An Unbound Soul

While I considered myself an early riser, that was by Earth standards. In the summer, I was never up before dawn. I was rarely even awake before Dad had left the house. Fortunately, it was still the start of spring, and dawn was late enough that I didn't feel the need to seek out whatever the local equivalent of an alarm clock was. It turned out I didn't need to, anyway; the first bell of the day was before dawn and was plenty loud enough to wake me up. I didn't remember that happening in the winter; maybe they rang fewer bells then? Or else Dad's snoring was loud enough to have drowned it out.

Speaking of Dad's snoring, wasn't this the first time I'd slept in a room alone in this world? I was too nervous about the dungeon to even notice yesterday, but I'd never had my own room back in the village. It wasn't something I'd really thought about; as a baby, of course I would need to stay with my parents, but then we just kept going, and it wasn't as if our shack had spare bedrooms. Somehow, I'd got used to the complete lack of privacy.

My armour was perfectly clean as far as I could see, and there was no lingering sweaty smell I could pick up. I unpacked everything that wasn't needed for the dungeon trip into my storage chest, ate my breakfast, donned my armour, checked I had all my equipment and set off. I'd brought some food with me from home, but it would only last till tomorrow at best. Hopefully, I'd earn some money today, or else I was going to have to borrow from my teammates...

The bar was noisy; there was no drinking going on, but there were a number of breakfasters and our party was not the only one using it as a meetup point. I spotted Xander, whose shiny half-plate was quite distinctive in the room that was largely full of black leather, and who looked as wide awake as ever despite the time. Robin and Noah were with him, which left us waiting for Freya and Jared. Xander stared me up and down, presumably checking all my equipment was in place, then nodded in satisfaction. "Good. We can leave as soon as our pair of mages arrive."

Jared turned up first, then Freya last. Looking out of the window, there was some definite sunlight going on out there, so I wasn't entirely convinced this counted as dawn, but she looked pleased with herself and Xander didn't complain, so it must have been acceptable. Or at least, no later than usual. That left us walking down the street towards the large gates. The large guarded gates. We were being stared at long before reaching them, but it didn't seem there was going to be any trouble.

"Is that Peter?"

"Yes."

"Okay, you can enter. Be careful in there."

It seemed they'd been pre-warned. In contrast, the other delvers we passed were doing double-takes or outright staring, but none actually approached us. I saw more than one of them glancing at Xander before looking away. Maybe the party I was in was famous? Xander's presence was certainly sufficient to deter anyone from asking questions.

On the other side of the gate was something like a plaza. A square section of floor about ten metres to a side was set in clean and polished white stone. Each corner contained a pedestal on top of which stood an outward-looking statue of a goblin holding a different weapon; A knife, a club, a staff and a bow. Pedestal and statues alike were made of the same white stone, which [Appraisal] told me was simply 'dungeon stone'. In the centre of the square was a staircase, three metres across and descending straight into the ground. It occurred to me that I hadn't asked what sort of monsters were present in this dungeon, but from the decoration, I would assume goblins. Would I look stupid if I asked now? Probably, but better to play safe.

"What monsters will we encounter on the first floor? Just goblins?"

Xander looked down with concern. "Did you not research this dungeon's behaviour beforehand? First floor is weak goblins. They'll attack either unarmed or by throwing stones. There will be undisguised pitfalls that they will try to push you into if you get too close to one. There will also be tripwires very close to floor level, so watch your footing."

Weak goblins? Was he calling goblins weak in general, or was the actual species name 'weak goblin'? It seemed a bit derogatory either way, the poor things. Although if they're the same level of strength as the weakest form of slime, the name would be well deserved.

We walked down the staircase and into a room. Floor, walls and ceiling were all composed of the same grainy white stone. It wasn't apparent on the surface, but down here I could see that the stone was very slightly glowing. Not much, but given that all surfaces were made up of it, the total was more than enough to see by. Something still looked off though, and it took me a while to realise that it was the complete lack of shadows. This wasn't the way illumination typically worked, and my brain was holding a minor protest about the abnormality of it all. I felt like I'd wandered into an early era computer game, back when 3d graphics were a newfangled thing and people hadn't quite worked out how to render realistic light sources.

