In the end, we left the bulk of soldiers with some twenty men willing to possibly break orders. I was honestly grateful for that much. Had it just been us I’d have wanted to re-manifest Emmett, but knowing how that went last time I didn’t have high hopes. Maybe even Kay could have helped had that been required. Having twenty armed and armored human soldiers seemed like the better choice all around.

We ended up with me in the center, half of the group behind and the other half in front, or at least it would have been if it wasn’t for the fact that Kosue was at my side. That left one less goblin in the rear. All of us were armed and glancing around not quite sure what to expect. The difference in the atmosphere of having Dragon Smith lead us was palpable.

“I’m surprised you didn’t make any strange suggestions.” I spoke to Naan as we retraced our path.

“Such as?”

“I don’t know… trying to convince them into joining us?” I offered.

“That would be a terrible idea.” Naan noted.

"I know... I guess I’m just used to you not understanding people.”

Naan just rumbled back at me.

I stopped worrying about my inner dialog and spoke as we reached the corner, “Take this turn.” I instructed, “And be careful this is new territory.”

I was thankful that Naan was claiming the paths in advance so it was quite clear where we were heading, as well as that at least there wasn’t anything actively resisting the claiming, though I supposed that was a “yet” more than it was anything else.

“Naan, just checking, but how far do we need to be from an area to claim it?” I asked as the men stood at the turn considering the glowing plants some way into the passage.

“Two criteria must be met to claim. We need to be within my sphere of potential influence, and the unclaimed space must be connected to either our physical body or already claimed area. Or simply it must be connected to our body, dungeon or otherwise.”

“Sphere of potential influence?”

“The range I can sense, or act. Consider what I am looking at for a moment.”

I wasn’t sure why no one was moving, for the moment I did as Naan asked before I could think better of it.

I found myself observing a room from what might be a doorway, however of note was that the room abruptly ended. That wasn’t to say there was a wall, it was like it simply ceased to exist. Like there was nothing beyond a point, there was a slight fuzziness at that edge in fact. Like it was shifting just slightly back and forth.

I tried shifting my focus back to my own perceptions and felt the familiar queasiness rear its ugly head. Just focusing on my body for a few moments I continued, “You said act within… so you mean like how you could light a fire, or produce stone?”

“Yes. Such potential actions function within our body. Other abilities, such as communication works without the dungeon body, as does my ability to observe. Beyond this, if I’ve touched someone with my communication ability before, the range is likely double.”

“The cords you mean? and how does likely factor in?” I asked.

“I suppose that's one way of describing them. Since it's beyond my standard perception, I find it difficult to measure. It's merely an estimate since the ability is entirely unrelated.” Naan explained.

I suppose that made sense. But it was lacking, “Two more questions, So to build some massive dungeon this big… the gemstone… the core of the dungeon would need to travel? Otherwise, you couldn't see what you were claiming?”

“If observing the area ahead of time is important you would be correct. As long as a dungeon’s core gem is within stone, movement within walls is possible using our ability to carve and generate stone. This, as you might imagine is slow, and wasteful. For this reason, a dungeon would tend to build deeper, horizontally, or vertically from the surface over time. Still having servants move us is always an option, what was your other question?”

I watched as the men slowly started to make their way into the room. Perhaps a bit too slowly, but I couldn’t exactly blame them, I’d just warned them that this was going to be dangerous.

I tried to wrap up my questions, “Ahead of time? Wouldn't you need to see what you are doing? Wouldn’t it be difficult to work with a dungeon so large? You would need to constantly move around to make changes, or manifest souls or something right?”

“That is the primary function of the dungeon body, our claimed area is an extension of my sphere of influence.”

“Oh… So you can check back in on the situation at the doorway? Or the church basement right now?” I asked impressed by that, that helped make more sense of what this ability’s purpose was.

“Quite so. Is there something you wanted to check?”

“Did you seal the door? Or the passageway?” I asked.

“I sunk the bridge, as well as sealed the doorway sometime after our passing.” Naan reported.

I nodded, “Right. Alright time to focus.”

Turning my attention back to reality and not my head space I decided that it was time to prod someone, “Umm? What's the hold-up?”

Devin and two of the soldiers were in the tunnel now whispering to one another. He glanced back at me, “There’s just a lot of these…" he said gesturing at the vines ahead of us on the ground. He continued, "We were thinking of cutting them all at the same time, or at least trying too.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. But try to hack them as good as you can in one go.” I offered my clearly sage wisdom.

“Obviously…” He replied with a sigh. He held his sword up and stepped over to one of the vines. The others did likewise and Devin took a breath and spoke, “Swing on three, one. two. Three!”

The three of them all swung done at roughly the same time, and swords met soft plant flesh. Not a single one cleaved the vines.

Devin was quickly wrapped up while one of the others was bucked clear across the tunnel. The last one was grabbed onto by a vine and was pulled forward off his feet.

The other soldiers charged en masse.

Devin hacked on his vine even as it pulled tight around him, but without a good solid swing, the large blade was probably more of a hindrance.

I resisted the urge to charge in. There were already too many people piling in as the soldiers split up to help each of our attackers. This meant about six or so for each of them. My goblins and Gerl stayed back with me protecting our rear. Not sure if anyone gave that order, or if it was just what happened.

