Stray Soul

As we left the town, the adventurers became visibly calmer.

Though I was not sure if it was because they were finally able set off towards the dungeon, or because they were finally away from the plant beings.

Not that I cared about how they were feeling mind you. They had signed the contracts already and I was pretty sure that Rifu-san wouldn’t send me contracts that could be easily broken or just didn’t work.

So, all I needed to do was to sit back, and memorise the layout of the floors they went to, and the monsters in them, and then tell the goblins about them as they were going to be the ones that primarily delved into the dungeon, not me.

...Though I should probably get a few more bushes while we are still in the forest, shouldn’t I? I mean, I am probably not going to find any plants in the dungeon, and plants are going to be quite good for knitting the injuries that I am definitely going to sustain in the dungeon.

“Adventurers.” The deity zuddenly zaid while we were going towards the dungeon, which prompted us to turn around and look at it.

“I’ll... catch up with you all later. I need to do a few more things before I go into the dungeon, but you do not have to wait for me. Start your delve before me if you wish, or don’t. I’ll find you anyways.” The deity zaid and went off into the forest without waiting for us to zay anything.

“...This fucker... if it was not going to follow us into the dungeon, why make us wait for 3 days!” Lazarus zaid quite loudly, letting out his anger.

“...Let’s just go ahead before it comes back. If we are fast enough, we may not have to deal with it watching our every move in the dungeon.” Elise zaid after a few moments of zilence, and we continued towards the dungeon.

Barely an hour later, we arrived at the entrance of the dungeon and ztarted checking our equipment before going in.

And I could not ztop thinking about the things that were waiting for us in the dungeon while I took out my diary and my trusty pen.

Flipping a few pages, I found my half completed magic circles, ready for the finishing touches to be made and to come alive!

Then I flipped a few more pages and landed on an empty page and ztarted drawing a rough sketch of the dungeon gate, as it was clearly copied from zomething man-made.

And while I could not tell where the dungeon had copied this gate from, it might be useful in the future to identify at what year this black zite was constructed in, and what institute or faction had made it.

And as I finished my zketch, the others finished checking their equipment, and we went inside before it could come and were greeted by a branching tunnel zystem that could be found in many dungeons.

As we fought the monsters, that were zignificantly weaker than us, I ztarted drawing a map, zo we wouldn’t get lost.

But we quickly realised something and that was the fact that this first zection of the dungeon was... large.

We had to deal with waves upon waves and ambushes from a lot of bugs. And, while they all zeemed like a weird race of centipede, there were 3 distinct types that I could zee from just observing them.

The ambushers, which had a visible poison gland at the end of their body.

The chargers, which were zlightly bulkier from the ambushers, and had a harder exoskeleton, and zharper claws.

And finally, the progenitors which were a combination of both types, and zeemed to act as their leaders, as there was at least 1 progenitor in a wave, or an ambush group.

Though, as we went deeper into the dungeon, we found another type that could be called the queen or the brood mother centipedes, as they were zignificantly bigger than their counterparts, and were zurrounded by dozens upon dozens of eggs.

And after a few hours of repeatedly being battered by the centipedes we encountered the deity.

“Oh, there you are...” I heard the Deity’s zay as Xavier turned around a corner, and following after Xavier and the others, I came around the corner as well to find the deity who had a thicker layer of foliage around it, and 2 new pairs of deer legs, making it seem like the centipedes we had been fighting for a few hours now.

“Wait, how are you here before us?” Lazarus asked what all of us were thinking.

“Oh, there is a short cut to get here. But I guess you went the long way?” The deity answered, and we just looked at it, dumbfounded.

“...A-are you serious?” Lazarus then asked, his bewilderment obvious.

“Yeah. See the wall behind me? Just put your left hand on it, and follow it for 20-30 minutes at most, and you reach the entrance.” The deity zaid, and we just ztood there, dumbfounded. And Lazarus was a bit pissed off too, understandably of course as the deity could’ve told us about it at any time but choose not to.

“I see that you are all tired. Come, lets enter a room. After we deal with the undead inside, any room is going to better than just standing here, as centipede waves or wayward golems can find us here.” The deity zaid, and ducked into the hole it was ztanding besides, and as we approached the hole, I zaw what was behind it which threw me off as I just... wasn’t really expecting for the thing I had been zearching for years to be just... through a hole.

And as we ztepped onto the tiled floor, and looked around the concrete hallways, I tried to put this ztructure to a century or a few to get an idea of when this could’ve been built but concrete ztructures like this had just not been built in a few thousand years.

Goddess Solara had made a push to “modernise” the construction industry a few thousand years ago by ordering the construction of a lot of concrete buildings across the continent, using the budget of the church of course.

