Golden light took form into letters over the fallen trunk-corpse of the Ashwood tree. Arwin was somewhat surprised to see a message from the Mesh after the fight. He really hadn’t been expecting much of anything.
After all, they’d come to this dungeon for one reason alone — to get a Dungeon Heart. And the Dungeon Heart in question was still thumping away at a steady, sickening pace encased within the wood of its former host.
Arwin hadn’t even been forced to use the full extent of his abilities in the fight against the fallen monster.
And that’s honestly quite fortunate. I want to get used to using the shield before I try to use my ability to manifest the power of a Cursed Item to help me fight. Something tells me that anything related to Cursed items is going to always be high-risk, high-reward.
Thus, Arwin would have been quite happy with just an Achievement for the fight. As a non-combatant, he really hadn’t expected to get much more.
But, as it turned out, the Mesh saw things differently.
Something prickled against Arwin’s skin. It felt slimy and cold, like a dip into a river of sludge. The breath stiffened in his chest and his eyes went wide in disbelief. The sensation almost felt like the rush of energy he got from leveling up, but that should have been impossible.
Non-combat classes couldn’t get energy from —
Title: [The Rot] has been earned.
“Are you going to eat it or plant it?” Reya squinted at the fruit suspiciously. “Is making another one of these a good idea? The Mesh seemed pretty pleased that we kill it.”
“It’ll be fine,” Lillia said. “I’m not going to have trouble from a baby demon plant. I’ve dealt with much bigger ones in my time.”
“And if it ends up being Cursed, I might be able to make quite some use of it,” Arwin provided. He grinned at the others. “It seems the Mesh was feeling generous today. I got a Title as well. One that lets me get Cursed Skills.”
“Cursed Skills?” Rodrick tilted his head to the side. “Sounds… well, cursed.”
“Very astute, Rodrick,” Lillia said.
“Arwin’s Cursed item seemed to work well enough,” Anna observed as the Menagerie all started to gather around the base of the fallen trunk. “That seems like it could be powerful.”
“Or dangerous,” Lillia said. “But it’ll just be one of the options, right? You’re not guaranteed exclusively Cursed skills.”
“Just an option,” Arwin confirmed.
“Then I don’t think we can complain. The Mesh rewarded us well for this one,” Lillia said. She brushed a strand of hair away from her face.
A wet thud echoed through the room.
They all looked to the center of the trunk. The Dungeon Heart was still thumping away within it. Arwin and Rodrick wordlessly walked over to the unsettling organ. It was buried deep within the tree, trapped in by thick, smoothed bark that implied it had been there for quite some time.
Freeing it took the entire group roughly five minutes. It would have been a lot faster if they didn’t have to worry about accidentally damaging the heart — the wood was so tightly packed around it that one mistaken cut had the chance of damaging it, which they couldn’t risk.
But, eventually, they managed to carve away enough of the tree’s trunk to free it.
The Menagerie didn’t stop there. The Dungeon Heart had been freed, but they’d just gotten so many rewards for killing the Cursed monster that the mere idea of leaving anything behind that they couldn’t carry felt like a physical blow to Arwin’s own heart.
They cut apart as many branches as they could, tossing out any useless and relatively unimportant materials they’d gotten earlier through the dungeon, and piled everything full of leaves, sticks, and pieces of trunk material.
By the time they had finished, the Menagerie resembled a rather odd-looking group of lumberjacks who had just gone to war against the notion of a forest as a whole.
But, finally, they were ready to leave. Their task in the dungeon had been completed. All they had to do was head out, give the Dungeon Heart to Yonas so the Dawnseekers could deal with the Ardent Guild and Twelve, and they would be on their merry way.
Arwin wrapped the Dungeon Heart in a cloth and hoisted it into the air, holding it out with locked hands to keep it as far away from himself as possible.
A small frown crossed over his lips. He glanced away from the pulsating heart to Lillia, and then to the rest of his guild.
Twelve wants the dungeon heart that belonged to Jessen. Somehow, the two of them were connected. If we give this heart to him… are we just going to make someone even stronger than Jessen more powerful?
Am I about to be outfitting another monster?
“You know, your forge got a lot stronger after you put a Dungeon Heart in it,” Reya muttered, picking at the side of her collar. “It kind of feels like a shame to give it away. Especially to someone who might be connected to Jessen…”
“We can’t scam the Dawnseekers,” Anna said, but there was a long second of hesitation before she spoke. “That’s just not right. We only got into the dungeon because they let us in.”
“But they don’t care about the heart. Just the money to get rid of the Ardent Guild,” Olive pointed out. “What do you think we could do with the heart if we kept it?”
“If we didn’t have to give it away, imagine what we could do if Arwin and Lillia stuck it in the Devil’s Den,” Rodrick said. He coughed into his fist. “Hypothetically, of course. Backing out of deals is wrong.”
Lillia glanced at Rodrick, then back to the heart. She scratched at the back of her neck. “Maybe we could offer to trade it for something and another way for the Dawnseekers to get what they want?”
“Giving a magical item that empowers shit to an evil bastard feels like it goes against what we represent,” Olive said.