Chapter Ninety-Nine - What is a Normal Adventurer?

“So, uh,” I said as I looked at the menu floating before me.

You are Entering The Palace of Strings
Levels 5-7
Your entire party has entered the Dungeon
This Dungeon is Occupied.
Share an Instance?

“What do we do?” I asked.

Amaryllis hummed. She seemed to have calmed down a little now that we were in the dungeon and far away from all the people in the town above. Was it still above now that we were in a dungeon? The last dungeon certainly didn’t fit in the place where we had been, and the Wonderland dungeon was really weird too.

“I think,” she said, cutting off my woolgathering. “That we can join whichever instance is already running. Our goal is the boss, nothing else. Having more people around would just shorten the time to get to that objective.”

“Awa, I wanted to, um, practice with my crossbow a little too. And, and my glass magic, I think I’m getting there,” Awen said.

Amaryllis shook her head. “The bow is fine. The magic... less so. We’ll have to pick up some books on the subject later.”

“Ah, okay,” Awen said.

“Did that book I gave you help?” I asked.

Awen nodded. “Yes, a little. I slept on it too.”

“Right,” I said. “Kinda forgot that was a thing.”

Amaryllis sighed. “Please focus just a little bit, please. We are about to enter a hostile environment. This dungeon has no delve room. And there are others in it already.” She made a gesture in the air and Mister Menu’s prompt poofed from the corner of my vision.

Spinning on a heel, Amaryllis led us deeper into the rocky tunnel of the Palace of Strings. Within a dozen steps the rock walls changed. Roots poking out from above like skeletal hands and the walls were more packed dirt than solid stone.

The tunnel grew a little tighter and we had to duck out of the path of what looked like entire tree trunks covered in mud and dirt. And then the tunnel ended and we carefully stepped out onto an open lawn.

A red quarter moon hung just over the horizon, casting a faint reddish glow across grounds that were sparsely illuminated by the twinkling stars above.

Ankle-high grass filled a huge field surrounded by woods so thick and dark and foreboding that just looking at them gave me Scooby-doo flashbacks. In the centre of the field was a huge mansion that looked like something out of an old Dracula movie. Big windows with flickering yellow lights within, gargoyles on each corner of the roof, and a hedge wall twice as tall as I was all around what I could see of the building.

“The book said that the first floor is that hedge maze,” Amaryllis said. “The second begins on entering the building proper.” She was whispering, and I saw her squinting at the sky as a flight of tiny bats flitted by.

“Spooky!” I cheered as I started to walk towards the hedge maze. “I really should have spent more time learning that light ball spell, It’d come in handy here,” I said as I raised a hand and pushed some mana into it until it glowed. Not enough to really illuminate my surroundings by much, but it did help.

“Awa!” Awen said as she jogged up behind me and pulled up her crossbow so that it was aiming out ahead of us. “I’m, ah, not used to the dark.”

Amaryllis sighed and raised her own hand, a bright ball of light sparking to life in it. “You have no gravitas. And Broccoli, there’s a light on your hat.”

“Oh, right!” I said. I’d forgotten about that. A push of mana towards my hat and the rune light I’d tied around the brim a while back lit up the world ahead of me. “Thanks Amaryllis!”

“I swear, I feel like a mother sometimes,” Amaryllis said.

“You’d make a great mom, I’m sure!” I said.

She whapped me so hard my hat went flying. “I-idiot!”

I laughed as I fetched my hat. “Sorry. Didn't know that was something you were sensitive about.”

“I am in no way... nevermind! Let’s just move ahead. I’d like to get this over before sunset.” She glared when I started to point towards the darkened skies. “Don’t start.”

Our moods were pretty high as we reached the opening of the hedge maze. They dipped soon after.

There were spiders there. Huge things, the size of dobermans with big fuzzy bottoms and fangs the size of my forefingers. The spiders were all piled up to the sides where they were slowly smoking and fading away.

“What happened here?” I asked as I held my spade by the very end of the handle and poked one of the spiders. It didn’t so much as twitch.

“The others in the dungeon, perhaps,” Amaryllis said. “They can’t have been here for too long, the corpses aren’t gone yet.”

I looked at the smoke wafting off the bodies. It was taking longer than usual, eating away at the body inch by inch. “Strange,” I said.

“Keep your eyes open,” Amaryllis said.

We moved into the maze, eyes and lights twisting this way and that to take in as much as we could. The area smelled like decomposing leaves, a faint tang of rot that grew stronger the deeper in we went. Our lights didn’t seem to illuminate all that far, not as much as they should have.

Leafy walls surrounded us on all sides, their tops swaying in an unfelt wind.

“Wow, this place is really scary,” I noted.

“Awa,” Awen whimpered.

I sighed and pulled her into a sidelong hug. “Just because something is scary, doesn’t mean you should be scared of it. It’s usually the things you don’t know about that are the scariest, I think, but that also means you’re worrying about something that might not be there at all.”

“Are, are you sure?” Awen asked.

I nodded. “Yep. Not worrying about things you have no control over is my number one way not to pee myself while watching horror movies.” I gave her a reassuring thumbs-up.

“What’s a movie?” she asked.

