Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 19 (Patreon)

The cavern was an utter loss. I was probably going to have to redesign the first challenge room from the ground up, a prospect that filled me with equal parts exasperation and excitement. Losing work sucked, but along with that suckiness was potential. Something new to replace the old, worn-out adventures was always a welcome sight at my DM table, though in this case it was less old and more totally annihilated.

Oh well. At least everyone had come out of it alive. The combination of the [Life Cleric]’s healing and the [Stom Sniper]’s cover had kept the three adventurers from taking any hits, and the four inspectors all had sufficiently high levels and abilities to keep themselves alive with the exception of Kira, who apparently relied entirely on her high health stat and her teammates to keep herself safe when she was in a battle.

As for me… well, I had died once, but I had gotten better, and Kira wasn’t questioning it now that I’d saved her life a couple of times. Admittedly, I’d also used her as a meatshield, but she wasn’t giving me a hard time either for that, most likely because she’d been unconscious when I’d been doing that.

Sarah was the big issue here, but a [Triage] had confirmed that all the compulsions on her had been removed. Given the fact that she’d been on enough of those to turn a jellyfish into a raging murder monster, I was fairly sure that her base goals did not involve killing me and those around me. We still had the [Sorlockadin Ranger] watching her, just in case, but it was probably going to be a non-issue.

Hopefully.

I’d suggested continuing the tour immediately after Sarah had dropped to her knees and stopped, but the sudden reconfiguration of her mind had disoriented her enough to put her out of commission for a few minutes, so I put that plan on hold for now.

Besides, there were other things that I had to get out of the way first.

“Why were you even here?” I asked, my arms folded. “You know that these inspections are supposed to be closed off, right?”

For some reason, Rose didn’t meet my eyes, the [Bard] staring at the floor like she could find treasure in it.

“Ryan spotted them,” Troy said, the quieter boy taking over for Rose.

“I did,” the [Apprentice Knight] added with a nod. “I was working on modifications to my sword in the woods, and then I caught them walking by.”

So there’s woods in this area? “Modifications to a sword? First of all, how? Second, does that require the woods? Third, you chose to follow anyway?”

“Well, uh…” Ryan scratched the back of his neck, smiling awkwardly. “To answer the first question, my sword is magical and the weaponsmith from the order who made it gave me some tips on how to improve its efficacy. I went to the woods because nobody bothers me there and also because I needed a flowing river. And yeah, I followed. These two were in the area, so—“

“Hold on one second,” I cut in. “You have a magical sword, sure. You have to do upkeep for it, sure. But those two? Why were they there?”

“No particular reason,” Rose mumbled. She was really being uncharacteristically quiet.

“Rose and I were hanging out with him because we felt like it,” Troy said. “We were going to go register for an easy adventure later. Had our excuses planned out and everything.”

Excuses? “Why would you need those?”

“Oh, reasons,” he said, waving the question away. “Rose might explain it to you later.”

“Maybe,” the girl in question said.

“Anyway,” Ryan said, picking up from where he’d left off, “I found them and followed them.”

“And you didn’t notice?” I asked. “I know you can hear me.”

“We left a sign out front,” Charles called over, his voice bouncing around the fragmented room. “Was supposed to stop them from coming in. That’s our standard practice. No point on wasting spell slots on detecting eyes on us while we’re not actually in the dungeon itself.”

“We kind of ignored it,” Rose said, looking up but still not meeting my eyes. I didn’t know what was bothering her, but if she didn’t want to raise the issue, I wouldn’t pry. “Whoops.”

“We heard the fighting from inside,” Troy explained. “It sounded like a lot more than should’ve been necessary for this dungeon, so we went to take a peek, and then the dungeon tried to stop us.”

“Which was definitely a sign that something was wrong,” Rose said, regaining some of the chipper flow she usually had. “So I made a plan to get us in.”

“Into a fight you definitely shouldn’t have been in,” I said. “And a Guild investigation.”

“The unique circumstances of this incident are enough that we will overlook the infraction,” Kira said. “But you must know that in general, this kind of incident is one that would be a black mark on your Guild record. Too many of them and you may be barred from official adventuring contracts altogether.”

“Understood, ma’am,” Ryan said, offering her a crisp salute that looked practiced. “Won’t happen again.”

