Lambert

"That was a great harvest, Lambert."

The hunters wouldn't stop showering me with praises, but I didn't mind. It was so different from how things went with the Elder. I cultivated lands much greater and for people numbering in hundreds of thousands. But she never said thanks, forcing me to work until I collapsed.

Here, everyone loved my cooking and commended me for all my other projects. I felt better valued amongst the Lesser Races than I ever did. They wouldn't let me do all the work alone either. When we harvested the rice from the paddies all kids and a hundred goblins volunteered. The golems had to change their priorities again and rush to build a proper granary. I didn't want all our hard work to go to waste because we didn't have storage buildings.

"It should last us for the winter as we are now, but I expect more people coming when food becomes scarce." I pondered while the hunter's leader still patted my back. He hollered on my assumption, flexing his muscles. We exported a ton of meat every week since they hunted with the crossbows. And it didn't mean the people of the village had to starve.

"The animals won't go away after snowfall, and we can trade too. Or cut back on it if needed." He ensured, moving on with his daily duties. They patrolled the roads too, which was part of their hunt as they never returned empty-handed. "And then there is Gitaut's orchard too, it's not like we don't have alternatives."

True. I visited the place with Alexandra's permission once the shaman's party left. It was bonkers. I studied every aspect of farming at the Magic Academy. I came from a village facing starvation even before the Collapse. I developed a knack for it and only enhanced the natural processes with my magic.

Gitaut didn't know a thing about cultivation, solving everything with brute force. Or at least the spirits did for him. Even I could feel a strong presence in that orchard, and my teachers deemed me blind to such things. One of the reasons I dropped out and ended up with the Elder.

The tree roots were in sandstone, the worst possible soil for their kind. But they received enough sunlight since he planted the orchard on a gentle hill. And he picked some exotic fruits to grow too. I already noticed that, but seeing them in person still surprised me.

"This guy must have more mana than the rest of us combined if he pulled this off," I remembered noting it to the Goddess. She was adamant, escorting me everywhere outside the village, except the rice paddies. I couldn't tell if I should appreciate her protection, or write it up as distrust.

"He had the most mana in the entire Magic Academy that year. But he slacked off in learning," Alexandra explained. I touched upon his botanical marvel in the meantime. "Which is funny considering he always shut himself in with his books and all, but I don't know what he did with them all day. Everyone learned how to cast basic spells ahead of time, but he ended up as a shaman."

"Yes, he's a strange one." I agreed. That first class made up of the Lesser Races was legendary. I banished one of those students while the other became the Demon Lord. Then there was the craftswoman extraordinaire, Anna Silberwulf who was Fenna's mother. One could argue if Alexandra was part of that class or only an auxiliary, but the shaman was their peer too. "He is more helpful than he pretends himself to be though. Once he gets that dungeon core and learns to cast spells, he'll become a warlock in no time."

"Will that change his behavior?" The Goddess giggled, and we returned to the village. It grew at an insane rate. When I first arrived it had fifty orcs and the Black Cat. But after another wave of refugees, they surpassed three hundred souls. The lizardmen menace was real, regardless if the Elder sent them against us, or if they acted on their own.

This brought back the first friend I made here when Bastion appeared on his Nightmare one day. I couldn't help but hug the gentle giant, drowning him in my best cooking. before I even got the chance to ask him about why he came back.

"Omerta is some ambassador if she's not even here." He grumbled, imitating Fang, the earlier mentioned Anna's husband. But the wolfman left right after greeting us, only returning a day later. "We tried to track down all the lizardmen tribes the Church Woman controlled. But Dio got caught up in something as usual. Another human joined us, and he travels with him now, trying to infiltrate Sanctuary."

I wasn't sure if he should reveal this, but with the beastman away, he ate and was cheerful for our reunion. The other captains had to leave though.

Avalon and Gorgon spent a great deal of training the people of this village, but now they took the wyverns home. Even I had to try myself in melee, but I was hopeless. I couldn't hold my own against a goblin and only knew a few offensive spells. The orc witch promised me more, and even a chance to borrow her magic crystal later. But we heard no news from them since they descended the dungeon.

