Chapter 63: Land Status: Hostile

Once the door had fully opened, Pyri retrieved her Cinderbolt from the ceiling and motioned it forward to illuminate the room in front of them.

There was a large step to get over the top of the upside down door’s frame, and following that, there was a meter drop downward into the room. The current ceiling of the room was the upside down floor, and bolted to it a round wooden table where cobwebs were strewn about from the bottom of the table upwards to the floor. The entire room of the structure ahead of them was upside down, including on the wall opposite them a wooden staircase leading downstairs, which, if the building was upright, would’ve been upstairs. The room was circular and had no other doors, a width of roughly 6 meters, and the ceiling of the room below their vantage point had a singular hole in it where the staircase was, implying that this was just the first floor of the structure, and there was at least one more floor below them. The state of the table and the staircase, alongside the cobwebs, implied that the structure was very old, and a few objects that were likely once on the floor had fallen to the ceiling now that the room was upside down. As Aegis peered down at the ceiling he could make out a few broken chair pieces that must’ve smashed whenever this tower was flipped upside down.

“We’ll know if it's a higher level dungeon the moment we step through.” Lina warned Aegis cautiously as she saw him leaning his head through the doorway.

“Might as well check before leaving, it’ll be awhile before we come back here…” Aegis said as he stood up on the door frame and gently hopped into the room, landing on the upside down ceiling. “Nope, nothing…” Aegis replied as he hopped back up to where the others stood.

Entering Dungeon: [Caverns of Jia'nir - Level 25]

“Huh, weird.” Aegis said as he waved the message away.

“What’s weird?” Lina asked.

“When I jumped back up, it said I entered the Caverns of Jia’nir again.” Aegis replied. “That would mean…”

“It considers this building to be outside any dungeon.” Rakkan finished his thought. “I’ve explored some weird places, but not this weird. How do you suppose a tower ended up like this?” Rakkan asked as his curiosity got the better of him and he jumped through the doorway. No one stopped him, rather the entire party was enamored by the structure and all hopped through behind him save for Aegis.

"Eh, guys, the Boss golem was okay but, I think we should stop here for now and head back to Rene." Aegis called down into the room to them.

"Why? We're just looking around." Pyri shrugged.

"Because we're all carrying a ton of Iron ore and I don't want to risk dropping it. Plus we're not gaining experience right now." Aegis explained.

"Aw c'mon, just a little exploring." Pyri pleaded with puppy dog eyes.

"You kept us couped up killing golems for two weeks, you gotta let us have a little bit of adventure." Darkshot joined in. Aegis' curiousy was also overpowering him and he couldn't resist despite his brain telling him to, and with a big sigh he relented and hopped into the room behind them.

“Just be careful not to touch any traps or anything. We’re just looking around before we head back to Rene.” Aegis instructed them and they all nodded. Pyri carefully maneuvered her Cinderbolt around so they could see the room more clearly while Rakkan spotted markings on the wall and ran over to them. Aegis watched him rub his hands on the markings for a moment before looking away with a look of disappointment.

“Let’s try the next floor, maybe we’ll find some treasure.” Darkshot suggested, motioning to the upside-down stairs. Lina walked over to the hole in the floor leading to the second story of the upside-down building and peered through, seeing only darkness. Pyri walked forward and saw it, deciding to lower her Cinderbolt down into the hole while the others peered in as well.

The second floor of the building had a much higher ceiling, it was a drop of nearly 15 meters, and the walls of the room were lined with old, decrepit wooden bookshelves covered in cobwebs and old tattered books.

“I bet there’s something about this place in one of those books.” Aegis pointed as Rakkan’s face lit up. Without hesitating he hopped through the hole in the floor and grabbed onto one of the nearby bookshelves lining the wall, using the shelves as a ladder to climb down while simultaneously grabbing any books that looked still readable and putting them in his inventory. Pyri was careful with her Cinderbolt to help light his way down while Darkshot followed him a second later.

“This is screaming Wizard tower. There’s always good treasure in Wizard towers.” Darkshot said as he jumped more hastily down the bookshelves, not interested in their contents. He’d spotted at the bottom an upside down iron chest sitting among a pile of books. The moment he got to it, the other three decided to join in. Lina was able to make it to the floor in two hops while Pyri and Aegis took their time, all of them reaching the floor before Rakkan as he started climbing sideways along the bookshelves rather than downwards to grab all the books he could.

“Some of these are beginner spell books for Wizards. I recognize them.” Rakkan called down to them.

“Can you grab them for me?” Pyri asked him excitedly.

“Of course, m’am.” Rakkan replied happily as he continued adding them to his inventory for the time being.

“Wizard treasure, wizard treasure.” Darkshot hummed to himself as he flipped the chest over and saw a rusted lock keeping it shut. A good whack with the bottom of his long bow broke it off and allowed him to pop the chest open. It was full with empty lesser enchanting orbs. Darkshot tried pushing them to the side to see if there was anything else at the bottom, but it was empty.

