A Dungeon’s Survival

Sean

“It will challenge us, right?” Cudgel asked, not for the first first dozenth time.

“Who is to say?” the local baron answered noncommittally.

“Can you give it a rest already?” the noble I'd still somehow managed to avoid learning the name of complained, “It's a new Dungeon. No matter how anomalous it is, it isn't going to be a challenge.”

“We can hope it'll be,” the giant shrugged.

I groaned inwardly as their bickering started up once more. Cudgel had been growing more and impatient the longer we'd gone without learning anything concrete about the Dungeon. As for the noble, unbearable was his normal state of being, and none of liked him for it. Somehow, though, ever since we'd arrived in Firmsoil, it was as though he'd grown twice as aggravating. A large part of that was likely due to the baron's constant displays of scarcely hidden disrespect toward him, something I'd initially found amusing; that was up until it became my problem.

The odd thing was, I couldn't understand why the old alchemist kept doing it. If it was out of pettiness or because he derived some form of amusement from it, more than understand, I would've agreed with his doing so. I certainly knew I hated the guy. According to Fable, though, the Apethis Tea I'd yet to see the man without should've ensured he felt nothing. If the baron wasn't a shrewd, calculating noble, I might've assumed there was no reason for it at all, but with how carefully chosen his every word seemed to be, that couldn't be it.

Ugh, I'm no good with this kind of stuff.

Political intrigue was about as far out of my skill set as mercy was to murderers or altruism to bandits. If I hadn't been able to figure things out by now, I wasn't going to. All I could do was pretend not to notice the baron's or the branch head's strange behavior and move on. There was no use worrying about things outside of my control, after all. Instead, as soon as I saw the opportunity to, I turned my attention toward what I could affect.

“Hey,” I interrupted the quickly intensifying argument between my two party members, “is that it?”

At the end of the path we were walking down, a small hill with a large crack in it had just come into view, and from the looks of it, the path of cleared trees stopped at it. With that being the case, I could only assume it was our destination.

“Yes. With the amount mana flowing from it, it has to be,” Fable answered me, not giving the others a chance to speak first.

“Huh,” I, at a loss for words, voiced my surprise, “Honestly, I would've expected something a bit–I don't know–more?”

It wasn't as though the entrance was completely unassuming. Even from a distance, I could make out stonework on the walls leading into the cave, but after everything we'd heard about how dangerous this place was supposed to be and with how odd the last Dungeon we'd visited was, it just felt too ordinary.

“I wouldn't write it off yet,” Fable countered, “The mana flowing from it feels unusual.”

“What does that mean?”

“I'm not entirely sure how to explain it; however, I've been to enough Dungeons to know something about this one feels different. Perhaps calling it a qualitative difference to the flow of mana would be apt?”

“Well, that's ominous.”

“Ha, more like a good sign!” Cudgel barked out in laughter, “Maybe it'll pose a challenge, after all!”

“It feels normal to me,” the last member of our party argued, haughty arrogance dripping from his voice as usual.

The glare Fable shot his way was colder than the jerk's ice magic. Normally, I wouldn't have minded indulging in our shared hatred of the man by siding against him here, but with the delve that was to come, I figured it would be for the best to avoid starting things out at each other's throats, so I changed the topic again instead.

“Hey, Sirius, is there really nothing else you can tell us about this place in advance?” I directed the question to the branch head of the Adventurers Guild who, along with the baron, had offered to guide us here.

“Sadly not,” he responded without skipping a beat, “I've already told you all I can.”

That was lie. While he and the baron had told us some things, there was no way it'd been everything. Since our first day here, it'd been clear they were withholding information from us. The senior adventurer team also coincidentally heading out of town not even a day after we arrived just helped to drive that fact home, doubly so since they were supposedly leaving to get medicine for their incapacitated rogue when they had access to, from what I understood, one of the best alchemists in the kingdom here. Something was up, and we all knew it. It was only the nobility's spy in our group that both cared enough about their reasons and lacked enough tact to call them on it, though.

“Seriously,” our resident snob began, “If what you've told us is all you know, you have no business overseeing a Dungeon. It's a disgrace.”

“What can I say?” the branch head calmly defended himself, “Changes were observed to be taking place before our senior adventurers had their mishap. The state inside is uncertain at the moment.”

“That's another thing that doesn't add up. Nothing a Dungeon this new could throw at them she be capable of injuring an adventurer beyond what I'm sure the baron here could treat.”

“Sadly, we don't have the budget for it,” the baron in question waved off his valid point without so much as a second of hesitation, “Growing a settlement from the ground up isn't cheap.”

