Preparing for the Expedition
The mercenary corps called itself the Black Eagle Owl, and its leader was a man named Lecadi. As it turned out, he was quite well known in this line of work.
With two days still remaining before departure, Yurik asked Lecadi for a favor and borrowed an alchemy workshop.
“You know alchemy too?”
“I've picked up a bit of this and that.”
True to form, Captain Lecadi didn't pry any further. Asking mercenaries or wanderers about their past was a breach of etiquette in this trade — one that could get you knifed to death and rightly so.
Once he had the workshop, Yurik headed straight to the market and bought materials: medicinal herbs, an assortment of spices, wood shavings, and the like. Then he returned to the workshop and threw himself into brewing.
He ground the herbs down into an impossibly fine powder and pounded wood chips with a stone until they shattered into splinters. Then he began feeding the ingredients into warmed water, one at a time.
Alchemy is, in the end, a matter of a single pinch. Yurik had endured no end of scolding over the years in pursuit of that one perfect pinch!
He added the ingredients in order, took up the stirring rod, and fed in just the right measure of mana, stirring and stirring until the mixture thickened slightly. After a full sleepless night, the potion was done.
It was a deep, murky green with a foul odor — and, sure enough, the taste was absolutely wretched. He took a sip of his own creation and gagged, retching half a dozen times. No matter how many times he tried it, that flavor never grew on him.
Of course, he would have dearly loved to make it taste good, but when the ingredients were this bad, no amount of skill could overcome it. As the Great Witch Adrian always said — bitter is good for the body — all he could do was resign himself to it.
He discarded the sunken dregs and decanted the liquid into small vials. It yielded three bottles.
It wasn't potent enough to yank a dying man back to his feet, but it would heal most any ordinary wound in one gulp. In fact, when he'd once broken his arm fighting a monster and the limb hung loose at his side, a single bottle of this had mended it in half a day.
It's a dungeon, after all. I ought to prepare this much at least.
For the long journey ahead, Yurik wanted to brew one or two genuinely fine potions as spare lives, so to speak — but the ingredients themselves were so rare there was no way to get them. Dragon horn ground to powder, wing dust from a spirit — how was anyone supposed to find such things? Even the Great Witch Adrian had shown them to him only once, they were that precious.
Having finished the cleanup as well, Yurik tucked a wool blanket into his bedroll, crawled inside, and closed his eyes. Breathing in the lingering sharp smell of medicine, he boarded the carriage to dreamland before long.
Yurik woke late in the night, confirmed there was still time before the assembly, and settled in with his newly purchased spellbook. He drifted between dozing and reading, and before he knew it, darkness had gathered in the sky and a hazy light was slowly spreading across it. He washed his face with water drawn the night before and tidied his quarters.
To the dungeon…!
A refuge built by countless mages while the demons still prowled this land. With so many years having passed, the spells woven there would have fermented and curdled considerably — but danger would remain danger all the same.
And yet, precisely because it had stayed hidden from the world all this while, rare treasures and history lay sleeping within. A mage who felt no curiosity, no thrill at that, could hardly be called a mage at all.
Preparations complete, Yurik stepped out of the workshop. It was the very crack of dawn, but the streets already carried a fair crowd of people moving about their expedition preparations. Walking among them, he felt oddly absorbed into the fabric of society.
When he arrived at the meeting point shortly after, he spotted a few familiar faces. Captain Lecadi and the Black Eagle Owl Mercenary Corps were there. As Yurik approached, the bald one called out to their leader — another one's shown up, cap'n.
“Good. I came ready to be run into the ground.”
“As long as it doesn't kill me, I'm at your service.”
Yurik shook hands with the bald Victor, who then introduced him to the comrades he'd be crawling through the dungeon with.
“The hairy one here is Engelgard. Front line of the team.”
The shaggy Engelgard gave a small chin-tilt at the mention of his name. The man who stood at the absolute vanguard, silently absorbing the enemy's blows — the scars all over him were medals enough.
“That big fella is Madarot. Front line too.”
A man with a quiet, careful face — and an intimidating frame to boot. An axe as huge as he was hung across his back; his strength must have been considerable.
“Those two women are Dimnos the archer, and the little one is Acho, our tomb raider.”
The archer was a powerfully muscled mercenary woman, and the short one apparently specialized in traps.
“And last of all, that old-timer is Haral. He backs up the vanguard from behind.”
The grey-haired man in his twilight years stood a full head shorter than Yurik and was slight of build. But the muscle beneath the surface spoke of decades spent weathering this brutal trade. Surviving in the field at that age meant, above all, that he was no one to trifle with.
Naturally, they too eyed Yurik — far younger than they'd expected — with visible curiosity.
In the mercenary trade, there are two kinds of people you watch out for: the ones who look too young yet are treated with respect, and the ones who are old yet are treated with respect.