Or rather, nothing new since Alexandra picked up the dwarf blacksmith. He also jumped into Bastion's neck. They talked about how they defeated some hellhounds when Fang tamed pack animals. The Nightmares had a reunion too, even if a brief one, but it was more important that Gomel gave us a report.

"Yes, they defeated that Cerberus in no time, but Nati knocked herself out with an insane spell." The dwarf told us during our meal, waving two sizeable ribs. "These taste magnificent, Sir Lambert, your cooking has improved even since I set out for my old shop."

"Stick to the gist of it, Smith, what did Nati do?" The Goddess acted all worked up when it was about her body double. She fidgeted often now that she spent most of her time in the village. She left on short missions, teleporting around the tribe to ensure we weren't ambushed. But she promised protection and was serious about it this time. "I hope she's all right, she has a lot of mana but..."

"She was fine, only slept through a day in my shop, that is all." The smith claimed, stuffing the ribs inside his mouth, the meat juice dripping all over his beard. "I mean I wasn't there but they said something about her generating a black hole. The Cerberus didn't stand a chance."

"I should have gone with them." Alexandra shook her head, but she got into a better mood after tasting my recent cooking.

"They were confident. Even cleared part of the city from the troglodytes once the Cerberus was gone." Gomel explained between his huge bites. It almost turned into a race between him and the ogre, but the Goddess ate more than the two combined. A feat I had only seen from Nati before. They couldn't deny that they shared the same body.

"Troglodytes and a Cerberus? Makes no sense." She returned to worried mother mode, and the dwarf had to explain, how they found the cave leading to the dungeon. They found it sealed off, and Omerta's dug straight into the middle. But after that, they could no longer communicate. When Bastion added his bits, things got interesting.

"Talk about digging, that's when Dio ran into the Nordhaben knights too." The ogre said with a full belly. His gear had upgraded since we last met, and Gomel made some adjustments, looking proud. "They tried to find the Church Woman's tribes, but found a dungeon instead."

"Where was this exactly?" Alexandra raised her eyebrows, losing her calm again. "Dungeons don't open at random in the middle of nowhere."

"Hmm, it was near here. The north-eastern edge of the Midgard Highlands?" Bastion pondered, and the Goddess laid a map across the table before I knew it. It lacked the details that we could see each forest, but the ogre pointed at a place some hundred miles south. "Somewhere around there."

"There is nothing in there." Alexandra shook her head, and her eyes dug deep into the giant's face. "Are you sure? What did they find? What kind of monsters? Did Dio's escort feel something?"

"Woah um, I don't know the details, all I saw was the letter he sent back with his wyvern." Bastion held his arms up as if surrendering. "But he mentioned beholders and harpies. And that the Bard mistook the entrances for the domination stones or whatever he called them."

"A bard? Domination stones should have a stronger signal than a dungeon that only opened. And did you say entrances? Plural?" Her questions wouldn't stop coming and she worked herself up again. Her anxiety rubbed off on me too, even before she turned towards me. "That's not a new dungeon. It might be the same one they entered in Baran, and that would mean it's huge. And if they faced abyssal monsters, not infernal ones, that hints at a change inside the dungeon."

"What's the difference?" Baran asked, furrowing his eyebrows. "Aren't my beauties abyssal creatures too? The same as the Cerberus and all."

"No, if you wanted to be technical with the terms, those are infernal monsters. They connect to planes with eternal fire. Like a hellscape. While abyssal ones come from the depths, hence the name." I joined in with a proper explanation, remembering it from my studies. "They are often interchanged but they aren't the same. And they shouldn't appear in the same dungeon unless someone took over one."

"Well, it's not the same dungeon then." The dwarf shrugged, looking at the ogre for help. "And what if someone took over it?"

"That's not something that happened in the last thousand years." The Goddess noted, on her feet now. "It's quite a challenge to clear a dungeon with a well-equipped force, but to take over one, you'd have to be a True God at least. Which means, they might be fighting one as we speak."

"Now, what are the odds? You are the only god on the continent, aren't you?" Gomel asked, but I knew of another. Someone I hadn't heard of since the Collapse, which coincided when the dungeon opened.

"There was Addas, the guardian of the Appenon nomads," I noted, and our eyes met with the Goddess again. I never saw her this worried before. Always calm, always downplaying the importance of things.

"Lambert. Pack your things, we're going after them."