“That–” he started again, but before he could finish his thought, Fable's voice cut the argument short, the intensity in her tone too much for any of us to ignore.

“Hold. What was that?”

Instantly, I rose to alert and asked, “What was what?”

“Something just moved from the cave entrance.”

“I wasn't paying that close of attention, but I didn't see anything.”

“Neither did I. That's the problem. I felt it with Mana Sense.”

The implications of that were concerning. Of course, rather than taking the warning seriously, our noble instead took the chance to scoff and assert his superiority.

“Are you jumping at ghosts now? I didn't notice anything.”

Before anyone else had a chance to speak, the baron jumped to agree with him, an action that inherently felt wrong coming from him.

“Neither did I. I'm certain it was only your nerves playing tricks on you.”

Something about the way he said that deeply disturbed me. I trusted Fable. Her senses were sharp, and if she said she felt something, she did. This baron's Mana Sense, however, should've been just as honed as hers, if not more so. Also, his reaction came too quickly and with much too certainty.

I didn't like this. It felt like we were walking into a trap, and if the profound amount of disgust in the glare Fable was shooting the two members of the nobility was anything to go off of, I could only assume she was having similar thoughts.

“Regardless,” the baron swept our concerns aside, “we are here. I wish you a swift extermination.”

That was our cue. With hardly a few more words and a heavy uneasiness settling over us, the two sensible members of our group at least, we turned toward the cave entrance and bean our descent.

[You are now entering Cave of Absolution.]

* * *

“Run!” I shouted, unsure if anyone would hear my warning.

“Where'd it go?” I faintly made out Cudgel's voice over the ear-piercing shriek right before he got his answer, just not in the way he was hoping for.

“Argh!” he screamed a moment later.

I couldn't afford to pay the blinding flash of light behind me any mind, not when the ceiling was coming down on top of us and the dense jungle of a room was rapidly filling with smoke. I couldn't even understand what was happening as fireballs leapt from the flames and actively shifted directions midair in order to close in on me from all sides. The strange liquid pouring down on me from above was just excessive. The room was sensory overload given form. It was so bad, I didn't even notice at first when something grabbed my leg.

To be fair, the momentum from me running paired with my strength alone seemed to be enough to tear free from the grasp of whatever it was, but in the moment of distraction that cost me, I was blindsided by something from the opposite side, and it sent me flying. Through the air, I twisted and turned until I wasn't even sure which direction was up and which was down anymore. Then, once I landed, something tried to bite me. The key term there was, “tried to,” because it failed to so much as pierce the skin of my hand, but the suddenness of it still caused me to jump.

“Aah!”

Before I knew it, I'd crushed the head of what seemed to be a snake with my other hand in an instinctual attempt to swat at it. In the shock of how rapidly things had escalated, that simple action was finally enough to bring me back to my senses. Slowly, I looked around the room and took in my surroundings.

It was hard to make anything out in the sea of fire, but I was fairly certain what part of the ceiling was going to collapse already had. That had been the only real emergency, at least for me. I was concerned about our more fragile mages, but with my Protection of Light active, I was confident nothing I'd seen so far could really hurt me, though I wasn't sure how long I could afford to keep it active.

There was also the problem of the smoke that was building up. I could handle it for a while, but even I needed to breath, not to mention that it was hot. If the temperature kept climbing like it was, it had the potential to deplete me of my stamina before I knew it or even to roast me alive, albeit slowly. I needed to quickly find my team and get out of here. Whether that meant moving farther into the Dungeon or making a tactical retreat, it didn't matter so long as we put distance between ourselves and this room.

The only problem with that was that I had no clue where I was, let alone where any of my party members were. I was surrounded by flames on all sides, including some directly under me. Forget finding the others, I couldn't see five feet away in any direction. Then, there was still that deafening screeching coming from somewhere. Between it and the roaring of the flames, relying on my sense of hearing was out of the question. I didn't have much of anything to go off of in that situation.

Not knowing what else to do, I was about to aimlessly charge into the flames in the desperate hope I would run into the others. That was when I finally caught sight of something that wasn't fire or smoke, though. Overhead, through the dark cloud the inferno of a room was putting off, a streak of light shot through the darkness. Thin and nearly instant in its travel time, that wasn't another fireball.

Fable!

There was no doubt in my mind. That had been her lightning magic. There was no telling if the others were with her, but now, I at least knew which direction to head. With that decided, I took a deep breath of burning air before it could get too much worse. Then, I began running through the flames.