Chapter 11: following the canon
The day after their city-wide stroll, the bronze badges felt less like novelties and more like tools. The plan had shifted from survival to ambition. Dungeons meant concentrated danger and legendary loot, the logical next step for a Bronze-ranked duo on the rise. But you don't walk into a legend unprepared.
"We need capital," Azazel said, tracing a route on their new regional map over breakfast. "Better gear, more supplies, information. That costs more than we have. We take one more high-yield job. Something that tests us against a proper, chaotic threat. Then we fund our dive."
Reginleif pointed to a forested region marked 'Gloomwood.' "Here. Local hunters are refusing to go deep. Something is agitating the flora. The guild is offering a premium for clearing the disturbance. It's the kind of messy, active combat that will reveal any weaknesses before we commit to a dungeon."
It was sound logic. An hour later, they were in the Gloomwood, and the "disturbance" had a name: Plantera.
The air was thick with the smell of damp earth and sickly-sweet pollen. They weren't just fighting monsters; they were fighting the forest itself—shambling mounds of animated vines with snapping, thorn-fringed mouths (Plantera), and mobile, whip-like creepers (Creeperlings) that lashed from the undergrowth with paralytic intent.
They were immediately surrounded. A hulking Plantera, a walking thicket of woody vines and pulsating sap, anchored the center of the clearing. Three smaller Creeperlings skittered around its roots, cutting off escape.
"Anchor!" Azazel barked, his kukri already darkening with the chill of his Mythic. The thrill of the fight, now honed by purpose, was sharp and clear. "I'll clear the runners!"
"Understood!" Reginleif's hands came up, and the wind answered. A focused cyclone erupted around the central monster, ripping leaves from its form and forcing it to hunker down, its primary vines struggling against the relentless gale. This was the pre-dungeon test, and they were acing the first question.
Azazel moved. A Creeperling lunged, its thorn-whip cracking toward his legs. "Youshadow." The monster's own elongated shadow coiled up its form, freezing it mid-strike. Azazel didn't break stride; he leapt over the immobilized creature, his dark blade shearing through a second Creeperling that tried to flank him. The third shot a spray of paralytic spores. Azazel dove, rolled, and came up inside its guard, plunging the kukri into its core. Ichor, smelling of rotten flowers, spurted onto the moss.
He turned to the anchor. Reginleif's cyclone was pinning it, but its hide was tough. "Switch!" he yelled.
Reginleif shifted. The cyclone died. In the same heartbeat, she sent a slicing blade of concentrated air shrieking across the clearing. It carved a deep gouge in the Plantera's trunk, making it shriek—a sound like tearing bark.
It was the opening Azazel needed. He charged, shadows coalescing around his feet, lending his sprint an unnatural, silent speed. He leapt, using a stump as a springboard, and brought the fully-empowered kukri down in a devastating overhead strike into the gouge Reginleif had made. The darkness flared, and the blade sank deep. The Plantera shuddered once, then collapsed into a heap of inert, decaying vegetation.
The Gloomwood fell silent, save for their heavy breathing. They stood back-to-back for a moment, scanning the now-still forest. A perfect, brutal dance.
After the quest was done, Azazel and Reginleif go back to the guild and take the reward for the quest. After that, they go outside the city in a large field to do some training.
The reward was good silver. But the real value was in the synchronicity they'd displayed. It was becoming instinct.
Later, on a sun-drenched plain outside Korvath's walls, they worked on turning instinct into mastery. Azazel sat cross-legged on the grass, eyes closed, delving inward. He focused on the cold seed of his Mythic, not to unleash it, but to understand its contours, to feel the difference between a whisper and a shout of power. He practiced manifesting a tendril of shadow, then dissolving it, over and over, honing the speed and precision of his Youshadow.
He was too focused to notice Reginleif's own breakthroughs. Across the field, she was a blur of motion. She would sprint, leap, and at the apex of her jump, a focused cushion of wind would snap into existence beneath her boots, launching her a second time in a powerful, controlled double jump. She landed, rolled, and immediately sent her dagger flying from her hand. It didn't fall. She controlled it with precise, minute gusts, sending it whirling in a wide, lethal arc around a training post before summoning it back to her grip like a boomerang of wind and steel.
After a while, they regrouped, sweat-damp and energized.
Azazel asked, "Hey, Reginleif. Where would you place us on the food chain now?"
She sheathed her dagger, considering. "I don't clearly know that answer. But we are strong. We can take down powerful monsters. Sometimes, fighting people seems to be… quite easy for you."
"Yeah," Azazel agreed, wiping his brow. A restless itch had been growing under his skin for days. "Feels like something is missing."
What am I missing? He thought back, past the fights and the guild halls, to a moment of hazy comfort—laughing on Yuto's floor, the glow of a screen. An anime scene surfaced. The protagonist and his party, talking excitedly. The only words he'd absorbed through his high, contented fog: 'Dungeon… rare things… a lot of money.'
The idea clicked into place with the force of a revelation. A structured challenge. Concentrated risk and reward. The true adventurer's proving ground.
A slow grin spread across Azazel's face. "I think I've got an idea."
