Chapter 149: Chapter 145: A Summoner breaks into a hideout

 

 

As Ritalassa body was currently a sword, spending the night outside in the open did not really phase her much at all. Even before she had become a sword, she had a series of long nights standing guard with her soldiers. So she was fairly comfortable with resting outdoors. Of course there was the exception when it was raining, then her irrational fear of gaining rust spots perked right up.

She knew as a magical blade getting rust spots naturally was incredibly unlikely to occur. It would take magic or such to cause her blade to corrode. Still just as a precaution she had taken to rubbing her blade down with oil, especially after every rainstorm just to be safe. As there was no rain last night, she did have a decent night's rest, although poor Dafter had a poor night.

After the strange encounters yesterday with Tessa and that giant bird, she had expected more things to happen to them through the valley. Yet nothing had occurred during the trek, with the exception of a strange atmosphere settling in. They didn't encounter any more wildlife, nor did they hear any more from the birds. It was as if everything had gone to ground after those giant things had appeared. So they walked in silence all the way to the end of the valley keeping a look out for that giant bird. At the end the climb out was incredibly easy and soon they found themselves back at the top.

With them cresting the ridge in the late evening, it was no surprise to see the sun was starting to set, especially with winter approaching. Given that they were currently in a wooded area, they thought it was best to quickly search for a place to camp for the night. In between several small trees, they found a set of boulders that had formed a small crevice in which she and Dafter could spend the night in. As there was no room for Inky, she desummend him to allow her spider friend to rest.

With little time to gather firewood, Dafter could only make a small fire with what little he could gather and what she had on hand in her inventory. Unfortunately, she hadn't had much time to restock on her food supplies, so she could only hand Dafter some rations and dried jerky for a meal. He nodded in thanks and soon went to bed to leave her alone with her thoughts for the night.

Occasionally throwing a few branches on the fire to keep it going, she watched the sky overhead. Soon the clouds dispersed revealing the bright full moon. As the moonlight filtered down, the boulders around them began to shake. Alarmed and worried that they may roll onto them, she watched as several large glowing mushrooms popped from crevices in the boulders. They seemed to glow in pulses and Dafter rolled over with a curse.

"Are you alright Dafter?" She asked, looking at her friend with concern.

"You may not realize this, but since I am a Mushroom man, I can hear mushrooms speak as they spread their spores. Most of the time it is like a silent whisper with not much to say. These glowing ones on the other hand are loud as hell and are screaming about praising the moon."

"Is that so?" She asked curiously, and then Examined the mushrooms.

 

 

"If you can hear what they say, can you tell them to quiet down?" She asked.

Dafter shook his head and said "Sadly not. These mushrooms are in fact dumber than the rocks they are rooted in."

"Then I could take them all down."

Dafter shook his head, "You can take a few, but leave the rest. It's not their fault. They are just living their life like they always do. I will just have to bear with it for the night."

She grabbed a few of the closer mushrooms next to Dafter, and he went back to sleep albeit fitfully. With that done she watched the glowing mushrooms in quiet contemplation. When dawn approached the mushrooms soon retreated back into their rocky holes. As he didn't get much sleep, she decided to let him sleep in a bit and they set off towards the city a few hours after dawn.

Given that they were quite a distance aways from the city, she looked at the map and found the most direct route to the back of the city was through the forest. This forest was untamed and quite wild, and they had some trouble making their way through the brush. It really seemed like no one had been here for awhile, so it was surprising to actually find evidence to the contrary.

Kneeling down Dafter ran his hand along the well-worn tracks in the soft earth. "It appears that someone came through here recently on a wagon. Not a big one, but definitely a wagon drawn by a single horse."

She looked around the area and frowned. All that she could see was a tight cluster of trees and bushes. Definitely not an easy place to bring a wagon, even a small one. "Odd to bring a wagon this deep into the forest. Even if they were taking a shortcut, the nearest road is miles away. It would be a nightmare to navigate through all this."

