This Used To Be About Dungeons полностью

They put as much of their personal equipment into the book as they could, now that the dungeon was assumed safe. To hear Alfric tell it, you couldn’t ever really assume that a dungeon was safe. He had said it like it was a rule written down somewhere, which was probably the case. “You do not know what is in the dungeon,” he’d said. “Even if you’ve cleared the dungeon, even if you have entads that can tell you what’s in there, even if you have personally checked, you do not know what is in the dungeon, and because of that, the dungeon is never safe.”

But they had done a lot and had a long way to go before they’d be back to proper civilization, so there was no sense in wearing their helms or lugging around their armor, no sense getting sweaty because of the layers.

They had eight entads in all, a good haul, and Alfric was quite hopeful that the wardrobe was the prize of the lot, not just because it had been guarded by the bear, and not just because if it was worthless they’d have to leave it, but because he seemed to take some joy in the large, uncomfortable entad.

“My dad used to tell me stories about entads like this,” he said. He was smiling. “You only really have a problem with them early in your career, when you can’t shrink things down or stuff them away, or just deal with them somehow. For him there was always some fun in it. There was one, a table, nearly four feet across, six feet long, which he navigated down the roads with his friends.”

“What did it do?” asked Mizuki.

“It was a map,” said Alfric. “A big map that went almost to the edges of the table, with bumps where the hills or mountains were, and little square bits where there were houses. I think he sold it to one of the Dondrian hexmasters, but I don’t really remember that part of the story.”

“There’s no reason that it’ll be good just because it’s big, ay,” said Hannah. “Just as likely it’ll clean the laundry you put in it.”

“That would be pretty good,” said Mizuki. “I hate laundry day.”

“The dial,” said Alfric, pointing to the front of the wardrobe. “It’s got six notches; that’s certainly suggestive. Six cardinal directions?”

“Six gods,” said Hannah, folding her arms.

“Six fingers,” said Verity, smiling as she held up a modified hand. She was still somewhat out of it, not her usual self, and Hannah was slightly worried.

“Six Spirit Gates,” said Mizuki.

“Those are just an extension of the gods,” said Hannah.

“No?” asked Mizuki.

“Well, there’s some argument on that score,” said Hannah. “The point is, there’s lots of things that six might mean, and since it’s an entad, it’s just as possible that it’s six outfits it can store, or something like that.”

“I have a good feeling,” said Alfric. After the fretting and postmortem, he seemed to be in a good mood, perhaps because they had managed to win against the bear. Hannah hadn’t expected him to suggest a retreat, not when he seemed to put so much emphasis on how you could only do a dungeon once. It made her like him a bit better, knowing that he’d argue for safety like that, even if she thought he’d been a bit overcautious. It made all his talk about being the first line of defense and running away if it got to be too much seem less like the shallow words of someone who just wanted a party.

After a full bell had passed, they’d assembled a pile of things in addition to the entads. Isra had insisted on taking some of the bear meat, which she also insisted was good to eat, and that had been stuffed away in the book, nearly a hundred pounds of the stuff, wrapped up in butcher’s paper that Alfric had thought to bring along. The trees were ectad material, and a fairly valuable one, which could be refined into growthstone, but they had only a handaxe, and Alfric didn’t think they were worth the effort. There were also, according to Isra, eggs up in one of the trees, though so high up and with so many branches that it was hard to see how they’d get them.

“We should do entad testing,” said Mizuki, who’d changed clothes now that the dungeon was more or less finished. Hannah had to admit that she did look a lot better in her normal clothes. “What if there’s something that helps us take a tree out? That would be worth it, wouldn’t it?”

“It might,” said Alfric with a sigh. “We have the staff, the sword, the wardrobe, the coin, the rope, the goggles, the rock, and the dagger. None of those are likely to be of any assistance, except for the wardrobe. I think you just want to do entad testing.”

“To be fair,” said Mizuki. “Entad testing is, like, the best thing about being a dungeoneer, right?”

“It’s seeing new things,” said Alfric.

“Money,” said Isra.

“Well, I enjoy seein’ these worlds, even if there is a lot tryin’ to kill us,” said Hannah. “But I agree with Mizuki, it makes more sense to test first, just in case we can take a tree.”