Her fingers tapped an unconscious rhythm on the tabletop. “Buy me a drink, and I'll tell you all the intelligence I have. How about it?”
“Another cup of ale over here!” Loviki called out toward the bar.
Before long, the plump, middle-aged woman walked over again, carrying another cup of ale along with the grilled fish Chen Mian had ordered.
Leila unceremoniously picked up the ale, took a large gulp, and let out a satisfied sigh.
“Ah, refreshing! After singing for so long, my throat was practically smoking. Thanks!” She waved her cup at Chen Mian.
“You said you'd tell us what you know about the dungeon?” Chen Mian cut straight to the point.
“Yes, intelligence.” Leila set her cup down, a flash of shrewdness passing through her emerald-green eyes that contrasted sharply with her playful exterior. “But intelligence comes in tiers.”
“The free stuff you can just read on the guild's bulletin board—moving plants, glowing fruits. But this dungeon is quite high-level; more than half of the first batch to go in have already ended up dead or injured.”
She lowered her voice, her finger tracing abstract circles on the table. “But what comes next is the paid content I worked tirelessly to gather.”
“What do you want for it?” Chen Mian asked casually.
“I don't want money. I want a promise.” Leila's expression grew uncharacteristically serious.
“Go on.”
“If you run into me in the dungeon and I happen to be in a tight spot,” she pointed to herself, “give me a hand. Just consider it an investment based on a bard's intuition.”
Chen Mian nodded. “Deal.”
Leila instantly beamed. “Great! Then I'll share my best-kept secrets with you. This dungeon is called the Frost-Steel Corridor.”
“The Frost-Steel Corridor? Does it have something to do with Wigtan's frost steel mines?” Loviki immediately caught the key detail.
“Spot on!” Leila snapped her fingers. “And the frost steel in the dungeon is of much higher quality than what's dug out of the mines! Even some of the magical beasts are connected to frost steel.”
“The most common thing you'll encounter in the Frost-Steel Corridor is the ice crystal golem, a type of magical construct that automatically attacks intruders. Because of the properties of frost steel, physical attacks do nothing more than tickle them. And unless a magical attack is fire-elemental, it'll be reflected, drastically reducing its effectiveness.”
“Most of these golems are distributed on the first floor of the dungeon. After over a month of exploration by adventurers, the first floor has been mostly cleared of them, but they can still be found on the second and third floors.”
“The first three floors are mostly stone corridors filled with dungeon mechanisms and magical beasts. But if you're unlucky, you might run into extremely dangerous dungeon traps. The Cold Front Team, one of Wigtan City's top adventurer teams, apparently wandered into a trap room on the third floor, resulting in their total annihilation. The team's captain, Greck, was a powerful Platinum Rank first tier (Level 51) adventurer...” Leila's expression grew much graver. For such a powerful expert to perish in the shallow layers of a dungeon was rare even on the Continent of Cecia.
“What are the characteristics of these dungeon traps?” Loviki asked with a frown. She was only at the Platinum Rank ninth tier herself, so such traps could easily pose a threat to her as well.
“There are none. According to the adventurers who were nearby, it looks just like any ordinary dungeon room, completely indistinguishable from the others. The Cold Front Team had just finished defeating a golem and were sorting through their loot when a barrier suddenly locked them inside. Right after that, a dense swarm of magical beasts poured out from a teleportation array. Those inside couldn't get out, and those outside couldn't get in. In the end, all four members exhausted their mana and were devoured by the beasts.” Leila's expression turned quite solemn.
The complete lack of warning signs meant that any adventurer entering the dungeon could end up as the next victim. For most adventurer teams, encountering such a trap meant certain death.
“What about past the third floor?” Loviki sat up straighter.
“Once you reach the fourth floor, it's completely different from the first three.”