“Girls, ahead,” Amaryllis said.

There were more spiders. Not all of them were dead.

Two of the big beasties were wrangling something invisible in the air, spider webs, maybe? Another three were skittering back as little thumbnail-sized balls of fire darted through the air and pelted the ground around them.

“Insight,” I said as I stared at the spider.

An overwhelmed Manweaver, level 5.

I stepped up and prepared to smack the first spider to reach us with my shovel. I needn’t bother. Awen’s crossbow twanged and one of the spiders flew off and smacked into the far hedge with a meaty ‘thwunk.’

Then Amaryllis reached out a hand and made a casual little shoo-ing gesture. Crackling bolts of electricity raced out ahead and fried the two remaining spiders, then two further away who were tugging at something unseen.

I almost felt bad when one of them stumbled close enough that I could smack it. It hardly took more than a bop to the head to kill it.

Congratulations! You have put Manweaver, level 5, out of its misery. Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!

We paused as whatever was throwing fire around stopped. Then, from the bushes ahead, came a masculine voice. “Is anyone there?”

I looked to the others. “Was that in... whatever language you speak normally?” I asked.

“Yes, it was,” Amaryllis said. “Hello there!” she called out. “Are you the delvers who started this instance?”

“Maybe? Who’s asking?”

Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “We’re from the Exploration Guild.”

Three boys--men, really--stepped out from around the corner. One was wearing simple leather armour with some cloth beneath it and he held a staff by his side. The team’s mage, maybe?

The other two were entirely different. The biggest of the lot was a handsome enough man with a nice chin and armour like a fantasy barbarian. He would have been nicer if he wasn’t covered in webbing.

Next to him was a man in thick full plate, only his lower face visible from under his bell-shaped helmet. He had a little capelet with a strange symbol on the front, like two hands holding.

“Ah,” the mage said. “Hello? I didn’t... we didn’t expect to have any company this afternoon. Especially not from such pretty young ladies.”

“Aww, thanks!” I said. “I hope you don’t mind us just showing up.”

“Me? Never,” he said with what he probably thought was a roguish grin. “I’m Eli, the thick lug behind me here is Boots.” The barbarian looking guy cheerfully waved a battleaxe at us. “And the healer back there is Percy. Don’t let the name fool you, he’s not as big an ass as he sounds at first.”

“See if I heal you next time you show up with an itchy crotch complaining about lumps,” Percy said.

“Not in front of the ladies,” Eli hissed.

“Ah, well,” I said before I cleared my throat. “I’m Broccoli Bunch, These are my friends, Awen Bristlecone and Amaryllis Albatross. And this is my kitten friend, Orange!” My friends waved or nodded seriously when I named them. Orange glared, but she was a cat so that was okay. “We’re here to fight the boss, but I’d love to make friends too!”

Eli
Desired Quality: Pretty, female.
Dream: To have intercourse with more women than anyone else.

“I’d love to be your friend,” Eli said.

“Ah, no,” I said. “I mean... friends are okay, but I don’t do any of... that kind of stuff. Only after marriage.”

“Awa? What kind of stuff?” Awen asked.

I felt my cheeks warming. “Nevermind that,” I said with a wave. “Um... Amaryllis, help?”

“You doofus,” she muttered before stepping up. “What’s your goal here?” she asked the three delvers.

The boys looked between each other, and apparently decided to elect Eli as their spokesperson. “We’re just doing our job? Our team has been here for a month now, diving once a day. The spider parts aren’t worth much, but the dresses dropped on the third floor go for a fair price.”

“Cool,” I said. “We’re just here for today.”

“Indeed,” Amaryllis said. “Are we interfering with your dive?”

“Not exactly,” Eli said, he became a little more serious. “Not yet anyway. We haven’t reached the second floor just yet. The maze shifts a bit every day. But if you pass us, then we’ll lose out on any loot drops.”

I looked to Amaryllis. There was a question in her eyes and it didn’t take a genius to figure it out. “Up to you,” I said.

She nodded. “If we accompany you, we can help clear the monsters and you can keep the loot. It might make things faster for you.”

“We’re not here to map things,” Eli said. “We’re moving quickly.”

“We’re here for the boss, that’s all,” Amaryllis said.

Eli hummed. “Well, we’re not getting any more out of killing the local beasties. We’ve all chopped our share of spiders. We probably won’t level for months at this rate, so one lost day... still, we’ll be escorting you, which puts us at risk.”

Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “Three sil.”

Eli grinned. “Each.”

“In your dreams,” Amaryllis said. “One each. Not a cop more.”

Coins were tossed over to Eli who snapped them out of the air. He even bit into one, which couldn’t be sanitary. “That’s a deal,” he said. “Welcome to Rosenbell Delve Team Two, ladies.”

“Alrighty!” I cheered. “So now where do we go?”

Eli swept his arms through the air like a conductor at a circus. “Right this way,” he said. “Let’s show you the wonders of the Palace of Strings.”

“And the horrors,” Percy said.

“And the fights!” Boots cheered.

I looked at my friends and we all seemed to choose to go along with it for now. I hoped for the best, but kept my spade close, just in case.

***