*/ Alexi - Expeditions Scout /*

It was the morning of the day we had to leave on this hellish trek, Count Xara’s Phentamancers had detected a flux in the ambient mana within her territory so she’d created this team to investigate. We were mostly unfamiliar with each other at the start of all this since the formation had been rushed and was a little bit messy but at least now we’re mostly on speaking terms with each other. The Phentamancer himself, Vurla, had been sent out with us so unfortunately that means this mission is being treated with some significance. Not exactly ideal for the first job I’ve been given since joining the Directive but at least it means they trust me? Anyways, Vurla. He’s a bit stuck up but all Phentamancer’s are, it’s a rare talent and they’re basically necessary for any noble to have in their employ so Phentamancers tend to get revered their whole lives. They can detect the nature of the ambient mana for thousands of meters, some even millions. They can find optimal farm land, monster dens, Kyrias mines and even dungeons. A dungeon can completely revolutionize a city, I mean benefits of the dungeon aside it basically means merchants will flock to you like moths to a flame. I remember hearing the capital city is actually built on a tame dungeon but only the royal guard are permitted entry, probably a rumour but I'd believe it. I mean their all level 10! I've heard breaking that barrier without access to a dungeon is nigh impossible. I've heard dungeons can also be used for food during sieges but I don’t think id fancy eating goblin meat personally...

Vurla’s apprentice, Ryan, is certain that what was detected is a dungeon but Vurla doesn’t believe it. Too sudden, he says. The emergent pattern is different, he says. The mana pulses are ‘too irregular’ he says. Vurla thinks it’s a Kyrias mine, he’s ecstatic about it as well, his experiments always need more gems apparently. I'm a bit worried though, if it is a dungeon this will be my first delve. I tried asking around about it but the only ones here who’d ever delved before were Sere, Wahuj and Sonya. Hell, Karus was uninitiated! Apparently, this was meant to be a ‘test’ before he’d be allowed into the Directive, but I couldn’t help but think the homifeles would be a liability. I’d heard his kind where a lot more agile than us humans but I'd only recently been initiated and the difference was like heaven and earth! Sure, using my ‘skills’ still felt weird but it was almost as if any of the tracks of my prey glowed when I looked for them, or like my arrows turned in mid-air to hit the target. I just don’t see how he would be able to keep up with beasts that have abilities like that if he’s still mundane...

I tried asking Sere about her experience delving since she was apparently the highest levelled one here, already level 4! But all I got was a scathing remark about how I ‘wouldn’t understand’ so I gave up on that approach. I mean id been warned the half-elf was in a bad place at the moment but we’re a team, right? You’d expect at least a little give and take, but no. She was the youngest here but she’d been a member of the Directive since she was a kid and was initiated very young, I think when she was 10? That might be wrong though. Point being, she got the noble treatment. Killing captured Monsters, initiated into the system young, skill training, elixirs every meal etc etc. She was the golden girl of the Directive so I was kind of walking on eggshells round her and she was quite withdrawn as well making it hard to try and hold a conversation, Sonya seemed worried about her though so I wanted to at least try.

Sonya was like a kind older sister for me, for all of us really. She’s one of Count Xara’s knights and the caretaker of our little organisation, she selects who will get initiated and trains us all. She helps out a little in the villages in Count Xara’s territory a lot and is willing to listen to the opinions of us peasantry so much most everyone has a nice word or two to say about here. Couple that with the fact she gives out the opportunities to get initiated she’s become both a bridge between us and the Nobility as well as a symbol of hope for a lot of people. She’s only a junior knight so she’s just recently reached level 3 but I hope she hits level 5 soon. I heard as your level increases you age slower so the younger you get your levels the better.

I asked her about delving but apparently, she’d only been taking on delves as a part of knight training and that tends to be heavily controlled and isn’t a good reference for what we’ll experience if this is an emergent dungeon. She did tell me one story though, about a time when there were some kids who’d sneaked into the dungeon. They were hoping to get some easy kills and become a natural ascended rather than an initiated since the Directive hadn’t been launched yet and there was no way anyone not associated with the aristocracy would be able to undergo the ritual. They’d been slaughtered obviously but somehow the kills had made one of the goblins undergo an evolution which meant when it showed up during their training it nearly killed one of the squires. She told me with an unknown dungeon I should expect everything to be like that. Something about that story seemed off to me though, aren’t you unable to get EXP for anything mundane? How'd they evolve from killing some uninitiated kids then? I suppose I should leave questions like that to the scholars, not in my purview.