"You would be correct, however take a look at this." He went over to one of the bushes and pushed it aside. "It's a fake bush. It appears someone has hidden a trail deep within these woods. Based on the morning dew on the ground, it appears that someone came by this morning."

"What purpose could someone have been hiding a trail like this?" She said. "This is certainly suspicious. But the tracks go off away from the city so it would be out of our way to check it out. Do you think we should take the time to check it out?"

Dafter ran his hand on his mushroom cap and said "If I had to say this smacks of someone up to no good. As a proud knight of the mushroom kingdom, I cannot stand by while foul deeds are afoot. Plus did not your system Jack ask us to keep an eye for anything strange happening near the well. This trail certainly fits that category."

"You make good points Dafter. Please lead the way." She said, and they began following the trail deeper into the woods. They had to stop several times to disable traps that were hidden along the trail. Due to this it took them sometime to arrive at the end of the trail. They found a small log cabin that was particularly hidden in the forest. Great care had been taken to camouflage it from both the air and the surroundings. They themselves didn't spot it until they were nearly upon it.

In a similarly hidden shack, they could see an old wagon with a horse that had seen better days. Despite the cozy nature of the place, she was already put on guard due to getting a really creepy vibe off the surroundings. Concentrating on what exactly was causing this disturbance, she realized that the magical energy in the surroundings was acting a bit haywire. It was if it was both being drawn towards the cabin and being repulsed at the same time. This caused whorls to appear in the magical energy field, which gave the surroundings a stagnant dying vibe to it. How that could happen she did not know, but she disliked it immensely.

"Let's check out the shed first since it's open." She said, and they carefully approached the shed. As she was walking with her tentacles, she had discovered that they were actually fairly quiet when she concentrated. Inside the shed were just mainly tools and feed for the horse. Which when she got a closer look at it, seemed nearly dead. Sores and the like were starting to fester on its flesh and it's eyes looked at her begging her to put it out of its misery.

"Do you feel that Lass?" Dafter said. "That horse has been exposed to corruption. Not enough to change it, but enough to mess with it. It doesn't have much longer to live."

Sighing she raised her tentacles and petted the horse "Sorry that I could not help you. May you have a happier time in your next life." She said and as cleanly as she could sliced the horses head off killing it nearly instantly.

Dafter shook his head. "Damn shame to have to kill a beast like that, but you did what had to be done. But this proves these folks in the cabin are up to no good messing with corruption like that."

She waved a tentacle in acknowledgement and carefully approached the cabin on guard. As all the windows were covered with the camouflage she couldn't get a good view inside. Through a small crack she did see a bit inside, there was a small fireplace that had a fire going. From what she could see, she guessed the cabin comprised a singular room that was filled with books and various bottles of what appeared to be magical reagents. There were several potion bottles as well, making it clear that this cabin belonged to some sort of mage.

As she looked she could feel something else bothering her Arcanesia senses. Focusing on them, she found the world to drop away to be replaced with the magical resonations. With it she could see the whole of the cabin was encompassed in a kind of magical ward. What's more the magic behind this ward was ancient. Nothing like the magical energy that was commonplace nowadays or even in her time as an Elf. Taking a close look at it, she found it had several functions to it. One that concerned her at the moment seemed to be an alarm that triggered someone attempting to enter the cabin.

Which confused her briefly. Other than the traps they encountered on the trail, there appeared to be no other alarms surrounding the cabin. If someone were to set off the alarm in the cabin, would it not be almost too late in that instance? Upon closer inspection she realized that the alarm function had in fact just been tacked on and was not in fact the purpose of the ward. No, the ward seemed to be both hiding corrupted energy within the home and doing something with it at the same time.

As she lacked knowledge about these kinds of wards in the first place, she could only make guesses on what she could see. Which was the ward did not just encompass the cabin but extended itself quite a ways down as well. Returning to her normal vision, she took a closer look and spotted an open trap door inside. That was likely where the owner or owners of the cabin were at the moment.

