Chương 111: Penicillium - Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty Crossing the gardening shed room was easy. The goblins were all dead, laying across the ground in little piles, some of them still squirming as they grabbed at their necks to no avail. As I'd guessed, most of the spore cloud had settled, but a fine dust hovered around ankle-height. We moved slowly through the room. Not just to prevent ourselves from kicking up the spore dust but because it was very possible that a goblin was clever enough to cover their face with a piece of cloth or something.

Fortunately, we reached the end of the room without encountering anything nasty. Just more corpses and not much else of note except for a few wandering slimes which we walked around.

"This is easy," I said.

"Sometimes that's how it is," Phillipe said.

"I've had some delves where I barely dirtied my hammer. Some were harrowing, long, and filled with near-death."

"Which was your easiest?" I asked as we reached the end of the room. Phillipe casually opened the door into the next and glanced in. It looked empty. A small space with a few benches around a broken stone table, some old, rotten plants all around. Was this once a picnic area? Or the dungeon's pale imitation of one? The walls were made of glass behind a steel trellis, though the steel was rusted and the glass often broken.

Beyond that was just a natural cave, though the ceiling was covered in faintly glowing blue lichen that gave the illusion of a sky at dusk. It was pretty, in a way, I supposed.

"The easiest," Phillipe repeated. He gestured ahead and stepped into the room himself. There was a sort of trapdoor just behind the picnic area, and with a few nods to Tyro to show him where to grab on, Phillipe pulled the trapdoor back, revealing a staircase leading down.

"That's a tough one," he said.

"Any traps down there, or does this just lead to the fifth floor?" I asked.

"Just a long set of stairs. We'll have to be careful, the room at the start of the fifth floor can be challenging. But the way there is easy enough."

"Alright," I said.

"So, my easiest delve... that was probably three years ago. I was just reaching the point where I could be considered something of a veteran delver, though I hadn't earned the title yet."

"Earned?" I asked.

"There are several delver guilds across most of the numbered cities," he said.

"But they've all agreed to a more or less uniform system of ranks to say how experienced and capable a delver is. There are tests and accreditations, but for the most part the big challenge is the number of hours spent in-delve. I'm a veteran. That means I've clocked at least five thousand hours in-dungeon and have reached the core room of at least five separate dungeons."

"Whoa," I said.

"City Nineteen only has two, right?" He nodded.

"There are a few cities that have very short, easy-to-dive dungeons that people trying to rank up will visit. They'll take an afternoon to reach the bottom of, and you get the credits to your name. Good experience for a second class too."

"Five thousand hours... that's a good few years, right?"

"About three, if you're going at a good pace. It takes two thousand hours to get journeyman, but the hours aren't cumulative." I frowned.

"So you have over seven thousand hours of delve time?" He nodded.

"Sounds about right. I'll be trying for Master delver one day, but that's a tough nut to crack. Hopefully by then Tyro here will be a journeyman himself." Tyro grinned, and looked rather proud of the idea.

"So, what was the easiest delve?" I asked.

"Ah, yes. Like I said, this was a little while ago. I wasn't quite ready for the veteran title, but I'd been a journeyman for long enough that I knew everyone worth knowing and was fairly well entrenched in the community. There are only a thousand or so delvers in City Nineteen. Few enough that everyone knows nearly everyone else." I noted, idly, that Phillipe was the kind of person that told a story with more tangents than actual story. That was okay.

The story itself was mostly to fill the time as we went down the stairs, and if it slowed Philipe down a little to be talking while walking, well, that would just make it easier on my legs. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"I got added to a team that I wasn't entirely familiar with. Very much a last-minute assignment. It wasn't in this dungeon. I showed up that morning, a little confused because nothing was as clear-cut as usual, and that is always a sign that the delve is going to be a mess."

"But you said it was your easiest. Was it cancelled?" He chuckled.

"No. Though I've had a few of those as well. Even got paid for one that I showed up for and didn't have to participate in. Anyway, showed up that morning and lo and behold, there's an entire group from Academy Nineteen. Seven or eight youngsters, all about Tyro's age, and all ready to dive in."

"Oh boy," I said. He chuckled.

"I thought the same. A group of warm-blooded boys and a few girls? Not what I'd ever want to escort through the dungeon. You just know one or two will try to impress the others by acting the fool. But, they weren't alone. No, this bunch had guards."

"Bodyguards?" I asked.

"Some. And normal guards, and a whole team of combatants and staff. There were caterers. Caterers! The dive started two hours later than planned and we only went two floors in. Didn't have to touch my hammer and I got to eat canapes while on one of our frequent breaks."

"That must have been weird," I said.

"You wouldn't imagine," he said.

"I wouldn't mind caterers and some well-armed guards right now," Tyro said.

"I especially wouldn't mind a few pretty Academy Nineteen girls." Phillipe sniffed, but he didn't tell his son off. I supposed that Tyro was still a teenager, despite his maturity in other places. It was probably a pretty normal fantasy for slum-adjacent people to wish to meet and marry someone from the upper crust. But I imagined it was the kind of thing that usually stayed a fantasy. Also, I wasn't looking forward to having to deal with hormones again. Maybe I could find a mushroom to help with that?

For now it was a future-me problem.

"Anyway, the entire thing was a farce. The academy brats didn't go far, but they were still mighty impressed by everything, and they were also keen on tipping everyone. One of the overseers came down with us and wanted everyone to hand him their tips so that he could more evenly distribute them, and take his part, but we banded together and threatened to leave him in the dungeon overnight.

So I came home without having worked much, with a full belly, a bag full of leftovers, and more coin than I'd make in a normal week. Easiest workday in my life."

"That does sound nice," I said. I didn't comment on how the easiest day of his work life was probably just another Tuesday to the upper crust people that had come to visit the dungeon out of what I imagined was passing curiosity. Phillipe and Tyro started to talk about a few things, mostly the guards that Phillipe had seen, but my attention was more on our surroundings. The initial steps had all been stone placed down and with cement of some sort between them. The walls were more of the same.

As we came lower though, the walls were replaced by concrete and the uneven stone-paved steps were replaced by weather worn concrete that looked like it was poured into place. The air became more humid too, and there was a strangely familiar, if unwanted, smell in the air.

"It stinks," I commented.

"Oh, the whole fifth floor smells like that," Phillipe said.

"You learn to live with the odour." As we reached closer to the bottom, Phillipe had us stop. The way ahead was blocked by a door made of heavy, if rusted, iron bars. Light poured in from a room beyond that, orange-yellow light that looked like it came from an open flame.

"Goblins in this room, a number of them," Phillipe said.

"Should I..." I gestured to my satchel. He shook his head.

"No. Not this one. It's a very large room. It connects to a number of others and... and I can't hear anything from below." Cautiously, we descended the last of the staircase until we were level with the barred door. On the other side, there was a large room, with a few workbenches, some seats, and a smattering of tools and supplies that had been turned into goblin homes. The goblins themselves were all off to one side, stacked atop each other like corded wood, with stray flies buzzing around their corpses.