“Aw man, just crafting junk.” Darkshot sighed, but Aegis on the other hand gladly snatched them up and added them to his inventory.

“Crafting junk? Do you know how expensive these things are?” Aegis groaned at him disapprovingly.

“Yeah yeah, I was hoping for something more treasure-like though.” Darkshot replied.

“I think this might be where the golems came from.” Rakkan suggested as he’d finished scavenging books and jumped to land beside them. “Y’know, if I had to guess. I don’t know how the tower might’ve ended up upside down in a mountain, but it looks like the wizard who lived here was the one who made the golems.” Rakkan explained.

“Makes sense. Must’ve been a powerful wizard.” Aegis replied.

“How do we know he’s not still here?” Pyri suggested, to which they all froze and looked at each other. Looking around the room, Lina saw that there was a trapdoor on the ceiling they stood on with a broken ladder sticking up from it a few centimeters.

“There’s another floor.” Lina pointed it out to the others, but no one was eager to open it.

“Why’d you say something like that mom, now we’re all scared there’s some big ancient wizard waiting to attack us.” Aegis complained.

“What’s the big deal? It’d be fun.” She smiled with a look of excitement as she walked towards the trapdoor.

“Do you have any idea how much iron ore we have in our inventories? If we die at level 30 there’s a good chance we’ll drop it all.” Aegis replied worriedly.

“Okay maybe we should go back now. I don’t want to be stuck mining in this cave again.” Darkshot said hastily.

“Don’t be such wimps, we’re not even in a dungeon right now. How bad could it be?” She waved them off before yanking the trapdoor open. All of them but Pyri held their breath as Pyri peered through the trapdoor down below, but after a few moments, nothing happened. The sound of rushing water echoing off of cavern walls could be heard from below, but no other sounds.

“Water?” Lina whispered in confusion. Curiosity got the better of them and they all moved around the trapdoor to look downward as Pyri motioned the Cinderbolt through the hole to illuminate whatever was below, waving her staff around to control it.

There was nothing, it was empty black space in all directions, nothing for the light of the Cinderbolt to reflect off of. The Cinderbolt light didn’t cover a very large radius, but the lower that Pyri moved it, the more anxious all of them got. It wasn’t until she’d lowered it approximately 30 meters down that they finally saw something reflect light - it was rushing water.

“Some sort of river or lake down there?” Darkshot suggested as they all saw it.

“Wait a second, remember when we fell down from the spider boss?” Aegis looked at Rakkan, and Rakkan’s face lit up with a realization.

“There was an underground river, and a waterfall.” Rakkan replied.

“Yeah that waterfall that almost killed us, it dropped down into a big open cave. You think that’s this?” Aegis asked.

“It’s gotta be. We’re not that far from there, right?” Rakkan replied.

“Jeez, this big open space is underneath Rene?” Darkshot looked in amazement as Pyri moved the Cinderbolt around to try and see anything of interest, eventually finding a rocky shore to the moving water of which broken pieces of a structure could be found.

“I found the rest of the tower.” Pyri said while motioning to the pile of rubble.

“Wait, what’s that?” Darkshot motioned to something giving off a strange glistening shine mixed in with the rubble of the tower, it passed through one broken wall that they could see and overtop another broken chunk of the tower before disappearing into the water.

“It looks like a plant root of some kind.” Rakkan squinted curiously as all but Aegis leaned in to get a better look. He was instead pacing and scratching his chin while pondering something.

“I was wondering why the land management menu was still saying hostile, even though there weren't really any monsters around. I guess it’s because of these caves.” Aegis shrugged to which Lina and Rakkan jerked their heads towards Aegis with expressions of horror.

“W-wait, it says Hostile?” Lina asked him with urgency.

“We gotta go.” Rakkan whispered aggressively as he backed up from the trapdoor hole and started climbing back up the bookshelves.

“Huh? What do you mean? What’s wrong? Why?” Aegis asked, confused as he turned from watching Rakkan flee to looking at Lina’s expression.

“If you wanna keep that iron, we gotta go, now.” Rakkan repeated.

“Land status has a lot of different values. Peaceful, Neutral, Contested, Wild… out of all of them, Hostile is the worst.” Lina replied nervously. “Rakkan is right, we should go.” She motioned Aegis to follow Rakkan’s example, all of her shyness was gone and replaced with a genuine concern.

“Well, what does hostile mean exactly?” Aegis was now feeling worried himself.

“Hey, check this out.” Darkshot motioned down the hole excitedly, interrupting them. Aegis’ curiosity got the best of him as he moved to look and see what he was pointing at, Pyri still staring as well.

“Hostile means that there is either an enemy nation or tribe in control of the land, or… It’s home to a really powerful world boss.” Lina replied while Aegis, Pyri and Darkshot watched what they initially thought was a glistening root slowly move, the tip of it receding from the rubble of the tower into the water until it was fully submerged and no longer visible.

“What was what?” Darkshot whispered.

