Zach accepted the quest and started moving through the crowd towards the dwarf, but as people began getting back to what they were doing, Zach was force to stand still. Just as the crowd thinned enough for Zach to move, he realized that the dwarf had disappeared back into the inn. Giving it a few more minutes, Zach walked up to Andy and Alexa before heading into the Ugly Elemental with everyone else. As the doors opened and Zach walked through the wooden door frame, he found himself on a small landing that had stairs leading up and down. It seemed that in order for the inn to have more space. They had come up with a spilt level floor, going down the stairs Zach saw a wooden floor with several lower tables and benches that the dwarves were settling around; while the upper level contained a deck with several open windows for light and a slight breeze to come in.

Andy pushed past Zach towards the main bar on the lower deck; while Alexa, Zach and his golem made their way up the stairs to a small table near an open window. As they sat down, Zach looked down to see Andy talking with the half-man half-elemental. “He has earth corruption from being petrified.” Alexa said. Turing back to Alexa, as she motioned to the innkeeper. “My mother told me about it. Strong earth mana beasts can inject a poison or have an ability that causes your earth mana to replace your body with rock. If you are strong enough earth cultivator than you can use the mana channels in the rock to still move and function with the Stone Shaping spell. There really isn’t a cure for it, the venom actually attaches to the earth element and force all the other types of mana to leave the area. In order to heal it, people have to cultivate all the other elements to a higher level than the mana beast that bit you. My guess is he retired from adventuring to do just that.”

Zach turned to her and arched an eyebrow. “That’s one hell of a guess? What makes you think of any of that?” Alexa pointed over to a small wall mounted display and Zach saw a map of the Bellmore Dungeon mounted with a shield and hammer. The map three main circles just touching each other, inside of the first two circles black lines and symbols lined the map showing traps, creatures and even boss rooms. There was a small date scored into the board below the map along with the words, ‘There is always a path.’

Zach was just to about to ask Alexa about the map when Andy came up to their table and placed a three of mugs of ale and two keys down on it. “Ok,” Andy said, “I got us rooms for the week and information on the dungeon.” Zach looked up at Andy. “The innkeeper was a previous adventurer and did solo runs in the Bellmare Dungeon.” Zach turned to Alexa and saw that she had a smug smile on her face. Andy ignored the two of them to sit down in an empty chair.

Zach picked up his drink and started taking a sip when Andy let his bombshell drop. “It a pretty standard dungeon for the first twenty floors. The first four floors are sewers, basically the tunnels twist and turn allowing for swarms of rats, slimes, dire rats, spiders, ghouls, and leeches. The floors are heavily travelled as the slimes give the ability of Mana Sight after killing a hundred of them. Most teams of adventurers will focus on them; the rats and leeches are left alone as their abilities and loot isn’t anything great; while some of the spiders and ghouls drop the more common party grimoire upgrades, like mapping, roles and rules. Otherwise, most of the beasts will be weak against fire and bright flashes of light usually stun them. The last boss of the sewer node is a Decay Jelly, most adventurers do not attempt the jelly without a mage or a lot of disposable equipment as it eats equipment.”

Andy took a long drink from his ale, reminding Zach that his own drink was untouched. The ceramic mug reached Zachs lips and a warm but slightly fruity drink greeted him as he took his first slip. After a few drinks Andy started back up, “After the Decay Jelly the dungeon turns into an earth node with long tunnels of rock with bits of ore and gems that occasionally turn into a cavern or dangerous pitfalls. The next eight levels are filled with earth elementals, lizards, kobolds, goblins, and rock trolls. The majority of the bosses tend to be Earth Elementals with ore mainly dropping in the boss room. The bartender never made it pass the eighth floor as the boss had a couple of lizards with a poison bite. What he heard though is after the earth node is down it goes into a death node, which is organized into a huge necropolis. Lot of the regular groups farm the war plains but hardly go pass that as it becomes city warfare. However, if you can get pass the boss at the gatehouse a lot of books and items for city quests can be found in shops and homes of the necropolis, so every once in a while someone will make an attempt to strike it rich.” Zach had to admit that it did sound like a great place to loot all kinds of stuff, if they could get that far.

Andy took another drink and looked at the two of them. “From the sound of the power levels, the both of you could probably handle everything up to level eight. The Decay Jelly would be a tough fight without a fire or ice spell, but with the lost of some cheap equipment and a careful spell or two, doable. The eighth level boss is a medium earth elemental with a pair of rock lizards. The rock lizards have a petrifying bite that can leave some serious earth corruption if your not careful, and without a serious spell caster or hammer, the elemental is going to take a while to break up, which increases the chances of being bit. So unless we can figure out a way to kill those lizards fast, we won’t be going beyond.” A sour expression turned on Alexa and Zach’s face at thinking about how they would stay in the beginning levels, and never get any real loot.

“So I will go confirm this with the Adventurer’s Guild, pay our fees, and get a map of the floor layouts up to tenth floor. First few floors will be crowded, but I think we should focus on getting the both of you Mana Sight if possible as for our first goal, any beast cores or extra upgrades, we keep and feed to our dungeon. If the both of you really want to test yourselves in the Necropolis for things to help our city core; then Zach, you should look around for a Life and Fire mage tutor. See what they charge for Kotan boards for healing, flesh renewal, and offensive fire spells. Alexa, go ahead and look for a few hammers or maces, they usually do the most damage to earth creatures. Otherwise,” Andy said as he finished up his ale, “spend a little bit of money on whatever, and meet back here before the sun sets. How’s that sound to the both of you?”

Zach and Alexa both nodded their acceptance of the plan and sat drinking the ale. Zach looked back at the map and decided to ask Andy a question, “Why the circles?”

