someone just sits in one place waiting to kill something or someone they know will spawn in a certain place, and farming is continuously killing something for XP once you find its spawn point. In this case, the time limit is to prevent someone from finding a spawn point for an easy kill in the dungeon and just sitting there waiting for it to come back and killing it over and over again for easy XP."

"Oh, I see now. Then yes, that is exactly what that is for. There are likely to be other adventurers that will come along and want to take on the dungeon. The other adventurers being there will help to force the previous teams out. And if all else fails, it can spawn all of its units in different places than previously placed to kill the teams, if it feels threatened. Since this dungeon hasn't been doing that, it is likely he is just dead, but exploring will be the only way for us to know for sure."

"What would stop a set of adventurers looking to take a core from waiting outside the dungeon for the timeframe to elapse and then going in to help their friends take the core?"

"There are some complicated rules that I'm not sure of the details on there. I'm a fairy meant to help adventures, not meant to help dungeon cores. But from what I can tell, from the knowledge given to me, the dungeons gain the ability to literally throw adventurers out of them if there is foul play detected such as that kind of plan. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I would assume that if it is detected that they are trying to do something like what you describe, the dungeon can just teleport the adventurers outside its boundaries."

"That is interesting. Some kind of balancing mechanism?"

"There is a goddess dedicated to balance, but we won't be likely to run into that situation. We should just get to exploring to see what we can find inside."

Erot, I remembered seeing that name before talking about a goddess of balance. I wonder what that could mean. Well, for now, it was time to let that go and move on with what we needed to get done.

"You are right, for now, I guess we should just get through this one. I'm sure I'll have time at some point to learn more. This is just such a fascinating world and I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface of what is in it."

"That is true, I can assure you. There is so much to know. We will learn about it all as we go though I promise."

We walked into the dungeon and as we passed about thirty yards into the entrance a door lowered from somewhere in the ceiling about ten yards behind us. We were thrown into a much darker environment, but just as the darkness was about to become complete, the torches on the walls of the dungeon that I had failed to see, lit up and showed us the passage. We waited a couple of minutes for our eyes to adjust from being out in the light of the sun before we continued, then I drew my sword, and we moved forward.

We followed the trail as it led a bit of a winding path that sloped down slightly the entire way, clearly taking us lower and lower underground. After a while of walking this way, we came to a set of stairs that led even lower into the dungeon. The stairs were carved into the rock itself and were fairly steep. Almost as though the dungeon was willing to take any opportunity to kill someone, even it if was falling downstairs. Following these stairs down even further, we found a room at the bottom. Room though was an understatement. This was a cavern. There were stalactites and stalagmites spread out around the room and hanging from the ceiling. There was almost no light at all in the cavern making it hard to see any great distance. There was the sound of water dripping down onto the cave floor from the ceiling, which I had read somewhere was how stalactites and stalagmites actually formed. This dungeon had gone all out to get the rooms as close to real caves as possible. There were a couple of places where basins seemed to have formed in the rocks on the ground and water had collected there, presumably for the creatures in the cave to drink from. There were some glowing mosses around the room that made it bright enough to see, but only barely. I had watched enough nature shows to know what this meant when they called a dungeon the Bat Cave. I made a motion to Tristan and he came over to me.

"This is going to be where the bats are located, I'm sure of it. We have to be careful that we can kill them without them causing too much damage to us."

Tristan nodded and I looked to Aeolith who nodded as well.

"If we start to get attacked, Aeolith I want you to take flight as best you can and use breath attacks to try to take a lot of them out and Dragon slash while you wait for the dragon breath cooldown. No forest here so fire should be an acceptable option. Tristan, we will do what we can with the spells we have. Your best bet will be Banshee Scream and use the dark shroud to conceal yourself. Try to make sure we have as many of the bats in the Banshee Scream as possible. I will handle the rest."