Carefully she moved towards the front of the cabin and waved for Dafter to draw his sword. Concentrating on the ward again she found a deactivation switch for the alarm and pushed her magical energy into it shutting down the alarm. With that done, she tried the door handle and found it unlocked. Carefully she pushed open and nearly recoiled at the disgusting feeling of corruption spilling out. Yet as soon as it flowed it, the ward reached out and grabbed at it keeping it from going far. She slipped in and found the place was pretty empty for the most part.

Other than the magical supplies and tomes, there was just a single unmade bed. The magical stuff, however, radiated dark energies that belied their evil nature. The potions however were the worst, she just got awful feelings looking at them and she examined one of them.

 

 

The other potions were similar to this one. With benefits like these she could see how someone might be tempted to consume one. She didn't even want to touch them, so she resolved once they were done here she would burn this place to the ground. Being silent as possible, she crawled over to the trapdoor and peered down. Rather than seeing a set of stairs leading to a basement, she found herself looking down at what to be an ancient stone well. A rope ladder was hanging down the side and so she began climbing down using her tentacles. She kept an eye downwards just in case anyone came, if so she would drop down upon them.

The well went down quite aways, but eventually they arrived at the bottom of the well. There was a foul black mold growing everywhere, and the water was disgusting, and she hated touching it with her tentacles. There was a tunnel that went off in the distance lit by candles. In the distance she could feel a greater concentration of corruption. Feeling like there might be a battle ahead, she opened her inventory to see what she currently had available to send to Tessa as a sacrifice. She settled on some of the Dried Jerky she had saved a while back, as her blood sister had a taste for meat.

Focusing on the jerky, she formed a connection to Tessa through her blood and then she felt the meat torn from her inventory to the void. A few seconds later she received a message from Tessa.

 

 

After closing the message from her blood sister, she suddenly felt a surge of Eldritch energy fill her being. It changed something deep within her, though she could tell that this change was only temporary, even now her being was pushing back on the changes. She once more opened her magical senses and found that with the increased strength to Arcanesia she could now clearly see what had been occurring magically down the tunnel. Three figures filled with magical energy were moving about in a room ahead. Two of them seem to be carving with magic a seal on to something living. The third was off somewhere close to a region where the magic seemed to go haywire, in addition there was a strong resonance coming off something around his neck.

Unfortunately, she could not tell if there were others in the room, as this sense only picked up people who had magic within them. Given the amount in these people it was likely they were some sort of mages. Just ahead of them there also seemed to be a pile of something that was reacting to the surrounding magic. Being careful, she and Dafter silently moved down the hallway being careful to not make too much noise. The path rose up allowing them to escape the murky water, though that black mold continued on the walls.

Soon enough they came to an open room carved out into the side of the wall. It appeared to be a storage room of sorts, with several piles of robes currently within. Robes that looked suspiciously like the ones that the monks who worked at the Well wore. Frowning, she picked one up and found the inside had been lined with magical sigils. Yet they seemed incomplete, it appeared that they needed to be powered by an external source of energy, most likely a magic crystal. She examined it to see what information she could gain.

 

 

Not seeing a reason not to, she thought Yes at the message and suddenly there appeared an image within her mind of a series of lines. Each one made her mind hurt to look at, but she found she intimately knew what the purpose of each one was.

 

 

She would have to experiment with this later as she grabbed a bunch of the robes and then tossed them into her inventory. She would show them to Jack and the others, perhaps they could figure out a way to use them to track down the monks who were wearing similar ones in the city. With that done the two of them continued down the tunnel to a rather huge room that reeked of corruption. Lining one wall was various racks that held monsters and abominations that had perished. Yet they were occasionally twitching, not in the way that undead were wont to do but in the way the corruption filling these things refused to let them die.

Each of the beasts seemed to have been experimented upon to some degree. Most were missing limbs, and pieces of flesh, with one having it's chest completely cut open revealing the mass of organs within. A bloody pit nearby them told her where they would likely dump the remains of these creatures later. Despite the mass of corruption coming off these things, they weren't the primary source of corruption in this room. No, that came from the device located at the center of the room.

