116 Veteran's Advice

"Is that… a lizard?" Blue asked.

"I'm not sure, but it seems familiar, doesn't it?" Mark said.

The small lizard had light green skin with two white stripes on its sides and a little blue diamond shape mark on its forehead.

"Wait, isn't that the lizard we saved in the beginning?" Hera asked. She was sure it was the same creature, not only that, the patter on its sides were very similar to the one on Tanika's body. The explorer activated her [Observe] to confirm her suspicion.

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Tanika's Soul

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The lizard started to glow and become translucent. When the massive corpse turned into the small particles, the small lizard crumbled as well, giving the group a nod and a smile before its face vanishing.

"Oh, so I guess that thing still had some good on it," Leo said.

"Yeah, it's kind of nice that we managed to help it. Still think we are not the good guys?" Blue turned to Alex.

"Meh, a fight is a fight. I'm not going to be cruel for shits and giggles, but I'm not going to be bothered by whatever is this," the assassin replied.

"Yeah, but where is the mana stone?" Mark asked, looking around.

"Check your tablet. There is a rewards thing. But you should wait for us to get out of here before getting it," Bonnie explained.

The sound of Hera vomiting stopped the conversation. She had kneeled by one of the pools and was in the process of returning her lunch to the wilds.

"Hera? Are you ok?" Blue rushed towards her friend.

"I'm fi.." she threw up once more. She had just killed a kind creature. If the soul was still there, there could be a way to save Tanika. Yet, she chose to take the easy way out and kill the creature. A creature that was so caring that wished to die in order not to hurt anything. And she had killed it. How could she say she was any better than the emperor? She killed him for power, and now she killed the lizard for money.

"Gimme a pearl. The poison must have gotten to her," Blue commanded.

"No, it's not. Sorry," Hera raised her head. A few tears had streamed down her face.

"What do you mean, fine? You just threw up," Blue placed a pearl on Hera's arm, hoping to trigger it. The pearl did nothing.

"I told you, it's not the poison," Hera used the clean water of another pool to clean her mouth.

"Ok, but what the hell just happened?" Leo asked.

"I... I don't want to talk about it," Hera said, avoiding the hunter's gaze.

"Are you pregnant or something?" Mark asked.

Hera chuckled, "If I am, I'm starting a religion."

"Ok, but what happened?" Blue asked once more.

"I... Can we talk about it later?" Hera slumped her shoulders and looked away.

There was a long pause before Blue, letting out a long sigh, "Fine, but we are talking before the next run."

The group now had a chance to see the drops from the monsters. In total, they found 1 450 gold, another block of clay, a few more pearls as well as one pearl the size of a bowling ball at the largest pool. Touching, it generated a prompt asking if they wanted to activate the pearl. After discussing a bit, they decided to trigger the effect.

The sphere started glowing, and the light began to spread. In front of them, a wide shot of the valley appeared as a notification, showing the view from the entrance. The live feed showed the glow coming from the other side and quickly covered the entire screen. A few moments later, the light vanished, and the image showed a valley completely free of poison. Even the purple fog above had vanished.

The group had spent 4 hours inside the dungeon. Even if they spent a couple of hours resting, they still had enough time to try another run.

The first few times a creature showed up, as they made the walk back to the entrance, put them on edge. However, neither the frogs nor the snakes were aggressive towards them. With that, the group relaxed and started talking as if they were strolling through the woods.

"Hey, Bonnie. Are you good to say what the hell was that whole contract thing?" Leo asked.

"Oh... Yeah, I guess I never explained to you," Bonnie let out a sigh, "Ok, First. The thing about me being married off was my mistake. The contract had a bunch of technical law terms, and I completely misunderstood. It was about companies and my role in them. So forget about all that. The entire contract was bogus. My father attempted to pressure my mother into telling me about my birth. She was worried about how I would react after knowing the truth. My parents are not in a loving relationship. I mean, I knew that, but still, my birth was a business transaction. My father wanted someone with good genes to give him an heir. So he paid 100 thousand gold to my mom to be artificially inseminated and then raise me as her daughter. In the end, he is asking for that money back."

"That is... messed up," Blue said.

"Is it?" Alex said, "I mean, People do worse for less. And there was nothing bad going on. Also, it gave us you, didn't it?"

Bonnie smiled, "Yeah. And I know my mom loves me, but the whole thing is just so weird. It's hard to talk to her right now."

"Still don't be too hard on her, show you still care. Take that from someone who has a long road to fix family relationships," Mark said.

There was a moment of silence before Blue finally asking," Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not even a little," Mark said, grabbing his tablet.

They changed the subject to spells and what they could use in this place, and in just around fifteen minutes, they reached the entrance, leaving the dungeon.

Outside it, there was the line of people waiting to get into the dungeon. Hera's group had agreed to rest a couple of hours in the city before coming back. They headed away from the wooden gate and towards the tower. On the way, Hera noticed Runir and his group walking towards the dungeon.

