It was perhaps a strange thing to say, but I almost wished that I were hungover. It had somehow slipped my mind, but when we’d finished building the bar, it had gained an anti-hangover effect, meaning I’d woken up this morning feeling fresh as a daisy.

What that meant practically was that as I stood inside the dungeon, surrounded on all sides by dark obsidian walls, I did so with a completely clear head. While perhaps that normally would have been a blessing, in this case, it only served to make me question my choices even more.

“Can anyone remind me why I decided to do this again?” Sane people didn’t dive into the place they’d recently almost died in just to blow off some steam.

Wonder if they have therapists in Sylum? Has to be healthier than beating monsters up. Probably. Can’t say I ever had the chance to prescribe monster fighting to anyone, so a little hard to say.

A chuckle sounded out. “I believe it was largely the alcohol and the interpersonal issues, dear. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t still a good choice.” Barb flicked his scissors sharply downwards -- likely a habit more than anything else, as they had no blood on them -- before returning them to his back. He surveyed the room before nodding to himself.

Save for our party, it was empty.

It hadn’t been. Much like on my first trip down here, the first room of the dungeon had been filled with shades which surrounded us from all sides.

We’d demolished them.

It was, in fact, Kex who’d ended up being the MVP this time around. After summoning up a mud golem, it had done nearly half the work. Not only did it draw most of the shades’ attacks, but also whenever they were about to heal up, it would fire a mud blast at them. The mud would largely fly straight through the immaterial shades, but in doing so would slam against the wall behind them, coating it. Whatever healing magic the shades had access to when they touched the wall, it failed if they couldn’t make direct contact.

From there, it had been short and sweet. Barb had gained some sort of skill that let his scissors deal magic damage. Jason -- apparently as a side effect from the rock that Aarris had given him -- could imbue his stones with light magic now. Between the two of them, the shades had stood no chance.

While I’d helped a bit with a few choice arrows, I’d been rendered largely superfluous this time around. It wasn’t just me, either.

“Your choice. A good one,” a deep rumbling voice sounded. “You fight here.” He gestured around us to the surrounding dungeon. “You learn to fight here.” He jerked a finger towards himself, poking at his heart.

Jason, Kex, Barb, and I only made four. With Cal gone off to who-knows-where, our old Drawgin dungeon-delving team was down one. Luckily, however, we had an entire contingent of adventurers to pull from. I examined our newest addition.

Eak, Level 16 Disciple of the Revitalizing River: 250/250hp

He was a hulk of a fellow, serving as our party’s healer despite looking more like an ox. Even on top of his size, he was a notable man, completely hairless, without even a pair of eyebrows. He was also one of the very few pale people I’d seen since my arrival, closer in shade to me. Altogether, the overall effect was something like a pro-wrestler had been bitten by a radioactive naked mole rat.

While I’d yet to fully take the measure of the man, he’d at the very least proven himself good at what he did. Only a rare few shots managed to hit any of us, but the moment they did so, soothing waters sank into our wounds, healing them in seconds.

With the fight over, Barb gestured with his head over to the cavern’s exit. “I do believe you’re up now, Tess. We’re in your care.”

I grinned, for the first time in a while feeling fully and deeply confident. Even the first time I’d been here, I’d managed to spot any traps in our way fairly easily, and that was before I’d gained my most recent boon. With Illuminated Sight, the natural darkness of the dungeon was pulled back. After funneling some dark mana into my eyes, my darkvision intensified even further, the area immediately around me as clear as day. That wasn’t even counting the tiny balls of Illumination I’d summoned up.

“Well then, here we go.” As one, the five of us ventured forward.

A few tripwires, a half dozen pitfall traps, and a couple rooms full of shadow bats and dark wolves later, I called the group to a stop. So far, nothing notable had occurred (unless you counted getting bitten by a single bat notable). When it came to the bats, Jason was more than enough to pelt them out of the sky, and when it came to the wolves, Barb proved perfectly happy shaving them down to their pelts.

