I looked at the vine trellis that was the passage back up to the 2nd layer. “Plants,” I muttered. I had some experience with plants from my time with Squire Jessica and they were a massive headache. I preferred to avoid them if possible.
It was just that finding this passage up had taken far too long. Even with my Depth Sense, it was much easier feeling out the next passage down, rather than the passage up. And they could be next to each other, or far apart. They just couldn’t be in the same chamber, that was it.
I had spent six days trying to find this exit. The deeper one went, the harder it was to find the passage back up and then one had to actually climb up in most cases. At least it wasn’t just a hole, I couldn’t get out of. The lower layers were completely unfair in this regard.
The real challenge would be the Champion monster waiting above me. I would be directly entering a fight without scouting out the situation first. I could look for another passage back up the layers, but that was just putting off the problem. It was also how many adventurers died, they got overconfident and went too deep.
The last two months of fighting had made me much stronger. I could feel my skills were much higher than previously. I made sure everything was secure, and I knew where all my equipment was. I began climbing quickly. The Champion monster at the top would act quickly.
You couldn’t just stay in the passage. It would attack you there. And hanging from some vines, was not where I wanted to be when I fought a Champion monster of the 2nd layer. I quickly climbed over the top scanning the chamber.
My Danger Sense didn’t trigger and I noted a team of three adventurers fighting some giant vine growth. While it might seem like luck, running into another team in a passage chamber wasn’t surprising. While the dungeon was supposedly infinite and ever changing, they were good choke points.
Also, the dungeon liked to connect places that already existed between layers rather than making some place new. It was a small subtle thing, but it just meant that encounters in rooms like this with passages were more likely. In addition, I didn’t have to fight the Champion monster, which was nice. I moved to the opposite side of the room and waited as they slowly hacked away at the entangled roots, sap spilling out onto the floor and their weapons.
That was going to be a nightmare to clean off. Another reason to avoid plant monsters. Even after killing them you wanted to kill them a second time because sticky sap was a hundred times worse than blood or entrails.
They finally won and looked in my direction. “Peace for peace, fist for fist,” I called out the standard friendly greeting between adventurers in the dungeon.
“Peace for peace, fist for fist,” one of them called back and the tension left the air. I walked over. “You came from the 3rd layer?” a young man asked me.
“Yes. You heading down?” I asked.
“Yes,” he replied.
“I came from the passage with gravel. Is the passage back up close by?” I asked.
“No. We have been adventuring for over a week on this layer,” he replied. That was unfortunate and fortunate at the same time. The location of the dungeon shifted, so it could get confusing. Normally you came back up in the general area where you took a passage down from the surface.
Even if you went all the way down to the lower layers, the dungeon generally tended to send people back up to around where they had entered from. The exception being if you ran into another passage to the surface and team. If I took their passage, then my exit point could shift very rapidly.
Traveling through the dungeon was possible to another location on the surface, but not easy or simple. You had to find other people and their passage had to still be nearby. In almost every instance, it was faster to go to the surface and travel that way. It was also why I was running into humans and not other races. Since the dungeon had people encounter each other from the same region. There weren’t clear boundaries in the dungeon, but you were more likely to meet someone who had entered the dungeon from the same city as you than someone from another city or nation.
The dungeon didn’t segregate people but didn’t let people run into each other that often. It was supposedly infinite after all. Even with all the people wandering about the 1st layer, teams or individuals rarely ran into each other.
“Which way did you come?” I asked.
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“That tunnel,” the man pointed it out. I wouldn’t be taking that one out of the chamber.
“Thanks. May you find what you desire in the dungeon and return alive,” I gave the standard farewell.
“You as well, fellow adventurer, safe travels,” he said. There was no need to exchange names or anything else as polite adventurers. That was how most run ins were supposed to go. You didn’t interfere in the fight unless it was a desperate struggle, staying out of the way and in clear view. You said hi, chatted about the direction you both had come from, and then both groups would say goodbye.
Anything else would just invite suspicion. There was no law enforcement in the dungeon, only the law the adventurers down here made. While there were some bad people, the risk of running into a high level person traveling through the layers was not zero.
Squire Jessica let me know some high level people even pretended to be weak, just to draw out bad people like that and kill them. The monsters down here were enough for everyone without darker intentions. It was also why it was the standard thing to just say hi and then move on when running into someone else.
