Chapter 8

John

John hobbled back into camp an hour or two after sunset. He’d been hoping to make it back before dark, but the constant pain in his ribs slowed him down significantly. Despite that pain he went straight to Olivia’s house skipping a visit to the healers. He pounded on the door and heard Olivia grumble as she got up. As soon as she opened the door he stuck the flower out in front of him and said “I’ve got big news Olivia!” he waited for her to ask what it was, but instead she said “Dear gods John couldn’t you have waited till the morning to proposition me? Also couldn’t you clean yourself up more?” John blushed before saying “ Uhh. That wasn’t what I was going for. Look at the flower!” Olivia held up her lamp to get a better look and after examining it for a few seconds she grabbed John and shook him as she asked “ Is that a mist lily?” John winced and nodded before Olivia continued asking another question “ Could you not have treated it better? It's probably lost half its value being crushed by your big mitts.”

John took that as an opportunity to bring up the second piece of big news. He said “Actually I couldn't. I didn’t just find a single mist lily, I found a dungeon that grows them, and it took offence to me trying to take its flowers.” Olivia paused and said “Is that why you were wincing earlier? Come on John. You should know better than to stop by here before getting medical treatment if it's not a life or death situation.” John scratched his head and gave a chagrined grin before saying “ Your right. I just got a little over excited. This is an untamed dungeon you know. Entirely new territory. Somewhere that treasures abound. A proving ground where the strongest adventurers are forged. Surely you can’t expect me to just accept it calmly.” Olivia sighed and said “ I don’t, but let's get you to the medics for now and you can tell me everything while they patch you up.” After that Olivia helped John over to the medical tent and half listened to his babbling as she thought about the new complications this would bring.

Olivia

Olivia was sitting in her office still thinking about the new complications the discovery of the dungeon would bring. Apparently John had gotten a mild concussion to go with his fractured ribs, so he wasn’t able to give too clear of an account, but if just the part she had understood was true then that was already enough to change the future of the whole settlement. Instead of making slow profits off of the settlement's farms they could pay back the entire cost of the expedition within a few months instead of the years they projected. That could lead to its own complications as adventurers and farmers alike lost their obligation to the camp and became entirely free men, but for now that was far enough away that she decided to not worry about it.

What she did have to worry about was whether or not to use her communication crystal. They only had one to be used in case of emergency, and if an issue came up after that they were on their own until the next supply ship came in. She pushed that worry to the side as well after reminding herself that John had a concussion, and they needed to verify what John had told her. The problem was that they needed to verify it quickly. Their next supply ship was supposed to leave in two days, and if she didn’t contact them before then she didn’t know if the dungeon would be important enough for them to send a separate ship along with the supply ship. She considered it for a while longer, but eventually went back to sleep since nothing could be done until John woke up.

Olivia woke up bright and early and headed over to the medical tent. John was already up and eating breakfast, so she went straight over to him and said “ Are you feeling alright?” John smiled and responded “Yep. The healers say I get a nice vacation for the next few days so why wouldn’t I be?” Olivia chuckled before saying “in that case let's get down to business. Can you tell me where the dungeon is, how sure you are that it is a dungeon, and what danger there was? John nodded and said “the easiest way to get to the dungeon is to follow the demi-human’s tracks until you hit a river, and then follow the river upstream until you reach a waterfall. The entrance to the dungeon is behind the waterfall. And I am one-hundred percent sure it is a dungeon. Once I went in the entrance I was assaulted by an overwhelming mana pressure, and had to channel both of my runes to keep it from freezing me up. As for the last question I can’t help you much. I got hit by some headbutting fish for my injuries, but they wouldn’t be too dangerous if you were prepared for them and had decent footing. The problem is they are the only defenders I saw, and the dungeon looked cave based so I'm sure it has some defense other than fish.” As soon as he finished talking Olivia said “ Alright. In that case I need to go send people to check it out. Get better quickly so you can join them in a few days.”

With that said she left the healers and went to find whatever free adventurers there were to check out the dungeon. After looking around for a while she found that the only free adventurers were Chase, Camille, and Sam. She gathered them up, told them everything John had told her about the dungeon, and then sent them off with strict orders to be back before night.