It’s definitely going to happen again.

“You don’t need to call me that,” Kira chuckled. “I’m not that old.”

“How’s Sarah doing?” I asked, raising my voice enough for her to hear me. “Still stable?”

“All good,” Kira said. “We’re going to give it a few minutes for her to wake up naturally. I don’t want to use magic when her mind is recovering from so many effects.”

“Fair enough,” I said, turning my attention back to the trio. “You three alright? This fight was seriously too high-level for you.”

“Well, I helped, didn’t I?” Rose said, defiant.

“You did,” I sighed. “But the fact that all three of you are alive now is practically a goddess-given blessing.”

“I didn’t get to help much,” Ryan said. “I have a lot to work on in terms of my swordsmanship and my sword. The man who attacked from the shadows was truly inspiring in that respect.”

“There were a lot of spells flying around,” Troy added. “I still have so much to learn, but I think I might have some ideas on how to improve just from observing that.”

I let out another sigh, deeper this time. “What’s happened has happened. Just don’t take risks this stupid in the future, perhaps? It is good that you learned from this, but I’ll give you this piece of advice: don’t let yourself get caught up in dreams of perfecting the spells that they have right now, because trying to mimic another without the same lessons they’ve learned, without the base of power they’ve built—all that will do is make you a shallow husk of who they are. So learn, yes, but learn while maximizing what you have without striving towards a goal that you’re not ready for yet.”

“Got it.” Troy nodded in acknowledgement. “Realistic goals, right?”

“Understood, sir,” Ryan said, though this time it was clearly a joke, his words unaccompanied by a gesture and his smile warm. “Thank you.”

“Will you three be joining as well?” I asked. “For the rest of the dungeon?”

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be here,” Ryan admitted. “We’re going to clear the dungeon again anyway once it passes the inspection, so I personally would rather not get spoiled.”

“I’ll wait just outside the entrance,” Rose said. “I haven’t got anything better to do, and I’d like to be able to assist in the event that something else goes wrong.”

“I still don’t know how you were able to affect the [Astral Monk] through her innate defenses,” I said. “You’ll have to explain it to me sometime.”

“I’m good with waiting outside,” Ryan said. “I was pretty much done with today’s mods to the blade anyway.”

“Good with me,” Troy said. “I have some changes to my spells I want to try.”

“Woah, keep your stick pointed away from me,” Ryan said, putting his hands up with mock seriousness.

“My arcane focus is fine as it is,” Troy said. “I think. Maybe.”

“Come one, let’s get out of his hair.” Rose ushered the other two out as if she was their teacher rather than their peer. On her way out, she shared a meaningful glance with me, one that I couldn’t quite make heads or tails of.

“Sarah’s awake,” the [Sorlockadin Ranger] called. “Wanna debrief?”

“We should,” Charles replied. “Glean any information we can.”

“She needs to rest,” Kira said.

“I’m… hardy enough,” the [Astral Monk] said, her regular voice surprisingly soft after she’d spent the past few minutes trying to kill us all. “And I’m sorry.”

“What the hell happened there?” Kevin asked. “Sorry about this, Sarah, tour guide, but I think we should get this out of the way while it’s still fresh in our memories.”

“Good idea,” the woman in question replied. “It was my ring, wasn’t it?”

“I think it might be,” the [Storm Sniper] said. “One second.”

He cast a series of [Appraisal]-type spells on it, each one of them with minute variations on them that modified them enough to add new effects but not enough for me to register them as wholly different skills through the interface. I didn’t look very closely with my dungeon senses—something these casters did with their spells made it a little annoying to perceive. High level casting, huh?

“It definitely was,” Charles said, his bevy of investigative spells concluding. “I can find traces of the spells that were cast on you with this. Where did you even get the ring from?”

“It was… it was my mother’s,” Sarah said. “It was one of the only things I was able to bring when I fled the Omen’s domain.”

“Fuck me,” Kevin said. “That ring? It doesn’t look like the one I remember.”

“It’s changed,” the [Astral Monk] said numbly, staring down at the ring in Charles’ hand. “The colors, the shape, everything… none of that was there before.”

