Leuen’s first job for the guild was remarkably easy to set up. He didn’t see Kara when he went in to sign up for one, but he also hadn’t expected to, considering the receptionists that handle setting up requests and the type of receptionist Kara is are different. The request he took was pretty simple sounding, just a request from another party in the guild for an additional set of hands to help go into a dungeon, which fit perfectly with Leuen’s short term goal.

 

After his exploration of and night in the abandoned dungeon, Leuen has decided he’d like to learn more about them and how they’re supposed to work. After all, the Home Crystal had brought him here instead of the place he started in this world, or in place of throwing him back to earth, so he thinks there must be more to dungeons than met his eyes previously. After all, Analyze didn’t work on dungeon walls.

 

Speaking of his stats, he’s only fifteen exp from leveling up, which is an exciting prospect considering he’s yet to do anything he’d consider traditionally worthy of exp in an RPG. Perhaps, he thinks, he could reach incredibly high levels without ever needing to fight anything.

 

Regardless, the group he signed up to help apparently meets in a tavern on the other side of town to the inn he paid for a room at, so on the walk there, Leuen decides to try and fabricate a backstory/persona for his life in this world. He can’t exactly say he’s from another world or that he just ‘showed up’ two days ago, can he?

 

Any sort of adventurer is right out, I could fake generic RPG knowledge all day long but I don’t know the first thing about combat that isn’t friendly martial arts. Some form of rich guy? Doesn’t work, too easy to disprove with a background check. Farmer? I have no knowledge of this world, but that could work once I do. I suppose for now, ‘Country bumpkin seeking his fortune’ works as an explanation if I can keep the money I obtained from the dungeon a relative secret. “I’ve only got what wealth my grandfather left me when he died to my name.” Let’s go with that.

 

Pushing through the tavern door, he spots the group of four that the receptionist described. The party is named after its leader’s surname plus the guild hall’s name, so this party is ‘Voran’s of Riverwake’. The leader of the party is a supposed ‘priest’ named Lucius Voran, though looking at the group at the table Leuen has no idea which of them could possibly be a priest.

 

The two women aren’t Lucius, so he puts them out of his mind for now. The two men are dressed like stereotypical ‘I’m a commoner but also a tough guy’ NPCs. The tunics and vests are closer to gambesons than anything else, pants with various properly secured pockets, and one of them has three different belts, only one of which is useful for his pants, but all of which are covered in pouches and various other things.

 

The women couldn’t be further apart from each other, though the blonde is closer to a female version of the more sensible man than anything else. Instead of a vest, she’s got a sleeved shirt-thing with chainmail covering her vitals and thick leather where she needs to be flexible, plus a leather bandolier-like strap with two swords hanging off the bottom of it. 

 

The other woman’s hair is bright green, something Leuen is just starting to get used to, considering half the people around here have non-standard hair colors, and is dressed like a typical ‘mage’. Bluish robes all the way down to her knees, a book in her hand, mage, obvious as can be. At least it confirms doing magic isn’t out of the ordinary.

 

“Ah, hi, I’m Leuen, I took your request for additional hands.” Leuen extends his hand out to the more moderately dressed man, simply hoping he guesses correctly on who the leader is. When the man takes it, he internally breathes a sigh of relief.

 

“Lucius, good to meet you Leuen. Are you new to the guild? I don’t think I’ve seen you before.” Lucius asks while cordially pulling out a spare chair for Leuen to take.

 

“Yeah. I just signed up yesterday, this is my first request. I’ll be in your care.” Leuen takes a glance around the table, only for the green haired mage to be the first to respond, despite being the one he spent the least time looking at.

 

“Essandir, pleasure.” Essandir offers a hand, but when she realizes that Leuen is too far away from the table to actually take it, she shakes her head at herself. “Later, I suppose.”

 

“Cole.” The other man says rather coldly, before offering up a fist. Leuen bumps it and silently hopes that Cole is the dedicated stoic member of the group.