If I had wanted to chat, then they would wonder why. With Squire Jessica and the new group of adventurers, she was giving a helping hand while showing me the struggles regular adventurers faced. While it wasn’t polite to use them as a lesson, they got some guidance as well.
Also, that Clean spell. That was very high up on my list of spells to learn. I set off right away, glad I didn’t have to fight that Champion monster. They could have fun getting its core out of all that sap.
The 2nd layer felt like a breeze after fighting in the 3rd layer. I was still incredibly careful about traps and analyzing monsters before fights, but I had a much larger margin of error to work with. I pushed myself by trying to keep my armor clean, so I didn’t have to spend so much time caring for it.
I would be getting rid of it to a second hand shop once I got out of the dungeon. It was incredibly smelly and almost a weapon on its own. Also, it had taken some heavy damage down here from general wear and tear and all the fighting I had done. The Adventurer’s Guild would probably handle it, since they clearly had streamlined the services for adventurers. While adventurers made good money, good equipment was also expensive.
Trying to find the passage up to the 1st layer was a hassle. While I had Depth Sense, it was best for finding the passage down, not up. When I finally found the passage, I let out a sigh of relief.
It was a waterfall with a spiral staircase going around it up to the next layer. Very scenic, but the stairs were wet. Footing would be an issue, even with my combat boots. At least I didn’t have to climb so I could keep my sword and shield in hand.
The Champion at the top was some kind of flying eel, that emitted a weak shocking aura. It was fairly slow and I had time to get out my bow and shoot it down as water poured down from the ceiling flowing into channels that eventually flowed to the passage. One of the nicer chambers in terms of aesthetics.
I got the monster core and continued on my way, trying to find a passage back up. I wasn’t sure if I would take one that didn’t lead to Monolith. I knew of the various human nations and major cities. It was why there was an Adventurer’s Guild. People could pop up in different locations from the dungeon and it helped handle such issues.
Normally adventurers took it as a sign to look about the new city before going back into the dungeon. Only if they had family did they try to get back to their original city. The transportation business was doing quite well since adventurers coming back up tended to have money needed to pay for transportation to another city.
The 1st layer was even easier. The monsters seemed so much easier now, compared to the lower layers. I would have to ask my mother about that, how she found the difficulty scaling of the dungeon.
My mother probably just ran through the upper layers when trying to get back to the surface. While it was tempting to do something similar, I was nowhere near strong enough to survive a trap. Even the monsters could get tricky if I wasn’t careful.
I kept trying to sense the passage to the upper layer as I randomly picked tunnels. While my mother had given me a device to keep track of the time in the dungeon, she hadn’t given me an exit device. I hadn’t asked her why, but it was clearly to improve my Depth Sense.
Tools could be lost or destroyed, but skills remained with a person. I finally felt a slight push instead of a pull after finishing off several skeletons in a chamber. Focusing and steadying my breathing, I could tell that there was something down a particular tunnel. I liked skeletons, easy to collect cores.
Making my way down the tunnel I felt a push from, I found a passage back up to the surface. A spiral staircase with the name of the city etched onto the bottom step. Monolith, which was nice. I wouldn’t worry about how to get back to the city I had started from. I began climbing up the spiral staircase.
The Mana in the air faded away. It was oppressive to my senses, but not overly so. Like a fog that made things more difficult the greater the distance. It was clearly designed by the dungeon to stop people from observing at very long distances as it moved things about and created monsters.
Some thought the dungeon was mysterious. I thought it just might be shy. It was super powerful, but it did so many odd things. I had a lot of time to think while I rested in the dungeon and that was what I thought most about. What was the purpose of the dungeon? Why did it do the things it did?
I was beginning to understand how the College of Advancement came to be. People had questions and they worked to find answers any way possible. While there was a lot of fighting, there was a lot of rest time as well. I needed to let my reserves recover. While I didn’t mind pushing myself in a fight, I wasn’t suicidal.
As I climbed up the stairs, I couldn’t wait to pay for a relaxing day at a spa and some sweets. I had two days before the three month time period was up. I was hoping my mother wouldn’t come bother me early. She might scold me for leaving early, but I had enough of the dungeon for now.
It was a good experience, but there was something about civilization that was nice.