“Even though it's an underground dungeon beneath the frozen forest, the fourth floor is a vast sea of trees. It doesn't even feel like you're underground; there's actually sunlight there. The glowing peaches, strange crops, and other magical crops mentioned in the Adventurer's Guild bulletins were discovered on this floor. There are all kinds of bizarre plants, along with hybrid beasts and magical beasts that shouldn't even exist. Resources are abundant on this floor, but danger lurks everywhere.”
“Exploding potatoes, fire-spitting peas, man-eating vines hidden beneath the soil, walking mushrooms... all sorts of bizarre things.”
“The easiest thing to fall prey to is the frost whisperer, a waist-high plant that looks like a fern encased in ice crystals. They use their roots to move around and can emit a unique mana wave that interferes with people's minds, causing them to mindlessly walk right up to it. The end result is being frozen into an ice sculpture to serve as nutrients.”
“So you absolutely cannot let your guard down on the fourth floor. It's as if the world itself has broken down there; even a random plant by the side of the path might launch an attack at you,” Leila complained before taking another large gulp of her ale.
Exploding potatoes? Fire-spitting peas? Walking mushrooms?
Hearing this, Chen Mian found himself growing rather interested.
However, based on his own understanding, there was an eighty percent chance these things were the handiwork of the dungeon master.
“What about the ghost mentioned in the bulletins?” He set his cup down and looked at Leila.
“There's a high probability it's real.” Leila took a deep breath, emphasizing each word: “Deep within the dungeon, there really is a ghost.”
“And not the kind of soul-type magical beast that just wails to scare people.” Leila's expression was more serious than ever. “In the boundless dark caverns of the fifth floor, someone from the guild saw her from a distance. It was a female phantom, very blurry but definitely real. Wherever she appeared, time and space would become highly distorted.”
“She didn't directly attack anyone, but anyone who tried to approach her was blocked by an invisible wall of ice. Those with bad luck would run into temporal turbulence. Some speculate that she is the guardian of this dungeon, or perhaps an adventurer trapped there.”
“As for the areas beyond that, no news has made its way out yet.” Leila picked up her ale and downed it in one go. “That's all the intelligence I have.”
Having finished speaking, she grabbed her lute, tossed her braid back, and reverted to her usual carefree demeanor. She walked off toward the other side of the cabin, making her previous serious display as an intelligence broker feel like a mere illusion.
“This dungeon doesn't seem simple at all,” Loviki said, though her tone sounded even more expectant.
“Yes, it sounds very interesting.” Flora was still sipping her ale in tiny gulps. Her alcohol tolerance was quite low; with less than half the cup gone, her cheeks were already flushed a delicate red.
Yet, not a trace of worry could be seen on her face.
“Aren't you nervous, Flora?”
“The secret realm I lived in for decades wasn't safe either.” Flora shook her head with a smile, picking up a small piece of grilled fish with her utensils and putting it in her mouth, followed by another tiny sip of ale. “Loviki, this grilled fish actually isn't bad.”
“Really?”
“Mhm!”
“Hey, Chen Mian, leave some for me!”
By evening, the ship sailed into a stretch of open sea.
The sea fog was incredibly thick, almost completely enveloping the ship. The light from the magical lamps grew hazy and dim in the mist.
The crowd on the deck had thinned out significantly. Only a few sailors remained on duty at the bow and stern, ringing a bell every so often to warn nearby vessels to keep their distance.
Chen Mian stood by the railing at the stern, watching the fog churn in the ship's wake.
Flora stepped out from the cabin, wrapped in a thick blanket, and came to a stop beside him.
“Why aren't you sleeping?”
“I can't sleep.” She shared half of the blanket, draping it over his shoulders. “Loviki, on the other hand, is already fast asleep.”
The two stood side by side, watching the fog slowly drift through the darkness.
“Mr. Chen Mian, this sea fog isn't normal.”
“Yeah. Has your mana recovered a lot?”
“About seventy percent.” Flora nodded, though her expression was quite solemn.
“Don't worry.”
“Okay.” Flora's hand, gripping her staff, trembled slightly from nervousness.
Rate on N.U.