 

“Ird el Gentrii, third and free.” The blonde, whom Leuen hopes is named Ird, introduces herself with a seated bow, which confuses Leuen enough that he goes to respond. Apparently, Cole notices his confusion, because the man interrupts Leuen before he can begin.

 

“She’s minor nobility. Third means third in line to inherit and free means she’s not bound to any lord or service.” Leuen gives Cole a thankful nod.

 

“Ok, now… I don’t really know what I wanted to say anymore, sorry.” Leuen scratches the back of his head a bit and turns to Lucius.

 

“Don’t have to, warrior priest, 4th rank faith magic.”

 

“Mage, 4th rank elements.” Essandir doesn’t look up from her book when she speaks this time.

 

“I am a warrior, 3rd rank and of the Duelist path.” Ird plays with her ponytail a bit before flicking it back behind her head.

 

“Rogue.” Cole’s tone indicates that he felt this was obvious.

 

“And I have very little clue what it means, but 5th rank warrior.”

 

-X-X-X-

 

“So, have you ever been in a dungeon before?” Lucius asks as the group of five trudge through the woods towards a spot marked on a map Cole has.

 

After it had been briefly explained to Leuen that everyone who has skill in a given field is ranked from 5th to 1st, the group had decided to leave immediately, with the assumption that anything Leuen needed to know could be explained as it came up. He saw no reason to argue with this.

 

“I don’t have any real experience with them, no.” Leuen replies as he bends a branch out of his way with his forearm.

 

“By the way, I can tell when you lie.” Lucius answers somewhat dryly, sending off dozens of alarms in Leuen’s mind.

 

“What?”

 

“Yeah, it’s a faith magic thing, I can tell when someone does something against one of the virtues. I’m not accusing you of being malicious, it just seemed odd that you’d try to lie after I told you I could use faith magic.” Lucius doesn’t seem to mind that the group has stopped moving to pay attention to the conversation.

 

“That would be because I didn’t know that.” A little bit of venom enters Leuen’s voice unintentionally. Leuen had been under the impression that since he’s the only one with a system as far as he knows combined with the fact that home crystal returned him to a city instead of where he actually considers home that his thoughts would be private. No. It’s perfectly natural to assume the inside of your own head is holy ground.

 

“Again, I’m not saying you did it maliciously. There’s a perfectly good suite of reasons to lie about something like that, but it seems like an important thing for you to know, faith magic users can tell when you defy a virtue like honesty or patience.” Lucius shrugs before continuing. “Priests are trained to assume the best in people. If we assumed the worst of everyone who lied, we’d be defying the two greatest virtues of all, Redemption and Forgiveness.”

 

“I see… Thank you for your explanation. I’ll say a lot less from now on.” Leuen doesn’t try to hide his disdain for the concept, hoping that wins him back some honesty and credibility.

 

“No harm. Do you mind if I ask what your experience with dungeons is, though, before we head into one together?” Lucius asks, and Leuen calms a little by walking forward, the group continuing onwards as the conversation moves away from the previous subject.

 

“I’ve been in one once, but I don’t really know what they are or do.” Leuen hopes that’s honest enough not to raise any alarms.

 

“I see. Do you know what the difference is between the threat dungeons pose and the threats wild monsters pose?” Leuen shakes his head at the question.

 

What follows over the course of nearly an hour of walking is an explanation of dungeon ecology, monster behavior, and the difference between living, breathing creatures and dungeon monsters. What Leuen takes away is fourfold:

 

