Dungeon Noble - Squire

The three of them were on the road early the next day. Jake made sure to mention the warning he’d received with Felix before they left as well. After talking it through with the older classer, they both agreed that there was nothing to be done right now.

Jake would try to narrow down the feeling of danger and loss with subsequent prayers, and hopefully, they’d figure out what it all meant soon enough.

In the meantime, however, they were pushing forward with Felix’s plan and heading for a Dungeon that saw little to no traffic with most classers.

To do so, they’d be heading south towards the coast and the least developed part of Strovia.

Strovia’s eastern border was dominated by the Viridian Expanse, a veritable sea of trees that stretched from Strovia to its neighbours. Before the Triarchy came, Strovia had been slowly expanding into that area, but no longer.

Strovia’s north was likewise bounded by a large group of mountains that were all but impassable, while the western and southern borders hit the ocean. The western coastline had several ports and cities, such as Port Emerald, but the southern coast was rocky and ill-suited to shipping.

Accordingly, there was little down there to draw people, and that seemed to have extended to classers as well.

Moira’s Hollow was the southernmost city of Strovia, and even it was a fair distance north of the coast. Eventually, Jake was hoping they’d head there, as he knew the city had two Dungeons in the second tier, but right now, that would be almost suicidal.

No, their current plan was to head to a small village south of Moira’s Hollow called Restern. The Dungeon they were looking for was near Restern, but between its ill favour with the classer community and how remote it was, the village had almost no classers present.

According to Felix’s contacts, the only protection the village had from monsters or other threats beyond those of normal guards was a group of retired classers who’d dropped out at the peak of the first tier.

The lack of Triarchy presence would hopefully mean that they could operate without too many issues. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

The three of them would be taking a circuitous route to the village, avoiding all the larger population centres and as many settlements as they could get away with.

The fewer opportunities for them to be spotted, the smoother this would go.

-**-

They settled into a steady routine easily enough, spending most of the day walking through barely-used and even less maintained trails before setting up camp and getting some training done during the evening.

Despite Jake’s reluctance, or perhaps because of it, Felix insisted that they run through several exercises regarding working with familiars. The older classer didn’t have one himself, but he’d worked with classers who did in the past and knew some of the principles of how they worked.

In theory, Jake had no issue with the training. After all, The Mighty Drake was one of his Boons, and Jake wasn’t so spoilt for choice that he would ignore that. Still, it was embarrassing.

Moby, the vividly coloured duck that Jake could summon, didn’t help matters either. The duck was intelligent enough to pick up on Jake’s reluctance to use him and took offence at that.

Despite performing perfectly for whatever Felix wanted, Moby was far from as helpful to Jake and exemplified the tenets of malicious compliance.

“As your familiar, he will perform to his highest standards during combat,” Felix said with barely concealed amusement once they’d covered everything and Jake had dismissed Moby once more. “However, I would recommend you resolve whatever issue the two of you have before you rely on him out of combat.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” Jake muttered, resisting the urge to protest that it wasn’t his fault.

One of the first things that Felix had taught them was that Jake shared a bond of sorts with his familiar, which allowed them to communicate. Unfortunately, Jake had realised that the same bond had passed on to Moby how he felt about the Boon.

Exactly how Jake would get past this issue, he wasn’t sure. Still, he didn’t intend to be using Moby for anything except combat any time soon, so it wasn’t a critical issue.

Rubbing his face tiredly, Jake took a bowl of stew from Alan and swapped over so that the Scholar could get some archery practice under Felix’s supervision.

They’d decided to alternate like this to give them both a chance to take advantage of Felix’s knowledge.

-**-

The third and fourth days of their travel saw a slight shift in this routine as they came across a series of Hollows.

Hollows were small nests of monsters with a reward at their core and were the source of wandering monsters in a region. Both of the ones they encountered held bestial monsters and were well-established with plenty of protectors.

The majority of the monsters belonged to the Beast category, the weakest of the ratings within the Skriva. Outside of a Dungeon, these creatures gave no Wyrdgeld, so Jake was tempted to try and ignore them.

Such creatures would be death to any normal person who crossed their path, though, however unlikely that might be. That made it their duty as Ascended to deal with those they could find.

Jake was under no illusion that all classers would think that way, but his responsibility was to his own actions.

Dealing with both Hollows but them behind on their schedule, but it did net Alan and Jake several dozen Wyrdgeld each. Alan had yet to get to the second tier, but considering how expensive it was looking, starting to save Wyrdgeld now was a good idea.

Jake was into his second tier, but he needed almost another hundred for his next rank. He’d come into this tier with several hundred Wyrdgled from the hard work he’d done before they’d set out to rescue Nepthys, but higher ranks were getting more and more expensive.

Accordingly, the small amount of additional Wyrdgeld was appreciated, if not as impactful as it would have been a few months ago.

-**-

Midway through the fifth day, they arrived at the outskirts of Moira’s Hollow, and despite some minor protests, Alan was sent in to gather provisions for them.

Jake was being hunted, and Felix was quite recognisable from his higher tier and missing hand, which had just left their resident Scholar.

To make things a little safer, Felix made sure to supply Alan with a pouch of ingars from his own supply. That would let Alan stick to the classless part of the city and out of the local Dungeon Row.

Waiting for Alan to get their supplies was a tense affair, but Jake did his best to remember that there was no one looking for Alan right now, so he should be safe.

It wasn’t all that reassuring, but it was the best Jake could do at the moment.

Deciding to do something productive with his time rather than sit and worry, Jake began to practice infusing his blade with Wyrd. After talking with Alan and a few comments from Felix, he was beginning to get better control over the process.

The Wyrd needed to be stable, and Alan managed that by creating a pattern within the arrow, allowing it to maintain its effect after leaving the bow. Jake didn’t need that same effect, but he could tell that Alan’s infusion was doing more than that.

Ideally, by copying Alan’s process, Jake would be able to figure out some new ways to apply his own technique. The problem, however, was figuring out how to make a pattern inside his sword.

He was making progress, that much was sure, but without a firm end goal in mind, he was struggling. Alan had tried to explain the pattern he used to help with that but to no avail.

Jake kept on trying and experimenting as they waited, only putting his sword away when Felix announced that Alan was approaching.

“Any issues?” Felix asked as Alan came trotting into their camp with a bulging pack.

“Nothing worth mentioning,” Alan said with a shrug. “The guards clocked me as a classer when I entered, but they didn’t question me wanting to buy supplies from classless traders.”

“I imagine it’s quite a common practice around here,” Felix said as he packed up his gear. “Though, most folk would be heading north, not south. Still, let’s be careful and put a couple of hours between us and the city, just in case.”

-**-

Two more days passed as they continued south from Moira’s Hollow. With the last city behind them, Felix felt comfortable for them to take the main roads, such as they were.

The Triarchy’s influence was hard to see this far south, but Jake supposed that made sense. There was little to draw them here, not when other parts of Strovia needed their attention.

Perhaps in time, there would be Triarchy outposts down here. For now, however, it was a nice change to be able to not worry about patrols.

“Here we are,” Felix said as they came to the end of the second day from leaving the city and reached a fast-flowing river that the road ran alongside. “Restern is only an hour away if memory serves. We’ll be there tonight.”