Attached to the roof over the center of the room was a series of magical crystals and pipes that were placed over a pedestal on which a glass bottle had been placed. As she watched a dark red drop fell from this contraption into the half-filled bottle and it sent a nauseating wave of corruption through the room. Her senses told her the ward from above was connected to this device. Somehow it seemed to be gathering up the corruption in the surroundings and concentrating it into this liquid form. The amount of corruption in that area was awful, this was by far the most corruption she had seen in one place.

This liquid was clearly the source of the corrupting influence on the potions. A drop of that would make any potion horribly toxic and dangerous to anyone drinking it. With the amount within the glass, it was starting to distort the very glass that contained it. If they were to dump that into a water supply that would cause chaos and destruction. That could not be allowed to ever happen. This entire place needed to be razed lest this give rise to more dangers. Movement to the left of the device caught her eye, and she looked over to it. A man in mages robes was attaching a piece of metal to what appeared to be a branding iron.

This man walked over to one of the racks in the back, where she spotted two other mages working on one of the abominations. This particular one looked to have once been a wolf. Now however, it had lost its fur to horrific growths that resembled bark except out of skin. Its massive wolfs head had split down the middle, creating a twin cyclops wolf. The man with the branding Iron held it up to one of the other mages who spoke a few words and a flame appeared. When the brand was glowing red hot, the man then jabbed it into the side of the wolf causing it to howl in pure agony and anger.

As she was far away she could not make out exactly what the symbol they had branded the monster with. She got the feeling that it was meant to be some sort of controlling sigil. After branding it, the three mages began to carve even more symbols using nasty looking knives. Looking around the room, she didn't see anyone else within the room, though she did spot a door at the other end of the room. Returning her gaze back to the three, she found two of them were absurdly weak. They were almost on the verge of death given the exposure to corruption they had experienced. As such they posed little threat beyond the possible magic they could cast.

The main threat in the room, however, came from the man who wielded the brand. Examining him, she frowned at what she saw.

 

 

From the status and from her magical senses she could see this man was incredibly dangerous. In addition, he seemed to have some sort of amulet that seemed to be powering another ward around the man. Given what she saw here, there was no way that she could let this continue any longer. As she was looking around, she came up with a plan of action. She waved at Dafter to come closer and said "I have a plan. I'm going to create a distraction to attract their attention to you, once that occurs I will then attack them from behind. Be careful with the middle guy. He's a real tough bastard. But the others will go down easy."

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Dafter nodded and readied himself. Grabbing the walls with her tentacles, she aimed herself at the closest man and then threw herself. On the way over she withdrew her tentacles making herself appear to be just a regular sword. As the three men were concentrating on cutting the sigils into the beast, they did not notice her until she stabbed herself deep into the back of one of the weaker mages. He cried out in surprise and pain and stared down at her point coming through his stomach. The other two seeing a sword were now in the back of their comrade, the two of them turned around and spotted Dafter who came charging into the room with a warcry.

The other weaker mage cursed and began to cast a spell, and Alfred Doob snarled and threw his dagger at Dafter. The man she had impaled moaned and attempted to remove her. She popped her tentacles out and wrapped them around his head and neck. The man struggled to break free from her grasp but she twisted and with a snap broke the man's neck. Moving up, she found the other two were currently distracted fighting with Dafter. Using his shield, he was blocking the fireballs the one mage was sending towards while slowly making his way towards the weaker mage. Worryingly she could tell that Alfred was preparing a far bigger and nastier spell.

Not having that she summoned Inky and sicced him onto the mage shooting fireballs and threw herself at Alfred. As she slashed at him from behind, he cried out "What?!" He jumped away and sent a magic blast of energy knocking her back. She rolled away and found he was casting another dark magic spell at her and she reached out with her senses and tore apart the spell matrix with brute energy. This resulted in a large explosion that tore his arm off. He screamed in agony and stood with a furious look towards her.

