The decision to enter the dungeon should have been an easy one.
There was absolutely no reason beyond dungeons being a source of monsters and therefore a source of experience to enhance my and Sara's levels.
But at this moment as i was standing at the mouth of the dungeon staring down into the black void that was the entrance, a feeling of unease that he'd not felt since back in his past life.
It was a familiar feeling even after having missed it for over ten years, but now it was back and he knew instinctively that this was the feeling of fear.
A dungeon was a big unknown, could they survive the first floor, sure probably without worry, but what if they got down to far? Would they have enough food? Water? What about if the monsters are to strong and they get trapped on a lower floor?
"Master?" I looked over my shoulder.
Sara had recovered enough that the exhaustion from her Fireblast was no longer threatening to make her collapse, she was standing upright and even with a gleam in her eyes like she wanted to find another fight.
"Feeling up for a dungeon?" I questioned, and she gave an almost immediate nod of her head.
"All right." I drew my sword. "We'll go down."
Sara herself tightened her grip on her staff, and together we left the smouldering remains of the goblin village behind as we dove into our first dungeon.
<You Have Entered Arthas's Dungeon>
Aside from the popup messaging informing me of the dungeons name, the fear i had felt now felt like a joke.
Like thinking your appendix was going to explode and going to the emergency room only to find out it was just gas.
The first floor was a standard dungeon, many paths to walk in a dirt labyrinth populated with goblins.
Not the hundreds we'd seen and fought on the surface, all in all, there were only maybe fifty total goblins on this floor, and thankfully the floor itself was not all that big allowing us to walk at a brisk pace and clear the floor in roughly 30 minutes.
Though there was one very big problem that appeared before us.
Sara's magic...
She was a specialized fire mage, but trying to use fire in an enclosed space such as this meant all the smoke not to mention oxygen required was trapped with us.
After she tossed out her first fireball, i had to restrict her to close combat only, and not just for the smoke and fear of oxygen loss.
Her power was just to strong, a simple fireball was bigger than the corridors the dungeon provided for us to walk down, rather than fighting only to wait for the walls to cool, or brace ourselves and walk through an oven.
Finding out her limitations, Sara had to consider an additional path forward for herself, she still was far from a fan of close combat, much prefering magic, but when given the options Carter himself knew about she was unable to make a choice.
Judging just by the spells she learned from the path of fire, each of the elemental affinities should produce similar spells.
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With Water, or Earth being the most suited for dungeon crawling, but earth being primarly defence focused in almost all cases, while Water is more neutral, with defence and offense but it all depends on if you can summon water or only manipulate it.
Since the enemy was only goblins and even with her own aversion to close combat at their levels and strength the fights were easy enough to save the descion for increasing her magical potential for later.
As they recovered in the safe room just before the staircase leading down to the second level, but before choosing to descend Carter was distracted.
Not by Sara, no no no, but instead by something he'd found on the wall.
Perhaps this was just dungeon art, or something done by an adventuerer before this dungeon was abandoned and allowed to fester until a dungeon break happened resulting in the goblins that had spilled outside.
Seeing the painting was interesting, because it wasnt just regular art, that much i was sure of.
"Master? What is it?"
Sara finally noticed my intent study of the wall, and raised this question.
"I think it's a story..." That was my honest opinon based off of what i was seeing right now.
"A story! Will you tell it to me?" She answered back almost giddy like a little girl to be read a bedtime story by her father.
"Well... i dont mind, but it looks like this is only part of the story."
"So tell me this part then, and we can look for the rest."
"Ok well the long and the short of it is: There was once a Knight or a Lord, he ruled over a great land, only this land had come under some conflict, either monsters, or civil war as his great city was in flames, but the lord wasnt fighting instead he looked almost apologetic and sad, as if this crisis was of his own making."
"And?"
"And nothing... thats all there is.
Back then neither of us knew what this artwork was, but in the future we would learn that this artwork was common in dungeons, appearing to tell a story, and the longer a dungeon existed the more detailed this story became as more murals would appear, and according to record the only way to destroy a dungeon was to clear it by defeating the lowest levels boss monster, and destroying the dungeon core... or solve the riddle of the dungeon, though there was no record of that having happened at least as far as the kingdoms history was concerned.
The floors that followed the first were not much more of a challenge than the first itself.
The floors increased in size, as did the number of goblins on them.
The only real change was that the goblins were getting better armed, and armored the deeper we dived into the dungeon, that plus the goblins were becoming superior, not yet becoming hobgoblins or some other varient, but their size was increasing making it likely that varients would be appearing soon.
As were their intelligence, with squads that fought independently now fighting as a group.
Sara struggled the deeper we went, but it was her own lack of teamwork.
She was new to fighting in general, and now i was forcing her to fight entirely by hand, in cramped quarters with coordinated enemies.
I tried to help out, by training her teamwork skills. Calling out when she should act, when to duck, calling out what i was going to do next.
Her progress was slow, but even so she was making progress, so much that she actually refused to accept a magic up when i offered it when the fights were getting tougher to allow her to drop back to the rear guard.
When we reached the fifth floor, we found a change. Unlike the labyrinth floors this one looked more like the entrance, well quite a bit larger, just a large stone walled squared room.
Then the creature stepped from the darkness of the far end, through the large doorway that would be the gateway down to the sixth floor.
It was a goblin, but calling it merely a goblin felt insulting, it stood at least 10 feet tall, iron armor covered its body, a battered shield was strapped to one arm, a longsword was held in the other with a wavy blade like a flamberge.
Seeing the creature, i wanted to exclaim that it was a goblin king, and yet instinct was screaming out to me that it was instead, a Goblin Knight.
Our first mini boss.
Sara swallowed. "That's different."
"Very."
The goblin roared almost as if that was the signal for the fight to start, cause as soon as he finished it then charged.
The collision with nearly threw me off my feet, its sword crashed against mine with enough force to numb my arm.
"Its strong!"
Thankfully from my words Sara knew to take a backseat, abandoning any thought of trying to stand toe to toe with the behemoth, and instead beginning her chants for unleashing fire spells.
An action i didnt stop because this room had more than enough room to maneuver through, for smoke to billow up, and oxygen to spare as well.
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