Chapter 17: Trust

"...what do you mean?" Sev asked after a moment. He seemed wary.

"How are dungeons ranked, normally?" Derivan cocked his head to the side, helmet clanking against his shoulder plate. "I am afraid I am missing some context."

The Guildmaster gave Derivan a strange look, but Vex quickly took over before she could speak. "They're ranked based on a combination of factors, usually the difficulty of the dungeon's challenges along with the level of the monsters inside. Usually, the dungeon's tier is equal to the rank of the monsters within, but it can change if the challenges inside are more difficult, or if the challenges allow you to bypass the monsters."

The Guildmaster furrowed her brows slightly. "...That is correct, yes," she said, nodding tersely after a moment.

"So what makes this dungeon so different?" Sev asked, eyeing the Guildmaster. "That ranking system seems pretty flexible to me."

"The problem is consistency and content." The Guildmaster's eyes narrowed slightly. "Dungeons don't usually have flexible difficulty ratings, but this one seems to adjust based on the adventurers delving them. The challenges, for example, are as likely to kill a Bronze ranker as they are to kill a Platinum ranker."

Vex frowned. "The challenges adjust their stat requirements?"

The Guildmaster laughed at that, though it was a bit of a bitter one. "No. The challenges don't seem to be stat based at all. They just... individualize themselves based on the delver. It caused a hell of a problem with our scouts, let me tell you; not a single one could agree on the difficulty of any given puzzle."

"But that's..."

"It implies this dungeon is intelligent in some way, yes. Like the core dungeons in the Prime Kingdoms." The Guildmaster watched Vex for a moment, her gaze making the lizardkin shift uncomfortably. He wrapped his tail around to his front as if for comfort, and her eyes softened just slightly. "That's dangerous in and of itself. If it were known that there was a 'platinum' dungeon that could be theoretically delved by Bronze and Iron rankers, there'd be a flood of demand and we'd have to deal with idiots trying to sneak in and getting themselves killed. But if it were just that, we'd probably rank this as an unusually dangerous dungeon, and that would be that."

"There's something else," Vex said.

"There are a number of intelligent monsters in that dungeon," the Guildmaster nodded, ignoring the sharp intake of breath from all of the party except Derivan. The armored monster's eyes simply narrowed slightly as he took in this information. Was that his fault? The dungeon had used him as a seed. "Monsters that can talk. Which is unusual, as I'm sure you'll agree."

"Quite," Sev said smoothly, taking over before Vex could respond. The lizardkin couldn't lie if his life depended on it. If the Guildmaster noticed, though, she chose not to comment. "And these monsters are dangerous?"

"Very much so." The Guildmaster paused here for a moment, as if trying to find the words to articulate the danger. "This is the first instance of a dungeon's mechanisms being controlled by its denizens that we know of. The intelligent monsters, if you encounter them, can manipulate and change the existing puzzles to make them more or less dangerous to you."

"Do they do that?" Misa asked. The Guildmaster looked up at her, and she clarified. "Do they make the challenges less dangerous? That seems like a good thing."

"If they like you," the Guildmaster said with a shrug. "But more likely than not, they won't, and they'll just make everything worse for you and everyone else in your party. They definitely didn't make things easier on my scouts; most of them are still recovering, except for the one that one of the monsters took pity on."

Sev and Misa exchanged glances briefly. Vex seemed very still. Derivan, for his part, still didn't know how to react.

"On top of that," the Guildmaster continued, as if largely oblivious to the interplay going on between the party members — Derivan saw how sharp her eyes were in spite of it, however. "The monsters themselves break all the rules we know of. They're not just intelligent, their difficulty doesn't tend to match their level. Bronze ranked monsters have skills that would be dangerous to even Platinum rankers. Platinum ranked monsters sometimes pose no danger at all."

"There's that much of a level range in the dungeon?" Vex frowned.

"Yes," the Guildmaster said. "Which is only one of the reasons I need to know what messages you got from the system when this thing was forming. We need to know if it has any more surprises up its sleeves, and if it does, we need to be ready for them. Or at least warn Elyra about them. I can't imagine the level of diplomatic incident we'll end up having if we withheld information that could have prevented a catastrophe."

"I — It's not that easy for us," Sev said with a slight furrow of his brows, glancing around at his party members. "We'll need to discuss this amongst ourselves. Several of those messages contain some private information about our classes."

Which was an excuse, Derivan realized. Sev had expressed before that he didn't care much for the privacy of the system — he was more than happy to share whatever was needed for the benefit of the whole. The problem was just that his class was unique, and no one else would ever have his class.

"I do not ask this lightly," the Guildmaster agreed. None of them were trying to hide that they had secrets, at least; they were only hesitating in sharing them.

Derivan was troubled.

Physical Empathy told him many things; it told him that the others were worried, but not for themselves. It was almost subconscious, but the rest of the team had put themselves between the Guildmaster and him. It told him that the Guildmaster was relaxed — almost too relaxed, given the nature of what she was asking of them. There was no hostility from her, and yet... his teammates were worried.

"I don't suppose you'd take our word that there aren't any messages that would explain this?" Misa half-joked, her voice strained.