I was half expecting a 'you have entered a dungeon' System message, but nothing turned up. Not that I needed one; [Mana Sense] clearly let me know I was entering monster territory, the density rising with every step down the staircase. I reached out with [Mana Control], making the dense mana surrounding me dance. This would be a great place to train it, if not for all the monsters.

The entrance room was another square, and had corridors leaving in all three directions, in addition to the staircase, which ended in an archway on the room's fourth wall.

"We'll head left. There will be very few people hunting on this floor, so as long as we avoid the direct path from here to the next floor, we should find plenty of prey. Peter will take point, the rest of us will hang back unless needed."

Something else I should have done; look up the floor layout. When I asked if there was anything I needed to prepare, why the heck did he say no? There was plenty I should have done...

I stepped into the corridor, treading as quietly as I could manage, highly alert and with eyes wide open. The corridor led around a corner into another room in which I saw three goblins. Thanks to my efforts at stealth, I noticed them before they saw me.

Weak Goblin, level 1

Wow, 'weak' really was right there in their name. They were looking around at random, and I probably only had a few seconds before one of them saw me. I could have stepped back around the corner, but there didn't seem much point. That would just delay the inevitable. I wanted to use [Far Step] to close the distance even if not using my buffs, but following Xander's instruction to not use magic, I charged in instead. Sprinting as quietly as I could manage and avoiding a trip wire that crossed the room entrance, I closed half the distance before one of them saw me and shouted out. The other two had just enough time to turn around and watch as I whacked the first one over the head.

I was unconscious when the orc died, but from the slimes I knew this world didn't have convenient notifications to tell me when an enemy was dead. I had no idea if one blow was enough, so I'd treat the goblin sprawled across the floor with caution until proven otherwise. The other two goblins charged, but were uncoordinated, and I was able to take out one before the other reached me, after which he met an equally swift end.

Weak Goblin, level 1 (Dead)

Handy. I could check whether they were still in the land of the living with [Appraisal].

They were no better than slimes; they really did all die in one blow each. Now that they were all dead, I had time to look at them properly, and boy were they ugly little things. At less than a metre high, they were even shorter than me. They were humanoid, but their bodies' proportions were wrong. Their noses were completely missized, taking up half of their face. Their ears were also huge, and the mouths were stuck in a sort of permanent grin that stretched from ear to ear, displaying an impractical looking set of pointy teeth that should have resulted in them tearing their own tongue to shreds should they ever try chewing. The eyes were brown, small and beady, and sunken deep into their heads. They had no hair and pale green skin. They had the same sort of lengthened arms and pot belly as the orc, but in contrast to the orc, there was no way their limbs could be described as muscular. Also like the orc, they wore nothing but a loincloth. I suppose I should be thankful to the dungeon for keeping its monsters decent.

While I was busy inspecting the remains, the rest of the team walked into the room behind me. Uh-oh, Xander looked pissed. What did I do?

"So, in your opinion, how did that go?"

And now it had turned into a test. Okay, obviously I did something wrong, but what? I saw and dodged the tripwire. I didn't use magic. I took out all three goblins with no problem. Ah, that was my problem. Why did I assume there were only three? I couldn't see the entire room from the corridor, and there could have been more out of sight behind the wall. By running straight in, I would have exposed my back to them.

"I saw the three goblins and assumed there were no more, even though I didn't have a clear view of the entire room. I'm used to using [Far Step] to close distance and ended up charging in without thinking."

"Good, at least you can realise your own mistakes. This is why we've started on floor one. Now what should you have done?"

I was blatantly back in school here... This guy missed his true vocation. Okay, so what could I have done instead of charging?

"None of them held ranged weapons, so I could have sacrificed the element of surprise and lured them into the corridor. Perhaps I could have scanned the room with [Mana Sense], but with its short range I wouldn't have been guaranteed to cover all the areas I couldn't see."

