Chapter y-Nine - What is a Normal Adventurer?

  “So, uh,” I said as I looked at the menu floating before me.

  You are Entering The Pace of StringsLevels 5-7Your entire party has ehe Duhis Dungeon is Occupied. Share an Instance?

  “What do we do?” I asked.

  Amaryllis hummed. She seemed to have calmed down a little now that we were in the dungeon and far away from all the people iown above. Was it still above now that we were in a dungeon? The st dungeoainly didn’t fit in the pce where we had been, and the Wondernd dungeon was really weird too.

  “I think,” she said, cutting off my woolgathering. “That we join whichever instance is already running. oal is the boss, nothing else. Having more people around would just shorteime to get to that objective.”

  “Awa, I wao, um, practice with my crossbow a little too. And, and my gss magic, I think I’m getting there,” Awen said.

  Amaryllis shook her head. “The bow is fihe magic... less so. We’ll have to pick up some books on the subject ter.”

  “Ah, okay,” Awen said.

  “Did that book I gave you help?” I asked.

  Awen nodded. “Yes, a little. I slept on it too.”

  “Right,” I said. “Kinda fot that was a thing.”

  Amaryllis sighed. “Please focus just a little bit, please. We are about to enter a hostile enviro. This dungeon has no delve room. And there are others in it already.” She made a gesture in the air and Mister Menu’s prompt poofed from the er of my vision.

  Spinning on a heel, Amaryllis led us deeper into the rocky tunnel of the Pace of Strings. Within a dozehe rock walls ged. Roots poking out from above like skeletal hands and the walls were more packed dirt than solid stone.

  The tunnel grew a little tighter and we had to duck out of the path of what looked like eree trunks covered in mud and dirt. And theunnel ended and we carefully stepped out onto an open wn.

  A red quarter moon hung just over the horizon, casting a faint reddish glow across grounds that were sparsely illuminated by the twinkling stars above.

  Ankle-high grass filled a huge field surrounded by woods so thid dark and foreboding that just looking at them gave me Scooby-doo fshbacks. In the tre of the field was a huge mansion that looked like something out of an old Dracu movie. Big windows with flickering yellow lights within, gargoyles on each er of the roof, and a hedge wall twice as tall as I was all around what I could see of the building.

  “The book said that the first floor is that hedge maze,” Amaryllis said. “The sed begins oering the building proper.” She was whispering, and I saw her squinting at the sky as a flight of tiny bats flitted by.

  “Spooky!” I cheered as I started to walk towards the hedge maze. “I really should have spent more time learning that light ball spell, It’d e in handy here,” I said as I raised a hand and pushed some mana into it until it glowed. Not enough to really illuminate my surroundings by much, but it did help.

  “Awa!” Awen said as she jogged up behind me and pulled up her crossbow so that it was aiming out ahead of us. “I’m, ah, not used to the dark.”

  Amaryllis sighed and raised her own hand, a bright ball of light sparking to life in it. “You have no gravitas. And Broccoli, there’s a light on your hat.”

  “ht!” I said. I’d fotten about that. A push of mana towards my hat and the rune light I’d tied around the brim a while back lit up the world ahead of me. “Thanks Amaryllis!”

  “I swear, I feel like a mother sometimes,” Amaryllis said.

  “You’d make a great mom, I’m sure!” I said.

  She ed me so hard my hat went flying. “I-idiot!”

  I ughed as I fetched my hat. “Sorry. Didn't know that was something you were sensitive about.”

  “I am in no way... nevermind! Let’s just move ahead. I’d like to get this over before su.” She gred when I started to point towards the darkened skies. “Don’t start.”

  Our moods were pretty high as we reached the opening of the hedge maze. They dipped soon after.

  There were spiders there. Huge things, the size of dobermans with big fuzzy bottoms and fangs the size of my forefingers. The spiders were all piled up to the sides where they were slowly smoking and fading away.

  “What happened here?” I asked as I held my spade by the very end of the handle and poked one of the spiders. It didn’t so much as twitch.

  “The others in the dungeon, perhaps,” Amaryllis said. “They ’t have been here for too long, the corpses aren’t go.”

  I looked at the smoke wafting off the bodies. It was taking lohan usual, eating away at the body inch by inch. “Strange,” I said.

  “Keep your eyes open,” Amaryllis said.

  We moved into the maze, eyes and lights twisting this way and that to take in as much as we could. The area smelled like deposing leaves, a faint tang of rot that grew strohe deeper in we went. hts didn’t seem to illuminate all that far, not as much as they should have.

  Leafy walls surrounded us on all sides, their tops swaying in an u wind.

  “Wow, this pce is really scary,” I noted.

  “Awa,” Awen whimpered.

  I sighed and pulled her into a sidelong hug. “Just because something is scary, doesn’t mean you should be scared of it. It’s usually the things you don’t know about that are the scariest, I think, but that also means you’re w about something that might not be there at all.”

  “Are, are you sure?” Awen asked.

  I nodded. “Yep. Not w about things you have no trol over is my number one way not to pee myself while watg horror movies.” I gave her a reassuring thumbs-up.

  “What’s a movie?” she asked.

