Chương 140: Chapter 138: Searching for the dungeon

Ash goes to bed, and soon I can hear all three of them breathing deeply. I look out into the jungle, wondering if something is going to attack us. It almost never happens. This is because animals are not stupid. Animals may come into camp for some food, if they're hungry and they smell what we have. I'm sure there will be carrion creatures all over the remains of the goar by dawn, if they're not already swarming over it. So an animal might come into camp sniffing for food.

But animals generally don't like people, in the sense that animals know instinctively that we're dangerous. A big enough animal that's really hungry might not care, but most of them avoid us. Having someone on watch is really just so that there's someone to make noise if a predator does come close. It's to have someone to scare off the beasts before they commit to coming into our camp in the first place. I've never had to shoot at anything while we're camping. Well, that's not true.

There have been a few times where I've loosed an arrow near a creature. But that's always been enough to scare them off. I've never had to kill anything. And I've never had to wake anyone else up. These hours standing guard are peaceful. They give me time to sort out my day, to think about what I've done today and what I'm planning to do tomorrow. I don't really give all that much thought to time past that. I used to live constantly in the future or in the past.

I'd either be thinking about what I wanted to do next, what my plans were going to be, or I was obsessing over something that happened in the past. Neither of those things is particularly healthy. The more I paid attention to the future and the past, the less I really enjoyed the present. Now I seem more able to focus on the now. Maybe it has something to do with the wolf blood. Maybe that's what helps me focus on the time I'm actually in. I don't know if we'll get across the ocean.

I'd like to find some treasure so we can bribe the dragon to take us over, but I don't really think about that all that much. I mostly just focus on the day that's just finished and the day that's about to start. Tomorrow, we'll start looking for the dungeon. Assuming there is one. I am assuming there is one, because if there isn't, tomorrow is going to be frustrating and boring. I'd prefer not to think like that, so I've decided that there definitely is a dungeon. We just have to find it.

And when we find it, we'll clear it out. We'll fight whatever is inside, and we'll get the treasure from within. Most of the treasure we find is probably going to end up in a dragon's hoard, but I'm not all that worried about that. I'm not worried because that's going to happen later than tomorrow. That's not worth worrying about yet. Is that the wolf blood? Is my wolf side getting stronger? I know I think of the girls as pack. Vincent too, though to a lesser extent for some reason.

Maybe just because he isn't here? Out of sight, out of mind, I guess. Or maybe it's because he hasn't gone through the death cycle yet. He's still on his second life. So maybe I feel disconnected from him in that way. But I know that I tend to gorge more than I tend to eat. I don't snack anymore. I focus on the present. I care about my pack, and feel an urge to protect them. But not in an alpha wolf kind of way. That whole line of thinking is bullshit. Wolves don't act like that in the wild.

The purpose of the pack alpha, if there is such a thing, is to make sure that the whole pack is protected. They're the leader, maybe, but it's a heavily service based leadership style. The alpha is the one who makes sure that the whole pack eats, that everyone is safe, and that the young are protected. They're in charge only in the sense that the responsibility falls to them to make sure that the rest of the pack is provided for. At least, that's how I see it. Maybe there isn't an alpha at all.

Maybe there's just one wolf in charge for a given situation because someone has to be and that wolf is the best suited for that situation. I don't know. Do I consider Ash my alpha? She is kind of in charge. Makes our conversation a bit more unusual. But she was doubting herself; we're all allowed to doubt ourselves. Doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly question her leadership or her tactics or whatever. I'm her friend, and she needed me as a friend tonight. So that's what I was. I'd do it for any one of them.

And I think they'd do it for me. Is that a wolf thing, or is that the human side of me? Do I still have a human half? Or do I become more wolf every time I die, with less and less of me being human? I don't know. I just don't know. Searching for the dungeon slows us down even more. El and I are both looking at the tracks on the ground, trying to figure out where the tracks go if they group up, or where they avoid if there's anywhere like that.

It leaves us basically following tracks for a little while, then doubling back and looking for another trail to follow. It's frustrating. I'm used to paying attention to our pace, to thinking about how much progress we make in any given day. But I know that today, that will be a bad idea. We're not maintaining a steady pace; we're moving in slowly expanding circles, searching the island rather than trying to move around it or through it. I'm used to moving with a goal in mind, not meandering without one.

We fight a few more monsters, nothing worth talking about. Another goar goes down just as easily as the first one. Another pair of greater lynxiths falls before our weapons. It's really only worth noting that these monsters are objectively much more powerful than the ones we saw on the mainland. If these are the weakest monsters on this island, then this island would be a death trap for most players. It would simply not be safe for any of them.

We aren't really put out all that much, but I know that if we didn't fight with more care, if we didn't treat these battles with the seriousness that they deserve, we'd be in trouble. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. Gigi levels up during our search, going to level 33, and Ash makes it to level 41. I'm still about twenty five thousand experience from another level, but it's within reach at this point. Ash and I won't be the same level for long.

