I looked around the boss room, searching for more trouble, but it seemed quiet now. I even looked up since the monsters in here could conceivably hang off the ceiling. There were some concerningly large cobwebs but no spider-rats or spider-anythings hanging above, ready to drop down onto our heads. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭·𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮·𝙣𝙚𝙩 For the moment, we were safe. "Should we take some of its meat?" Grace asked. She kicked the rat-ram in the ribs and the floor's boss flopped back a bit before returning to where it was with a roll. "No time," Cavendish said. She wanted to eat rat? I didn't care that it was half-ram, it still kind of put me off. Swooping down, I picked up Sir Nibbles who was mostly done snacking, then I used the end of my sleeve to wipe his muzzle clean of blood and guts. "Come on, back to your place, you," I muttered. "Interesting pet," William said. "He's handy to have," I replied. That was the end of that conversation since Cavendish stomped by on the way to the gate. "We've probably lost most of the time we gained by arriving early already. We need to keep moving." William glanced down at me. "Loot?" "From the boss? Like, a chest appearing in the room filled with goodies or something?" "I'm afraid not. The only loot in this room are the corpses and sometimes the stones. I've seen some of these statues on the surface too." He gestured vaguely in the directions of the nearest alcove where a spider statue sat. It was bigger than I was. "The workers hate it when they need to pull one of those out of here," Nathan said. "They're hard to squeeze out of here, and the bridge near the entrance can't handle their weight. Plus they block every corridor they cross, which clogs everything up." "Then why remove them?" I asked. He shrugged. "Some rich person wants an interesting lawn ornament and doesn't care about the price? Lots of teams come in to grab the bricks though." I looked at the ruin decorating this floor again. Most of it was made of a flat-grey brick, with each brick being maybe thirty centimetres wide and twenty tall. They were familiar. "Are those removed every day?" I asked. "Pretty much," Nathan said. At a glance, there were only a hundred or so of those bricks. But a hundred of them a day, pulled out of the dungeon and cleaned up... yeah, I could see why they'd be familiar. Given enough time someone could build a city with just these. "Gate's open," Cavendish said. We jumped to follow him as he pushed the gate aside and started down a staircase to the next floor down. As we went, the sheer stone walls were slowly replaced with a more striated sort of stone that was the same grey as the brickwork in the ruins. The steps, hewn straight out of the stone, were eventually replaced by bricks all the way down. "I hate goblins," Grace muttered. "We're not working to capture them," Cavendish said. "We can just kill our way through." "That'll anger some of the other teams," Phillipe said. Cavendish shrugged. "We're travelling in a nearly straight line. There will be plenty of goblin nests for them to work with." We arrived at the end of the stairs and I noticed my heart beating a little faster from the exertion. "Gear check, then we keep moving." The others jumped to look over their things. I just pulled out my trusty dungeon maps and checked the layout for the second floor. I didn't know what wall crawlers were. I wasn't sure I wanted to find out either. "That map's seven years out of date," Tyro said as he came to stand next to me. He nodded. "You know, dungeons change over time, right? More floors, more rooms. I don't know if there are any big changes on this floor compared to when that map was made, but still." "Thanks," I said. "It's good to know." I folded the map up and tucked it away before checking the room out. The entire room had ruins on one side, near the stairwell, but those ended soon enough and the walls were more plain stone. [Blur Glow Lichen] hung onto the ceiling, providing some very faint light to see by. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. The floor was uneven, I noted, with a slant that dropped the further from the entrance I went. At the end of the room, where the door into the next room was, the floor was covered in water. It didn't look deep though, no more than ankle-high water that was brackish and black and unmoving. Probably stale, and probably not the healthiest water around. Grace grumbled as she removed her boots, tugged her socks off, then stuffed them into a pocket before putting her boots back on. "I hate this part." "You complain every time. It's just a little water," William said. "You're tall, it doesn't come up to your crotch half the time," Grace shot back. I was instantly very worried. "We should get moving," Cavendish said. "George?" "On it," George said. His long pole came out again and he took the lead. I filed in behind him and a few others, trying to keep more or less to the middle of the group where I'd be safest. The next room was round, like a naturally formed cistern. The water on the ground lapped up to my ankles and I cursed as some of it spilled into my boots and started to turn my socks soggy. How many spare socks had I packed? George paused by the entrance and let the tip of his stick touch the ground through the water. There was a constant rasp as he shifted it from side to side. "This place has pitfall traps. No covers except for the water. There's some sort of slippery moss around them too." "Are the pits really that dangerous if they're filled with water?" Tyro asked. "I can swim." "They're lined with sharpened stones," George said. "Some have small stalagmites within them." I made sure to only step where George did, just in case. I didn't feel like getting spiked. "If we waited a little a team would come down with planks to cover the floor," Phillipe said. It sounded like it was aimed at Tyro. "There are a lot of mundane dangers in a dungeon that have easy solutions, but those aren't often available to those who are the first to push in." It made sense. I didn't recall seeing too many people stepping out of the dungeon with wet pant-bottoms. Then again, I'd hardly been paying attention to that in particular, and the walk back to the surface might be long enough to let things dry a little. I was just considering rolling up the ankles of my overalls when I caught sight of something floating a little ways off. A small, round thing that looked rather fleshy. I squinted at it. Was that a mushroom? I turned my [Druid Sight] onto the thing just to be sure it wasn't some sort of aquatic ambush goblin or something. [Blue Cleangill], it returned. That sounded mushroom-like to me. It was, unfortunately, out of the way, and with all the talk of hidden pits and with my inability to see through the water I didn't dare step over to it. But I did have a solution, even if it was grumpy and would demand the world for the favour. I knelt down, then tugged Sir Nibbled off from around my neck. He grumbled in protest. "Yeah, I know," I muttered. "See that mushroom in the water? Go get it." Sir Nibbles gave me a look as if to say, 'You go get it, bitch,' then I dropped him into the water with a splash. He hissed and spat, but proved that he was able to float and even swim as he spun around snake-fast and snapped at my calf. "Ow, you bastard," I swore. Sir Nibbles cackled as he spun around and swam to the mushroom. He booped it with his nose, then tugged the mushroom off its stem and dragged it back across the water to me. "Thanks," I said as I picked him and the mushroom up. Reluctantly, I placed him back over my shoulders and shuddered as cold water seeped into my shirt. Still, I had my mushroom now! [Blue Cleangill] - Uncommon An aquatic mushroom whose fruiting body collects detritus from the water it grows in and feeds on it. The mushroom isn't naturally toxic, but it may become so as it collects contaminants from the water it is grown in. "Hey, Ginger, are you coming?" Tyro asked. "Yes!" I said as I stuffed my bounty away.