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Chapter 95 Dwarven Tale
🕑 Added 2023-03-28 08:00:02 +0000 UTCChapter 95 Dwarven Tale
“Ouch. I had a lapse in judgment last night.” Alistar said as he held his head in pain. He had a hangover due to beers provided by dwarves. Edelweiss and Lily didn’t drink, and dwarves forgave females for doing that, but Alistar drank until he collapsed. His herculean strength didn’t help him an inch against dwarven liquor.
“Yesterday was quite fun! They are friendly towards us. I thought they were also inclusive group like elves.” Lily smiles as they sip tea at the restaurant of their hotel. The dwarves were cold back then to Lily because they didn’t want to reveal about their epidemics. But they were kindhearted and treated her like family.
“Come on! We need to travel to the dungeon! Where is the other girl? Why is she late? I reckon she didn’t even drink a drop of wine yesterday.” King Sig was looking for Edelweiss, who was still snoozing in her room.
“Edelweiss is not exactly a morning person….” Alistar tried to make excuses, but Sig won’t get them unless given straight.
“She likes to sleep late and thus can only wake up at noon.” Lily threw a straight ball.
“But this is a problem. No matter what, we need to wake her up. The path to the dungeon needs to be tread from dawn to dusk. We might be met with misfortune if night arrives while we are still on the road.” King Sig tried to ask Edelweiss’ serf to wake her up.
“Huh? Where am I?’ Edelweiss yawned as she mumbled incoherently. Her lady-in-waiting then brought her to her room to forcefully changed her dress, then brought her outside. Meanwhile, we also prepped ourselves with our weapons. Lily got her usual equipment with a buckler. I found out that it is more comfortable for me to hold a shield than a sword. The swinging was not as awkward.
We marched on while Alistar piggybacked Edelweiss inside a tunnel just north of the capital. We all brought a torch provided by king sig and ventured into the deep darkness. After an hour of walking, the tunnel was no longer a smooth cement road but a rough stone that stabbed through the soles of our boots. Soldiers weren’t affected, but Edelweiss chose to be piggybacked again after two hours of walking to such treacherous terrain.
“Why does day and night matter when we are inside caves like these?” Lily asked. It has been over four hours, and there is no sign that we will come out of the mountain. It feels like we go deeper the more we walk instead. The pitch darkness was calming initially, but the longer we lingered, the creepier it got.
It felt like something slick crawled on my fur, but nothing was on my tail, even when I scanned my surroundings. Lily also felt giddy when I mentioned it. The mana encroaching on this place made my hair stand on ends. It gave me goosebumps.
“It is not about the sun. It is the monster activity. Some nasty carnivores are active at night here. Such as worm eaters, crawlers, and ants.” Sig replied indifferently.
“Are they dangerous even at our level?” Alistar asked, “I don’t know about other dungeons, but I am sure that our dungeon of Carlith was the highest level dungeon in the land. There are several enemies which boast a level higher than seventy there. That’s where lords like us got our levels.”
“Not directly, at least. Well, it is hard to explain. You somehow can get killed even when their average level is only 30. I am level 70. “ He said.
“I never went to Carlith….” Lily sulked.
“It was difficult to enter. You must be above level 40 and have a matching party for that.” Alistar answered.
“I feel unwell.”
“Why? You hardly walked.” Jona asked.
“It is the mana,” Lily answered. Something is wrong with the flow of mana here. Are you okay, Rhander?” Lily asked
“Hah!Hah!” He was wheezing as we trudged on the uneven and sometimes sharp rocks. He had a lot of pride as a male and thus refused to be piggybacked by Mattheus, so he marched forth by pure will and stubbornness.
“I am not really fine. I don’t know… don’t talk to me….” He tried to regulate his breathing as he marched on.
“Hahaha, you need to do more exercise. Look! Lily is also a mage, and she was fine!” Joseph tried to make a joke as we continued on.
“Yeah, people that are sensitive to mana would feel unwell in this place. Especially those that have magician’s blessings. According to my sister, the mana was stagnant, and the density changed if compared to the outside.”
“Ahh, dungeon effect? It also happened in Carlith, but we have no caves leading to that dungeon, so the miasma was not condensed like this.” Alistar nodded. “I can sense mana, but my magic was subpar at most. But I knew something was wrong in this place. It really threw your sense of danger out of whack.”
“Ahh! You understand! That’s why we all must be careful. We often got more careless here due to the effect of this weird dungeon.” Sig nodded.
After four more hours of walking, we finally reached an open space. It was a large chamber with a gate leading to somewhere with two guards guarding it. Beside the entrance is a shack which will be our hotel for tonight. Rhander laid himself on the floor, uncaring of how dirty it was as he tried to breathe in as much oxygen as possible.
“Alright. I shall welcome you all to the hall of high metal! We shall rest here! After that, we will go through this door, and after two more days of walking, we will finally reach the deep mountain dungeon!” King Sig smiled as he caressed the metal gate that guarded this place. “Back in the day, the journey to the deep mountain was an essential trial for the successor of the mountain. We go there and fight alone, and when we touch the gate to the deep floor, only then we are deemed worthy of being the king.”
“Yes, yes. I know, dad. Quit telling a stranger about the glorious day before. Nobody survived such a journey except for the blessed dwarves. That’s why the journey was then changed into a party, right? Let’s sleep now. I am tired.” Niece cut off her father’s rambling, and we went back to the shack.
The shack was too small for all of us, so we pulled out our tent from Niece’s item box and did our cooking chores. The dungeon was still far away from us. And I already felt we were pretty deep inside the cave. We were really heading to the depth of hell.