The other mage was being wrapped up in Inky's threads, and Dafter stabbed his sword into the man, killing him. Alfred glowered at them and said "Damn the lot of you, If you want to die so badly let me show you my toy!"

He looked towards the corrupted wolf and spoke a single word. The restraints holding the beast down sprung open and the twin headed cyclops wolf sprung up and attempted to maul Alfred. He spoke another word and the beast came to a halt and then turn around and charged towards her. She braced herself and managed to grip one head with her tentacles, but the other one managed to get a good bite onto her tentacles and really began to shake her violently around.

It got in a good bite and really felt like it was about to tear off the tentacle. It was easily the most pain she had felt since she had woken up as a sword. She took a few of her tentacles and balled them up creating a makeshift mace and bashed the head biting down on her. Startled it let go with a yelp and then she swung onto it's back. Sensing that it was in real danger, it let out a howl and really began to try and shake her off. Wrapping her tentacles as much as she could around the beast she began to push herself into the beast.

As she pierced into the beast, it began to spurt caustic blood onto her blade that made her wince internally. It was so corrupted that had she not had the corruption resistance, she would have suffered major damage from it. The beast went wild as she slowly pushed through its meat and into its organs. In an attempt to knock her off the beast began to roll around yelping as she drove ever deeper. She held on as best she could and pushed herself deep into it's beating heart. It let out twin gasps of pain and despair and fell to the ground dying.

Until it was fully dead, she kept herself jammed into its body. Then she freed herself and turned her attention right back to Alfred who was currently fighting taking on both Dafter and Inky. Even though he now had one arm missing, with his one arm, he was casting bolts of energy at both the mushroom knight and Inky. Inky managed to get one of the Armins legs stuck into the web, but was currently dancing around blasts. Alarmingly she also could see dark power beginning to well up in the amulet causing her to feel a real sense of danger start to build up.

The man was also had created a magical shield around them. She was not confident that she would be able to attack him before he unleashed that dark power. Needed another distraction, she decided to cast Call of The Void and pull something in. Quickly she concentrated on the skill and it drained over half of her remaining Mana. Seconds later a tear in space occurred and she could feel the void beyond resonating with the blood coursing through her blade. Then a large dog-sized white fluffy thing hopped out of the tear. She took a look at it and realized it was some sort of void rabbit.

It was shaped like a large white rabbit with the exception of having four eyes. Even if it was a rabbit it did radiate strength, and looked at her with its red eyes waiting for her to give it a command. "I need you to help distract that Mage, so I can get at him."

The rabbit gave a short nod and then she watched as it began to rise up and levitated. Spinning around towards Alfred, it's Eyes began to glow brighter and then a pair of Purple beams shot out from them and into the shield of the mage. Despite having the shield up the beams began pushing him back. With another attacker joining the fray, he really began struggling. She could tell he was distracted so got ready to attack him.

She snuck to his back where the shield was the weakest and threw herself to the back. When she hit the magical shield, he blade cut into it with the aid of her new magical abilities. It did slow her momentum a bit, but she was still able to strike deep into the bastards back. He cried out in pain, and she wrapped her tentacles around his neck and mouth and really began to choke the life out of him. He struggled mightily, and she could feel him attempting to use the powers within the amulet.

She first attempted ripping off the Amulet but found it was stuck to him, then she pulled herself out of his back and then slashed at neck over and over until she had chopped through and his head fell to the ground beside his now limp body. Pushing herself up she went and checked on the others. Dafter's armor was all scorched up and she could see a chip in his mushroom head. "Are you okay?"

"Aye, that was a tough fight there. Don't like going up against those magic wielders. Never know what they will pull out of their ass when they are desperate. I will be right as rain once I get a good night's sleep." Dafter said.