Wahuj was one of the people with us that weren’t a member of the directive, he was loaned out from a nearby martial order to see what a normal, balanced expedition was like since in their orders people trend to only mixing with others that have a similar skillset. It's not exactly intentional they just spend more time together and have similar interests so they find it easier to get on. I’d heard people from orders like his tended to be rather arrogant but thankfully he’s just a little cocky, it’s a bit cute actually even if he can get annoying. He was a little taller than me with black hair and brown eyes and seemed to be around the same age, he was only one level higher than me as well but he was far more competent with the skills he’d learned. Apparently, he’d went delving with the order once before and he described levelling up as a feeling of ecstasy that nothing else could compare to, he said that low-level monsters tend to just be an animal but bigger and if you encounter anything different than that then you should probably run. At least that was the important bits in what turned into an hour of anecdotes and bragging, he got so caught up in some of his tangents I did have to just stop him mid sentences and bring him back on topic but I did at least get some useful information.

After 2 days of walking, we found the source of the mana pulses. A relatively large rocky hill in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the Kyrias theory all but guaranteed at this point. After all, dungeons need access to the outside otherwise they’ll just starve. Either a lack of mana or essence can kill one of them off, so with no exit we can basically guarantee that any dungeon that spawned here would die. Since the mana is still active however, this can’t be a dead dungeon. We have a group of earth mages with us in order to handle situations just like this so we have them start hollowing out the hill while we set up a small camp. Vurla prepared to send a message back to the relay station in the city, as he set up the ritual with his apprentice Lee set up a large bonfire with his fire magic. He was an elementalist but he was a specialist, a group of elementalists who gave up the variety in their abilities in exchange for an increase in overall potency. A relatively new skill path that was developed in the neighbouring nation of Beria recently and has been popularised due to the immediate rewards afforded to specialists and its exponential growth, apparently. Lee seemed to be very enthusiastic about an opportunity to explain the history associated but I very quickly lost track of what he was talking about. Magic is only fascinating when its mystical, a lot of its practitioners seem to make it extremely technical. Theres so much jargon that I just can't keep up so I just smiled and nodded along with whatever he said.

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In the morning as the earth mages were making progress through the hill all of sudden there was a massive crash and cheers rang out throughout the camp. As the earth and rock collapsed a large cavity was formed and a massive dust cloud billowed out, I'd been warned about this last night, the Kyrias would likely have a large amount of loose earth and stone surrounding it with a small cave covered by the hill. It was likely what had happened was during the Kyrias’ rapid growth and expansion that happens during their forming it had created a large air pocket and raised up the earth to form this hill. Why the Kyrias create air pockets is beyond me but all the mage types where confident so I guess I'll just believe them on that. After the dust cleared, we went to go in and make an assessment but instead of a Kyrias deposit there was a mound of rubble that was knee high. We had the earth mages clear it and what was left was a tunnel that descended downwards at a low gradient. Near impossible to distinguish from a flat path while walking on it, even. As we slowly moved the expedition into the tunnels system Tetra, the sun priest we hired for the purpose of this mission began claiming about how this wasn’t in the contract.

I never particularly liked the sun priests, they all had a sort of entitlement that annoyed me slightly, as if they saw people as cattle that needed herder. Ignorant barbarians that would be nothing without them. That and they charged exorbitant prices for their healing, they claim to be kind and charitable but will fleece you for all that your worse if their care is your only option. Tetra felt like the embodiment of that pretention, greed and pride so I had a slight disdain for him, I tried to ignore it. Really, I tried. I just cannot stand him at all.

