The place eventually closes. I found myself incredibly satisfied throughout, but a hole starts to form in my heart as soon as we are in the streets.

“I wanna go again tomorrow” I mutter.

“Ah, be careful man. This sort of thing is only to tide you over. One shouldn’t rely on it too much, you can’t really afford going too often, and you lose out on the finer aspects of women” Nimor warns me.

“What do you mean “finer aspects”

“That, right here. It is all surface level stuff. Empty words and empty gestures. Only when those words and gestures come from someone speaking their heart out, will you feel the true impact.” It somehow saddens me further. I also start to feel embarrassed. We did just pay a rather large amount of money for women to pretend they are interested in us.

“And you will never reach the end goal of a relationship between man and woman with these girls here. No relying on each other, having a dinner made for you or starting a family.”

“You speak as if you know a lot about it, but aren’t you in the same boat as me?” I ask

“No, no my boy. You see, I am married. It’s just that I left my wife in my hometown with the kids, while I work for the hero. I send her half of my salary every few months.” Eugh, I grew a little frustrated. So he has a wife and kids… But, doesn’t that make him kind of a scumbag to fawn over a woman like that?

“Stop looking at me like that. A man needs to be complimented by a beautiful woman, even if he is far from home” He defends himself from my judging gaze.

“By the way, what salary? I haven’t received anything yet?”

“Eh? Really? You better talk to Ahorn about that the next chance you get”.

A few weeks pass. We grow better at following orders, working together and relying on each other. In addition, I get my wages fixed and often end up going to the weird bar, often alone. I feel shameful afterwards, but the experience is so pleasant and alluring I can’t stop. The blue-haired girl becomes my favorite, and I even invite her to hang out outside the bar, in a moment of poor judgment. She refuses with a “this is a professional relationship” which kind of bums me out. I have barely visited Amina and Vasha during this time. Eventually, a special day comes.

“Listen up!” Ahorn rouses us. “Today is the day we push our boundaries and dive deep into the dungeon. It will be hard, and there will be casualties, but today, we are making history!” His unsynchronized lip movements rob his little speech of its gravitas, but most don’t seem to mind and cheer as we form up.

Supplies are of little issue. There are two storage users who carry our supplies. One has a heavy limitation of the space of the stuff he can store, and he feels a portion of their weight, but in return, he can freely make the things appear and disappear, as if by a magic trick.

The other seems to have a gift with a much higher capacity, but in return, his gift apparently makes him exhausted really quickly. He doesn’t seem to feel the weight of his load at all. Gifts are weird. One would think they could roughly be split up into categories that function similarly, but there always seem to be at least some small difference between any two gifts.

The expedition initially moves fast. The shortest route to each new floor is already mapped, and the few monsters that stand in our way are weak. I hear Yorgar explain that the previous expedition had a guy with a gift, that allowed him to get a rough idea of the layout of the floor, but he bailed after witnessing the gruesome deaths, even if he himself was in the back.

Seems there will be a lot of trouble once we get to unknown ground.

The danger starts at the 20th floor. It is as if, all of a sudden, the monsters are vastly more powerful. We receive a short briefing on each floor on what to watch out for. On the 20th floor, small, round beasts, about a foot in diameter roll around with relatively high speed. Their trick is they pop upon impact, exploding into a hail of small spikes.

They are dealt with by focusing on defending in a convex formation, such that neighbors in the shield wall don’t take unnecessary damage.

On the 21st floor, massive bat-like creatures drop down from the ceiling, trying to pierce any below with a massive singular spike, growing out of one wing.

On the 22nd floor, formless blobs rush past our defenses and try to grapple our feet, but are repelled by fire.

And so on. Until we have cleared out a small section of the 25th floor. The next floor is for the bile-spewing monstrosities, but we are camping here. I have never slept over in a dungeon without being dead before, I wonder if it is safe?