"Oh?" Phillipe asked. "What's that?" "How long have we been in the dungeon for?" I asked. Phillipe hummed. "I'd guess two, maybe three hours so far. Perhaps a little more. Hungry?" I was, but not enough to make a fuss about it. If we'd entered at around seven, it must have been approaching noon-ish soon. "No, I'm fine. I was more wondering... well, someone told me that each floor takes twice as long as the last. It should have taken us seven hours to get this deep in, shouldn't it?" "Not quite," Phillipe said. "It might take that long if you're in an unmapped area, going very slowly and cautiously. Imagine if we didn't have Cavendish's team to push through the first three floors. We'd still be on the second floor now, I think." I nodded. Maybe that estimate wasn't far off, then. "That rule of thumb is about as accurate as any rule of thumb," Phillipe said. I could hear the smile without having to glance up to see it. "This floor should be relatively simple, if we were willing to rush it, but the fourth floor is... as dangerous as it is simple." "What's that mean?" I asked. The ruined staircase actually became better as we continued to descend. Fewer steps were broken and cracked and we even reached an archway where a lamp was hanging above. It glowed very faintly with some sort of stone within. Newest update provıded by 𝗻𝗼𝘷𝗲𝗹•𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮•𝕟𝕖𝕥 "What are those?" I asked, pointing to the blueish-white light. "Lamps?" Tyro asked. "They use these on the roads all over the city." No, they absolutely did not, I didn't say. "They're crystalized mana lights. They don't provide much light, so most places prefer oil lanterns, or electrical bulbs now. But these will glow for ages without dimming, so they have their place," Phillipe said. "Some teams come down to grab them, but they're usually late in the run. No one appreciates it when someone takes away the lights while they're not done working. Besides, other dungeons have better, bigger lamps that are easier to grab and on floors that aren't this deep." "Huh, alright," I said. The lamps became more frequent as we continued to descend, though there were spots where a lamp was clearly meant to be that just outright lacked one. Still, it provided enough illumination that I spotted the greenery right away. The first signs were some plants clinging to the cracks in the walls. Long vines with big, flat leaves that were pressed up against the stone and along the floor. The deeper we went, the more plants there were until, finally, we reached the fourth floor and I found a room where every wall was covered in greenery. The ceiling arched above, carefully placed stonework with the occasional chain hanging down to hold onto one of those glowy lamps. "Is the whole floor ?" I asked. It felt like being in a park, almost. An eerie, quiet park in the dead of night. The walls were practically hedges, broken up only where a door led into the next room. We had three options as far as directions to travel: left, forward and right. "Pretty much," Phillipe said. "This floor has a lot of plants, and the enemies within it are adapted to them. Tyro?" "Slimes and goblins," Tyro said. "Unique to the Ditz dungeon, the goblins here are adapted to using the slime, both as mounts, as weapons, and as armour. They still only pose a low-to-mild amount of danger to a prepared delver." Phillipe nodded. "Don't expect too much by way of resistance here. The floor is rather strange at the best of times though. Some of the corridors are like miniature hedge mazes, and the goblins, while weak, tend to try and ambush from the sides." "Wonderful," I said. "Just to be clear, what's a slime?" Tyro seemed to be on the ball when it came to answering basic dungeon trivia today. "A slime is a small-to-medium creature that has no bones and looks like a lump of semi-liquid material. They react to stimuli in different ways and are generally caustic or poisonous. But they move slowly, and can be killed by beating them apart." Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. "If you see a small one, just stomp on it," Phillipe said. "Wiggle your foot once you're done, you don't want their remains sticking to you. The acid they're made of is very slow-acting, but it'll wear out your boots anyway." "Good to know," I said. "So, which way?" Phillipe slung his backpack off and opened it up. He pulled out a small tin box which opened with a pop to reveal some folded papers. Maps. I didn't get to see them since he was far too tall and it only took a moment before he pointed to the door to the right of the entrance. "That way. Right into a room where we'll have no choice but to fight. Do you have any more of those mushrooms?" he asked. I nodded and tossed my satchel open. There wasn't much left though. A number of my mushrooms had been squished and... well, I'd need to clean out my bag sometime soon because the inside was filled with enough poisonous powder to wipe out a village. I still had a few mostly-intact mushrooms though. "Some hallucinogens, a few that'll have anything that breathes choking to death. And I have a few utility mushrooms. Water, healing, low-light vision." I shook my head. "I really need to restock, but I should have enough to clear a room like we did above." "The room after this one is a waypoint," Phillipe said. Again, Tyro jumped to reply. I think he was mostly just fishing for compliments from his dad at this point. "They're rooms in a dungeon that aren't the entrance or exit to a floor and which are usually free of any monsters, traps, or big dangers. They tend to show up on set floors. The middle-most usually." "This one has a well, and a few amenities," Phillipe said. "We can rest there, have a bite, recuperate and prepare to push on." I nodded. And I could restock. Well, I could if we had a few hours. "Alright. I think I could use a break." Phillipe placed a hand on my shoulder. "Do you want one now? This room is relatively safe." I looked at his hand, then nodded. I couldn't quite meet his eye. I... I don't know what it was, but the sudden caring hurt, which was stupid. I was his client, of course he would be concerned about my wellbeing to some degree. It didn't make sense for what was clearly a positive feeling to sting so badly. "I'm fine. Like I said, just looking forward to the break. I brought some sandwiches for the first day." He chuckled and nodded. "Alright then." Phillipe pulled his pack back on and prepared his weapons, which was my cue to do the same. "Tyro, can you throw these again?" I asked as I prepared another mushroom bomb. I only had two [Bottle Pops] left, so I was thinking of placing them together with the rest of my [Dead Man's Cough] to create a single, larger explosion. "Phillipe, how big is the next room?" "Relatively large. There's a hedge throughout it. It's not quite a maze, just a lot of hip-high walls all over and some goblin hovels dotted around." That would make the dispersion a lot worse. "Okay," I said. "Tyro, aim for the ceiling." The hedges, if they were what I imagined, would probably make the spore dispersal worse. Which sucked, but we'd have to live with it. We could make up some of the difference with the rest of my [Purple Starball] mushrooms. We masked up again, I adjusted Sir Nibble's cloth mask after wiggling it around to free any dust clinging on it, and the two men (did Tyro count?) got their own masks up while I gathered all the mushroom's we'd be tossing to hand them off to Tyro. Phillipe opened the door into the next room, and I caught a glimpse of a wall of thick foliage that reached up to a little taller than I was. Tyro tossed the first big mushroom bomb in, and it detonated against the ceiling with a loud whump. Goblins started to chitter and scream as he started to fling the other mushrooms around while I passed new ones to him. And then it was time to dive into the room and clear our way through it.