I snuck a peek with my dungeon senses, and to my surprise it was true. Earlier, the ring had had a simple, elegant design on the outside. A nice artifact, to be sure, but nothing that had any identifying insignias—none that I recognized, at the very least.

Now, though, the sign of the Kingsguard that I had seen engraved onto the inside of the ring had moved to the outside, engraved in deep, rusty red. The embers of it were still glowing, parts of the rust turning blood red for moments here and there, which made me pretty sure it had been fully alight when it had been functionally controlling Sarah.

“We’ll store it somewhere for the time being,” Charles said. “Until we can be sure it won’t make that happen again.”

“Right, right…” Sarah muttered, her voice still numb.

The [Storm Sniper] cast another spell as he talked, tossing the ring from hand to hand like it hadn’t just almost killed us all, and a moment later the air screamed as an [Extradimensional Cache] opened to his right. He lobbed the ring in, closing the tear in reality with a snap of his fingers.

Goddess, these guys are terrifying.

“Alright,” I said. “Are we ready to go now?”

I checked each person with my human half, making eye contact with each of them. The three that had been uninfluenced seemed fine, but Sarah…

The robed [Astral Monk] was just sitting there with a thousand yard stare, and then she wasn’t.

I could see the moment the weight of the past few minutes fell on her, the overwhelming emotions crashing down as that barrier of numbness dropped aside. It had been a slow process, but now the dam had broken, and she buried her face in her knees, her body shaking as she sobbed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”

And then the [Life Cleric] was there, comforting her ally with a hug. “It’s okay, Sarah. You’re alright. We’re okay.”

I looked away. I wanted to offer the [Astral Monk] support too, but this was their party and they had an image to uphold. I wouldn’t force her to acknowledge her weakness in front of me.

I turned away my dungeon senses, too. Their conversation was private and intimate, and just because I could listen in on that didn’t mean I would.

At length, they came to a resolution, and I turned my senses back on their area when I heard Kira give the all-clear. When I looked back at them, the [Astral Monk] was just about done with wiping her face, and she met my eyes with a smile that actually looked genuine.

“Thank you,” Sarah said. “For your help.”

“No problem,” I said. “To the rest of the dungeon?”

“Let’s go.”

With that, the five of us were ready to go.

The remaining part of the tour was pretty smooth. To be fair, that fight would’ve made a proper disaster seem like a flawless operation.

The parkour room hadn’t seen many improvements, but there were a few for modular difficulties. The inspectors seemed satisfied with the changes I could make in making easier routes, moving or not moving the routes while people were on them, changing the number of snakes in the water, or even just shortening the course altogether. Only Kevin actually did the parkour, with the other using various transportation spells to get across, but at least the [Sorlockadin Ranger] seemed to be having a great time.

The new room also passed by virtue of the fact that the puzzle would work for any level party and the number of earthen constructs could also be modulated. I was pretty excited for a normal party of adventurers to run through it, to be honest. It took even this party a few minutes to get through it, but most of that was spent on the puzzle.

They cleared the boss room in three and a half seconds after I’d finished explaining it.

“Well done,” Charles told me as we were walking back to the entrance. “This dungeon passes, and your role as a companion to it seems to work excellently. The local Guild should come around for an initial setup soon. There should be precedence for negotiations with dungeonbound.”

“Great,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Is there anything else you need?” Kira said. “Just ask. You have done us—and me in particular—a great service today.”

“Just come around sometime,” I said. “Bring food, books, or just some conversation topics. It would be lovely to see you again.”

“We will,” Kevin promised, the min-maxer sounding surprisingly reasonable given what I’d seen of him so far. “It was a fun dungeon. Well designed.”

Thank you, I almost said, but I was still maintaining the facade that I wasn’t actually the dungeon here. “I’ll see you again, then.”

“I will return,” Sarah promised, and then we split off, them leaving the edge of the dungeon and me staying behind.

“Fuck me, this is going to be a lot of paperwork,” Charles muttered, and then I couldn’t hear them anymore.

I took a deep breath, closing my eyes, and then I heard the almost-imperceptible crunch of light footsteps pattering through the dirt.

One last thing to do today.

I didn’t even need my dungeon senses to identify my last potential problem of the day.

“Hello, Rose,” I said, opening my eyes.

The [Bard] met my eyes. “We need to talk.”