The cave

Five woke up as the first rays of light entered the small house. "Ahhh!"

He quickly got up and checked his interface. After spending a few hours last night on planning what he would do next, Five finally decided that this village should be suitable to set up his dungeon. The only problem was that the barbarians were strong, too strong; Achi himself was level 35 and should be able to clear the dungeon without any problem.

But Five decided to take a risk! He wanted to make use of the children of the tribe to gather some DP first. It was usually not advised to found a dungeon in a city or village and that was because when starting, one would not have many monsters to defend the core. They would obtain a lot of DP since a lot of people would readily be able to come to the dungeon but then, they might put their core at risk.

Usually, one would build their dungeon in the wild where the beasts would attack the dungeon and the dungeon master would obtain their initial DP from them. Wild Beasts were attracted by the dungeon cores and wanted to eat them. They were technically the cores of powerful demons and by consuming them, the beasts were able to evolve.

If he followed the normal procedure, Five would have first killed the wild beasts and earned DP to grow his dungeon. Eventually, adventurers would discover his dungeon, resulting in more people coming in. As more people would come, they would eventually build some facilities nearby to make the dungeon hunting more pleasant and finally, these facilities would grow up and end up as a city.

This was how most cities were built. A city would only be successful if there was a lot of resources near it and dungeons were naturally a large reserve of resources, ready to be collected. The strength of the city was proportional to that of the dungeon.

The most powerful cities like the capitals would even have several dungeons nearby. Dungeons could not be built within a radius of 1km of each other, but one could build one just outside that radius. This was the method used by Five to try to locate the dungeons. He would simply try to found his own and if a dungeon was nearby, he would receive a system prompt informing him that it was invalid. If there were no dungeons, then he would simply decline upon receiving the system prompt asking for a confirmation.

Five quickly got out of his house and was surprised to find the village already lively. The men were preparing to go out hunting; some were checking the quality of the nets while others were sharpening their blades. The women were also preparing to go to the river; they needed to do some cleaning and to bring water back.

Five quickly walked by the barbarians and found Achi giving some orders to some barbarians.

"Achi! I'll be leaving, I have something really important to do," said Five.

"Are you not going to eat something first?"

Five smiled, "No need. I need to go. But thank you for your hospitality! I will definitely pay you back. I can guarantee that life here will improve!"

Achi looked at Five. He could not read through the enigmatic smile but seeing the determination in Five's eyes, he simply nodded.

"Then, I'll be waiting! You can come back at any time," said the tribe leader.

Five waved at the barbarian before quickly leaving the village. He needed to move fast before the women would arrive at the river. The other barbarians simply looked at him with strange expressions; it was weird fort to wake up that early. But none of them stopped him since Achi told them to let him go safely.

Five was planning to use the cave mentioned yesterday by Mira. Since it was an unexplored cave, he could use it to his advantage to build his dungeon there. He ran through the green forest as quickly as he could. The river could be seen entering the forest from the village but Five did not want the barbarians to suspect that he was going there.

And so, Five simply ran for about 100m in the forest before turning left where the river was. A few minutes later, he stopped just in front of the stream of water and observed his surroundings. The river could barely qualify as one; it would be more accurate to call it a stream of water. The water was not very deep making it very convenient for the women to easily wash the clothes. The children could also safely play in the water but if they went down the stream, the water would become deeper.

He did not have any map of the place and did not know where the cave was but taking into consideration that the children were allowed to play there, it should be relatively close to the village and safe.

Five walked down the stream as he looked around him. The forest was very peaceful, no beasts could be found, except for some rabbits running around. But very quickly, a very distinguishable sound resonated in his ears, 'A waterfall?' thought Five.

He continued to walk forward and a few seconds later, he stopped on top of a cliff. Next to him, the river came to an abrupt stop and released all its water down the cliff. Below, a small pond could be seen which poured its water into another stream going deeper into the forest.

It was a breath-taking sight; Five could see the forest from above. A few strong beasts could be seen drinking downstream. It was as if the forest was divided into two parts by the cliff. It was hard to believe that a village was found merely 300m away from this wild environment.

'The cliff is a natural barrier. The forest above should be a safe area while the one below is the hunting grounds of the barbarians.'

'If there is a cave down the river, it should be around here. Most likely near the waterfall!' said Five to himself.

After taking a few seconds to admire the scene, he started to look for ways to climb down the cliff.

'There should be a path somewhere which links the upper part of the forest to the lower part.'

Five looked everywhere and quickly found a way to climb down. The rocks were arranged such that a small path was formed but it did not go all the way down. Going down the path only led to a dead end. Five paused for a moment. Moss and a few bushes were growing on the path. To his right, he could see the forest and could jump down to dive into the pond. To his left, was the rugged cliff wall.

"Where is that cave? Behind the waterfall? But there is no way to access it unless I jump down!" thought Five.

He had no way to confirm it but Five was certain that he was very close to the cave Mira mentioned. He heavily doubted the children dived into the pond or else, how did they climb back up? But more importantly, this dead end was strange. It was not very noticeable from above and could easily be missed when looking from below due to the moss and bushes. The green color allowed the path to easily blend with the cliff making it hard to notice.

Five looked around him and thought for a moment, 'This strangely looks man-made'. Something was definitely fishy, it was weird for there to be such a random path down there that led to a dead end. And so, Five started to examine the moss on the wall and the bushes.

A few minutes later, he finally found what he was looking for. Hidden behind 2 large bushes, the small entrance to a tunnel could be seen, blending perfectly with its surroundings.

"Found it!"

Five quickly crouched and crawled inside the hole. Unfortunately, the entrance was a small hole and Five was forced to crawl to get in. What greeted him inside was complete darkness! All he could hear was the waterfall flowing outside.

The inside of the cave was fresh and humid but beyond the hole, the cave quickly became larger, allowing Five to stand up properly. Five quickly took out a torch and lit it up. He started to explore but to his disappointment, the cave was completely empty.

He walked for about 5 minutes through the tunnel which kept becoming larger and larger, until he finally met a dead end. However, at that dead end, Five found a small entrance that led to a small room.

To his surprise, the small room actually turned out to be the house of someone and the owner of that place was staring at him as he entered. The only thing was that the owner was already dead; he was now merely a lifeless skeleton sitting on a chair, staring at the entrance. There was also a bed and a rotting table. A faint air current could be felt coming from the roof of the room.

"What is this place?"

He looked at this old place with a trace of pity. That man should have been someone powerful to have been able to create this place, but he was now dead, forgotten by all. There was no doubt that the room used to be cozy and well decorated but now, it looked completely in ruin.

But in this ruined room, there was one thing that attracted Five's attention. He quickly raised the torch and placed it on the stand on the wall before walking to the bed. Next to it, was a small rusty chest; its lock was completely covered with rust and even the paint was scratched off.

"Since you already passed away, I suppose you would not mind if I take what's inside?" said Five while briefly looking at the dead skeleton. It naturally did not react at all and Five easily opened the chest; the lock gave in as soon as some force was applied, revealing the treasures inside.

Apart from a pile of dust, only one item was peacefully resting in the chest.