She nodded and looked at Inky, thankfully her summoned spider friend did not get hurt in the fight, plus she noticed that it had a more confident gleam in its eyes. The void rabbit was just floating around the room looking at things. It's stare made her a bit uncomfortable. Returning her attention back to the mages body, she checked Alfreds corpse to see if he had anything worth taking. The first thing she found was he had carved numerous sigils into his own flesh. Most appeared to be gathering mana for him to use. Around his neck she found the amulet that scared her and she examined it.

 

 

This was surely the cursed item that Tessa was likely referring to her message. Now that Alfred was dead it was easy for her to take it off, dark whispers in her mind suggested that she place it on herself. Disturbed she quickly put it away into her inventory to send to Tessa later. The rest of the body didn't provide anything else of value, so she turned towards the Void Rabbit and said "Hey, Um Mr. Rabbit can you destroy this body?"

The rabbit looked at her and then at the body and than let loose with four bright purple beams. The body was soon being burned into ash and she looked over at Dafter. "I want to destroy this place the best we can so the corruption cult or whatever they are can no longer use this place. Once we get back to the city, we will then have to tell the monks about it, so they can clean up the corruption here as best they can."

"Indeed that would be a good idea. Especially that thing the middle of the room is really dangerous. I'm not entirely sure what should be done about that."

"That I'm not sure about yet." She said then looked to the back wall. "First we should check out this door first."

The door was unlocked and she carefully opened the door just in case someone was behind it. Though no one appeared, and what was beyond was a small dock. An underground river was flowing down to the right. It was hard to see in the weak mana light, but it appeared the river went down and entered a tight rock tunnel. On the other end a series of ropes could be seen that would allow the boat that was currently at the docks to drag itself upstream. She said after a bit, "Well that's a surprise."

Dafter looked at the river and said after a bit "I'm unsure but it sure looks like the river is flowing from the direction of the well."

She pulled up her map to take a look and said "You are right. If this river does keep going in that direction, it will eventually pass by the city."

"If that is so, then perhaps this river is how they are getting these monk robes into the city. If this river does keep going in that direction, it will eventually pass by the city." Dafter said. "If that's the case, do you think at the end of this tunnel is their base?"

Taking a long look at that direction, she shook her head. "No. There were only three people here, not to mention some of them came by wagon. No, most likely it leads to a dropoff location that cannot be traced back to them. There is only space for one boat and it's already here. Once we are done here, we should take this boat to check out just to be sure, though." Then she went back into the room and took a look.

She quickly checked the lesser mages' bodies and came up with nothing of value, so she ordered the rabbit to take care of them as well. She then turned her attention to the ward in the corruption collection device. While it was extremely complicated she did work out a few places here and there where she could nudge it to make it stop collecting the corruption. Still that left a half filled bottle of pure corruption that she didn't know what to do with at the moment. So she went around the room looking for any papers or the like that could tell her more about the corrupted cult.

In some boxes she found some supplies for making potions. She would have taken them, but they had all been tainted with corruption making them useless for making anything. At a small desk she did find some notes and a journal, likely Alfreds. However they had been written in a code that she couldn't figure out. So she decided to store them away for the others to take a look at later. At the side of one of the racks, she found the set of brands that Alfred had been using. Notably they were a series of sigils that had been made out of cast iron. Thinking she might be able to learn a new sigil she examined them.

 

 

This concerned her a bit, but she ultimately decided to learn them. As such she agreed to the message, and two images of sigils forced their way into her mind. While they were not outright evil, they definitely came from a disturbed mind. Each one had sharp and jagged lines to them that felt raw and unsettling. It made her shudder to even bring up the information on them, still she wanted to see what she had gained from this experience.

 

 

While looking at these sigils, she worked out a plan on what to do with this place. "Hey Dafter, I have an idea on how to deal with this place for the moment. I need you to go up to the cabin and get it ready to be set on fire. While you're there check to make sure that we didn't miss anything important."

"Got it." Dafter said and headed down the tunnel they had used to come in.

As he left, she turned to the void rabbit who had floated up to her. "Well, can you burn down the remaining bodies, and I'll give you something to eat."

