Chapter Fourteen

John immediately got back to work when he arrived at the settlement. He started by going to Olivia’s to get permission for everything on the list. Unfortunately that meant his momentum was stalled since he had to wait an hour just to slip in between her meetings.

When a gap finally arrived he burst in the doors and said “The dungeon will do it. I just need to do a few tasks and I’ll be tier two in no time!”

Olivia said “That’s great. Any tasks that will be troublesome?”

“That’s actually what I came here to talk to you about. Most stuff on the list is simple, but I wanted you to look it over and see if there are any issues.”

He handed over the list he had written and waited as she looked through it. After a minute she put it down and said “The only thing that might be sticking points are the powerful creature and the new rune.”

“Why would those be an issue? I can just go and catch some young creatures. And for the new rune don’t we have a space mage in town? He’s got to have an extra rune.”

“The apprentice mage left town after he sent the first samples back. Plus even if he was in town I doubt he’d give up one of his space runes. Being rare and expensive tends to make people hold onto things.”

“Then what about getting the settlement manager to send one? I’m sure I can afford it after all the raiding I've done.” John said

“You could probably afford it, but I’m not sure the manager will want to send one. His main job is making sure we get enough blood river flowers. He probably won’t give you one because who knows whether or not it’ll make the dungeon harder to raid.” Olivia said

“Well, I’ll just have to figure it out later.” With official business done John slipped around Olivia’s desk till he was right next to her and asked “Now what about those plans for dinner? Should I start hunting down our chef and wine?”

“I’ll try and be done by sunset, but you’ll have to stop distracting me from my work for that.”

John gave a quick bow and said “As my lady commands.” and walked out the door. As it was closing behind him he heard Olivia yell “And don’t forget the honeyed treats!”

With that reminder he set about getting everything ready for dinner. Starting with visiting the baker. Then he went to the bar and smooth talked the owner into selling a bottle of wine from his personal stash, and then he brought the chef a rabbit he managed to kill on the way back from the dungeon. With all that done he rested in his room till sunset. Once the sun was down he went back to the office and waited for Olivia to finish up. After half an hour she came out and dinner began. They walked over to the kitchens arm in arm, got their food, and then John turned to Olivia and asked “Where shall we eat?”

Olivia thought for a second and said “They just installed light crystals in my office the other day. How about we go back there so we don’t have to mess with candles.”

John said “That's fine with me.” and then they rushed back to the office to make sure the food was still warm. They ate and drank their fill. Only stopping when their wine bottle ran dry. That seemed to signal the end of dinner, so John stood up and said “We’d better get to sleep. I bet tomorrow's meetings are already not going to be fun for you. “

John escorted Olivia over to her cabin. Once they were there he was about to leave for his own to get some sleep when Olivia grabbed his hand and said “You can join me for the night.” Then she pulled him inside.

When John woke up he realized that he wasn’t in his own bed. He looked around for Olivia and found that she must have already left, so he laid back in bed and gathered himself for a second. What a night that had been. Dinners like that definitely need to happen more often. He basked for a little while longer, but then his stomach started to growl so he got up and headed to breakfast. He ate quickly before getting all his standard gear and going to find Sam and Camille to see if they had the free time to help him complete the dungeons requests.

He found both of them at the adventurer’s guild training.

“What are you guys doing here? I thought for sure that you would be out doing something exciting now that you’re tier two.”

“Lou’s very insistent on us getting used to our new strength before we do anything interesting. I was thinking we could just do some shallow dungeon raids to get used to it, but Camille wants to play it safe.” Sam said.

“I’m just being reasonable.” Camille said “Plus Bjorn talked about how important it is to be in total control of your mana as well. Can’t you deal with a little boredom?”

“I have the perfect solution to both of your problems. You should come help me get some of the dungeon’s tasks done. They aren’t super exciting, but they are more interesting than staying here at the training ground. And you’d be helping me out.” John said

‘I’m in. What about you Camille?”

“I still need to get a better grasp of controlling a lot of mana before I do anything serious. What kind of tasks are we talking here?” Camille asked

“I was thinking we bring some weeping willows to the dungeon and scout around to see if we can find any animal tracks. That simple enough for you?” John said.

Camille paused for a moment to think and then said “I guess it is getting a bit boring training here. Let's go.”

Once she said that they all grabbed their gear and hurried out to the forest. They hiked out far past the settlements' planned expansions, and then started to look for weeping willows they could bring to the dungeon. As soon as they found one they would chop off all the branches that were low enough to reach them and then dig the tree up by the roots before dragging it to the dungeon. They repeated that many times over the next week until the dungeon agreed that they had brought enough trees to fulfill that part of the promise.

With that done they took a day off to rest, and then they decided to move on to looking for the strong creature. They spent days hiking around all the edges of the settlement looking for a creature they could bring to the dungeon. John was just about to give up hope when Sam knelt down in the dirt.

“Did you find something Sam? Please tell me you found something.”

I did. I think we finally caught a break. These look like tracks from a momma bear and cubs to me.”

“I hate to be a buzzkill, but is a bear even strong enough? I thought you guys said it had to be something that could fight tier two adventurers?” Camille interjected.

“Unless the dungeon expects us to find a mana beast or bring something from another dungeon I think this is the best we are going to get. Lets just bring these and negotiate with the dungeon. It's been reasonable so far.” John said

Sam nodded in agreement and then she said. “I’ll follow the tracks. The winds favorable right now so if we stay quiet we might be able to sneak the cubs out without a fight.”

They followed the tracks as quietly as they could. The occasional crunch of vegetation was the only sound they made. After half an hour Sam called for a halt.

“I think we’ve about caught up. Get ready to deal with an angry momma bear.”

They worked their way through the underbrush for a while longer. Then they started to hear some chortling from up ahead. They advanced and saw that it was the two cubs that they were looking for.

John looked around and then asked “Should we just take them and run?”

“The Momma bear will be able to follow the scent, but if we get to the dungeon fast enough then it won’t be our problem.” Sam said

They approached, John and Camille picked up a cub each, and then started hiking to the dungeon as quickly as they could. On the way over Camille started petting the cub before saying

“How about we keep one of them as a pet? They’re warm, fuzzy, and young enough that we could probably find a ranger to train it.”

John scratched the cub he was carrying as well before saying “They're nice and soft, but I don’t want to tempt fate. I’m worried the Momma bear will follow us back and Olivia will put us through the ringer when it eats some poor farmer.”

“Plus think of how much hunting you’d need to do to feed it. Better just to give it to the dungeon” Sam chimed in.

“Fine. But give me that other cub. I want to enjoy the fuzz on the way to the there.”

John handed over the bear and then they finished walking to the dungeon. They walked inside and then waited for Mav to show up. After thirty minutes she walked in and Camille handed over the bears after giving them one last pat.

“The Holy tree says bears aren’t strong enough.”

“I don’t know of any stronger animals and I haven’t seen any mana beasts. If that isn’t good enough what should we do?”

There was a pause as Mav communicated with the gem and then she said “Holy Tree will take them if you bring a few other creatures. Just try and get new things.”

John thought for a second, trying to figure out if that was fair, and decided that it wasn’t too much of a hassle. Plus he wanted to make sure the dungeon had a good impression of him when it was leveling him up.

“Alright. These won’t be as strong though. I’ll be back later in the week with the other goods”