Dungeon Virgin No More, Part 2

"Who can give me more details about this specific breed of undead monster?" was Mistress Lorelai's previous question, which no one seemed to have an answer to right off the bat.

"Anyone?" Mistress Lorelai called, her tone sounding more insistent now.

"The sluagh are said to be minor demons born from the souls of Irish sinners," Dess answered quickly.

"That's the myth. I want facts." Mistress Lorelai shoved Morph forward and right into the path of a charging sluagh. "Come on, novices... this is an easy question!"

"Sluagh are creatures born of a child's petty envy for things that belong to other children," Liara spoke up.

She'd arrive to assist Morph with the sluagh hacking away at his kite shield.

"They share physical similarities to Alfheim goblins, but also possess qualities exclusive to the undead category listed in the book Monstrous Beasts and How to Hunt Them." Liara's explanation came at the end of another sluagh that had been cut down by her spell-saber's gleaming blade.

I noticed that her spell saber sparkled like it had been coated in a sheet of frost, and I wondered just how many spells Liara's grimoire had given her as a signing bonus. Surely not more than mine, right?

"A point to the tower for your thorough answer, Ms. Lockwood," Mistress Lorelai smiled. It was a smile that turned upside down when her gaze fell on Morph. "Perhaps you should pay attention in class more, Mr. McMorbid... It might just save your life next time."

Now, what was I doing this whole time, you ask? Nothing. Unless you count keeping my lantern raised high as an achievement, which I didn't. Honestly, though, there were way too many competent cooks in this kitchen, and, as Sun Tzu said; 'The mark of a great warrior is that he fights on his own terms or fights not at all.'

A wounded sluagh drifted toward me with wide, weepy eyes that were just pitiable to look at. My pity evaporated the instant it hurled itself at me with outstretched claws though. And, while I smacked it away with the butt of my glaive as if it were no more than a mere nuisance, I reminded myself of another lesson from Divah's guide.

'Too many adventurers have been led to their deaths by a monster's smile. Learn from their mistake. See beyond the glamour and into the heart of one most vile.'

Our two teams and one instructor made short work of the remaining sluagh. Then, with the battle ended and the miasma temporarily receding, Mistress Lorelai led us to the rest of the raid group, which was also showing signs of winning a recent battle. The tiny bodies of the same undead monsters that had attacked us littered the ground around them with most of my fellow novices looking relatively unscathed.

"We'll take a short rest here," Mistress Lorelai announced.

At her words, my class's resident blonde Viking, Bjorn, approached one of the sluagh corpses with a carving knife in hand and a greedy look in his eyes.

"Do you even know how to carve out a sluagh's corpse, Bjorn Ericsson?" Mistress Lorelai asked.

"Uh…" Bjorn the Viking looked flustered under the scrutiny of our dökkálfar instructor's steely gaze. "I was just trying to—"

"Can you guarantee you won't spoil the quality of the materials?" Mistress Lorelai's eyebrow was arching slowly. "Need I remind you that none of the shops in Lower Yggdrasil will buy anything in poor condition?"

With his pale cheeks turning a bright shade of apple, Bjorn the Viking began backing away from the monster's corpse. Interestingly enough, several other novices who were attempting to do the same thing quickly jumped back into their teams.

"This is why we hire professional collection crews"—Mistress Lorelai's milky purple eyes scanned our faces—"who will come to do the work for us once we've made this floor safe for them to traverse."

No one seemed inclined to disagree with her, although I thought this step of having someone else farm your materials sounded lazy and expensive. Especially since material farming was an important and necessary skill all adventurers should have. At least that was Divah's excuse for being stingy about hiring outside help.

"Clean yourselves up, eat a power bar, or drink some sage tea. Those of you with professions can set up shop here... We'll move out in forty-five minutes," Lieutenant Doyle recommended.

After begging off from following Dess around the hastily raised stalls of my fellow novices, I found a nice little corner to lay my sleeping bag on. One far away from the hammering of apprentice smiths or the chanting of enchanters-in-training.

"You're going to sleep?" asked a voice from right behind me.

I couldn't tell Liara that taking a thirty-minute nap for me was like making a save point in a video game that would, in the unlikely chance of my death, ensure I wouldn't have to redo the entire day and just come back to life at this moment in time. Instead, I simply said, "A nap a day will keep the doctor away."

Liara sat on the floor next to me. "No one says that..."

"I say that," I countered.

I noticed her brows were furrowed more than usual.

"What is it?"

"Keep this to yourself, alright?"

"Who would I tell? I barely know anyone here."

Liara wasted another precious minute of my nap time before the she-elf revealed that she'd overheard our instructor and guide discussing how there were way too many monsters present on the second floor when another raid group of adventurers had already swept through this dungeon's first five floors only a few days ago.

"Lugh's Lament only has ten floors, and the official dungeon suppression force led by the Golden Bow is already clearing out its sixth floor," Liara said.

"But if they've already eliminated the bulk of the monsters on the upper floors, what about our quest?" I asked. "Weren't our targets supposedly down on the third floor?"

"They must not have found the specific monsters responsible for the situation in Kells Falls," Liara reasoned. "It's impossible to fully explore a dungeon floor in one run... there are far too many hidden passages that would take a group even as famous as the Golden Bow more than a few days of dungeon delving to discover."

I noticed a strange melancholy flash on Liara's face after she mentioned the Golden Bow a second time, and I wondered if she was somehow connected to the popular guild that I'd often read about in the Realmsverse Times.

"You know someone from the Golden Bow?" I asked.

Liara deflected my question with one of her own. "Weren't you planning to take a nap?"

I didn't pester Liara for an answer though as I had already decided earlier on to wait for her to tell me her origin story. Because, as Divah's guide suggested; Information given freely is unspoiled by coercion's guiding hand.

"Maybe you're right about this dungeon having secret passages..." I stifled a yawn while tactfully changing the topic. "Maybe the sluagh hid in one of these passages and they're just now coming out because they think our group's too weak to fight them."

"Maybe... but Mistress Lorelai sounded worried," Liara insisted.

"Lorelai, worried?" I glanced over at the dark elf who was teaching some spear-wielders how to properly twirl their spears in ways that would keep enemies at bay. "Does that monster look worried to you?"

"No. I guess not."

I lay on my sleeping bag and shut my eyes with the vision of Liara's worried face being the last thing I'd see.

"She'd tell us if there was a problem..."

"And if she doesn't?"

'Then me taking a nap would be a good thing for everyone,' I thought, but I didn't say it aloud. "We'll deal with it... that's the job."

On that confident note, I let sleep take me while wondering if Liara planned to sit by my side throughout my nap.