"I doubted the system would give direct messages about the nature of the dungeon to begin with," the Guildmaster said drily. "We are looking for hints, not complete answers."

"This isn't a decision any of us can make alone," Sev said. "We need to discuss this. We will try to work with you, and we would not withhold any information that would put anyone in danger; this much I can promise you."

"Of course." The Guildmaster smiled at them. "I will return in thirty minutes or when you knock twice on your door. I'll even have a privacy ward cast on your room. Is that sufficient?"

Sev nodded once, and the Guildmaster got up and left the room; the door shut behind her, and a strange magic settled over them.

You have been placed under a privacy ward. Actions taken and words spoken will not leave the radius of the ward.

Misa stood up, walked over, and jammed a chair under the door handle.

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Vex stared at her, bemused. "Why'd you do that?"

"So she can't just walk in and have none of us notice that she's there again," Misa grumbled. Evidently she'd been thrown off by how the Guildmaster had slipped beneath their guard.

"Can we be sure that she walked out?" Sev joked; silence greeted him, and the cleric somewhat belatedly realized that they could not, in fact, be certain. He coughed. "Right. Well then. Operational security. Be vague enough so that we know what we're talking about, but for all we know the ward extends out past the door and she can hear us, so..."

"For what it's worth, my mana sight tells us the ward is confined to the limits of the room," Vex offered. "But it's probably best not to rely on that. Um... That said, I think most of the system messages are fine to share, honestly. Anything relating to the formation of the dungeon. What I'm worried about are the messages regarding the excess mana."

The bonus rooms, he meant; the messages that had outright stated their levels and classes, and revealed their secrets to one another.

"We can see if she'll allow us to be vague about it," Sev offered. "Take out the specifics of our classes."

"But you are not truly worried about your classes," Derivan said. "Only mine."

For a few breaths, no one spoke; then Sev sighed.

"It's my biggest worry, yeah," he admitted; Misa and Vex both nodded slowly in agreement.

"I do not think we should hide it," Derivan said plainly.

Sev hesitated. "Are you sure? The way she talked about monsters..."

"I suspect that she already knows what I am," Derivan said. "But more than that, I am worried that my presence is what caused the monsters in this dungeon to be intelligent. It may be crucial that we do not hide this."

"We can't." Vex shook his head, distressed. "I mean... maybe we can tell the Guildmaster. She seems nice. But we can't let Elyra know. I... I know Elyra. They wouldn't just let Deri go."

There was a tremble of genuine fear in Vex's voice that gave all of them pause. Derivan frowned slightly, moving closer to the wizard, and Vex seemed like he had to stop himself from shrinking back. Very gently, and giving Vex time to pull away if he needed, he placed a hand on the lizardkin's shoulder.

Very slowly, the trembling stopped.

"We will tell her, but ask that she disguise this information when she gives it to Elyra," Derivan said. "Is that acceptable?"

"I..." Vex hesitated slightly. It wasn't perfect — one only needed to look at their party and the dungeon formation data to realize something was wrong. But the Guildmaster clearly had some Skill-based way to disguise information, and the Guild itself had proven itself willing to try to do what was right, in that earlier confrontation. "...Okay."

It was the best compromise they had. Derivan didn't want to risk leaving out something crucial, though he accepted it came at some cost to his safety.

"That isn't the only thing I'm worried about," Sev said with a sigh, now that that had been settled. "There's what happened afterwards. The last battle we fought."

"There's no way they don't know about that one already. We shouldn't hide it," Misa said bluntly.

"The battle itself, no," Sev agreed; a moment later, Misa's eyes widened in realization.

"Ah, shit. The last time you even talked about it..." she said, and her voice trailed off. Sev nodded slowly.

"I will explain it," Derivan said. "And I will stop if it seems that what happened with Velykos is also happening with the Guildmaster."

"Are you sure?" Misa frowned. "Sev almost died. He only didn't because there were other clerics around that could keep him stable."

"That is why Sev cannot be the one to speak of it." Derivan glanced at the cleric. "Our healer must be available in case the worst happens. And my circumstances are unique enough that whatever affected Sev may not affect me."

He didn't have Health, he meant. If the effect was Health-related, he would be immune; if the effect stopped his heart, he would still be immune.

"...Okay," Sev said slowly. Vex looked like he wanted to protest, but ultimately kept silent; he seemed to understand that it was the most reasonable choice outside of just keeping silent on the matter entirely, and that didn't seem wise. Whatever was happening affected even the gods. "So. We explain everything we can. Derivan can talk about what happened with the Overseer, and explain my use of [Divine Communion] — that's common knowledge about cleric classes anyway. Are we agreed?"

"Agreed," the others chorused; Sev stood up, and went to move the chair aside and knocked twice on the door. His hands were shaking only slightly.

The door opened. A woman stood behind the door; she walked through and closed the door behind her before her Skill dropped away and she once more became the Guildmaster. No deception this time, beyond what was necessary to stop others from realizing who was entering the room.

"We might not be able to tell you everything," Sev said without preamble. "But we will tell you as much as we can. Is that acceptable?"

The Guildmaster smiled a rare smile. "It is more than I was expecting."

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