They greeted each other, but both parties wanted to keep doing their own thing. In a few minutes, they arrived back in the small village around the tower. The first thing Hera wanted to do was take a shower. The mud and water from the dungeon wasn't exactly clean.

The village also had a quick cleaning service. It was expensive, but they could clean all their gear in just half an hour. Hera wanted to take a bath, a long steamy bath in the hot springs. They agreed to spend a couple of hours resting before going to the dungeon again.

They stopped by the hotel, buying some simple clothes at the gift shop before going to the cleaners to wash their gear.

"I want to buy some more clothes. We've been doing everything with our armor. I forgot how comfortable regular clothes were," Blue said.

Hera had to agree. Even if she wasn't using a hard armor like the controller, the leather pieces were not the most comfortable things to wear.

"We could go buy some clothes after we get back... or when you get back from your trip," Alex suggested, but it was clear the assassin wasn't very excited about Blue's trip.

"I'll bring you guys some seashells bikinis then," Blue laughed.

"I pass, seashells don't go well with my eyes," Bonnie replied.

Hera was around that conversation, but she wasn't hearing. Her mind went back to the dungeon boss and the emperor. She understood that both events were supposed to happen like that. Tanika even seemed to thank the group for killing her, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she was going on a path that would crush her soul.

They went to the hot springs first, taking a shower and then going to the heated pools of water. The girls kept talking, but Hera wasn't a good company. They loudly discussed the dungeon and what happened inside it. They were even getting a few stares from other women that were relaxing in the heated waters.

A woman with long black hair approached the group, "Ladies, I understand your excitement, but please be mindful of others."

"I apologize, we will tone it down," Bonnie said.

"Yeah, sorry. We didn't intend to bother anyone," Blue joined.

"Not a problem. It was kind of refreshing to see people talking about the dungeon like that. After a while, it turns into a routine," the woman said, "Mind if I join?"

"Not at all," Alex moved a bit to the side.

"Thanks, I'm Cassandra, by the way," she sat at the by the group.

"It's a pleasure. I'm Bonnie, and these are Blue, Alex, and Hera."

"The pleasure is all mine," Cassandra nodded towards them, "Was this the first dungeon you ever did?"

"No, we did the Arcanist Lookout already, but it was the first time we did the Frog Valley," Alex said.

"Oh, the lookout is to the south, right? I've never done that one. People say it's only worth it if you get the first run after the reset," Cassandra shifted, getting a bit more comfortable.

"We got the first run by accident. It was fun, but there were some tricky parts. Although, I think the valley it's harder," Blue replied.

"Oh, I can imagine. The first time I did the valley, we had to run away. Only a few runs later, we realized that if you toss pearls in all the pools, in the end, the boss just glows and blows up without spawning the other things,"

"Really?" Alex gasped.

"Yeah, did you guys beat the boss without that?" Cassandra asked.

"Yeah, well... sort of. We cleaned a few pools, but not all," Bonnie said.

"Oh, so you had to deal with the spawns? That is hard. But if you let the giant lizard eat every one of them, you can get some good money with the things it... births," Cassandra explained.

They kept asking about the dungeon and strategies. Cass gave some hints, including that they should give up on trying the hard mode. To trigger it, you had to kill all the poison things and the snakes, but the boss would be a powered up version of the scared frog. It would not only be the size of the lizard boss, but the frog had lightning magic. Since they would fight around water, it was a deadly combination. Around half an hour later, they had a lot more information about the dungeon.

"Thank you for all the advice, Cassandra," Bonnie said.

"No worries, we explorers have to help each other," she replied.

"Hey, Hera! She is an explorer too," Blue turned towards her friend, trying to cheer her up.

"I meant in a more general way, like we are all explorers. But yeah, I'm an explorer too. It's weird to have a role that doesn't have a name," Cassandra chuckled.

"Oh, did you get another role skill?" Hera asked.

"Yep. I was between explorer and mage, so as soon as I could, I got the explorer's sync."

"Oh, did you get any other role skills?" Hera asked.

"Not yet. Why?" Cassandra asked.

"Nothing. I just wanted to talk about something that happened on my assassin role skill test."

"What was it? Was the bonus round weird?" Cass asked.

"Do you know about the bonus round?" Hera turned towards the woman.

"Yeah, I got one in the sync test and asked around. Apparently, all have a bonus round, but the difficulty in finding it varies," Cass said.

"Oh, did you..." Hera was about to ask about peaches. Thankfully, she stopped herself before saying anything in front of her friends, " How did you get the bonus round?"

"Well... I had to do the test well. Then I had to find a few things. But what exactly you are going to have to figure out. We are explorers. It's all about finding things," Cassandra said.

Hera nodded. She wanted the help and did not understand why Cass said no, but she wasn't in the mood to argue. They stayed in the hot springs for a while longer before they left. Meeting up with Leo and Mark, the group went towards the hotel to grab something to eat. They still had one more run to do for today.