Chương 91: Volume Three - Prologue

Prologue Feronie, goddess of nature, watched as her little paladin took the first steps towards curing the world of its illness. It wouldn't be painless. This would be the lancing of a boil, the fever before the calm, and the amputation of a gangrenous limb. People would suffer, though the pain would be localised for now. There was too much in the way preventing her from unleashing her full, angry potential. She was too ill, and too weak for that.

Her little crusader would have to push and push and keep working in order to free Feronie. But it would happen, and the world would suffer for it. It had to be done.

This would be my second time entering the Ditz Dungeon. This time, if things went well, would also be my last. In fact, it might be everyone's last time soon, though I wasn't certain about that. The plan was simple, if costly. I'd enter the dungeon with the two men I'd hired to play escort, Mister Greene senior, who was an experienced delver probably worth a lot more than what I was paying him, and his son, Tyro, who wasn't as experienced at all, but who seemed to have a good head on his shoulders all the same.

If I could reach the core, I could use my [Ritual of Sporemageddon] skill, and then... Well, then I wasn't too sure. So far, I'd been driven by momentum more than anything else. Initially there was that anger, the need for revenge that pushed me onwards, then that slowly morphed into something a lot colder. I think half my actions were just me trying to set things right. There was so much wrong about City Nineteen.

The massive slums, the enormous inequality, the downright broken legal system, the disrespect of nature. In my previous life, I'd seen similar things too, but never to this degree. In my previous life, when I'd seen horrible things, I'd shaken my head and said 'wow, that's awful' then I continued minding my own business. When things got bad, I'd talk to someone about them, I'd try to turn that stress into productivity.

None of the therapists I'd ever talked to had suggested that killing the bourgeoisie would be therapeutic.

"Are you ready?" Mister Greene asked. It felt wrong to think of him as merely Phillipe, even if that was his name.

"I'm ready," I replied as I hitched up my backpack and made sure Sir Nibbles was well seated around my neck. The badger raised his head and gave a sniff. He was almost cute, sometimes, but I'd have to put him down eventually. I had a backpack full of stuff already, on top of the satchel hanging by my hip filled with enough explosive, poisonous, and otherwise lethal mushrooms to wipe out a city block. Tyro checked the weapons hanging off of his belt.

I would have expected to see swords, but maybe I was too influenced by media back in the before. Tyro had two knives, one that looked like it was a camp knife hooked to the small of his back, and a longer one on his right hip. His real weapon was a hammer. It was, from blunt end to spikey tip, about as long as my hand from wrist to middle-finger, but it was otherwise fairly slim, with a shaft like a sledge hammer with leather wound around it which ended with a loop hooked to the young man's belt.

His father carried something similar. A set of knives, a big hammer. He also had leather gloves with articulated brass plates over the knuckles. His fists were nearly as big as my head, which made those rather intimidating.

"Last gear check," he insisted. Tyro sighed, but didn't complain as he removed his backpack and set it down. We were close to the dungeon, enough so that I could feel my mana slowly leaking away, but we weren't so close that we were in anyone's way. The only people around at the moment were the very first workers to show up. It didn't look like anyone was pushing into the dungeon yet. We wouldn't be holding anyone up by taking a minute or two to go over things on the edge of the dungeon plaza.

Tyro opened his bag and started pointing to things within.

"Bedroll, tarps, rope, posts and second hammer. Flint, because I'll be damned if I start a fire by rubbing sticks together again." Mister Greene chuckled at that, and I felt like a third wheel as they went over the contents of the bag. There was a lot more water in there than I'd brought, surprisingly, it took up half the bag. Another big chunk was canned foods, usually in little square tins with tabs on the top. I guessed they didn't want to lug around a can-opener. This story is posted elsewhere by the author.

Help them out by reading the authentic version.

"That seems about right," Mister Greene said. He glanced at me.

"Now, while our contract covers us assisting you, it didn't specify us feeding you or keeping you watered."

"I understand," I replied.

"I brought some stuff too." Enough food to last as long as I suspected the trip would take, and a couple of bottles of water. I could produce my own food given a few hours and enough mana, which I wouldn't be lacking within the dungeon itself.

"I brought extra," he said with a grin.

"Just in case."

"Oh," I said. Then I nodded to him. That was kind. In theory he just had to follow the contract to the letter, he didn't need to go any further for me.

"I have some nice things too, I'll be sure to share."

"Haha!" Phillipe rubbed my hair, which set Sir Nibbles to hissing.

"Did you bring anything for your little friend?"

"Are we really bringing a pet along?" Tyro asked.

"It seems trained," Phillipe said.

"Could be handy at sniffing out traps and the like."

"Sir Nibbles is useful," I said which reaching up to scratch the panbadger under the chin where he liked it best.

"And when he's not being useful, he's pretty quiet. I don't think you'll need to worry about him. Um, did you bring gas masks?"

"We did," he replied. It was the only specific piece of equipment I told them to bring along. It wouldn't do for me to accidentally poison my own companions. Even with the masks I'd have to be careful, some of my mushrooms worked on contact, not just on inhalation.

"If that's everything, then should we get going?" Phillipe nodded.

"Let's," he agreed while Tyro rushed to pull his pack back on and tighten the straps. The Ditz Dungeon loomed above us, a mound of stone with a huge D on a metal frame hanging over its entrance. We'd taken up enough time that more people were entering the plaza, including a few delver teams with some members who seemed half-asleep. Children from the different dungeon gathering groups were arriving as well, and the number of normal gatherers were increasing too, teams forming up in little clumps.

Before I had time to really stare too much, we crossed the threshold into the dungeon's first floor. The air was different here. Not as oppressive as it was just a few steps back where the dungeon was sucking away at all the mana in the air to make up for the losses caused by gathering teams. In here, it was the opposite, the air sang with fresh mana, enough that I found myself breathing deeper just because I could, at least until that set off a coughing fit that I had to work to suppress.

The entrance's far end had a couple of folk setting up tables and tents already, and we ended up stepping to the side and waiting as a crew pulled a cart along which had wooden boards stacked on the back of it. We followed them to the right and into the first proper room of the dungeon, a large cave-like area with a wide crack splitting the room in half. A few people were stringing up lights and setting down poles to fix them to already, casting swaying shadows across the room.

"We'll wait for the bridge to be built," Phillipe said.

"Then, it's a straight line to the second floor's entrance." I tugged an oft-folded piece of paper from one of my pockets and eyed it in the swaying light. My more-or-less-trusty map of the dungeon's first floor. We had four rooms to cross.

"Are we expecting any trouble between here and there?" I asked.

"Nothing worse than a few rats and maybe a pitfall trap or two," Mister Greene said.

"And the dark. Tyro, got your lamp ready?"

"Oh," I said.

"I have something for that, actually!" there, an opportunity to be useful right from the start. If I wanted these two to work hard for me, I'd need to make the work as pleasant as possible. I pulled out a trio of small, purplish mushrooms with lighter spots on their surface from my satchel. In the poor lighting of the dungeon, they seemed to glow a little from within.

"Here, eat these." [Blackbottle Night Watcher] - Rare A rare mushroom not found in any natural environment. This small, edible mushroom contains a basic alchemical reagent that allows the consumer to see in low light conditions. Can be used in several alchemical concoctions. That would give us something of an edge. I figured we might need those.