By the time we’d reached the second floor of the dungeon, I already wanted to kill the adventurers we’d been assigned to work with. Three out of the seven of them; the two mages and a massive shield-wielding “tank”, were incredibly condescending and patronizing.

The two mages spent half the time chatting between themselves. I later learned they were lovers, and more than half the conversation was about how staves were overhyped and wizard training wasn’t anything like good old-fashioned experience, and so forth.

The truth was that a staff was an anti-mage weapon more than anything else, it really shone in battles between two magic users. In a setting where your enemies had no magic of their own, and the strength of one’s intent didn’t matter that much, a wand might well be a better option, because it was more suited for chain casting. Etch the runes for a magic missile into a wand, then just spam that spell to your heart’s content. So long as that was the only spell you planned to use, the wand was great. Maybe carry a few different wands with different pre-prepared spells for different situations.

I held my tongue on my thoughts about staves because these two mages weren’t interested in scholarly debate, they were mostly trying to bait me by insinuating that my staff was “compensation” for some other part of my anatomy that was quite small.

The “tank”, a giant of a man, likely seven feet tall and three hundred pounds of muscle, wearing more metal than two royal knights, took the lead, with the rogue scouting ahead for traps and monsters. Behind the tank were four of the royal guards, Lance included, two of the guards were by my side in the middle of the formation.

The tank spent most of his time belittling the royal guards for their “parade-uniform” style of armor and told them they might be good for duels on some nobleman’s patio, but out here in the “real world”, they were useless. When the fed up royal knights inevitably got tired and challenged the giant to a duel, he simply laughed and said, “I only have my shield, how can I fight you? Not that those puny swords can pierce my thick armor!” and the like. Lance, the captain, was forced to constantly try to defuse the situation, even though he personally would have very much liked to challenge the giant himself.

The three archers, a tight knit squad of elven deserters, mostly just glared at us in silence. Their long memories kept the last human-elven war firmly in their thoughts. While they’d deserted the elven army over a century ago, they considered the royal guard and court wizard no different than the kingdom soldiers they’d once fought. Nevermind that any soldier who’d been alive back then had long since died of old age. The adventurer’s guild was infamous for accepting people who were no longer welcome in their own homelands, but these elves were still an oddity. Did the guild leader saddle us with them because no other group could tolerate the human-hating, racist jerks?

The healer, a young priestess, was actively afraid of us. She appeared convinced that I or one of the other nobles would attempt to ravish her. I could have explained that I was actually a commoner, but that would imply I believed the royal guards with me, who were all mostly very minor nobles, were actually all rapists. Unsure of how to build trust, I simply gave her space.

And the rogue was an invisible presence who never actually bothered to show himself. Only the occasional disarmed traps we encountered while walking proved that he hadn’t abandoned us completely.

This team was assembled of the people no one would miss, I decided. I suspected that the guild rewards were extremely slim, and only rejects that no other team wanted to work with had signed on.

“Alright, so, the second floor boss is in the next room?” I asked.

“Yeah, we’ve killed him hundreds of times,” the male mage boasted.

“Nothing you’d need a big stick for, our tiny wands can do it just fine.” the female mage added snidely.

Dungeons were capable of reviving slain monsters quickly, so many groups could farm the same bosses over and over. So long as the various adventuring parties maintained about an hours distance from each other, they would never know they weren’t the only adventurers in the dungeon.

“We’re running slow though, we need to pick up the pace,” The tank explained, “Next team will catch up to us if we don’t start working faster.”

I didn’t care about that, “How deep was the king’s nephew?” I asked.

“8th floor,” one of the elves chimed in. “Many many humans have died on that floor, your king’s blood will turn into another of the many undead humans that roam that floor.” He said with a gleeful laugh,

“I enjoy killing undead humans, almost as fun as killing living ones, right?” the second archer asked with bloodlust in his eyes.

“How long is this going to take? Getting to the eight floor?” I asked.

“A week? One day per floor after the first two is considered normal. Coming back up is faster though, there's a special set of one-way stairs that only allow people to go back up to the surface in each of the boss rooms.” The male mage explained with a shrug.

“Oh are you tired lugging around that heavy staff already? It’s only been one day,” the female mage taunted.

“Isn’t there any way to skip bosses and move down faster? Seven days is a long time to wait for a rescue, especially if the nephew is already overdue.” I asked, exasperated.

“There’s shortcuts,” a whisper said from behind me, and I whirled to find the rogue had appeared behind me, “But they’re dangerous. I know a path that lets us skip the fourth and fifth floor, but there is a risk of being caught by rift cats, there’s a huge nest along that way.”

“Rift cats are seventh level creatures, as strong as monsters of the seventh floor. I’m not sure the shortcut is worth it.” the rogue explained.

“We’ll have to go through the seventh floor anyways, what’s the harm in skipping ahead?” I asked.

“Your funeral.” The rogue said, “but the shortcut is on the third floor, so we still need to clear this boss first.”

“Why don’t we let the royal team handle this boss? Seems like they wouldn’t need help dealing with a 2nd floor boss on their own. Us adventurers routinely farm the first three floors all the time, so the court wizard and his merry men shouldn’t have any problem.” The tank said with a hearty laugh.

“It would prove they are good enough to handle the rift cats,” the rogue agreed, “I’m not sure I’d be willing to risk them down that shortcut if they can’t even kill the second floor boss on their own.”

“Fine! Fine! Whatever,” I said. I know I’m being baited and it’s risky fighting a boss with no prior knowledge of how the encounter works. But at this point, I was willing to do anything to just shut these insufferable adventurers up by proving myself to them.

“Lance, we’re going in, just focus on staying alive while I try to figure out what the boss is about.”

“You sure about this?” He asked doubtfully.

“Nope. But well, we’re representing the king!” I tell him.

The other royal guards give a cheer, and Lance nods, “Alright then, let’s do this.”