  “Girls, ahead,” Amaryllis said.

  There were more spiders. Not all of them were dead.

  Two of the big beasties were wrangling something invisible in the air, spider webs, maybe? Ahree were skittering back as little thumbnail-sized balls of fire darted through the air aed the ground around them.

  “Insight,” I said as I stared at the spider.

  An overwhelmed Manweaver, level 5.

  I stepped up and prepared to smack the first spider to reach us with my shovel. I bother. Awen’s crossbow twanged and one of the spiders flew off and smacked into the far hedge with a meaty ‘thwunk.’

  Then Amaryllis reached out a hand and made a casual little shoo-iure. Crag bolts of electricity raced out ahead and fried the two remaining spiders, then two further aere tugging at something unseen.

  I almost felt bad when one of them stumbled close enough that I could smack it. It hardly took more than a bop to the head to kill it.

  gratutions! You have put Manweaver, level 5, out of its misery. Due to bating as a team your reward is reduced!

  We paused as whatever was throwing fire around stopped. Then, from the bushes ahead, came a mase voice. “Is ahere?”

  I looked to the others. “Was that in... whatever nguage you speak normally?” I asked.

  “Yes, it was,” Amaryllis said. “Hello there!” she called out. “Are you the delvers who started this instance?”

  “Maybe? Who’s asking?”

  Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “We’re from the Exploration Guild.”

  Three boys--men, really--stepped out from around the er. One was wearing simple leather armour with some cloth beh it and he held a staff by his side. The team’s mage, maybe?

  The other two were entirely different. The biggest of the lot was a handsome enough man with a nice and armour like a fantasy barbarian. He would have been nicer if he wasn’t covered in webbing.

  o him was a man in thick full pte, only his lower face visible from under his bell-shaped helmet. He had a little capelet with a strange symbol on the front, like two hands holding.

  “Ah,” the mage said. “Hello? I didn’t... we didn’t expect to have any pany this afternoon. Especially not from such pretty young dies.”

  “Aww, thanks!” I said. “I hope you don’t mind us just showing up.”

  “Me? Never,” he said with what he probably thought was a roguish grin. “I’m Eli, the thick lug behind me here is Boots.” The barbarian looking guy cheerfully waved a battleaxe at us. “And the healer back there is Percy. Don’t let the name fool you, he’s not as big an ass as he sounds at first.”

  “See if I heal you ime you show up with an itchy crotpining about lumps,” Percy said.

  “Not in front of the dies,” Eli hissed.

  “Ah, well,” I said before I cleared my throat. “I’m Broccoli Bunch, These are my friends, Awen Bristlee and Amaryllis Albatross. And this is my kitten friend, e!” My friends waved or nodded seriously when I hem. e gred, but she was a cat so that was okay. “We’re here to fight the boss, but I’d love to make friends too!”

  EliDesired Quality: Pretty, female.Dream: To have intercourse with more women than anyone else.

  “I’d love to be your friend,” Eli said.

  “Ah, no,” I said. “I mean... friends are okay, but I don’t do any of... that kind of stuff. Only after marriage.”

  “Awa? What kind of stuff?” Awen asked.

  I felt my cheeks warming. “Nevermind that,” I said with a wave. “Um... Amaryllis, help?”

  “You doofus,” she muttered before stepping up. “What’s yoal here?” she asked the three delvers.

  The boys looked between each other, and apparently decided to elect Eli as their spokesperson. “We’re just doing our job? Our team has been here for a month now, diving once a day. The spider parts aren’t worth much, but the dresses dropped ohird flo for a fair price.”

  “Cool,” I said. “We’re just here for today.”

  “Indeed,” Amaryllis said. “Are we interfering with your dive?”

  “ly,” Eli said, he became a little more serious. “Not yet anyway. We haven’t reached the sed floor just yet. The maze shifts a bit every day. But if you pass us, then we’ll lose out on any loot drops.”

  I looked to Amaryllis. There was a question in her eyes and it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. “Up to you,” I said.

  She nodded. “If we apany you, we help clear the monsters and you keep the loot. It might make things faster for you.”

  “We’re not here to map things,” Eli said. “We’re moving quickly.”

  “We’re here for the boss, that’s all,” Amaryllis said.

  Eli hummed. “Well, we’re not getting any more out of killing the local beasties. We’ve all chopped our share of spiders. We probably won’t level for months at this rate, so one lost day... still, we’ll be esc you, which puts us at risk.”

  Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “Three sil.”

  Eli grinned. “Each.”

  “In your dreams,” Amaryllis said. “One eaot a ore.”

  s were tossed over to Eli who shem out of the air. He even bit into one, which couldn’t be sanitary. “That’s a deal,” he said. “Wele to Rosenbell Delve Team Two, dies.”

  “Alrighty!” I cheered. “So now where do we go?”

  Eli swept his arms through the air like a ductor at a circus. “Right this way,” he said. “Let’s show you the wonders of the Pace of Strings.”

  “And the horrors,” Percy said.

  “And the fights!” Boots cheered.

  I looked at my friends and we all seemed to choose to go along with it for now. I hoped for the best, but kept my spade close, just in case.

  ***

  RavensDagger