"I take it this isn't normal?" I asked. Phillipe shifted his shoulders and changed the grip on his hammer. "No, it isn't. Tyro, what do you think happened here?" "Um," Tyro said. He started to look around the room, sweeping it with his attention slowly. I followed his gaze as he pointed. "Just taking in the clues. The goblins are an obvious one, they're dead, and stacked. It doesn't look like there are any weapons on the pile. They're all over there, next to the fire pit." Phillip nodded. "Yes, go on." "The fire wasn't put out, but it looks like it's nearly dead, so unoccupied for a while. No telling how long. Uh. Scuff marks on the ground there, and there," he said while pointing. "And it looks like blood on the ground there, but it's dried?" "Good," Phillipe said. "You missed those stones there. See how those ones look like a lower torso? That's a rock golem. Weakest sort of semi-animate monster-like creature you're likely to run into a weaker dungeon. Tough to take down, but not a big threat." Tyro nodded with a grimace until his dad patted him on the shoulder. "Don't worry. Takes experience to notice that kind of detail. You'll figure it out." "So, what does this all mean?" I asked. "Were the goblins stacked that way by others?" "They probably didn't stay here," Tyro said. "No tin cans, no spots for bedspreads." His dad nodded along. "Good observation. Whomever cleared this space didn't linger." "Are we expecting friends or not?" I asked. Phillipe lowered his hammer and then rubbed at his chin. "We should be fine, probably. We're heading deeper in any case. I checked the guild list for teams heading in, and there was a team coming through the fourth floor on the way to the fifth today, but I didn't see any teams deeper in." "So a non-guild team then?" I asked. Check latest chapters at 𝙣𝙤𝙫𝙚𝙡⁂𝔣𝔦𝔯𝔢⁂𝘯𝘦𝘵 "Possible. The guild can be testy about that kind of thing. Most people join up because it's worth the cost just to have someone taking care of the administrative side of things and interfering with any conflicts between teams, but some groups don't care." So we were maybe dealing with someone or someones who were clandestine. Which could mean literally anything from an expert team that didn't want to bother with paperwork to rank amateurs diving for fun. The truth was probably going to be somewhere in the middle. The real question on my mind was the level of aggression we could expect to deal with if we did run into a team. I wasn't going to shy away from a bit of murder if it meant keeping myself safe, and my shrooms worked as well on people as they did on goblins. But... I'd rather not have to deal with anything of the sort if I could avoid it. "Wouldn't someone notice if a non-guild team entered the dungeon?" Tyro asked. "There are laws in place to prevent anyone from gatekeeping the dungeon's entrance, and it would cost a fortune to prevent people from continuing on from within the dungeon itself," Phillipe said. Was that why no one had stopped me from sneaking in the first time? I had wondered why there wasn't a gate and barrier around the dungeon's entrance. It was a dangerous place, after all, and you probably didn't want just anyone wandering in. "Has anyone tried walling off a dungeon?" I asked. "To pick and choose who goes in? Sure. You'll get some very aggressive teams every so often that'll try to bully others out of business too. They usually end up annoying the bul-- the law enforcement officers in charge of guarding the dungeon. I think, in the past, some groups tried to monopolise the dungeon but that turned out to do more harm to the local businesses that needed the dungeon's produce than it did any good. So it's no longer legal." That made some sense. Besides, what was the worst that could happen if they just let anyone in? Someone might die? If the city cared about that it would do a lot more about its sanitation levels and the state of the slums than it did. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! "What do we do now?" Tyro asked. "You were planning on having us camp here for the night, right?" Phillipe nodded. "I was. Change of plan though. If this team has cleared this room, it's possible they've cleared others. We can always return here, but I'd like to see how far they've gone. If they cleared all the way to the sixth floor..." "Then we'll be a whole floor ahead by tomorrow," I said. "It's wishful thinking for now," he said. "Let's see what's actually waiting for us before we jump to any more conclusions." Phillipe pointed to the various exits. There were two with doors to the left and right, and a tunnel entrance ahead, as well as an archway into another room that I imagined was also cleared if nothing had come from it. "There are two ways down to the sixth floor. To the right is five rooms, to the left is two." "So why take the right path?" Tyro asked. "Because if you take that one you need to clear eleven rooms to get to the sixth floor's exit," Phillipe said. "If you're just in a hurry to hit the sixth floor, then you always go left. If you intend to reach the seventh, then taking the longer path on this floor is worth the effort." We moved right. Tyro was holding himself casually until Phillipe tapped him on the back. "We don't know if this one's cleared. Be ready." Phillipe had me open the door, then we peeked into the next room. It was more sewer space, with a stench that almost overwhelmed me and reminded me of my ill-fated experiments with [Skunk's Lament]. In the centre of the room, sitting around a vent that was spewing faintly glowing gases, were half a dozen goblins wearing nothing but slimes and sewer filth. One stood up with a bounce and squealed while pointing our way. Phillipe was quick to barge into the room and meet the goblins in combat, with Tyro just behind. I stayed back, only supporting them where I thought it wouldn't hurt by applying a small bit of [Blight] to any goblins that came close enough to reach with my aura. I was trying to see if I could maybe push [Blight] in deeper. Press into the skin instead of merely covering a patch of it and rotting that. My one attack ability lacked penetrating power, so maybe if I tried to counteract that lack, I'd develop a secondary skill that would make up for it. Or so I hoped. In reality I figured it wasn't all that likely to work out that way. The room had seven goblins, and Phillipe and Tyro seemed content to divide them between each other, with the last getting double-teamed by the father-and-son duo. Not exactly what I'd call a beautiful parenting moment, but to each their own. "I stink," Tyro said. He shook his boots which had gained a layer of some sort of sticky gunk to them. "You're a teenage boy, that's a normal state of being," I said as I walked in. Phillipe chuckled, so at least two of us thought I was funny, and that made a majority here. "So, they didn't come this way?" "Seems like that's the case," Phillipe said. "Might be good news, might be bad." "How do you figure?" I asked. "If they were here for something on the fifth floor, then they might have passed through here, but there's no telling. But if they were trying to get to the seventh floor, then they would have passed through here, not through the left-most route." "Oh," I said. "Do you have a map of this floor?" I needed something to help me visualise what was going on. Phillipe nodded, started to remove his pack, then paused and gave the pack to Tyro instead of setting it down onto the floor. I didn't blame him, the whole place stank of sewers, and at the moment Sir Nibbles was burying himself into the scruff of my neck to escape the stink. "Here," Phillipe said as he handed a map over. I had to squint to make out anything on it. The floor was so much bigger than the last that placing it all on one page required making everything smaller in scale. If I was right, then we were on a path towards one of the exits on the south end of the dungeon. Now... where were our mysterious friends?