Chapter 336: Not Following the Rules

Konstantin remained on watch while the rest of us slept. Raelia curled into me and mumbled about how bad I smelled. Normally, I found her elven musk attractive—but right now she didn’t smell too peachy, either. With the amulet locked and shared in our grasp, we entered the dreamscape.

I immediately felt out and surveyed the space, grinning. I had entered first and had greater control of the dreamscape. Raelia usually managed to enter before me, but I had channeled my aether before she could lock her hand with mine. The consternation on her face was welcome as she wouldn’t be able to cheat if we sparred. “Well, at least you smell better in here,” she said grouchily.

I rolled my eyes as I was the one who was fastidious in my cleanliness. The fact that her elven sweat usually smelled like a spring breeze was unfair. I got serious. “I wanted to tell you that the dungeon sealed the exit. The wall is now over a foot thick and increasing.”

Raelia took a second to process, a little worry on her face. “What does it mean?”

“I hope the dungeon just didn’t want anyone else entering after us. I think the dungeon only allows four delvers at once.” Her eyes got wide in realization. I didn’t chide her for not piecing it together from the number of sleeping benches.

“Did you find the core?” she asked after a moment.

“No. But it may be the large glowstone in the ceiling of the manticore room—or maybe behind it. Do you have any idea what it would look like?” I watched as Raelia’s twin entered from the ankheg room. I teleported her back to the scorpion room with the others. This was not a time to play.

Raelia shrugged, reiterating what she had already told me. “No, I have never seen one in the dungeons I delved. The Esenhem elves destroyed most of the dungeons in their lands, but that was a thousand years ago, and I never studied the texts on how they did it.” We had all believed that locating the dungeon core with my earth speak ability would be relatively easy, but so far, we had been proven wrong.

“I think finding the exit is more important than finding the dungeon core. We will kill the jungle cats in hopes of getting another healing potion, and then follow the next passage. Get some rest. I will tell the others.” Raelia looked a little disappointed we wouldn’t be playing together as I left the dreamscape.

I untangled myself from her when I woke up. Konstantin looked up, surprised, since I had been in the dreamscape for less than ten minutes. “We will see if the panthers yield another healing potion before exploring the other corridor.” I could tell he had questions, but he simply nodded.

I watched Navek and Maveith talk and eat while I thought about the dungeon. What if there was no exit? And that was why the entrance to this dungeon hadn’t been found. What game was the Seer playing at? Although I could see why she hadn’t told Navek where it was. He would have failed and likely died if the hunter had tried to gain access alone. Maybe she didn’t know where the entrance was because it didn’t exist. There were too many questions and unknowns that made me uncomfortable.

It was a long wait for the jungle room to reset. Raelia woke, and I took the amulet to study my local flora books about what I had gathered in the jungle. Most of the flowers were considered rare, but very few alchemical uses were listed. The most useful was the sweet water from the yellow flower called sunrise, which could be used to make a powerful stimulant potion that eliminated both mental and physical fatigue.

After a few hours of studying and playing fetch with Oscar, I returned to the safe room. Maveith alerted us when a day had almost passed, and we walked as a group to the jungle room. Navek asked why we were returning, and I told him it was to get the potions. At least he was wise enough not to mention the search for the dungeon core aloud. We were slowly educating the one-armed hunter on how a dungeon worked.

The cats had returned, looking agitated, and both were high in the trees. Much of the flora I had picked looked to have regrown, too. I noticed one of the large rats scurrying in the roots, but the cats were focused on us.

I held everyone back. “I think this dungeon expects only four people to challenge each room. We might get a lesser reward by sending in five. I want Konstantin to hold back and only enter if we run into trouble.”

“How do you know that?” Navek questioned.

“It is just a theory, and we will see if it holds after we clear the room,” I said, walking forward. Maveith followed loyally behind me. Maveith had a glowstone out this time, expecting the room to darken.

I moved quickly to the right as I entered, focusing on the nearest panther. It leaped from high in the tree. I braced Heartseeker against the ground and let the cat impale itself as I rolled away and drew magebane. It howled in pain and rage as its life ebbed away.