Chase

Chase was in a bad mood. First someone didn’t cover his side so he was injured by those little demi-human assholes, and then as soon as he was recovered the bitch who was leading the expedition sent him on another dangerous mission with only two girls to help him. If she hadn’t slept her way to the top he probably would have been in charge and could have sent someone else on this shitty mission, or at least have some better helpers than the chicks he was stuck with. The only consolation he had was that they had finally arrived at the dungeon and he could start getting this shitty mission over with.

To get into the dungeon they ran along the wall, and got behind the waterfall before the fish had a chance to attack them. Once they got inside he looked around to try and find the mist lilies they had been told about, and saw them growing right behind the waterfall. He couldn’t believe that idiot John hadn’t taken the time to harvest all of them. He was about to start plucking them when one of the girls yelled at him to stop saying “we need to defend against mana attacks before harvesting anything. Did you even listen to Olivia?” Chase snorted before responding “Fine. You do that and I’ll harvest the flowers. He felt the girl behind him push her mana out into a bubble and started to harvest the flowers immediately, but he didn't get far before running into a problem.

As soon as he started to harvest the flowers, two wolves came from within the cave. He decided the best defense was a good offense, so he drew his weapon and charged towards the wolves. He approached them quickly and started a big swing to finish one off early, but before he could manage he was struck with an enormous amount of mana pressure. He stopped and could only watch as his arms dropped like dead weights instead of killing the wolf he had been aiming for. Before he had a chance to channel his mana to resist the wolves attacked. One was hit by an arrow and had its leap interrupted, but the other managed to bite his hand. He watched in horror as it gnawed, but was unable to move. He thought he was going to die, but then the girl who was blocking the mana pressure finally stepped up. He felt the mana leave his body and kicked the wolf away from him.

He started to go after the wolf to get revenge for his hand, but one of the girls grabbed him and started pulling him towards the exit. The sprinted across the ledge with fish flying all around them and only stopped when they got to the treeline. As soon as they were safe Chase turned to the girl in charge of resisting the dungeons mana and started yelling. “ What the fuck were you doing! How can you call yourself an adventurer when you can’t even protect your team from a little bit of mana pressure. If you weren’t so incompotent then that wolf would never have gotten my hand.” He took a deep breath as he got ready to say more, but the other girl came between them and started yelling back. “What do you mean what was she doing! You just sprinted out of the area she was protecting without telling her anything! If anything you're lucky you only lost a few fingers. If we hadn’t reacted quickly the wolves would probably be having a snack right now and If I didn’t block the fish for you on the way out then you would have broken ribs to go along with your hand” Chase turned on the other girl and was about to start pointing out everything she did wrong, when the first intervened. She put a hand on his shoulder and said “Umm. I know you are angry but you need to treat your hand. You're bleeding a lot.”

He looked down and saw that it would difficult to bandage his own hand, so he let the girl do it even though she was probably going to fuck it up just like she did dealing with the mana. Once she was done he shook his arm out of her grasp and said “Let’s just get back to camp and maybe they will give me someone competent to work with next time” before walking off without waiting for them to respond.

Sam

Sam watched Chase walk off and wondered how someone as stupid as him was let on the expedition in the first place. She walked up to Camille and saw the beginnings of tears in her eyes. She tried to comfort her saying “Chase is an asshole Cam. If you blame yourself every time some idiot gets injured then living on the frontier will be hell.” Unfortunately, her consolations didn’t seem to do much, and they needed to start heading back to camp soon or they would be hiking in the dark. As they started the hike back she tried to forget about how much of an asshole Chase was and focus on her surroundings, but her arm was throbbing from where she blocked one of the fish for that bastard and that was making it difficult to forget.

The aching in her arm made it so the hike ended up being long and unpleasant, but they managed to make it back to camp before sunset. They went to the healer’s tent to get patched up, and then went to Olivia’s to give her a report on what happened. Right as they were walking up to Olivia’s Chase stormed out. He stopped for a second to give them a triumphant smile that made her worried, but at least he didn’t try and make any trouble.