"And if they did have ranged weapons?"

That would be harder... I couldn't actually think of any good solutions there. No, the same principle would work. I just needed to force them into melee range on my own terms. "Lure them further, to the corner of the corridor."

"So what if there had been a hidden goblin, and it had been the only ranged one in the room?"

Then I would have to retreat to the corner while being pelted... "So I should have lured them to the corner even if I didn't see any ranged users?"

"Correct. Although even then you may have just walked through a straight corridor and need to retreat to another room entirely. Keep the terrain in mind at all times. Now go and grab the monster cores from those goblins before the dungeon absorbs them."

Huh? I looked down at the corpses. What were monster cores? Was that where magic crystals came from? But... Eww... Did I really need to dissect these corpses? I knew I couldn't exactly stash the whole things in my pack, and I needed to bring back loot to sell if I planned on eating tomorrow, but.. Eww!

"Would I be correct in assuming you don't know how?"

"Yes."

"Noah, show him how to grab the cores. They're only worth a copper a pair, but it's better than nothing and more than the rest of the goblin."

One copper for two was still more than I'd get for the rest of the goblin corpse? We didn't have coins worth less than a copper. He was probably implying the corpses were worthless; no-one would cart multiple goblin corpses to the guild for a single copper.

I watched as Noah took his knife and ripped the core out from where the goblin's heart should be, all in about ten seconds. I attempted to repeat his example on the other two goblins. It took me a lot more than ten seconds, after which my armour was in desperate need of a wash. Either the self-cleaning from the comfort enchantment only affected the inside, or else I'd just overwhelmed it. Where did all that blood even come from?

Despite the mess, I successfully extracted the cores, cleaned them off and stashed them in my pack. We moved on to the next room, where I lured a couple more goblins around a blind corner by bashing my staff against the wall. They fell quickly, but Xander gave me another telling off for stopping to extract their cores before investigating the room, in case there were more goblins in there that hadn't responded to the noise.

By the time we'd cleared a half dozen rooms, Xander had berated me variously for making too much noise, not making enough noise, not keeping up a sufficient level of alertness while extracting cores and on one occasion for splatting his face with goblin blood. Which was a complete accident, honest, and not at all because he was starting to bug me. I hadn't gained a single stat or level in that time, but given the level of the enemies, that wasn't a surprise. It was obvious that we were on this floor only to teach me the required levels of paranoia before going somewhere where being caught unaware would actually be dangerous.

"Why are there no goblins anywhere? Has someone been killing them?"

Huh? That wasn't our team. I looked around, but apparently I was the only one surprised. Xander pointed at a corridor. "Another team. Nothing to worry about. Keep collecting the cores."

In dungeon stories on Earth, other parties could be even more dangerous than the monsters. After all, if you murdered someone in a dungeon, the dungeon would dispose of the evidence for you. How was anyone outside supposed to know the fate of a party who never returned? Fortunately, in this world, that wasn't an issue. People couldn't even lie, never mind stab me in the back. I continued my efforts to extract the core from the latest goblin, which I could now do without making so much of a mess, albeit still not in anywhere close to the ten seconds it had taken Noah. Fortunately, it had turned out that the armour was in fact self cleaning on the outside too, but it took some amount of time to deal with the sudden application of a significant part of a goblin's interior. It just kind of slipped off over time, and by now I was mostly clean again.

"Huh? You!"

Oh my, if it wasn't that brat Chris again... I ignored him and continued my goblin dissection efforts. The things put up more of a fight dead than they did while alive...

"Oi, don't just ignore me, you argggg!"

Oops, my hand slipped. Seriously, just how do these goblins fit so much blood in their tiny little bodies? Oh, it seemed that Chris was right in front of me and somehow got covered in blood. However did that happen? Looking up, I could see that Freya was in hysterics and even Robin was smirking. Noah was facepalming, Jared was sighing, and Xander was looking like he was about to break back out into full apoplectic teacher mode. Maybe I went just a little too far there.