It proved difficult for the entire expedition to make their way into the tunnels. We had about 30 people in total counting the guards, earth mages, members of the Directive and people who Xara had join the expedition so things where quite cramped. The tunnels where wide enough for 3 people to stand side by side comfortably, 4 if you wanted to push it, and they were tall enough that all of us but Sonya could stand straight and all the surfaces where relatively smooth. Sure, there was the occasional rock that jutted out or cracks in the walls but on the whole it was fine. What really got to me was the air, it was suffocatingly damp and musky. It felt like swallowing a glass of mud with every breath as the dank air clung to the sides of my throat and caked my mouth in a sickly, slimy feeling. It was mostly unnoticeable at first but as we trudged forward through endless monotony things only got more severe, thankfully I didn’t need to push myself at all since I was far above the average physical capability in our group and was able to keep pace with the mages without as much as a brisk walk. I didn’t need to do any tracking either since Vurla had some fancy compass thing that pointed towards the strongest source of nearby mana that he used to navigate these tunnels; a fact I was thankful for given I didn’t think I'd be able to keep track of the labyrinth we were traversing.

After spending as long inside the tunnels as we’d spent outside, we finally reached the source of the mana. We were all exhausted and frustrated but the promise of a nearby end to the constant drawling stone walls was enough to keep us moving, Ryan had mapped out the tunnels we’d followed to this point so we wouldn’t get lost on the way back and it’d be a lot easier on the way back since we wouldn’t need to stop at each turn while Vurla spends the better part of 10 minutes fiddling with his contraptions before we can get moving again. We turned the final corner only to find more tunnels, as a collective groan escaped our lips Vurla took out all his tools again he ran a million and one tests over the next hour before concluding that the source of the mana fluctuations ‘must be here’ and we would find it with ‘just a little more effort'. A few minutes later we did find it as we continued to advance but soon noticed only the 10 of us where here: me; Sere; Ryan; Lee; Vurla; Sonya and Wahuj who I’d properly talked to over the trip. There was also Tetra, the sun priest; Karus, the homifeles mundane who used a bardiche and Ellias, the son of Baron Reia who was a retainer of Count Xara.

Ellias was arrogant, not actively and aggressively arrogant like most noble children though. He was more subtly arrogant, he believed himself invincible. He didn’t think he was the best with the bow in the world, but he definitely believed himself a cut above his peers. He didn’t think he was better than commoners by birth-rate, but he still thought them inferior due to their lacking education and etiquette. He was also one of the people who believed that the mundane where a lesser class of person. In short, he was a dick. Mainly because he was ignorant, but a dick none the less. Thankfully he’d been very eager to learn and improve himself using this opportunity and had been rather respectful because of that but some of his off the cuff remarks definitely made me consider killing him on the spot. Thankfully I held myself back but if he was like that the whole time... I don’t know.

After we noticed that the group had been reduced to a third of its proper size, we of the vanguard immediately retreated to check and a handful of meters behind us we found a faint silvery film in the air. Vurla quickly reconvened us all and had me guide the group to somewhere we could rest, I followed traces of moisture in the stone to quickly take us to a small alcove like the ones we’d used to rest in the tunnels previously and while we walked Karus continuously bombarded Vurla with questions before Vurla demanded he be silent saying “It is of the utmost, utmost! Importance that none of us speak at all when not necessary, cease this incessant chatter this instant.” with a look of cold severity on his face that revealed a hint of worry but also anticipation. After we arrived in the alcove Vurla and Sonya stepped outside to talk for a while before returning, when they entered Sonya gathered us to give us a debriefing of the situation.

“It seems likely, that what we have walked into and what caused the fluctuations that Vurla measured is a new born dungeon. However, this dungeon seems to be inherently self-aware as it has activated the party size restriction. This means one of two things for us; the dungeon has been tamed by a rogue master or it is anomalous. Either way, that means this dungeon is a threat. We will purge this threat. Alexi? Can you check the surroundings for me? Tetra, perform a malady check on everyone to see if this dungeon has any poisons in the air or such. Ryan, Vurla is going to be performing some tests he’ll want your help with. As for the rest of us, we’ll just need to remain vigilant.”

With that bombshell announcement I went straight to my task, scanning the area for any threats. Aside from the glowing cave mushrooms that where a fairly common sight however, I found nothing of note except some rabbit droppings. When I reported that to Sonya, she seemed relieved. She told us all that this was likely a beast dungeon and would prove to be a little easier than she was concerned about.