It was thus that the twin paths that lay before me proved to be the first real oddity we’d encountered. Thinking back to my previous dungeon runs, coming across a fork in the path wasn’t quite standard. Things were only made stranger yet by what looked to be a thin sheet of shaded glass covering one of the paths.

“What this time?” Barb questioned. “Tripwire? Dart trap? General bad feeling?”

It struck me, more than anything else, as a particularly odd question, given the fork ahead of us. “Um. No? Just thought we should decide which way we want to go.” I pointed at the two passages before us, only for four sets of eyes to bore into me blankly.

As my finger hovered in the air, directed at the glass-blocked path, Barb only frowned. “That, dear, would appear to be a wall.” To demonstrate his point, he walked forward and tapped on the glass, finding it to be as solid as expected. “It certainly feels like a wall as well. Are you saying this is not a wall?”

I mean, the glass was a little dark, blending in with the surrounding obsidian, but not that dark. I could understand missing it without any light, but with my Illumination orbs, was it really not obvious? I could see the light streaming through, landing on the far side of the translucent barrier.

Detect Secret has reached level 5!

Whelp, guess that confirmed it. Didn’t really seem that secretive, but to each their own.

Evidently not satisfied with either a tactile or an optical check, Kex approached the divider with her tongue sticking out. Crouching down to start low on the wall, she gave it a painfully large lick.

“Mmm. Tastes thin.”

The other three -- even our newcomer, Eak -- seemed to take that proclamation in stride. I vowed to someday sit down with Kex and figure out exactly what was up with her tastebuds. Or not. Maybe it was better not knowing.

“Thin rocks! I can punch it.” Jason nodded at his own words, and with his arm raised, he approached. To his credit, he took a moment to check for any dissenting voices, but after seeing Barb give a passive shrug, he acted.

“Here we go!” He hammered his fist down into the glass, and at once, it shattered. With it gone, the air grew tense as I half expected the dungeon to retaliate in some way. When, after a few seconds, nothing happened, all five of us let out a collective sigh of relief.

“So, are we choosing to go down the weird sort-of-hidden path?” I hesitated to call it “secret” considering that it had jumped out at me as much as it did, but then again, it sounded like the four of them would have passed it by without me.

“Might as well, no? Perhaps we’ll come across something none of the others have, hmm? Maybe even rivaling our previous hidden discovery, wouldn’t that be nice?” Barb stared wistfully down the pathway, fiddling with the curl of his mustache. “Though perhaps a touch less dangerous.” His words were met with nods all around, and with that, we set down the fork in the road.

The path was blissfully short, normal, and trap-free. As for where it spit us out…

“Well, that’s certainly odd.” Barb absentmindedly stroked his mustache.

I couldn’t help but agree.

For once in the dungeon, the room up ahead was lit. Not well lit, admittedly, but small golden specks in the ceiling gave off a faint illumination, letting even the least perceptive of us look into the dim room.

The cavern was fairly standard in shape, large, circular, and with a craggy dome-shaped ceiling. Much to all of our reliefs, it appeared to be free of enemies. That didn’t mean, however, that it was empty.

Two areas of note made themselves known immediately. Firstly, in the center of the room, there was, for lack of a better word, a… lawn? Possibly a garden if one wanted to be generous. A ring of loose stones circled the bulk of the room, and inside the area they marked off, thick grass grew a bit past ankle high. In keeping with the general theme of gloom and darkness, the grass was entirely black.

Inside the circular garden, the grass stopped as it met another, smaller circle in the garden’s center. Between these stones, nothing grew, a bare patch of earth somehow untouched by the grass outside.

Despite the sight being fairly eye-catching, the ring of grass wasn’t actually what caught my attention first.

On the far end of the room, an obsidian shelf jutted out of the wall. With my Perception as high as it was, I could make out a number of colorful ovular blips sitting there.

Seeds? It would certainly fit with the garden theme, but unless Eak was holding out on us, I didn’t think any of us had a particularly green thumb.

