[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 138 – The Dungeon Dimension Awaits

“I did not do that,” Shrubley said, just to make it clear. He didn’t want to harm the little monster. It seemed more than capable of doing that on its own.

“Maybe Slyrox can teach him to make better bombs?” she said, kneeling by the small creature. She prodded the prone kobold with a mitt.

Cal stirred the remnants of the pot with the tip of his staff. “I think he just twisted up an old rag and stuck it into a used chamber pot.”

“His ultimate attack, huh?” Miranda said. She shrugged. “For a kobold, that’s about right.”

Shrubley grabbed the kobold’s limp arms and dragged him away. “It is not right. He should be in school.”

Miranda stared at him. “Because…?”

“He is a child,” Shrubley told her.

“Are you… sure?”

Shrubley paused. “No.”

“Pyuu.”

“I am not going to ‘count his rings’, Smudge.”

“Pyuu-pyuu.”

“Because that would kill him.”

Smudge’s face became a large O of surprise.

“We made good time,” Miranda said, putting her hand on the Dungeon core.

“Allow me,” Shrubley said, reaching out and touching the core. After a moment of shutting his eyes, he sighed and shook his head. “No wonder even a silly kobold was able to control the Dungeon. It is but a shell. A husk. There is no life here to save,” Shrubley said morosely.

“I am sorry, Shrubley,” Miranda told him. “If you like, I can–”

Shaking his leafy head, Shrubley crushed the core in his palm. “Ending its existence is the only hope it has of becoming a Dungeon once more. Its essence will flow back to the Dungeon Dimension, and we will follow it.”

Shrubley looked at the drifting diamond dust that swirled all around the room from the shattered core. “I do not know if you can hear me, but I will make the one who did this to you pay.”

There was no telling if the Dungeon, or the ghost of the Dungeon, heard Shrubley, but the glittering dust picked up speed. It rose and twisted through the chamber, forming into the shape of a great archway complete with a heavy door made of diamond dust.

“Thank you,” Shrubley said to the Dungeon, stooping down and picking up the [Ivory Card] left behind. He held it up to Miranda, who had been keeping the other two. There were three shallow rectangular depressions in the glittering doorway.

Behind them, the traditional swirling portal that would take them out of the Dungeon appeared. Whatever had been done to the Dungeon must have been severe because only a single treasure chest appeared.

“Are you sure about this?” Miranda told him. “I can go alone. You could go back to Clocktown and save it. I might be wrong about the Dungeon Dimension.”

Before the words were out of her mouth, she knew his answer. In him, she saw much of his father. They were both the sort to run into a burning building rather than away from it.

Oh Halbert, Miranda thought sadly, if only you could see your son now.

Shrubley looked up at Miranda. “I will not ask you to venture into the unknown all alone. You survived that once, just like me. And once is more than enough.”

Slyrox was busy hastily scrawling out a note and pinning it to the kobold’s rags. She rolled the kobold over to the portal. “Bye-bye little dragon-dog.” And with one final push, the kobold was safely out of harm’s way.

“He would have killed us,” Cal told her.

Slyrox shrugged. “Slyrox has affinity for small cute ugly things that like fire-blooms.”

Cal stared, trying to parse that, then gave up and went over to the chest. He opened it easily enough and was surprised to see so little inside. “I feel like we were robbed.”

“Nonsense,” Shrubley said, ambling over. “The Dungeon was significantly damaged. Besides, safe passage to the Dungeon Dimension is more than reward enough, don’t you think?”

Cal grumbled and fished around in what looked like a refuse pile of old junk. Finally, he pulled out a gnarled black staff with a cracked jewel at the top. When he concentrated, mana fizzled out of the damaged spellcasting focus.

He gasped. “I can repair this!”

In fact, there was a new weapon or piece of equipment for each of them, all damaged, but none were completely useless.

Shrubley’s item was a necklace with a once-beautiful shield charm dangling from moldering threads. It had been badly damaged. He had no idea how easy it would be to repair, but like everybody else, Shrubley’s item seemed suited to him.

It wanted to be restored.

[Knight’s Charm -1]

(Accessory, Neck)

An ancient relic from days long past, steeped in the honorable deeds of countless knights, this charm has been bestowed upon you with the last wish of a dead Dungeon’s dream. Currently unusable, this item must be repaired to be equipped.

“They are… relics?” Shrubley said in wonder. “I have not seen this sort of item before.”

“What did you say?” Miranda demanded, then picked up one of her own. “By Revel’s greed, these are relics!”

One by one, each of the monsters picked up their treasures. They were beautiful, but tarnished, warped with age, rusted, or otherwise utterly unusable for the time being, just as their descriptions said.

Each one mentioned that they needed to be repaired first.

“Do we have enough time to mend these before the portal closes?” Cal said, staring longingly at his ancient staff.

“No,” Miranda told him, tucking away her relic with a thrill she had not felt since she was a young girl out on her first adventure. Gaining a relic was rarer than hitting Noble Stage. It was a weapon, accessory, or piece of armor that looked and acted much like trash but could be repaired through an arduous process.

When it was fully repaired, the item grew with you. Instead of having to find new equipment every time you leveled up enough or hit the next rank, your relic would match you stride for stride.