Andy finished this drink and looked over to where the map was and nodded. “The theory is that a dungeon is in an extra-dimensional space which is fueled by an elemental plane, or like a bubble of reality. When a City Core establishes one, it forms this bubble and as mana beasts enter it, the bubble is shaped by their experience and power. Given enough mana and time the bubble expands, until it touches another bubble or another node. So when a node is linked to a dungeon it begins to create pathways to the opposite side. Adventurers call a subsection of the pathways a floor, because the last room or creature in the subsection is identified as a floor boss. The node boss is that final creature of the entire node and has the most say over what the node looks like. At least that’s what Milly told me, then we got really drunk one night and she told me the mages theory on dungeons sharing nodes and how they can be jump points to different cities.” Andy looked at Zach as got out of the chair and stroked his unshaven weathered face and said, “If you want my opinion, it’s because when a dungeon has an open section it’s always a big circle. So most people just think every node is a big circle.” Andy got up and headed out, and Alexa soon followed him to put away her gear into her room leaving Zach to drink alone.

It took about ten minutes for Zach to find his room as the staircase to the third level was on the outside of the building. His room was maybe sixty square feet with a bed and a wooden chest to place things in. Zach cursed the size of the room, as feeling of closing walls came to his mind. “Man, I really should have wrote a fantasy harem story where the inn rooms were closer to the downtown Hilton suites.” Zach said.

Zach heard a snort as Grim appeared on the bed. “At least you’re not bedding down in the stables or in the common room. Besides lets face facts, Courtney is more woman that you can handle, and giving you two slave girls would only mean the awkward silence afterward would be twice as bad.” Zach sighed as some of the equipment he was carrying was placed in the chest and a little bit of weight left his body.

“Well someone is in a mood today,” Zach said to Grim. Grim was wearing a brown T-shirt with a red and yellow bullseye on it that said ‘Shiny’, as he held a paperback copy of ‘I, Robot’.

“Just tired of working on the Hide ability, after working out the basic plan a month ago. You can’t believe how long of process it is too slowly draw out each component and function, translate it to machine specification and then figure out coding for it. Thankfully, as I get one structure down I can translate more of the spell, but it still a boring process that takes a while to even guess the functions of new runes. No wonder anyone working on a spell borrows other people’s work even if it’s more inefficient, trying to come up with just the basics is exhausting.” Grim said as he laid back in the bed and opened the book. The shift in weight on the floor boards creaked gently as Hayze entered through the door. Grim lowered his book slightly as he gave Hayze a dirty look and then started back up in it.

Feeling the uncomfortable tension in the air, Zach realized it would be better to leave and do a little bit of shopping now to force Grim back into his mind. Zach put a few more items in the chest and walked out onto Iron Street. He could see Alexa already haggling with one of the many dwarven smiths around, so he decided to go ahead and see if he couldn’t find an Artificer or Mage tutor. Turning around, hoping for a sign post, Zach just finally gave up and started to ask people for directions. Thankfully someone took the time to explain that Bellmare only had an artificer shop in the inner city, in which he was banned from, but the Mage College was two blocks away from the dungeon.

It took Zach about an hour to get to the Mage College as he browsed the goods of some of the shops along the way. As Zach got close to a couple of four story buildings with a few Minarets on them, he finally got the blue screen he was waiting for.

Building Screen Name:Bellmare’s Mage CollegeMaterial:GraniteSpeciality:UnknownTier:3Abilities Core Communication; Dungeon Link; ???Building Description:Bellmore’s Mage College handles the education for aspiring mages. This facility is only available to Bellmare citizens. Additional permissions needed for more details.

Surprised that the building would be restricted to only people in the town, Zach began to look around the shops lining the street. There were shops for ritual supplies, magical pets, cultivation techniques, and skills books. But it wasn’t till he found an open park with Kotan boards setup next to stone chairs that he finally found what he wanted. As mages and students sat around the boards placing color beads here and there, Zach finally found a mage sitting by himself with a little slate chalkboard that gave rates on spells. Zach looked at the rates and saw that the man could give Zach three tries on a Kotan board for a spell at ten silver, or for eighty silver, you could learn a spell by getting tutoring from the mage.

After asking what spells he could learn, Zach paid a hundred and sixty silver to learn the spells, Fire Arrow and Purge Poison. Apparently, the Mage College held the secrets to restoring petrified flesh, and they kept a monopoly on it milking the adventurers for all that could get. Zach was glad that he paid the extra money as it took six tries on one of the spells even with the guidance of the Mage. The mage explained that Kotan boards changing based on who was playing them forcing mages to help tutor someone in a spell. So after talking with the man a little more and losing a Kotan game against him, Zach left with two new spells and with very little silver. Thinking that he would need to ask Andy and Alexa if they wanted him to buy the healing spell for pertified flesh with DP instead, Zach made his way to the inn as the sky darkened.

Zach arrived at the inn and saw that Andy and Alexa were at a previous table and were having a dinner of herb roasted meat surrounded by vegetables. Zach pulled up a spot at the table and they sat down to share in the food that his companions had ordered. After having his first plate, Andy asked what he had bought and Zach flicked the two spells screens over to Alexa and Andy as he carved off some more of the meat.

With help of Kizar the Broken you have learned two new spells.Spell Name:Flaming ArrowSpell Mastery:0Spell Cost:15 manaSpell Description:By focusing on the element of fire you can summon a small orb of flames and sending it shooting in a direct line. Upon hitting the target it will use its intense heat to burn a hole into their flesh. Armor and auras may lessen the damage.Spell Name:Purge PoisonMana Cost:15Spell Description:You can now hook this spell in the aura of someone for eight hours. Should the person be poisoned a small air pocket will form around the poison and shoot it back out of its entry point. This spell can be cast on a person up to three times in their aura.