Chapter 148 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Pov Sandy

"Carl, handle the six-legged one!" Caspian yelled. I took a look towards Carl and winced. Another one was joining the fight. It was hard to tell what that monster originally was, but it might have been a dog of some sort.

I could sense how Caspian broke his hand once again defending against the boar-type monster. I pulled on my magic and quickly cast a spell to mend bone and then another to help heal his flesh.

I needed to be way too efficient to just throw out general healing spells. We had been in the grasslands for three weeks now, and I truly hated this place. I sent another spell towards Ziiipe to boost her vitality. She was the least physically fit member of our party. During these long fights, she needed to start reloading, which normally Carl handled for her.

She already knew the mistake she had made and was trying to fix that problem by training. Normally she would have used her other skills to boost herself so she could do it herself, but these fights showed us that we all need to be as efficient as possible.

"Up above!" I heard Sheep yell as she took out one of her loaded crossbows and started to aim upwards. "Vinny, help her!" Caspian yelled. It took a moment, but the constant fire of crossbow bolts stopped when multiple lightning bolts hit the flying monster that could easily pick one of us up and fly away.

It fell to the ground, but that bastard was still alive. Ziiipe now had a clean shot, and a moment later, it was finally put down. "I’m under 30!" Vinny yelled, and I had to wince. "I’m at 40!" I also yelled, giving information to Caspian. "Understood," was all that he said. We all knew that if he started to answer in one word, things were getting tight.

We were slowly being pushed back by the current 7 monsters that we were fighting. Carl was able to handle his own monster, that terrifying 6-legged one. It was ridiculous how little healing I needed to do on Carl.

Waiting for the perfect moment, I finally saw Carl create an opening. Immediately, I hit him with a boost to his speed and strength. To boost him took a lot out of me, but it was warranted as in the next moment he was able to deliver a devastating attack which meant that he would soon finish his fight.

"I’m fully back in the fight," I heard Ziiipe yell. "Then get to work," Caspian answered, and immediately the monsters that had been pressuring us now felt pressured instead. One of them died when both Vinny and Ziiipe focused it down.

Things got even easier as Carl joined us once again. The fighting was still brutal, and in the next 10 minutes, we had another three monsters join the fight, but fortunately, they didn't just fight us but each other as well.

In the end, we watched two monsters fight each other as we all watched on the sidelines, breathing heavily. When finally the boar was able to get one of its tusks into the belly of the large lizard-type monster, the fight was over. It was heavily wounded, poisoned, and missing one of its eyes. Ziiipe put it out of its misery with one shot. "I hate this area," I heard her say, and I couldn’t agree more.

This was nothing like the normal dungeon. While sometimes in the larger rooms a few monsters would join an ongoing fight, it was extremely rare. Here it was almost like a battle was a town bell calling everything towards itself. Caspian and I have been once or twice to a real wilderness and honestly, this seems to be an even more dangerous place.

The others can't feel it correctly, but this here is completely real; it might be inside a dungeon, but everything here is exactly like it would be in the outside world, but also completely different. It's like everyone here is like adventurers, constantly trying to get stronger. It's unnatural, yet somehow it speaks to me. I think I’ve also seen it in the others; this place just feels right.

"We only have two corpses that aren’t poisoned, so let's get the pieces of meat from them that we can turn into jerky, and also get some big pieces that we can cook today. Also, check the rest of the corpses for anything else useful." We all started to go do our tasks. I watched as Ziiipe went around collecting her bolts, grumbling when she discovered one that she couldn't fix.

All of us went on alert when we heard cracking coming from the forest. We had finally reached the edge of the grass fields, and our destination was just in that forest, at least according to the quest. I did not know if this was related to our quest, but something was coming towards us. "Everyone, first formation!" Caspian yelled, and we quickly got close to each other.

As we watched that thing get closer, we could see how it was pushing trees aside. "Maybe we should run?" Vinny said. I think I agreed with him until I felt the monster coming closer. Normally, I wouldn’t get such details from this distance, but I wasn’t getting details on the monster, instead on its injuries. "It's really hurt, like it's going to die any moment," I said to the others.

"So we either just got lucky and will have a chance to get loot from a huge monster, or there's something more dangerous behind it that was able to kill it." Everyone looked at Carl.

"Dude, you really know how to ruin a mood, you know that?" Ziiipe said. I could see Caspian calculating our next move. "Yeah, we run," he finally said, and all of us started to sprint away.