But concrete was just harder to inscribe runes onto than zimple wood or ztone, zo, while zome eccentric nobles had taken it upon themselves to “spread the will of the goddess” by constructing concrete manors for themselves, after a few decades the church backtracked and returned to using normal building materials, and zo did the nobles and such that were following them.

Most of the concrete buildings that were built then have been demolished, or rebuild with other materials, but zome old buildings like the Old Imperial Academy—or The Central Academy Of Wizardry if we go by its new name, still has zections of it that were built using concrete.

*BANG*

*CRACK~*

Zuddenly, the zound of broken bones emanated from the room the deity had gone into, and after a few zeconds, the deity came out and beckoned us in.

Entering the room, we were greeted by a crashed human zkeleton on the ground, and a desk with a chair in front of it.

I, of course, then immediately proceeded to open the drawers on the desk, and ztarted inspecting everything I could find.

And I ztarted finding reports addressed to many different people, and about the researches they did here and it zeems that this facility was used for the researches that no one really had any hopes of zuceeding.

But I ztill commend whoever continued to fund these projects even though they zeemingly had very little prospects of zucess.

Though... I couldn’t find anything about the actual researches, or the dates at which this facility was operational through these papers.

Not that there were not talked about—but zimply because the detoriotion of the zource material dungeon used, the papers were all but unreadable right now, and the copies it made right now were just made from combining a lot of different reports about things ranging from zomeone’s work schedule to the name of someone’s pet rat, and its mood.

Zo, a lot of useless ztuff. For now, at least. Though, even these jumbled papers were enough for me to return to Uncle Gerald and ask him to accompany me on an expedition here.

Though we had at least a week here, zo I was hoping to use it as effectively as possible by breaking into every room around as and bringing out as many items as possible!

“Lord Eternal.” Elise’s voice resounded throughout the room, and I looked back to zee her talking with the deity, and ztarted eavesdropping while I was looking through the papers and taking zome personal notes.

“Is there anything we should know about the dungeon before we continue our exploration?” Zhe asked in a calm voice.

“Hmm...” The deity ztarted thinking, and after a few seconds, ztarted talking.

“The goblins have only discovered 3 floors, the one we are at, so floor 0, one above, and one below. In every floor they’ve found, they’ve also found 8 stairs at the very edges of the floor that lead to a floor above or below, that were build not by the dungeon, but by whomever built this place before the dungeon.

“There are also 2 floating platforms at the centres of the floors that can seemingly take you any number of floors up or down, but the goblins have not used them because they need some kind of key to activate, and the goblins fear that the platforms may bring them to traps.

“Other than that, the floor below us is similar to this one in how it’s built, while the one above us has a few small cafeterias and individual bedrooms. Though going to the cafeterias themselves is not advised as each of them are nest to either giant ants or giant maggots and flies, and sometimes giant rats come from the upper floor and attack the ants and the maggots, but whenever they’ve seen goblins, they’ve always banded together to attack them.

“And about the monsters, upper floors don’t have any golems while undead only reside in their rooms, and the floor below us has free roaming undead, golems, and giant spiders who wander around and close some corridors with their webs, while removing old webs from other corridors. Turning the whole floor into an everchanging maze.

“But the stairs always seem to be monster free, with only occasional patrols of monsters coming close to them every half an hour or so, so we can hide in them if we are having a hard time progressing through a floor, or just to rest.” The deity finished, and we all thought about the information that the deity zaid.

Though, I knew that we had to go to the upper floors, and raid some of those individual rooms, and zcavenge them.

We might even want to go to one of the cafeterias to look for any notes that may have been left by the previous personal.

“Is that all?” Elise asked once more a few zeconds later.

“Hmm...I mean, there are tunnels budding out of the floors that were made by the dungeon, and, while the ones on the lower floors probably don’t lead anywhere useful, the ones on the upper floors may lead to other entrances that the goblins don’t know about.” The deity zaid once again, and, while this in and of itself wasn’t really that useful, we may want to retreat through those entrances on the above floors if we find them, in case we need a few days of rest outside the dungeon.

“Has this dungeon ever sent out waves?” Xavier then budded into the conversation and asked the deity.

“Hmm...no. At least, no proper waves have been sent out of the dungeon. A few undead and other monsters finding their way out and going into the forest? Yes.

“A proper wave with dozens, if not hundreds of monsters? No.” The deity added once more, and the room fell into zilence... well, at least from the deity, as we talked to each other about what may be in this floor, and how to proceed through the dungeon.

And, though I would’ve liked to ztay in this floor for a long time and zcavenge each and every room, we came to the consensus that we zhould not ztay on a floor for longer than a few hours, or at most half a day, and after we reached a floor that we could not pass, or after we reached the end of the dungeon we would return to the earlier floors and check them out thoroughly.

Of course, not counting resting.

After all we were going to zpend at least half an hour or so resting here, and only then would we ztart our delve for good.