They were often the very foundation of a Great House. All the Inner Ring families, even those in Pandaemonium, traced their lineages back to at least one relic.

And they had just found a treasure trove full of the things.

“Interesting,” Shrubley said, reaching into his inventory and pulling out a dark blue-green coin. It smoldered in his wooden grip, thin tendrils of smoke wafted toward the ceiling. “It is hot again.”

Miranda looked at the coin. “What is that?”

Smudge formed an oversized nose and loudly sniffed the coin.

“The lucky coin Remal gave me,” Shrubley told her.

Miranda barely remembered it. She had wanted to leave so badly that she hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on besides hoping that the rest of the town wouldn’t come out to weigh him down with gifts.

“And what does that mean?” Miranda asked, taking out one card after the other and putting them gently into the depressions on the door to the Dungeon Dimension.

“I do not know,” Shrubley admitted, putting the coin back. “But I think it is the reason we gained these things. It is lucky, and for the second time now, I think its luck has been triggered.”

“It’s a good thing we’re taking the long way around to Sormwynn then,” Cal said. “We’ll get good use out of it before you give it back to Remal.”

Cal wanted to suggest that they hold on to it a little while longer. After all, they were weak and Remal was a Steel Ranker. He didn’t need luck like they did. However, he knew Shrubley would never entertain the idea.

The shrub had an honorable streak a mile wide. He would sooner pluck every leaf from his body than go back on his word.

Cal admired that about him, but at times it could be chafing.

After having a short rest before the doorway, Miranda placed the last card. The door opened, and the group stepped through, one by one, prepared to take on the Dungeon Dimension.

***

Sel sat at her desk, fingers laced as she tried desperately not to sweat or scream in front of her guests.

Two officials, each in black clothes that resembled martial arts uniforms with silver runic edging, stood before her desk. The Auditors refused to sit. One male, the other female, but both so beautiful that at times it was hard to tell them apart.

They could have been brother and sister, but to ask such a personal question would be a grave mistake.

The Auditors were among the most powerful officials in the entire Empire, not just the Adventurers Guild. They were given incredible amounts of power and control. Such positions were only given to those who had mastered Gold.

From the last Sel had heard, even after distinguishing yourself as an adventurer and becoming at least Low Gold, the training one must undertake to become an Auditor lasted at least a full century.

They were the most fearsome and deadly officials known to mankind. Not only because their weakest members were Gold, but because through their training they were granted almost every permission imaginable.

With nothing more than a word, they could have Sel thrown into a dark pit, never to be heard from again. They could have the entire Empire strike her birth and death from the record, so it was like she never existed.

Such abuses of power were–supposedly–beyond them, but that didn’t do much for Sel’s nerves with the two Golds standing in front of her desk.

As much as she wanted to stand and meet them on level ground, she realized how ridiculous that would seem. Not only would it feel childish, but she doubted she could keep her knees from shaking.

Even clamped tight, the power of a Gold was a tremendous thing to behold. Sel had once been in the presence of a Silver, and that was a cakewalk compared to this.

The difference between a Silver and a Gold seemed wider than that of a Silver and a Copper.

One of the Auditors cracked a broad grin, her brilliant green eyes lighting up with mirth.

That did not comfort Sel. Not one bit. Especially since she didn’t say a single thing.

“Lord Jerric of House Malrese,” the male auditor said. “Given an unofficial reprimand along with his party for professing they wished to undertake more unsupervised contracts.”

“Yes,” Sel said. Her mouth felt as dry and hot as [Fire Cotton].

The female Auditor looked around the place and began to wander around, much to Sel’s horror. She had more flamboyant, yet lazy mannerisms than her stiff, formal partner.

“It is… interesting,” the female auditor added, looking through papers and moving things here and there as if she owned the place. “that Lord Jerric would find such a large-scale Grit ring among such a… rustic backdrop. A place, I believe, he was dispatched to in order to teach manners and respect while affording him the opportunity to undertake the solo contracts his party so desperately wanted.”

“A harsh sentencing that should have been carried out with official censure instead of laissez-faire under-the-table punishment,” the male auditor added. “Do you have the name of the one who punished him?”

Sel’s uniform clung to her back like a second soggy skin. She shook her head. “As you said, sir, it was unofficial. I do not know who ordered it, but I could retrieve Lord–”

The Auditor shook his head. “There will be no need. We will follow up on this alone.”

“Your report suggests that there is a local man going by the moniker, ‘Big Jon’ that is a contact for a greater Grit ring, is this correct?”

“As far as I have been able to corroborate, yes.”

“Why has he not been apprehended?”

Sel had been dreading this. The Auditors were obscenely powerful, but they were used to dealing with entire armies or rogue Nobles.

Investigations such as these, while known to them, were not their forte. They would have a hard time understanding what needed to be done in order to capture the entire ring without sending it scattering into the four winds.

The Auditors were used to people bowing to them and accepting their fate, or at the very least, open warfare. The delicate dance of chasing criminal leads down without alerting the ringleaders was practically unknown to the Auditors.

Taking a deep breath, Sel tried her best to explain, hoping that Jerric and his party could actually follow through on their end. If not… well, it didn’t bear thinking about. If they failed to catch them and the Auditors thought they were being intentionally incompetent, none of them were ever going to see daylight again.