Men grabbed and hacked the vine dragging a man. The vine that had tossed a man across the passageway was quickly retreating into the wall and the men tried slashing at it as it burrowed. Those that rushed to help Devin helped prevent it from crushing him and used knives to carve through the bulk of it with effort. Once it was severed the living side quickly pulled away and hid within the walls.

It only took some thirty seconds. But I didn’t breathe the whole time. So seeing them all glance around and consider their positions and watch for anything else to happen I finally took a breath.

I decided that our assessment of this place being dangerous was a good call. There was no way we could do this without the soldiers.

Devin thanked the men that had helped him and turning down the hall he said, “I think we should rotate out, we’re going to get bruised up, and it would be best to share the pain.”

“Don’t you think it would work better if we all tried at once?” Another man asked.

“I think if we did that someone is liable to get stabbed.” He replied.

“How do you figure?”

“If one of those things decided to buck like they did back there, or even try to wrap up two of us. No way we don’t end up stabbing someone by accident. I think this is as good as we are going to get. Let's not overthink it. Everyone's fine right?”

The men grunted and nodded.

The one that had been thrown spoke up, “I like the idea of switching out though… that fucker nearly popped my shoulder out.”

The others noticeably tensed at that.

“Alright, let's move before these things get brave again.” Devin gestured ahead of us.

We moved and my goblins watched around us for other signs of movement.

We started picking up a bit more of a rhythm. Unless the vines were particularly close, they took it one at a time, and the reinforcements started closer so they could leap into action as soon as they realized how a vine was going to respond.

Most of them tried to wrap around their attackers. But the second most common response was retreating, some of them might try and buck them off first, but with the others closer usually they could catch them when they were shoved backward, though as Devin said the first time when they got too close someone nearly got stabbed.

We avoided messing with the big glowing flowers just pushing our way forward quickly. Maybe it wasn't a great plan, but I was feeling a little drained, and they didn't seem to be able to attack without the vines.

Thankfully that didn’t happen and we started taking corners. We ended up finding a room with a staircase, and we wound around the room careful to take the stairs slowly. Strangely that room was dark, so I opted to use the light incantation several times as we made our way through. Maybe it would have been more prudent to figure out where we had stashed our limited mushroom ink vials, but I didn't like the idea of us sorting through packs when these things were around us.

We started down a new path and the men in the lead stopped.

“Uh… those look like the ones that gave the captain trouble.” One of them spoke up.

“You're right.” Devin agreed. Then he called back, “Anna!”

I pushed my way forward and found Gerl and Devin standing near the front. When had Gerl joined the soldiers up here? True to what I heard already they were massive green vines on either side of the room.

I considered and after a moment I said, “Hang on.” Then spoke with Naan, “Any way around this?”

“Not that I can tell. But then again, I’ve not been entirely sure this whole time.”

“I thought you knew the way.”

“I know how to get to the end, the mana channels carved into the stone make that obvious. But you’ve asked me to find a way around, and we are nearly there, but I didn’t see any promising tunnels that would lead to the same place, at least that I can recall. Also, do I need to remind you about my present limitations?”

I frowned at that. I supposed I was putting a lot of responsibility on the former gemstone. I decided to peer through Naan’s gaze once more and after a bit more back and forth I realized that this was the last main path, the problem was if we wanted to get to where we needed to be, we would need to be just past this.

“We can either try sneaking past them. Or we can try to drop a ceiling on them.” I offered to Naan.

“The first is Dangerous, the second might forfeit this entire task.” Naan noted. "There is also the issue of mana, we are consuming it at a quick pace, unless we replenish our supply we should be more reserved."

“I know…”

I made my decision, “Everyone, wait here.”

“What? What the hell are you going to do?” Devin asked as I took a step forward.

“I’m going to very carefully sneak down the tunnel. When I get to the end we should be close enough to do what we need to do.” I explained. My plan was to get Dragon Smith and then come back.

“No fucking way.” He said looming over me.

“Miss Anna…” Gerl spoke from the other side.

“Stop.” I said. “You all can risk your lives all you want but I have to stand around watching?”

Devin wouldn't have it and he shot back, “You know full well we are doing this as smartly as possible. We are all risking our lives down here Anna. This isn’t just because I don’t want to see you hurt, but what you are suggesting is ridiculous. We are skeptical of this hallway with twenty reasonably trained men, and you just want to go alone?”

I suppose I had been a bit unreasonable with my statement. “Fine… I get that. But the only other option I can think of is dropping the ceiling down. There's no way to know for sure if we can even recover from that.”

“Do it anyway.” Devin stated. “Even if you have to bring the entire hallway down on top of those fucking things, we’ll figure something out.”

I frowned looking up at him and glanced over to Gerl who glanced away. I turned to the goblins who all had determined faces on. Not quite sure what they thought on the matter. But I suppose I didn’t really have a choice.

"And if I do it anyway?" I asked Devin.

"Then I'm gonna tie you up." Devin replied without a moment of hesitation.

Too bad I wasn't into that. In any case, this was my bed, and I supposed I had to lay in it. Honestly, maybe it was for the best, I had a habit of doing stupid shit without thinking.