With that plan in place, we walked into the room. I immediately heard a loud set of squeaking sounds coming from the ceiling of the room as we walked in. There had to be thousands of bats in this cave and they were crawling over the ceiling in waves. I pointed to directions away from me for Aeolith and Tristan to go into and decided to get this party started with a bang. I held my hand up and formed a Fireball and shot it at the ceiling right into the middle of the bats. The Fireball was a very interesting spell. It cost fifty mana dropping me to two hundred right away but took a few seconds to cast. First, a spark appeared in front of my palm, then it grew to the size of a pea, then the size of a marble, then the size of a gumball, then the size of a tennis ball, and then it shot from my hand toward where I wanted it to go. As it flew it continued to grow, first to the size of a softball, then a basketball, then a beachball, then it was about half the size of a car right before it impacted. When I thought I should start it with a bang I wasn't prepared for the actual bang. When the fireball hit the ceiling it exploded and spread fire out in every direction across the ceiling killing hundreds of bats at once. The bodies that weren't immediately turned to ash and dropped from the ceiling like crispy or flaming chips.

This sent the rest into a frenzy though. I quickly cast Bark Armor on myself as well, costing an additional twenty-five mana, and made my way out to intercept them. I looked up to see them swarming around near the ceiling. They moved as though they were water in the air, the ebb and flow was almost hypnotic until they caught sight of me and flew straight for me. I started by sending out a dragon slash that cut through the first wave and then continued to go further and further into the mass of bodies cutting them to pieces as it went but compared to the massive swarm that was coming for me, it was a drop in the bucket. I decide this is the time to try out the Wind Blast. I cast it toward the creatures and a tornado grew out of my hand and extended toward the mass of bats as it increased in size and began to suck them into it like a vacuum. This was much more effective than the slash. The ones that tried to go around it were sucked up into the cyclone even from the sides. There were so many, though, that the vortex wasn't large enough to catch all of them, and some were able to make it past to get to me. They latched onto me and some started biting at my skin. I could feel that the thickened skin was doing a good job of keeping most of them out, but it wasn't completely effective. I had to slam myself into walls and stalagmites to kill the ones I couldn't reach. I was still doing alright though. Not a lot of health loss. A lot of the rest of the swarm was deterred from following the front runners into the wind vortex and had pulled back. This meant they noticed Tristan and Aeolith though and were starting toward them.

They hadn't been idle and were using their own attacks to take out a large chunk of the remaining bats as well. I heard a loud scream that was aimed up at the bats. It was so loud my ears started bleeding. I wasn't even directly targeted and I was taking some damage from this. I would hate to see how it felt to be directly in the path of the attack. I even got a new notification.

Deafened:

You have been partially deafened from the spell Banshee Scream and will have partial hearing loss for the next 15 seconds.

Many of the bats were now flying around chaotically, not in the patterns at all that they were before bumping into parts of the cave and each other. Some of them appeared to have been far too close to Tristan when he set it off and their heads had exploded from the power of the sound. Tristan was nowhere to be seen so I assumed he was using Dark Shroud. Aeolith was flying through the air blasting pockets of remaining bats with fire breaths and with dragon slashes. Dodging, weaving, and blasting she was an amazing sight to see. Unfortunately, there were just so many she was starting to get some that were clinging to her body. Her tough scales were helping to keep them from doing a lot of damage, but she couldn't keep it up for too long.

I mentally told Aeolith to come to me and we could attack them together. She let out one last fire breath and flew towards me. I had a fire breath of my own ready for when she flew past me which roasted the bats that were following closely behind her and deterred the rest from continuing to pursue her. She ripped off the bats that were clinging to her and destroyed them with her teeth. I followed the fire breath up with a quick dragon slash to push any remaining bats away from us for a moment while we took cover. It looked like we were doing fairly well, but there were so many to begin with that we still had a fair number to face.

I had a five-minute cooldown on Fireball and a ten-minute cooldown on Wind Blast so those weren't going to be an option for a bit. We needed another plan to get rid of them. From our hiding spot, I heard a squeaking sound that sounded slightly different than the original bat squeaking sounds. I peeked out from the cover to see what was happening and saw a swarm of bats that looked funny attacking the other set of the main bats. They were way outnumbered, but it seemed to confuse the main group of bats greatly. I told Aeolith to look out around the side and user her Confusion on the bats. She turned her head out and used Confusion. Several things happened at that moment. First, I realized that the group of bats didn't count as individual monsters for targeting. Second, I had an idea. Third, Confusion took hold and complete chaos ensued. Apparently, Tristan had used raise undead to bring back some of the bats in an attempt to help us. He had realized the same thing we did when he brought them back and found that instead of raising just one bat at a time it raised closer to twenty bats. Having more slots he raised about a hundred of them and sent them after the other bats. Then Confusion hit them and almost half the bats started attacking the other bats. It turned into a civil war of bats where the bats who were not affected by confusion suddenly found themselves attacked by their own kind and undead bats simultaneously.