Reginleif tilted her head."Okay. So, what's our next plan?"
Azazel met her gaze,the bronze badge on his tunic catching the sun.
"We find a dungeon."
____
Azazel and Reginleif returned to town and spent a good portion of their earnings on maps. Not just the one from the apothecary, but older topographical surveys, faded merchant route charts, and even a dubious "Geomancer's Ley-Line Guide" from a dusty stall. Azazel spread them across their inn room floor, cross-referencing points of interest, zones of reported monster density, and geographical anomalies.
"It's not just about a hole in the ground," he muttered, his finger tracing a pattern. "It's about convergence. Places where the land itself feels… concentrated. Power draws power. Monsters gather. Loot follows."
After hours of analysis, his finger stopped on a region marked 'The Scarred Heaths,' a blighted area west of Korvath. Multiple maps noted strange mineral deposits and persistent, localized beast tides. One older scroll had a small, faded notation in the margin: 'Old delving site. Sealed. Beware deep resonance.'
"That's it," Azazel said, certainty hardening his voice. "That's a chance."
---
Two days of hard travel brought them to the Heaths—a barren, rocky landscape where the wind whistled through stone spires. Following the coordinates, they found not a grand cavern mouth, but a jagged fissure in the earth, half-hidden by a landslide. A cold, damp breath seeped from the darkness below.
"Looks like there's actually a dungeon here," Reginleif confirmed, peering down. The air tasted of ozone and stale moss.
Azazel stood at the edge, his hand resting on the hilt of his kukri. He closed his eyes for a moment, not meditating, but listening with a sense he was only beginning to understand. A deep, rhythmic thrum seemed to vibrate up through the stone, a pulse of dense, wild energy. "So this is it," he said, opening his eyes. "I feel a crazy amount of power down there. It's… layered. Like floors of pressure."
He can feel energy resonating from the dungeon? Reginleif thought, watching him. When he says 'down there,' does he mean the lower floors? How odd. I can barely feel a draft. It was another piece of his strange, latent sensitivity, another mystery tied to his dark Mythic.
They lit torches and descended. The first three floors were unsettling in their emptiness—echoing tunnels, empty chambers, and the lingering scent of old dust and damp. It felt less like a cleared area and more like a held breath, a dungeon waiting to be awakened.
On the fourth floor, the air changed. It grew humid and carried the sharp, green scent of chlorophyll and wet fur. A low growl echoed in the cavern ahead.
"Hey, look," Azazel whispered, gesturing with his torch. "Our first dungeon monsters."
Emerging from the phosphorescent fungal glow of the chamber were three Greenpaw Wolves. They were larger than any natural wolf, their fur streaked with moss, and living vines coiled around their legs and paws like symbiotic armor. Their eyes shone with a sickly, intelligent green light, fixed on the intruders.
"If I remember from reading the Bestiary," Azazel said, falling into a ready stance, "Greenpaws. Wolves infused with dungeon flora. The vines on their paws can lash out like whips, and they hunt as a pack, using the terrain."
As if on cue, the lead wolf howled—a sound like tearing roots—and charged. The other two split, flanking with unnerving coordination.
The fight was a brutal symphony of shadow and wind against fang and vine.
The lead wolf leapt for Azazel's throat. "Youshadow!" Tendrils of darkness shot from the ground, snagging its hind legs mid-pounce. It crashed down, snarling, as the shadows hardened into binds. Azazel darted in, his kukri aiming for its neck.
To his left, a vine from a flanking wolf's paw shot out, not at him, but at his feet, trying to entangle him. Reginleif was there. A scything blade of wind severed the vine a foot from its source. The wolf yelped, green ichor spraying from the stump.
The third wolf tried to circle behind Reginleif. She didn't turn. Instead, she stomped her foot, and a circular gust erupted around her, throwing the creature back and buying Azazel time.
He finished the leader with a decisive stab, the dark aura on his blade seeming to drink in the creature's fading green light. He turned just as the second wolf, enraged, lunged for Reginleif's blind side. Azazel threw his kukri. It wasn't a practiced move, but a desperate, powerful one. The spinning blade, wreathed in a trailing plume of darkness, slammed into the wolf's side, knocking it off course.
Reginleif capitalized instantly. With a sharp gesture, she summoned a vortex of air that lifted the wounded beast and slammed it into the cavern wall. It slid down, unmoving.
The last wolf, the one with the severed vine, whimpered and tried to back away into the fungal forest. Reginleif ended it with a precise gust that snapped its neck with a sickening crack.
Silence returned, heavier now, filled with the coppery scent of blood and the sweet, rotten smell of crushed fungus.
After catching their breath, Reginleif knelt by the first wolf. With practiced efficiency, she used a small knife to harvest the intact, still-glimmering vines from its paws and carefully extracted the luminous green eyes. "Alchemical reagents," she explained, storing them in wax-sealed pouches. "The guild buys them. The vines are good for binding potions, the eyes for sight-enhancements or poison."
Azazel retrieved his kukri, wiping it clean. The dungeon's energy pulsed around them, deeper and stronger than before, as if their victory had stirred something awake.
He looked toward the dark passage leading further down. "Floor five awaits."