1. Wild monsters are like invasive species of dangerous creatures. Goblins are goblins are goblins in any world, apparently, but they still need to eat, breed, grow, and so on. They’re limited by the resources of their environment, they can be purged from an area, they can group up and migrate, or they can kill each other just as much as they can to humans.
2. Dungeon monsters are not like any sort of living creature. They are created by dungeons for dungeons, to survive in and protect dungeons. They are spawned by the dungeons at a constant rate, but when a dungeon can’t support the dungeon monsters it has spawned, it kicks the excess out into the world, where they become proper living creatures.
3. The problem is that dungeon monsters don’t need to eat or drink as long as they have a steady supply of magic in the environment, and they’re often drastically more efficient as organisms than the counterparts they’re made to represent. Gremlins, for example, are a dungeon’s version of creatures like Goblins, except they don’t need to eat or drink but still will, will never infight, and will never die regardless of the environment as long as they have enough ambient magic to spare and aren’t killed.
4. The problem dungeons pose is that of an infestation. If a dungeon isn’t purged in its entirety, the risk is that over time it will saturate the environment with excess dungeon monsters, permanently damaging the environment and ecosystem in addition to doing normal, murdery monster things.

 

This explanation gives certain context to some things, but no real explanation as to what dungeons are. Then again, Leuen supposes that an adventurer that makes money by purging dungeons might not care what dungeons are in the same way that he’s curious about. They’re a fact of life and a problem for these people, not much more explanation required.

 

“We’re here.” Cole’s voice from the front shuts down the last dregs of Essandir’s elaborations of the ecological consequences of dungeon monsters (something Leuen was ignoring). “No stragglers out front or obvious signs of overflow.”

 

Leuen recognizes the terms, and takes the time to walk up near Cole and examine the dungeon as he points it out to Lucius. Perhaps luckily for Leuen, it isn’t the same one from two days ago, though he’s not sure that would be a bad thing.

 

“Right. The plan.” Lucius turns to the group, settling his eyes on each member for a moment. “We have a new guy, time for you to learn what we wanted you for.”

 

Unceremoniously, Ird and Cole push Leuen in front of Essandir before Cole takes a position next to him and Ird stands behind him.

 

“You two, as usual, Leuen and Essandir, congratulations on being buddies. In dungeons, you always travel with one melee combatant and one support in pairs, ideally with your frontline healer, Me, as an off support between the two frontlines. As long as we never break formation, we can’t get separated and are always close enough to help each other out of traps without getting in each other’s way. Got it?” Lucius is only talking to Leuen now, and Leuen simply tries to nod and follow along.

 

Honestly, ‘buddy system’ with a melee and a support sounds like a decent strategy. In real life, a D&D 5ft square is definitely enough for two people to share in a formation. My only misgiving is the idea that the healer is supposed to be a frontliner with no dedicated support, it seems a little backwards. Then again, supposedly Lucius is a warrior who can also use magic, so maybe that’s why? I still don’t think it sounds all that perfect.

 

The dungeon isn’t a dirty hole with doors this time around, instead being a rather pleasant looking wooden archway with iron doors set into a hillside. Just like the previous dungeon he saw, Leuen notes the lack of any plant growth for a few feet near the dungeon entrance, and assumes this is because the entrance is considered part of the dungeon somehow.

 

“Question.”

 

“Go?” Lucius replies quizzically.

 

“So I’m basically here to be Essandir’s dedicated bodyguard, and I assume you or Ird was doing that before, right?” Lucius nods for Leuen to continue. “Are parties usually groups of five, then? Or are you normally supposed to have a guard with you, instead of being a hybrid warrior and healer?”

 

“Kind of. Most parties are groups of five or six, but the stronger adventurers get, the more biased things become towards the support end of things. After all, Ird could probably take me, you, and Cole all at the same time, and she’s only 3rd rank.” Lucius ponders something for a moment, but it is Essandir’s voice from behind Leuen that seems to complete the thought.

 

“The strongest party in Riverwake has one warrior, one rogue, three mages, and one healer. The weaker groups will have multiple warriors and whatever supports they can get their hands on.”

 

“I think that answers my question nicely. Basically, you wanted an extra set of hands because otherwise you’d have one dedicated warrior guarding three other people, and I’m lightening the load?”

 

“Bingo.” Cole supplies as he strings his longbow and dry fires it once.