While the room at least looked safe enough, we took a second before walking in to let Kex scout ahead. In her usual disconcerting way, she spat a wad of mud onto the ground, her magic forming it into a miniature spider. It skittered ahead and into the room, scrambling through the grass. As far as Kex could tell, the grass was devoid of any life.

Scouting done, Barb addressed us all. “Do we have a verdict, then? Having run the dungeon before, I suggested that we enter it knowing that we were well-equipped to face what lay within. This, however, is an unknown. It certainly appears enemy-free, but should we wish to play it safe, we could still turn back now.”

After a flurry of glances sent towards one another, a decision was evident in all of our eyes, and we nodded as one. Why bother going down the secret passage if we weren’t even going to check it out? Especially if there were no enemies inside. Barring anything weird, we could always just turn around if we didn’t like what we saw.

That decided, we stepped inside. Thankfully, nothing slammed in place behind us to bar our way back, nor did anything visible change.

Doing his part as our fearless leader, it was Barb who suggested our path forward. “Perhaps some type of puzzle room then? I’m personally of the mind to check out this ‘seed shelf’ first. Shall we?”

We skirted the room, leaving any exploration of the grass for later and making our way to the back. As we neared, it became clear that my initial guess was correct -- the objects were clearly seeds, and a good seven of them were laid out side by side. I hit one of them, an arrestingly bright red seed, with God’s Eye, curious to see what we were dealing with.

Your Herbalism level is insufficient to identify this seed.

Overridden by God’s Eye.

Super-strength Blazeberry Bush Seed

The seed of a berry best known for its fire resistant properties. This particular seed has been modified to be significantly stronger than its average counterpart.

Grows best from within fire.

Some sort of artificially bred super seed? Definitely not what I’d expected from a darkness dungeon, but at least there wasn’t anything trying to bite my face off like there was in the other rooms. Couldn’t really imagine what good it would do me in the short term -- darkness dungeons didn’t really involve many fire attacks -- but it was interesting at least.

I would have continued to identify the remaining six seeds, but before I could, Barb let out a surprised grunt as he halted mid-step.

“There… would appear to be a wall here?” He reached his hand out, only for it to stop shortly in front of him. Despite flexing his muscles and visibly pushing forward, his arm stayed put.

While none of us disbelieved the barber, we all tested the wall for ourselves, unanimously finding that our way forward was barred. It was particularly odd as I couldn’t even see any mana blocking us.

“So. What do we-”

As if waiting for that exact question, a prompt popped up before I could finish my question. Judging from everyone’s startled reactions, we’d all received one.

You have discovered a hidden room!

Welcome to the Community Garden of Slippy the Gentle Garden Snake. Feel free to grow whatever you’d like.

Would you like to make use of the garden?

The garden of… Slippy? How does a snake own a garden?

Well, whatever. At the very least, the snake in question didn’t seem to be home right now, and even if it was, at least it was a gentle garden snake. Judging from everyone’s reactions, their thoughts were much the same.

Barb absentmindedly stroked at his mustache, staring ahead at his prompt with a wispy brow arched up. “Hmm. I can’t think of much of a reason to say no, no? Appears to be some sort of puzzle room, and it doesn’t mention any sort of penalty for participating. Worth exploring further?”

How could we not? A hidden room with no signs of danger. I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as an adventurer, per se, but even so, walking away from something like this would rub me the wrong way.

After a brief discussion in which we all essentially said “duh, yes,” we left it to Barb to accept the prompt.

“Here we go then! Lets hope one of us has some acumen for growing things, yes? Accepting it now.”

A moment later, a loud crash sounded from behind us, causing me to practically jump out of my skin. Turning around, I spotted a massive slab of obsidian where once there had been a tunnel leading back to the rest of the dungeon.

For whatever reason, all five of us were now sealed in.

You have chosen to use the community garden.

Note: All seeds and fruits must be kept within the room at all times. To help you prevent accidental breaches of this rule, the garden has been temporarily sealed.

As thanks for using the garden, please make sure to grow a Snakefruit for Slippy whenever you’re done, at which point the door will open once more.

Happy growing!