I looked to where Maveith was facing the other cat. He hadn’t managed an easy killing strike this time and was bleeding from a long claw slash on his forearm. Navek had thrown his spear, piercing the large cat, crippling its movement, and this victory wouldn’t take long with four of us.

Raelia dissipated the fireball she had been forming instead of releasing it. It was useless in such close quarters anyway, and the cat was as good as dead. She drew both her blades as she tried to flank the beast. The cat turned with difficulty to follow her, giving Maveith a clear opening with his hammer. He swiftly stepped forward and struck the spine of the creature. All those quickness essences had improved his speed. I started to relax, but Raelia turned to face me, alarm in her eyes.

As I turned, the weight of a third cat impacted me from above, activating my aether shield amulet. The flash of blue protective armor barely slowed it. Its mass and momentum pinned me to the ground after the aether shield had expended itself. Magebane was useless, so I released my grip. Its jaws opened for my throat, and I shoved my forearm into the cat’s mouth. My earth drake bracers were crushed in the maw, but they were also an artifact and not easily overcome.

I almost used my dimensional space, but held back as the cat tried to rip my arm from my shoulder. With my other hand, I drew Corvus’s dagger and began stabbing the beast repeatedly in the chest. Then Maveith’s body tackled the cat off of me, and they rolled away in a tangle of limbs and claws. I gathered magebane and rushed to help, but he did not need it. Maveith had gotten a chokehold on the beast. His muscles bulged, and his tendons tightened as the cat fought the inevitable. Maveith’s strength overpowered it and wrenched its neck until it popped. The spine snapped, and it slumped.

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I stood, panting and looking for other threats, Raelia back-to-back with me. We breathed heavily from the brief encounter, a mix of effort and adrenaline. Konstantin called from the corridor, “I can see the reward chest through the leaves.” He stepped into the room, sheathing both of his blades. He had been ready to help but held back. As if to explain, he shrugged. “Looked like you had everything under control.”

Maveith was heaving deep breaths and had claw marks on his arms and thighs, but one appeared to be bleeding dangerously near his femoral artery on his thigh, blood pooling on the ground. He calmly used a salve to close the wounds as I kept an eye on him. I knew he would not use the valuable healing potion unless he felt it was needed. Once I was confident he would be fine, I asked aloud, “Why were there three cats?”

Only Raelia seemed willing to hazard a guess. “Dungeons can change over time, but it is gradual. That”—she indicated to the largest cat who had successfully attacked me—“increased the difficulty drastically. Dungeons follow the rules, so I am at a loss.”

I sarcastically retorted, “Great, we are in a dungeon that doesn’t follow the rules. Will it get punished for not following the rules?”

“A dungeon expert from the Adventurer’s Guild might know,” Konstantin said unhelpfully, returning with the reward chest.

I let my frustration out a little. “Well, we don’t have an expert from the Adventurer’s Guild here, old man.”

“You could always travel to one of the larger Adventurer’s Halls and become an expert,” he said reflectively. Damn, he was right. I knew the Adventurer’s Halls had libraries about the dungeons and their history as well. One of the best such libraries was in the elven city of Artiria, but the Guildmaster there hated me for being a Telhian legionnaire.

The group was interested in the chest, so I set my thoughts aside. I thought the ornate wooden chest might be worth more than the silver inside. This would be the third one I would be taking with me, and maybe after this dungeon romp, I could open a shop selling the small chests.

On a bed of silver coins were two potions again, this time healing and a lesser aether restorative. Both were extremely valuable. “Konstantin, take the healing potion, and the aether restorative is for Raelia.” We divided up the twenty-three large silver coins.

I turned my attention to using the collector, starting with the massive panther that had successfully attacked me. I was kneeling next to the cat, as a thick blue aetheric smoke quickly formed an apex essence. I rolled it off the disc into my hand, slightly confused. The first two cats had yielded power essences, but this beast had formed an apex. The essence was heavy and appeared to have tiny leaves growing inside it, but when you rotated it, the leaves faded from sight, with new leaves coming into focus.

