On the other side of the mountain
Eldi could feel the tunnel workers staring at him, curious from the news of the return of the expedition, and the guests they had brought. And above all, his presence. There was some fear about the arrival of one of those beings from the surface, one of those who were mentioned in the legends, or in the tales to scare children. But there was also surprise by the friendly relationship between this and the foreign mole-people, and even with their own explorers.
It was also a wonder to see their distant brothers, those with whom they had long since lost contact, those that, until now, they didn't even know if they were alive.
However, gazes were all that Eldi received. None dared to start a conversation with him, beyond some forced greeting. They were afraid or didn't know how to talk to that stranger, and they didn't stay long enough for others to introduce him.
It wasn't until they arrived near the city-mole that, as it had already happened in the first city, some elderly people came out to receive them. Before, the explorers from that city had gone ahead to report everything that had happened.
His companions were the first to speak, to offer their willingness to talk, to start conversations and resume the broken relationship from hundreds of years ago. Eldi was watching from afar, realizing that the number of these elders' guards was significantly higher than in the previous occasion. Perhaps for being more distrustful, or for the presence of the group that were with him.
However, there were no major problems, beyond the initial distrust, which disappeared largely when he proved to be able to teach them magical crafting. They didn't own all the platforms, since they had only managed to recover or retain half of them, although they had the blacksmithing one, the most important to them.
Despite that, Eldi identified the candidates from the missing crafts, encouraging them to go with their brothers to learn it, as soon as those brothers managed to reach level 7. In this way, he was giving them a new reason to establish a cordial relationship with them.
He also taught them as many recipes as he knew, except for those owned by the other mole-people. It would have to be them who provided those recipes, who exchanged them for the ones they had shown to the high-human. They should be another reason for friendship between their peoples, or so he hoped. He had perceived the distrust between them, but also the expectation for their future relationship.
He didn't stay many days there, just enough to let them level up and to teach them new recipes. And these were more than willing to accompany him to the surface, as he had crossed the mountains from below. Shortly before, he had said goodbye to his new students, who had broken the barriers between their races and had come to respect their teacher. As a result of the daily treatment, they had acknowledged that this stranger wasn't someone to fear, that he had a heart and soul like them.
And he said also goodbye to the warriors-mole with whom he had shared very intense and dangerous hardships, making each other precious companions.
He neither created an Exit Gate there, nor did he propose it. Although in the end the relationship had been cordial, he hadn't gained enough trust from them. Perhaps they had been together less time due to having fewer crafts to teach; perhaps it was the incipient relations with another mole-people among who he himself was very well regarded; perhaps the circumstances, or perhaps the differences between communities that had long been separated.
It is true that they felt indebted to the surface dweller, and accompanying him was the least they could do. However, and facing the complaints from some citizen-mole who still distrusted him, he was part of the journey blindfolded. They feared that he could use that knowledge to lead an invasion against them from the surface.
Eldi himself had proposed it. He didn't want troubles, and he didn't need to know the way, although, to his surprise, it became marked in his map, a path through a labyrinthine network of tunnels, many of them containment ones. However, it wasn't a knowledge that he intended to use.
He said goodbye friendly to his guards, being aware that they felt guilty of the treatment they had given, although he wasn't reproaching them. Given the circumstances, he didn't consider that they had treated him badly, and distrust is something that can't so easily be torn from the hearts.
The red sunlight dazzled him. After so many days underground, it was hard to get used to the bright daylight, so he took refuge in the shade of a tree. It was comforting to feel again the breeze running free and stroking his face, the sound of the leaves moving, the singing of birds or the sound of insects, of those which were really insects and not giant monsters. He hadn't realized how much he had missed it.
He decided to try Disguise, lowering his level to 20, and soon he was attacked by a dark red centipede level 35, who soon realized its terrible mistake. He suffered two other attacks before he decided to stop using it, after which none of the forest denizens approached him.
Once its usefulness was verified, and since he didn't need to hunt the lower level beings, he preferred the comfort of them fleeing from him, while he was heading towards his destination. Eldi no longer needed the dungeon to level up, but he still had to go there at some point, on the advice of the Oracle, and now it was near. He also wanted to gather information to decide whether to go to one of the highest level dungeons, or try to cross the border and temporarily move away from that kingdom.
So he headed towards the point in the map representing the dungeon, crossing the forest. He was hoping to find some village in the way where he could get some information, somewhere he could enter safely, hiding its level and appearance. But he found nothing, because he didn't know exactly where to look, and was avoiding the roads.
And, what was worse, when he arrived near the dungeon, it wasn't deserted as the first. There were soldiers watching it.