This was going well finally. I was not sure what we were going to do with the timers I had on my spells for cooldown. This turned the tide of the battle in our favor. I charged out and sent Aeolith to the air to take them down with fire breaths while I sent dragon slashes after them and Tristan raised more as his creatures died to take their places. After just a few more minutes the only bats in the air were undead. We sank to the ground to rest for a bit. I cast a minor heal on all three of us. We pulled out some food rations and shared them around while we waited for our mana to refill. All-in-all that had gone as well as could be expected from a giant swarm. We now had a strategy to deal with them as well.

"That was fun," I said while resting. "It could have gone either way."

"Agreed," Tristan added. "But we prevailed. And now we know that for those big groups targeting is not on every tiny monster."

"That was a great find. But now we have to figure out going forward. If there are more rooms like this then we will be here for a long time recovering."

"If we do we can handle it like this. But hopefully, we will see other foes."

"Why? These foes were tasty. I would like to find more of them." Aeolith said to me through our bond as she sat eating more of the tiny creature.

"These were more of a snack weren't they?"

"Yes, but snacks are tasty."

"That is true. I always loved snacks back on earth. I guess I was just hoping for something more one-on-one than a swarm. We aren't exactly built for swarm fighting."

"We did fine."

I chuckled at her level of confidence. We had done well, but I didn't look forward to fighting swarm after swarm after swarm if I didn't have to.

We decided to go look around the cavern to see if there was anything we could find in the dungeon. Loot was a thing in dungeons after all right? We found a chest at the back of the room opposite where we came in from. It had been hidden behind a large rock, just like in so many RPGs I had played back on earth. Excitedly we circled around to see what was inside for us. I opened the lid and inside were three bracelets. Two were obviously human-sized, and one was sized to fit Aeolith's wrist. I took out the three bracelets and inspected them.

Item:

Bangle of Death's Embrace

Item Type: Accessory

Durability: 50/50

Enchantment: This bangle gives the wearer the ability to summon one additional undead minion. This bangle is only able to be used by those with the class Necromancer.

Item Quality: Well-Crafted

Item Rarity: Rare

Item:

Bangle of the Night

Item Type: Accessory

Durability: 50/50

Enchantment: This bangle gives the wearer dark vision so they no longer need to cast the spell on themselves.

Item Quality: Well-Crafted

Item Rarity: Uncommon

Item:

Bangle of the Dragon

Item Type: Accessory

Durability: 50/50

Enchantment: This bangle allows the wearer to have greater control over their dragon breath. The user can now either project their dragon breath twice as far or choose instead to send it out in a cone with a width half the distance of the max range of the attack.

Item Quality: Well-Crafted

Item Rarity: Rare

These were pretty good items. I handed the Bangle of Death's Embrace to Tristan and helped equip the Bangle of the Dragon onto Aeolith, then put the Bangle of the Night on my own wrist. The bangles seemed to size themselves to fit perfectly on each of our wrists, which was really handy considering how fast I was sure Aeolith was going to grow. There was also a bag containing ten gold, forty silver, and fifty-six copper coins. In a separate bag, there were also four small gems. Two appeared to be sapphires, one an emerald, and one a ruby. I had no idea what these were worth, but we could figure that out later. All in all, it was a fairly good haul for the first room of a dungeon. Once our cooldowns were complete except for my Bark Armor, we picked up our items. I pulled out the new Intention Compass and held it up in my hand for a moment. I pushed my intention to find the missing adventurer into it. For a moment it did nothing. I was beginning to think I was sold a fake when the needle began to move. It went left, then right, swinging back and forth for a few minutes until it finally settled in a direction that was almost directly behind me. I thought for a moment it was telling me it was outside the dungeon. I turned and the needle moved with me. When I was facing the same way as the compass I saw it was not pointing to the entrance, but to a door off to the right. I hadn't seen it because the light was low. With the new dark vision ability of the bangle though, I could see an entrance tucked away, barely noticeable. I pointed it out to the others and we made our way over to that entrance. We paused for just a moment to check that it was still the right direction, and we went through the nearly hidden tunnel.