“A nature essence? From a jungle cat?” Raelia said, stunned, leaning on my back casually and inspecting the sphere. I stood and moved to the other two beasts, Raelia following with interest, and they yielded the expected major power essences.

Navek stood over the large panther and said, “This is not one of the island cats.” His statement caught our attention. “The size of the beast, the shape of the head…” He kneeled and picked up one of the legs. “It is also a female.” We soon crowded around the creature.

“I didn’t notice it until it was in the air—like it had blended into the background and didn’t reveal itself until it attacked,” Raelia said.

“Dragon shit,” I muttered, recalling the creature from one of the books about the jungles of Tsinga. “It’s a shadow hunter. They can perfectly camouflage themselves by changing their fur to blend into the background, but their natural fur is black.” I looked up at the canopy of the room. “But why wasn’t it here the first time we cleared the room?”

No one had an answer, and the unusual circumstances kept us from wandering off alone. I gave Raelia one of the power essences and kept the apex nature essence and the other power essence for myself. Maveith had a slight nature affinity, and so did Konstantin, but it would take dozens to raise their affinity. If either had asked, I would have given it to them.

I spent some time gathering more flowers with Raelia while Maveith, Navek, and Konstantin worked on skinning the cats. The shadow cat was much larger than the other two, easily over three hundred pounds. The fact that it singled out and attacked me made me think this dungeon didn’t like me already.

When we finished our harvesting, we returned to the safe room and cautiously followed the unexplored corridor. The corridor was definitely sloping upward as we walked. I held my hand to stop the group as my earth speak detected something: “The floor gets extremely thin ahead, and there is a large drop to a pool of water.”

“A trap? Not many dungeons have traps. I have never been in one that does,” Raelia said as she inspected the floor intently. She wouldn’t notice anything as the floor was one solid piece of stone—impossible to detect without magic. Maybe tossing something on the surface would activate the trap. I produced a mundane dagger from my space and tossed it—on impact, a slightly hollow thud rang out in the corridor.

“We will be fine if we cross one at a time and stay near the walls. The floor is thicker there,” I said as I reached the edge of the trap. To be certain, we daisy-chained to each other with a rope. I led the way, and I was sure that if we had remained together, the floor would have given way, dropping us thirty feet into the water. My earth speak couldn't tell me if there were any surprises in the water, but I didn’t want to find out.

We successfully crossed the span, and if the dungeon hadn’t known what my earth speak spell did before, it certainly did now. By the time we reached the next chamber, I hadn’t detected any other traps. Still, my thoughts were wandering. Maybe the dungeon made the trap specifically for me to discover the extent of my abilities, or it was just my paranoia.

We stood at the entrance to the next room, looking down at a massive cavern with switchbacks winding toward a stone maze. The massive cavern was illuminated by numerous soft white glowstones in the ceiling. Down in the maze, large white and gray horned goats wandered within and on top of the maze walls. “Dragon shit, that has to be nearly a mile to the other side,” Konstantin muttered. “Never heard of a dungeon room so large.”

He was right; the exit was a distant, brightly lit opening on the other side. “Look on the bright side. We can map the maze from here. If we enter down there, we would be guessing the entire time.” ℴ

We collaborated to create the intricate maze map and made copies for everyone. The center of the maze had a large courtyard and a large tree growing there. With my spyglass, I could see yellow fruit growing on the branches. The fruit was roundish, but I couldn’t identify it. We didn’t observe any goats near the center tree, so we guessed another creature might be guarding it.

I sacrificed a few pages from my books for the mapping effort, so everyone had their own map. We talked about the potential traps within the maze and what we would do if we somehow got separated. Walking on top of the walls like goats seemed possible, and we intended to test that. However, I felt the dungeon would see that as cheating and use the goats to knock us off. From our perspective, I could count at least fifteen goats, but seeing everything below the walls in the maze from our vantage point was hard.

As we were ready to enter the maze, Raelia made a suggestion. “Maybe Baldo can fly me to the other side.”

“Baldo?” Navek asked, and I gave Raelia an annoyed look.

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