In this dungeon there's only hordes of monsters. Three floors of them, a final horde was in the final room. James explained this as we went on, there are gnomes, large lizards, insects, and goblins. No boss for this dungeon as far as their explanation was concerned. It was an already cleared out dungeon, so it was just kept active by guild specialists.. So it's basically a quote on quote "Gym" .
Usual like these lands, the plains were boring and barren. Whilst we walked and the cold stung my skin, even through my clothes, it felt like I was getting frostbite.
Kind of jealous…. I turned to look at James and Shaun… They weren't freezing— While I was shivering over here. Rather not use my mana, gotta save it for the dungeon… could take all night. Besides..
It was never a good idea to use fire in a dungeon. It could end up suffocating you by eating all the air for itself. Apparently, some famous adventurer noted that in their book that they almost took themselves out accidentally by that.
I had an idea to deal with the hordes, it involves messing with earth bullet. I can split it if I keep my mana connected. Although… There are some issues with it, specifically Shaun. He'd need to get out of the way as I'm unsure if I could control all of the pieces…
That's only if he didn't know. In fact, I already talked to him about it. All I need to yell is "Shaun!" And he'll do his best to get out of the way. It's as reassuring as we can get.. I guess.
Of course… I don't trust him right now. He seems… Well not in the right head space. His hair was messy, there's a big frown on his face… and he had a stench of alcohol on his breath. Only James gave me a stronger spine.
He had an excited grin as we were walking. Sometimes he'd pull out one of his daggers and eye it for a few minutes before putting it away.
"Oh, Yukina… Do you know how close you are to evolving? Requirement wise, how close?"
"I…" I brought up my evolution requirements before fully explaining it all. "I still don't know the last one."
"Huh, I'll have to look into animalkin evolution."
I turned my head to look at him and explained, "Shen doesn't know what it is either. It might be something difficult due to my… bloodline."
"Huh? Oh."
James brought his hand to his mouth then continued. "She said it was the fenrir bloodline, right?"
"Mhm… Wait, she told you?"
"Yeah, after Frosted Peaks. She probably kept us knowing that from you however."
That's another secret out I guess… I let my head fall whilst keeping my eye on him. "I still don't understand it… Just don't want issues in the future."
"Whatever it is, we'll bring you back to your senses!"
Thanks… I kept my mouth shut for the rest of our walk. Before long we stopped at this odd sight.
"So… this is what the dungeon looks like?" I asked whilst looking down at the staircase. The stairs were a rich brown. It spiraled down and around a grey wall. James was the first one to step down.
On the second step he turned to me, gave me a smile and gestured to me to take a step down.
"How are you feeling?" James asked me as his smile became smaller, and he tilted his head. "I understand if you're nervous, but you went through tougher enemies… I think you'll do fine here. It's for beginner adventurers afterall, your skillset isn't a beginner one."
I'm not as nervous… Never did I feel this calm after… well the past year. Although my heart was beating slightly faster. My hands were shaking a bit. I'm honestly excited.
"This dungeon is called the den. Straightforward due to most of the monsters inside."
Self explanatory…
"Has Miss Shen explained to you how dungeons are formed?"
I shook my head as we began to go down. This led onto a sort of long explanation from James. But to put it simply, Dungeons started to appear randomly in history. Dating back to a couple thousand years ago— how was this known? The adventurers' guild holds this knowledge.
Dungeons started to form when the world's mana started to distort. The level of the dungeon is created by how many distortions happened in a year— one distortion forms a bronze ranked dungeon, two copper— which was this. Three and more, the harder it becomes. Stark, the demi-god of blacksmithing, personally handcrafted a device to monitor them. With the help of the entire Elven house here..
James went on to explain that elves and dwarves were at basically a spat until Stark and Lorainne married. That caused a little peace treaty to form. Although they still get into spats it's not as violent as it was back then.
Back to the main topic, the guild holds this information and assigns missions accordingly.
"There are man-made dungeons, they're created by individuals or groups forcing the distortions. The den isn't one of them, but you don't need to be on high alert. Just follow Shaun and I, okay?"
I nodded before focusing on the steps downwards.
The further down we went, the darker it became; and so I summoned a fireball and held it over my shoulder. Handy… Alongside that, it was warming us up.
I made sure it was being activated by my mana and not by surrounding air, basically I kept feeding it small amounts every second.
I lowered it when I could barely see the next step— somehow James kept walking down the stairs with no issue. Same with Shaun who's heavy footsteps kept resounding from behind me.
After a few minutes we hit solid ground. Is my eyesight getting worse…?
With my only good eye, I could barely see fifty feet ahead of me with my light.
"Just down the tunnel is when monsters start appearing. Shaun you take the lead, Yukina stay in the back, okay?"
"Got it." Yeah, as expected.
"Don't need to remind me of our usual formation…"
James sighed and let Shaun take the lead. His back faced me; but I felt safer than usual. We started a stroll down a tunnel, rocks filled my right eye as we went on. Pebbles littered the ground cracks on the walls.
Before long I started to hear clicking, clacking and scuttering in my ears from ahead. It started to become overwhelming as we went on, hundreds to thousands…
"Get ready, okay, sleepyhead?"