Dungeons and Dalliances

6.30 – The Search Begins

When Natalie and Ana joined their three teammates down in the inn's lobby, Liz immediately blushed, giving away that Jordan had filled them in on what had been happening. The reason for the delay.

Now that Natalie thought about it, Liz had probably felt when [Divine Invigoration] had changed targets. A person could sense when they gained or lost stats, often quite clearly—much less a boost as big as the one Liz had been accustoming herself to. That must have been, uh, an interesting realization. Liz had basically been alerted to the exact second Natalie had finished inside Ana.

"You're wearing a different shirt, Ana," Jordan said innocently. "What happened?"

Ana paused, obviously taking the question literally. She opened her mouth to answer, but Natalie interrupted.

"Alright. We have a meeting with the Baron, right?" She tried to play off how flustered she was, but she probably didn't do a good job.

Jordan smirked at her, but thankfully chose not to press. "Just a routine thing," she said. "Probably thanking us for yesterday."

Thanking them for yesterday. At that phrasing, the event with Alaina flashed into her head. Her accidental late-night intrusion, the Baron's daughter having come upstairs to also thank her.

Should Natalie tell them about that?

Nah. Why would she? It'd just been an awkward mishap. She would still be keeping her promise; she wouldn't fuck the Baron's daughter.

"Which is a bit tedious," Sofia said. "There's obviously no need to be thanked. And the mission hasn't changed. There's no new information." She sighed. "It's definitely because Liz is on our party, so he feels obligated to."

"Sorry?" Liz offered timidly. "It's annoying to me too."

"Not your fault, of course," Sofia said. "Let's go and get it over with so we can head out and start our search." She wrinkled her nose. "Might take all day, or longer. The sooner the better."

Natalie nodded in agreement. "And by the way," she said, "I've got some stuff to talk about, while we're walking around." There would be plenty of opportunity while roaming the Duskwood fruitlessly searching for the goblin nest to chat, so she'd save it until then. "Me and Malice discussed some things."

"Oh?" Jordan said. "Important topics?" Her eyebrows went up. "Things only she knows about?"

"Yeah. That stuff."

"Interesting," Ana said. "Let's hurry, then. I want to know."

***

After a brief visit with the Baron, which indeed provided no new information and was rather a pointless waste of time filled with frivolous politeness, their party of five returned to the inn, got dressed into their adventuring gear, and headed out to begin the hunt for the goblin nest.

The same enchanted carriage carried them outside the city's limits and a bit past, down a less-maintained branch where the bumpy dirt had the cart rattling around like it would fall apart. The swift convenience lasted until the edge of a thick forest: the Duskwood.

Varten, the [Tracker], had created a map for their team, identifying the portion of the forest he had narrowed his search to. He had needed to leave at a certain point, the danger growing too prominent. An armored, combat-ready squad would need to crawl around to close the search off. Them.

Assuming Varten's preliminary work was accurate, and she did assume that, since the man was a level six [Tracker] who had the Baron's trust, then they weren't in for all too tedious of a mission. Though definitely somewhat tedious. Trudging through a forest for hours on end looking for a goblin nest wasn't anyone's favorite way to spend an evening, least of all Natalie's.

Even with the amount of the Duskwood they needed to look through narrowed significantly, the search space of 'a section of the forest' was still a decently large area. And unlike the dungeon, there weren't frequent combat encounters to spice things up. Just plodding along with a compass, a map, and trees all around them.

Naturally, they filled the time talking amongst themselves. There was an argument to be made for total stealth, but a goblin nest, especially a larger one, would be immediately noticeable. And any goblins who spotted them would likely charge on sight, not retreat to warn the others. They were mindless, evil creatures, stupider than even many dungeon monsters. So stealth wasn't all that important.

For the first topic of conversation, Natalie filled the others in on what she had learned from Malice. Like her, they were understandably dumbfounded by what the wolfgirl had revealed—or, Natalie supposed, what the wolfgirl guessed. That the seven passions weren't ever supposed to have awoken, having been dead, and now that they had, were likely in conflict with the dungeon. Possibly wanting revenge.

"But why isn't the dungeon trying to kill us, then?" Jordan asked. "If your patron is its enemy, shouldn't it be doing its best to stomp us out? Before we become a threat?"

"How could we possibly be a threat to the dungeon?" Sofia asked incredulously. "At any level, patron or not?"

"How would I know?" Jordan said. "I'm just saying. If those two entities are, in fact, enemies, then wouldn't the dungeon want to get rid of us? So far, the dungeon has been—well, kind of nice to us. I'd say our opportunities for progression have been better than most teams."

"That might be Lust's doing, not the dungeon's."

"She can affect its encounters?"

"Maybe. At a minimum, she did give us Malice's capture core. And we know the dungeon didn't like that."

The group paused, then shivered, remembering that frantic life-or-death scramble for the surface. Malice seemed to think its temper would have cooled by the time they went on their next delve, and indeed, the dungeon had already been easing up even before they'd escaped. But Natalie wondered whether there would still be some lingering animosity. The dungeon had made it abundantly clear it didn't want them to take the wolfgirl—a 'prized possession', as Malice had called herself—and yet they had anyway.

"She also doesn't have any proof," Jordan pointed out. "So we can't take what she says as fact. But the reasoning does have merit. If the Reverie says the Passions were enslaved to power the dungeon, then, if they were somehow breaking free, they would definitely want to destroy their prison to fully escape, right? And that prison is the dungeon."

"This is way above our pay grade," Natalie groaned. "But either Lust can control how the dungeon manifests and even stop it from attacking us, or the dungeon is friendly despite Lust being hostile toward it. Or something else is going on."

"It could just be its nature," Jordan said. "We might not want to think of them as having people motivations. The dungeon might always provide fair encounters to its delvers, so long as those delvers themselves haven't done anything to it. Allegiances irrelevant. For that matter, who knows if the dungeon even cares if it dies?"

"If we don't assume some level of non-alien intelligence, then we can't make any guesses about anything. Logic wouldn't hold at all."

"Fair," Jordan said, rubbing her forehead. "Doesn't make what I said wrong though."

"Focus on the practical," Sofia said. "Until Lust shows her hand on why she's given Natalie the skills she has, or until the dungeon shows hostility toward us, we just proceed as normal." She shrugged. "What else is there to do?"

True enough.

"Besides," Jordan said. "It always comes back to the same thing. What's a level three gonna do in a battle between gods? We just have to keep getting stronger."