Jeremy looks around the room and sighs. “Well, this has been the hardest floor yet. Doctor, I’m not stupid enough to think you can heal you three enough for another fight, but will everyone at least be able to walk out of here?”

Doctor looks up from Kelly’s left leg, which has a decent chunk of flesh ripped off. “Unassisted? No. However, everyone should be able to hobble out with some help. Since only half of us have been done in, we should be able to leave just fine.”

Jeremy nods, “Good, I don’t even know how I would explain this to Ace if we needed others to come in here to help us get out.”

Zach laughs as he lazily waves his hand in the air while laid out on his back. “Long as Doc can kill the pain, I can whip up some wheelchairs or some such for us to leave. Though not actual wheelchairs, they don’t do well with stairs. Rather some golemish chairs that can walk around.”

Doctor coughs, “I would prefer people use my full name. I know it is a little odd, but that is how I want it. Anyway, even if I could kill the pain, I wouldn’t. Pain is an important warning and we have some serious injuries here. I need to know the instant the pain increases or, even worse, goes away. This isn’t funny business, even if chances are just about any normal physical wounds can now be healed. We aren’t quite at that level of healing magic and can’t afford to lose any of our current group.”

Zach nods, “Can do Doctor. Though once we get new people in I don’t think you will be able to stop it. From what I hear we should see outsiders inside of a week.”

Doctor, Kelly, Susan, and Jeremy all jerk their heads around to stare at him and they try to all talk at the same time. Jeremy raises his hand to stop the others and asks, “Where did you get this info?”

Zach pales, “Auh, um, well, everyone knows back in the settlement. Or at least I thought everyone did. Maybe it didn’t get to you founders or something.”

Jeremy raises an eyebrow, “And how does everyone know about this fact?”

Zach sniffs, “Well, it isn’t so much a fact as it is a very high possibility.”

Jeremy shakes his head, “No, you said that with certainty. It might not be a fact, but it is a truth for you. Now what is your source. This is critically important information.”

Zach props himself up and looks each of the four founders in the eye. “More than a few of the people who stayed didn’t do it because of your promises. We stayed because of Daisy Peachblossom. Few people noticed, but she is the sort of person who could be called blessed by the universe. Besides Bell here, she is the only other person who got a luck increase from the cliff.”

“Now Bell is lucky, no one will deny that. Compared to Daisy, though? Bell is nothing. Daisy’s luck is so high that it almost seems like she can see the future. She is someone I knew pre-system and let me tell you, even without magic, her existence warped common sense. On a whim, her parents bought her a tarot deck as a birthday gift when she was nine. First reading she did that day scared her because it predicted a threat in the near future. When she didn’t want to head out and visit the relatives at first her parents wanted to force her but gave up. Not an hour later, the news was blasting out about how a wild car chase had ended in a police shootout. All happening right along the route the family would have taken.”

“After that she didn’t feel like doing anymore readings until she did. She interpreted what she read that day as meaning she should pester her dad to go through with a deal at work he was waffling over. A year later, her family were millionaires. Time goes on and occasionally she would decide to do a reading. Not all of the situations would turn out big, sometimes she would just read where her friend would leave her wallet during recess the next day.”

“A week before the system came, she did a big reading. See, her parents and friends had noticed the odd happenings so every birthday multiple tarot decks would be gifted. Daisy would appreciate the art, but the decks would tend to get lost until the moment she needed them. This had been happening for years. Me and Bell saw her go into the college gym with multiple bags stuffed to the brim.”

“Every single tarot deck she had ever owned showed up. Even ones that people had claimed to throw away, damage, or in some way dispose of was there. Apparently she found them under her bed and decided to lay them all out at once. This is why I don’t have to worry about my family.”

“In a giant array centered on her original tarot deck, she layed out readings for every single person who mattered to her and those close to them. Now it wasn’t all good news. My parents are dead, they just couldn’t adjust to magic. But back to her original tarot deck. Up till then she had never done a reading for herself, and I guess you could say she didn’t this time either. It was the last deck she laid out that day and without noticing she had placed almost all the cards face down with only the fool at the center visible.”