We search the island for most of the morning without finding anything. By noon, I'm getting frustrated. The battles we had weren't enough to alleviate that frustration, though it was nice to be able to take my anger out on some beasts. But we're not finding anything, and we're not making any real progress. I'm pacing around and chewing on some jerky while we take a bit of a break when Gigi comes over to see how I'm doing.

"You don't like this meandering about, do you?" she asks me. I shake my head.

"I usually feel like we're making progress, but now I feel like we're just wandering around for no reason."

"We're always just wandering around," she tells me.

"No we're not," I say.

"We're working towards a goal. We're moving towards somewhere. Maybe heading to a city, maybe just heading to the coast. But we're always moving somewhere. In a straight line. I like that."

"You like straight lines?" I frown.

"You know what I mean." She chuckles a little.

"I know, I know. But still, just because we're not making clear progress doesn't mean we're not progressing. We're mapping out the island, searching it for a dungeon entrance. We have to be methodical."

"I hate methodical," I say.

"It's so boring."

"Yeah, I know," she says. She puts a hand on my shoulder.

"Would it help if I told you that there was a chance we could run into the dragon?"

"What do you mean?"

"Think about it. We keep leaving these huge hunks of meat lying around. They're bound to attract predators. Other predators I mean. Sooner or later, all this blood on the air is going to come to the attention of the dragon. Don't you think?"

"Why would you think that?"

"Silk was worried that the dragon would spot them, that the dragon would know they were in her territory. They worried that the dragon on this island would be aware of them right away, or would find them if they stayed too long. They basically took off on another trans-oceanic flight rather than take a few minutes to rest and recover. That suggests that the dragon has a way of watching what happens in her territory. A way of being aware of intruders."

"And we're intruders," I say.

"That's a good point." Gigi smiles at me.

"And if it's not just a visual thing, we have to assume that the dragon has other senses that are enhanced beyond human comprehension. I can smell the blood. I'm sure you can. What makes you think the dragon can't?"

"That makes me feel oddly better," I say.

"We might end up running into the dragon before we find the dungeon."

"Which would not be ideal," she points out.

"We don't have much to offer the dragon right now."

"Good point," I say. I dust my hands off and push myself away from the tree I was leaning against.

"We should get moving. We may not know it, but we're probably on a clock here." It takes us a few more hours, but we do, in fact, find a dungeon entrance. It looks like a pyramid. I mean, it is a pyramid. Pyramids appear all over the world. On Earth, they appear in every major ancient culture. And why? Is it because of aliens or some world wide secret society? No, it's because stacking rocks into a pyramid is a good way to get them to stay there for thousands of years.

This pyramid is kind of like an Incan pyramid more than an Egyptian one. There's a flat top, and stairs up each side. I wonder if the flat top is big enough for the dragon. I have to imagine that it is. Which tells us a little bit about the dragon, I suppose. Not much, though. The top of the pyramid is maybe a hundred feet across. That gives us a limit to the size of the dragon, but not much of one. Silk could have fit on this pyramid without any difficulty.

They could have fit here with space to spare for people to come and stand around them, to talk to them and whatever else they do on the tops of these pyramids. There isn't an entrance on the top of the pyramid. Which means we climbed all those steps for nothing. We don't get a view of much; the jungle pretty much swallows everything around us. Standing on the top of the pyramid, I can't even see the shore of the island. All I can see around us are trees. Makes sense why we couldn't see the pyramid from the beach.

I wonder if we could've seen it from the air. Probably. But we didn't, for whatever reason. Back down around the base, we look for a door. It's possible that the pyramid isn't hollow, but I don't believe it. I think this thing has an inside. And I think the inside is how we get into the dungeon. And I think we need to get in there as quickly as possible. Sooner or later, the dragon is going to find us. And we need to have something to bribe her with when she does find us. So we need to get inside.

"How do we find a door?" El asks, pressing against the pyramid wall kind of randomly.

"I don't know," Ash says.

"Maybe look for the signs of a passage. Any tracks that come out of the pyramid?" Oh, right. We were looking to see if there was a spawn point inside the pyramid. If there is, then there should be trails leading out of it. Even if there isn't, there should be some sign of how whoever built this thing used to come in and out of it. The path may be overgrown, but there might be some sign of it, some sense of where people were meant to go in.

There was a path through the jungle that we followed to get to this little clearing. It was an animal path, but it might once have been a path made by human or at least humanoid feet. Assuming that, there should be an entrance on the side facing that path. An entrance roughly in the middle of the pyramid. Maybe to the side of the staircase? We begin investigating, and it takes us maybe an hour before we find it, but there is a door. It's got a huge stone pushed in front of it, completing the pyramid.

But the bottom few steps of the staircase aren't sealed in place. We are able to wedge them away, and then pull them back. The stones must weigh at least a few thousand pounds, but Ash and El pull them away with barely a grunt of effort. There's no light inside. That's actually a good thing. If there was a light inside, I'd be very worried. It would mean we were expected, and that there was something definitely waiting for us.

"Let's go with a tight formation," Ash says.

"I'll lead. Then El, then Caleb. Gigi take up the rear. Shields out, shields up."