We were able to get a good enough distance from the forest, but we couldn't escape to safety. We took shelter behind one of the rock outcroppings and hoped that we would not be noticed. When I felt the creature finally take its last breath, I decided to take a look.

My eyes opened wide at what I saw. The monster was a huge boar, but that wasn't what truly surprised me. It had multiple large spears buried in its side and one in its neck.

I think the others saw my face go white as they all peeked around to get a look as well. Carl was about to say something, but all of us froze once again when we saw large humanoid monsters coming out of the forest.

We all recognized them instantly; they were orcs, at least what this dungeon claimed to be orcs. They were speaking in a language that we didn't understand, apparently happy about their kill, but then they all got quiet as they noticed our kills.

"Look at all those runes on their bodies. I’ve never seen anything like those," Carl whispered. Caspian immediately indicated for Carl to be quiet and not to speak.

We all quickly took shelter behind the rocks, hoping they would not find us. Minutes went by as none of us spoke. Those monsters looked really strong and completely real, like everything else here. Wait, if they are intelligent, then calling them monsters would be wrong.

All of a sudden, Carl got up. We had tried to set up some nonverbal communications between us, but other than me and Caspian, no one else knew them, and teaching them was slow-going as we really didn’t have the time to spend on it. However, Carl was able to communicate enough. I swallowed in nervousness as I understood that those beings were on the other side of the rock outcropping.

All of us started to move to get into a defensive position, and at the same time, we could hear rushing footsteps. The very next moment, four of them came around, pointing their weapons at us. I readied my best healing spells. To my surprise, and to the surprise of everyone, they didn’t attack us, but they were clearly ready for it if they deemed it necessary.

In all honesty, they looked like curious children seeing something new. They then started to speak in their language. I wish I knew the translate spell and wondered if Vinny knew it. When I looked towards him and saw how his face had gone white, I knew that we were in trouble.

It seemed that everyone else thought so as well, and we readied to defend ourselves, but none of us believed that we could win this fight; they just felt so strong and they were so massive.

Each one of them must have been 8 feet tall and they were so wide, yet the way they moved seemed so natural, like the bulk they were carrying meant nothing. They were a lot greener than the normal orcs I knew. Just before they finished speaking with each other, while still never taking their eyes off us, I saw Carl put his weapon down. Absolutely everyone, including the orcs, focused on him.

Then that crazy bastard started to take his armor off. "What are you doing? They were about to decide to kill us!" Vinny informed us while trying to also understand what Carl was thinking.

He didn’t answer, and the tension continued to ramp up until Carl finally revealed his left shoulder, showing the rune that was on it. Immediately, tension broke as the orcs lowered their weapons. One of them approached Carl, grabbed his hand, and inspected the rune.

It then spoke in its language. To my surprise, Vinny started laughing. "He just said that he thinks his 3-year-old child could make a better rune." It took me a moment to register the meaning. When I saw the other orcs smiling, it felt like we had escaped death. Vinny then started to try to communicate with them, asking if he could cast a spell on the one who had inspected Carl’s rune.

It took a bit for the orc to understand, but it nodded its head. The other orcs readied to attack just in case. Vinny cast his spell as quickly as usual. "Can you understand what I’m saying?" he asked the orc, who quickly nodded with a large grin on his face. Next, Vinny cast the same spell on all of us, even the other orcs. Caspian was the one who started to explain our situation.

"We do not know what this place is; we arrived here with the teleportation device from a quest, and we are now trying to find our way back home." None of us missed the reaction the orc had when he mentioned a quest. I was the first to notice that all of the orcs also had the same necklaces as we did. I quickly pointed that out to the others.

"So, you are on a quest given by The Father. This is an honor and an obligation. We are honor-bound to help all who request aid in a quest. Things are a bit more difficult between the other races as we do not see eye to eye on many things. But tell us about your quest a bit more, and perhaps we can give you some advice at least?"

There was so much to unpack there, but our first priority was to get back home. Caspian explained more, and it seemed like the orcs were impressed.

"You are truly on a grand quest. We do not know much about the upper world, so perhaps you will tell us about it and we will escort you to your next destination. It also seems like you were in a large fight, bringing honor to yourselves. We will have a celebration today. I have declared it," the orc said, and others started to beat their chests in some sort of celebration.

Why did I have a feeling that this was going to be a weird night and that this place we were in was a lot more mysterious than we ever thought before?