The void rabbit nodded happily and then floated off to do as she commanded. While it was doing that she turned her attention to carving sigils into the walls and objects in the room. It took several minutes to do so, and by the time she had finished Dafter had returned. The Void Rabbit had also gone back to the void, the space tearing open and her handing it some vegetables that she had on her. It wiggled its ears and then hopped through the gate. Just to be safe however she did a once over the room to make sure it hadn't left behind any eggs.

"Alright, I think we have everything ready for the next phase." She said to Dafter.

"What is the plan?" He said.

"We are going to set everything on fire. I've set up the sigils to gather the heat and it will eventually cause this place to explode."

He frowned and said "Are you not afraid of dumping this corruption into the river?"

"I did think about it and came up with a solution. The explosions will start at the back, causing it to seal this place in. Of course, the corruption will still be here, but it will be sealed up until the monks can deal with it. Plus it will prevent anyone from easily accessing this place again. So the cabin is ready to be lit on fire?"

He nodded. "I made sure that the surrounding area of the cabin was clear, so the fire won't spread. I went over the place again and didn't find anything else besides more of those corrupted potions."

"Good. I'll go back and set it off. You get the boat ready, because I'll be back real quick, and we'll want to get out this area real quick."

He nodded and she desummoned Inky, and went back up the tunnel and climbed back up the old well. When she arrived at the top, she glanced around and grabbed a fire poker next to the fireplace and grabbed one of the flaming logs and pulled it out into the middle of the room. She grabbed some of the sheets off the bed and tossed it onto the log. They went up surprisingly fast. She broke off a piece of chair and quickly made a torch.

By the time she had finished with that, half the cabin was already on fire. She quickly made her way back down the well and down the tunnel. When she passed the piles of robes, she lit them on fire and returned to the main chamber where she lit everything that was flammable. Using her senses she could tell that the walls were beginning to rapidly absorb the heat. Even now with the fires blazing in the room, it was still quite comfortable in the room.

Finished here she moved quickly to the river and got into the boat. "We are ready to go."

"Good. Since we are going upstream, I'm going to need your help pulling the rope." Dafter said.

Using her tentacles, she grabbed onto the rope and began to pull the boat and them up the stream. Five minutes later there was a massive boom from behind them. They continued onwards for two more hours, switching up between them whenever they got tired. Other than the manalight on the boat it was pitch black on the river.

Soon they could hear a rumbling coming from up ahead. After a bit more they found what was causing it, a massive spray of water was shooting out of a side wall creating the river they were on. A nearby dock indicated that they had arrived at the end. While she was pulling the ship closer to the dock, she could make out in the light that the water appeared to be shooting out from a massive pipe. They finally reached the dock, Dafter jumped out and secured the boat to it.

She pulled out her map and took a look at where they were in relation to the surface. Just as they suspected, they were in the middle of the city. In fact they were not too far from the well itself. Maybe only a few blocks away. The dock was similar to the one they had just left, and she went up to the door carefully. Just to make sure they didn't draw any attention, she took the manalight into her inventory sending them into darkness. She slid the door open and peeked inside. The room inside was dark, but had some light coming from cracks in the roof above.

They snuck into the room, and she found it held some robes and various packages of corrupted potions. At the end of the room they found a ladder. She climbed and carefully pushed the trapdoor up a crack to take a peek. She didn't see anyone inside the room, the room in fact looked like a basement full of storage equipment. Pushing the door up fully, she confirmed that indeed they were in a basement of a building. As she took another look at the map she realized exactly which building they were in.

"Guess which building we are in?"

"What?"

"The Inn we are currently staying at." She replied.

"That... actually makes sense. The inn is an ideal place to hide visitors coming and going without seeming too suspicious." Dafter said. "What do you want to do now?"

"Well it's apparent that some if not all of the staff here are corrupted. We should talk to the others and come up with a plan to draw them out." She said and then they went up the stairs. After making sure no one was watching, they slipped out of the basement and into the backrooms of the inn. She sent a message letting Megan know that they were back in the city and they had important news to share.

 

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