Road to the Dungeon

I hit the bed soon after dinner to get the rest my body and mind needed.

I wake up a little later than my usual time again to see Vimal working on his skills surrounded by the village kids.

After doing my morning chores and a little warm-up exercise, I go to have my breakfast brought by the kids who are admiring Vimal while he is devouring the food like a wild animal which has been starving for days.

When I am in the middle of munching the sweet bread with chicken, I see Jack coming towards us with a serious look on his face.I immediately realize it is going to be either an important task or a bad news that will be hard to handle.

As soon as he comes close to us, Vimal sends the kids away so he can convey the orders that we have received from the command. Tariq also straightens his back eager to know what the orders are.

"We have our orders to move out to the dungeon. You have 15 minutes to prepare. Meet me at the North defense gate." Jack says before looking at me for a second and leaves which creates more confusion.

I immediately put that thought at the back of my mind and started gathering the materials the command has given us to go on this dungeon raid. I collect a few healing and energy potions from the quartermaster who is stationed near the command tent to supply the required potions and repairing kits to repair the soldier's weapons and armors.

There are few other variety of potions available, but I don't think it is needed for an E grade dungeon which can be easily dealt with 150 defense corp soldiers and our squad of four, so I didn't get the other potions like Tariq and Vimal who has stocked a few strengthening and enhancing potions to engage in close combat if required as they mostly rely on their speed being an archer.

We reach the entrance gate on time to see the soldiers are ready to leave Azalea the moment they are ordered to. I see Jack next to their commanding officer talking to him with his usual calm demeanor which changes the minute he looks at us standing a few meters away from him.

I understand something is going on with him when it comes to me as his usual calmness changed towards me from the time we started this assessment to clear the dungeon. I wish he could tell me about it soon. I even started to notice Tariq showing more friendliness towards me than he usually does.

I look at Jack and Tariq wanting to know what's happening, but decided against asking them, at least for now.

We move out of the defense gate of the village along with the soldiers and will be together until we reach the dungeon portal. Once we reach the portal, the soldiers will also be split into small squads to begin the dungeon raid.

The squads from the defense corp will enter the dungeon first. Each squad will be teleported to different areas inside the dungeon by the portal. So a squad will take a minute or two to enter after the previous squad entered which will ensure them to be teleported to a different area than the other squad.

This is to confirm no area will have more than one or two squads at a time. As the squad from the Obsidian Shadow for assessment, we will be going in after all the squads have entered to make sure we will be relatively safe after the other squads have attracted the Pigmen in the dungeon, or that is what Jack told us.

The dungeon gate is located about seventeen kilometers away from the village and we will have to be cautious to make sure we are not getting hindered by any monsters. We do not have to worry about the wild animals as they have been hunted or chased away by the locals and the soldiers.

The only problem we will have is with the Pigmen as we have to be careful so they cannot ambush us like we did to their team who came to attack Azalea two days back. We have 5 more days to clear the dungeon and close the gate and stop the dungeon outbreak or kill as many Pigmen we can to reduce the number of monsters, if the outbreak happens.

I focus my sense to the peak and keep moving while also keeping my hand flexible so I can unsheathe the katana from my back within seconds to defend if required.

The forest is too quiet with only the rustles of the leaves from the wind and the soldiers marching steadily towards the target. I can't hear even an insect or a bird, which makes me feel weird.

There should be at least a few monsters or insects left in the forest. No one can annihilate them in five or seven days.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Vimal says when we are deep in the forest and haven't heard any sound. "There must be a reason for this." I tell him while looking at the tree branches that are six or seven meters above us just to make sure every vantage point is checked before we move forward.

I can hear faint fighting sound from far, but we go in the formation towards the dungeon slowly while keeping our hands ready to get our weapons in case we are attacked or ambushed.

The deeper we go into the forest, dense and taller the trees becomes making us hard to stay in formation which is spread with a meter distance between each soldier. I also notice some of them are marching without any cautiousness as if this is a leisure walking with their friends.

I sense they are at High-E grade which will make it easy for them to handle an E grade dungeon. They might be the squad leaders of the soldiers, but I can sense too many High-E graders, more than required to clear this dungeon.

HOORRRNNNN

All of a sudden I hear a horn blown from the far left side and the casual look on most of the soldiers become serious while some show fear on their faces.