She walked in and gave Olivia a stiff salute which Olivia matched. Sam was about to start describing what happened at the dungeon, but before she could Olivia started the conversation by saying “ Chase just came in here spinning a pretty damning tale about you two, but I figure it’s only fair to get both sides of the story before I come to a conclusion.” Sam thought about the best way to respond for a second before deciding simple was best and said “ Chase is an asshole mam. He didn’t coordinate at all, treated us like trash, and blamed us for everything that went wrong. Next time we go on a mission I would rather be down a man than have him.” After that she told Olivia all the details. Chase calling them girls, Chase charging out of the range Camille was protecting with her mana, and Chase leaving to head back to camp while they were tending their wounds. Olivia listened quietly the entire time, and then said “Alright, don’t worry about Chase too much. From now on I’ll do my best to keep you all separate. Forget about Chase for now and tell me everything you noticed about the dungeon.”

Sam cleared her throat before saying “ Ah well, I haven’t been to many dungeons before, but I noticed a few things. The dungeon had both wolves and fish as claimed creatures and normally I wouldn’t expect either of those. Most dungeons choose creatures that are better suited to living in caves. I also noticed that the dungeon didn’t have much experience fighting humans. The wolves didn’t react at all when I pulled out my bow. That makes me think the dungeon had never seen one before. On top of that it didn’t have any traps, which probably means it's never faced a serious threat before. The last thing I noticed was the flowers. I didn’t have time to gather any samples but I’m pretty sure there were valuable flowers other than Mist lilies. The only one I recognized was a blood river flower, but all the flowers growing there had mana fluctuations.” Sam waited at attention while Olivia thought and was very happy when Olivia said “All that information will be very useful for my communication with the mainland. You and Camille can take tomorrow off if you’d like.” Sam took that as a dismissal and saluted once more before heading back to her tent for a well deserved rest.

Chancellor Harry Alexander Philip IV

Chancellor Harry Alexander Philip IV or Chap as his friends liked to call him was settling into his office waiting for an intern to bring him his tea when one of the emergency communication crystals started to glow. He sighed, wondering how settlements ended up running into problems so often. They didn’t even have to fight any vampires for their land, but they constantly used their emergency stones complaining “ A frost snap ruined our harvest, if you don’t send more supplies we will starve” or “An unknown monster has been picking off our farmers and none of the adventures can find a trace. Can’t you please send a mage tracker to help?” He really wished he could just leave all those idiots out there to live and die on their own, but if he gave the royal family a report about a failed settlement and then they learned it was because he didn’t have enough time to send them over a shipload of carrots he would be joining those settlers in the underworld. After considering that he reluctantly pushed his mana into the crystal and started to listen.

A woman began speaking saying “Greetings lord Chancellor. I call.” he interrupted her saying “ Just get to the point already. I have an appointment coming up and don’t want to be late.” There was a slight pause before the woman responded saying “Alright sir. I called because we found a dungeon.” As soon as she paused the chancellor started talking again saying “And why does that matter? We have plenty of dungeons over here.” the women responded “Well the dungeon is unexplored and it produces valuable materials so we thought you might want to send over some goods to help us explore it. Without runes to resist the dungeons mana, potions to restore our adventurers health, and more weapons we won’t be able to make much progress.” Once she stopped the Chancellor responded “What could there possibly be out there that would be worth sending you all that? The shipping costs alone mean that it would barely be worth it even if the dungeon produced pure gold.” the woman responded “Ah, well, we haven’t been able to identify most of the materials, but we did confirm that the dungeon is cultivating mist lilies, blood river flowers, and other mana rich flowers.” When the Chancellor heard the first part of the sentence he resisted the urge to hang up straight away, but once he heard about the flowers his attitude completely changed.

His mind started racing as he considered how much this could help his career. He could go from Chancellor of expansion to Field marshall or maybe even marry one of the princesses far down the line of succession. He made sure to ask the woman everything else she knew about the dungeon, but it seemed like they had gathered hardly any information. He told her “ Alright. I’ll make some changes to your next supply ship.” and then he started working in earnest. He called his assistant and had her cancel his meeting with his mistress before calling the entire department in to start working.