“To start fresh. A new beginning was coming for her. That day she picked up her original deck and wandered off. I stayed in that gym with Bell for hours just watching what happened next. With no plan, with no order, every single person who had a reading there would show up along and find their reading and then take their deck. Even people who should have been out of state at the time ended up there that day. All of us who survived till now still have our deck.”

And having said that, Zach pulls a small box out of his pocket. It is a small nature themed tarot deck. With a shake of his head, Zach puts the box away. “I didn’t plan to bring my deck with me today. Most days it just stays in my backpack that I keep sentimental stuff in. Yet here we are, without thinking about it, I brought it with me today.”

“She had quite the collection of decks, each one themed differently. Mine is nature themed, Bell’s has the Hindu gods, and my mom’s deck was themed on Halloween skeletons. Thinking back on it, Daisy’s birthday being near Halloween is ominous for everyone else. Lots of death themed tarot decks to be had.”

“So yeah, now know why we trust Daisy on some things. One such thing is that just a few days ago she did a reading for the dungeon itself. New challengers were predicted and that can’t mean us or the ones who left with Jan. None of us would qualify as new. Of course nothing was said about our dive right now because where would be the fun in that?”

Jeremy frowns, “Wouldn’t something like tarot be more of a destiny thing?”

Doctor shakes his head, “Destiny is a personal force. Those with great destiny have an easier time themselves. Opposite it is karma which deals with the other, that connection to people besides yourself. Plus, I don’t think she is predicting the future.”

Zach frowns, “If she isn’t predicting the future, how does all this stuff keep happening?”

Doctor shrugs, “Well I guess you could call it predicting the future but it seems more like altering the future. She predicted the car chase and shooting, so her luck stopped her from going. She saw her dad ending up sad for not investing and changed it. Only that last reading before the system would seem to be closer to the traditional fortune reading. Even then it probably nudged more than a few people into better positions.”

“As for the visitors? Luck as described, as little as it says, could do any number of things to nudge people towards our settlement. It could be as simple as a group catching a fish in the stream, so they decide to follow it. Or it rains and one particular drop lands on their hand-drawn map smudging the ink causing them to go off course and arrive here. On the other hand, it could be that no matter what the group was going to come here.”

“Instead, this reading is to make sure we are prepared to meet them. Maybe even it is meant to allow the dungeon to be prepared for it. After all, we ended up talking about it here in the dungeon itself instead as a line item at the nightly meeting. None of that matters at the moment, though. We need to get out of here first and then tell Ace so it can be out of our hands. Now hold still while I try to fix up your feet.”

With that decided, everyone goes back to clean up after the fight. Most important is the slight noise Jeremy heard when the kobolds faded out. One kobold had dropped a couple copper and almost as exciting as the other kobold had dropped a chunk of copper ore. Of course, none of that could compare to how much ore the goats had dropped.

While not as pure as the chunk from the kobold there was a lot of it. There had to be about 50 pounds of the stuff. Zach does a quick check with his magic. While not unnaturally good, the ore was at the high end of copper content. About a percent being metal, meaning they just got half a pound of copper. While not much that sort of output would add up quickly if it was consistent. That doesn’t even count how much ore might still be in the vein the kobolds had been mining in.

Jeremy holds up the chunk of ore that the kobold dropped. “Well, this changes things for us. Though this means we have even more production skills that need to be trained. Not that I think it will be hard to find someone that wants to try their hand at smithing. Still will be nice to get some metal weapons. The post-system wooden stuff is amazing enough, and I can’t wait for proper gear. Now are we ready to leave? The coins and ore should offset our embarrassing display here.”

Susan nods, “A source of coins and metal will go a long way to getting the settlement, well, settled. Still need an absolute ton of the system coinage to set up our town all official like. We killed a lot of kobolds on the second floor and still no coins there. Then again, we haven’t tried throwing away our garbage on that floor yet, so we might just be unlucky. It isn’t like the second floor gets all that many people, even when all of us can reach it.”

Doctor claps his hands, “I’ve finished with what I can manage here without my assistants and equipment. We need to get a move on so I can treat these wounds some more. We need to be up and running as fast as possible. The world will not wait for us to recover and I don’t want to get behind the curve.”

Jeremy helps Zach up, “Anyway, my goal for the trip is complete. We have a good handful of spore packets. There should be enough to experiment with until we can make another dive. Though next time Ace can be the one blazing the trail.”

Akhier

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