We stayed the night in the safe room. The next morning, we left and started looking for the cave again. We ran into the T-rex again, as he had re-popped, but he was quickly taken care of.
This dungeon wasn’t like any dungeon I had ever entered before. Most dungeons depended on a maze-like feel to them, leading you down closed-off corridors. The most complicated of these earned the name labyrinth. You used your mapping skills to look for the exit, but the exit was always as clear as day once you reached it.
This dungeon was a complete open concept. Although the thick trees of the forest blocked my vision, I could just about walk in a straight line from one end of the dungeon to the other. The ends of the dungeon seemed to be a large cliff that went vertically up. If I was to make an attempt to climb it, I wondered what would happen. I thought about sending Celeste up to see where the sky ended and the roof began, but I was afraid she might get hurt running into it, or that it might backlash and cause some damage to her.
The exits for each floor of this dungeon were much like the safe room. Although the first few levels were easy to find, it seemed like they got more and more concealed the deeper you went. In some cases, it was even obscured on my Map, the outline cleverly done in a way that almost made me miss it. As for the safe rooms, they only appeared on my Map after I had entered them. They didn’t appear until I got close enough to that tree.
This was a similar yet completely different experience from the mazes of other dungeons. You had to be hypervigilant. Not only did your perception need to catch sometimes hidden paths leading to the next dungeon, but at any time an attack could come from anywhere. The ape-like beasts in particular liked to leap down from the trees to attack us. They often laid out ambushes. Thankfully, Lydia destroyed every single one of them before they even had a chance.
It wasn’t long before we made it down, or perhaps it was better to say to the side, to the sixth level. If these exits hadn’t looked different, it would have been very hard to say we had even progressed from level to level. Although the 1st level was clearly different from the next four, those four had all looked similar. As for the shape and direction of these levels, that wasn’t really clear. Every level was shaped differently, from squares to rectangles. As for the exits, they weren’t always opposite the entrance, and at least one level had the exit on the same side as the entrance.
Upon entering the sixth level, the forest had become increasingly thick. The monsters inside had also become much more menacing and difficult. It wasn’t at a level that caused any threat on the girls yet, but it wasn’t at a level where individuals could take out an enemy anymore. They had to rely on teamwork more and more. After Miki and Shao had been separated from the other three for months, this was a good opportunity for them to regain some of those skills of cooperation.
Salicia had also regained some of her vigor at first, chatting and talking merrily. I had feared that she would spout something that Calypso would overhear and reveal our secrets. Thankfully, she had always been an outsider to the core group, and only acted like normal. By the time we finished with the sixth floor and headed down to the seventh, her attitude had returned to the silent woman from before.
As for me, I could only carry on, pretending to be the innocent person from before. This didn’t mean I didn’t gain experience. I gained a portion of the experience from any kill my slaves made. However, at this low level, that didn’t account for much. Even though my magic had returned, my support could only be passive. This was kind of a torture on its own.