“I don’t know, I can’t move my Cinderbolt any further, that's my max range.” Pyri whispered back with obvious pure joy - until a second source of light appeared in the cavern below for the first time. A gigantic set of glowing light red eyes opened beneath the surface of the water, glaring up at them. The eyes were each easily the size of the entire tower room they stood in. For a brief moment, [???] in red text became visible above the eyes, below the surface of the water.

“NOPE!” Pyri snapped her fingers to cancel her Cinderbolt spell. “Lumina.” She lit up the end of her staff to see the bookshelves and ran to the nearest one to start climbing.

“Fuck that shit. Grappleshot!” Darkshot spun around and shot an arrow to the hole above, zipping just over Rakkan’s head, and his skill magically created a rope attached to the arrow giving him a way to quickly climb up. Aegis joined in, climbing the Bookshelf beside Pyri.

“Shadowstep!” Lina teleported back up to the floor above after a few casts, reaching her hand down to help everyone get up faster, and as she did, they all heard a horrendously loud, gurgling roar from below that shook the entirety of the tower and caverns around them. Just as Lina finished pulling up Aegis, the last to climb through, a large black tendril crashed through the ceiling of the 2nd floor that they’d just been standing on, destroying it completely and opening it to give a clear view of a giant maw of teeth rising up through the huge cavern towards them.

“GO! GO GO GO!” Darkshot shouted after glancing down to see the light of Lumina reflecting off the hundreds of giant gnarled yellow teeth. It was hard to make out any real details of what sort of creature was pursuing them, only that it had dark slimy skin and was gigantic.

Entering Dungeon: [Caverns of Jia'nir - Level 25]

The message popped up for them as they all jumped through the upside down doorway, Aegis quickly waved it off and turned around with the others.

“Shut it, shut it!” Aegis shouted as they all joined in to help push the set of large double doors shut. They moved slowly, grinding against the stone once more, and every second felt like 10. In the last glimpse of the tower interior they could see, they spotted a large black tendril shoot up through the first floor ceiling and smash the wooden table that’d been bolted to the floor of the upside down tower.

Once the door was completely shut they paused for a moment to catch their breath, but only for a moment.

*Slam!*

The stone double doors shook violently from the tendril banging against it.

“I doubt that’ll hold it. Run!” Aegis shouted, motioning them all forward. No one needed to be told twice - the five of them broke into a sprint through the Jia’nir dungeon. It was a straight tunnel to the exit and as they’d recently cleared the golems, they had no opposition on their way out.

The slamming behind them stopped almost immediately, but none of them were willing to risk stopping. When the exit to the dungeon came into view, they could see the silhouett of a young female human standing at the entrance under the sunlight waiting for them.

"Hey guys! I brought more repairing supplies from Orm!" Amlie waved to them as they sprinted towards her.

"Run Amlie!" Rakkan shouted at her as they got closer and closer.

"Huh? Whats going on?" Amlie asked confused.

"No time to explain!" Rakkan shouted as they reached Amlie. Without stopping, Rakkan swept her off her feet and cradled her in his arms before jumping off the small ledge outside the cavern, the others by his side. Under the sunlight for the first time in a long time, the party just kept running despite knowing they were long out of danger. Down the mountainside under the bright afternoon sun, past the scurrying wildlife and through the tall green grass until they reached the outskirts of Rene.

"We.... we're back." Aegis breathed out.

“Oh sun, how I’ve missed you!” Pyri blew a kiss up towards the sky.

“You always take me to nicest places.” Darkshot playfully slapped Aegis on the shoulder.

"You can put me down now." Amlie shyly said to Rakkan.

"Oh, right, yeah, sorry. There was a big tentacle thing with teeth." Rakkan explained as he gently set Amlie down.

"I didn't see it." Amlie shrugged while avoiding looking at Rakkan. "So does that mean you guys are all done adventuring?" She asked hopeful.

“We're done for now, but we can't leave that thing down there. Is it weird…” Aegis said between breaths as the others looked at him. “When that thing was chasing us… all I was thinking was, I wonder what it’ll feel like to block that thing's attacks?” Aegis asked.

“Y-yeah.” Lina chuckled.

“Lil’ bit.” Rakkan smirked.

“You’re a masochist.” Darkshot sighed. They all went quiet for a moment as they finished catching their breath, throwing each other random looks that slowly turned into big dumb grins.

"That was pretty fun." Pyri declared on everyone's behalf.

"That wasn't even the best part!" Aegis declared. "We have one last thing to do before we all set out to do our intermediate quests."

"Oh yeah? It better not be more mining." Darkshot groaned.

"Nope, even better, crafting new equipment!" Aegis cheered.

"Hell yeah, daddy needs a new bow." Darkshot joined in the enthusiasm.

"Call yourself daddy again and you won't be getting anything." Aegis glared, as Darkshot clued in a moment later and awkwardly glanced away.

"Oh, right, yeah, it's just a thing, y'know, people say it sometimes. I heard it in a song... sorry. Darkshot needs a new bow." He corrected himself timidly.