Lecadi, captain of the Black Eagle Owl, was by no means a man to be taken lightly. For a commission as vital as a dungeon expedition, he would never drag along some green pup who'd be no help at all.
“I'm Yurik. A mage.”
A mage! The mage slot their captain had spent more than ten days selecting with agonizing pickiness. They'd imagined a seasoned middle-aged spellcaster, worn to the bone by wind and weather — and the result was nothing of the sort.
“How old are you?”
“Seventeen.”
The revelations came one after another, and astonishment chased its own tail.
Let's see now. What was I doing at seventeen?
While Engelgard was recalling his own seventeenth year — getting his skull knocked in for sport while cleaning up after the older mercenaries — Captain Lecadi walked over to the group clustered together.
“Is everyone here? Then come along, all of you.”
The Black Eagle Owl Mercenary Corps followed their leader to a carriage. Inside rode the employers who had planned this expedition.
The leader of the exploration team that had discovered the dungeon, the nobleman who had invested a fortune in the venture, a knight to guard the nobleman, a mage hired by the noble house, and two laborers — six in all.
When the captain rapped lightly on the window, it slid open with a creak and a finely featured face appeared.
“These are the ones accompanying us?”
“Yes. Every one of them an expert in their own station.”
“We've sunk no small sum into this venture. I trust you'll see it done well, Captain.”
“Have no fear. We will see it through safely.”
Surprisingly, the nobleman bound for the dungeon was in fact a woman who looked to be past forty. Bald Victor's face went slack with disbelief — surely this pampered middle-aged woman didn't mean to follow them into a dungeon?
The moment he drew away from the carriage, he grumbled to his captain.
“Goddamn it. She's coming into the dungeon? Does she think it's some kind of resort? She drops dead in there, that's on her!”
“Keeping her from dropping dead is our job. Word is, the money she put into finding this dungeon was substantial.”
“Madness, the lot of it!”
“Which is why the pay's so generous, no? And she's got a knight trailing her, so don't fret yourself too much.”
A mercenary company, after all, had little choice but to do as the paying employer commanded.
“Right, everyone aboard! We've got to hurry if we're to arrive by nightfall!”
Captain Lecadi loaded the corps into the wagons, confirmed that all three were ready, and gave the drivers the signal to depart. One wagon for the employers, one for the mercenary corps, one for the cargo — three carriages rolled out of Rehinburg.
The dungeon expedition, having left in the small hours of dawn, reached the edge of the forest late in the evening.
The very Sea of Trees where countless mages had fled from the demons and carved out countless dungeons. A place chosen expressly to serve as a refuge — one glance told you it was hardship upon hardship, wilderness atop wilderness.
“Never wanted to set foot in this place again… Shit, money's the devil.”
The men for whom the Rehinburg Sea of Trees was an old acquaintance each spat a curse at the sight of that gloomy expanse.
As for Yurik, the moment he laid eyes on the forest, inspiration came flooding in so hard that he simply could not keep his hands off his sketch paper. Seen from a distance — a young man furiously drawing under the light of the falling moon — the picture was, if anything, frightening.
“The captain didn't pick him for nothing, huh. There's all this good stuff around and his mind's on drawing that. Creepy as hell.”
“Frankly, that's a relief. What's it gonna look like if the mage in the rear starts bawling about being scared while we're getting shredded up front?”
The lounging mercenaries snickered that they'd seen men like that before. Victor, remembering the fellow, swung a fist through empty air, saying he still wanted to plant one in that bastard's face.
“You just let that bastard go?!”
“We beat the hell out of him! Thinking about it makes me want to do it again!”
The chuckles died down quickly enough. Full bellies after dinner bred drowsiness. One after another they yawned wide and burrowed deep into their bedrolls.
Yurik, having finished his drawing, slipped into his own. The shrill song of the crickets grew louder still.
……He closed his eyes for only a short while, and when he opened them, dawn had already broken.
The expedition ate breakfast and struck camp with brisk efficiency. They left the wagons where they stood and formed into two columns, moving toward the Sea of Trees. Each step onto the dew-soaked grass gave a soft crunch.
Yurik, who had lived in the forest for a long time, loved the stillness of the woods at this hour. And slowly, silently, the coming of daybreak approaching through the dark — he loved that too.
They pressed on into the shadowed forest. The noblewoman, rather unexpectedly, kept up well. Perhaps it was stamina honed by years in the saddle.
Within the Sea of Trees, the exploration team leader took the lead. He had explored this place for years, and the forest lay as familiar to him as his own front yard.
Amusingly enough, finding a dungeon was often bound up with pure luck. Even on roads one walked every day, a dungeon would turn up now and then — stumbled upon after some chance brush against a mechanism that opened its entrance.
Truth be told, this latest find had been much the same. He'd picked a region that seemed barren of dungeons, set aside the days, and gone jabbing an iron rod into every last corner until something finally gave.
Walking and resting by turns, the expedition pushed deep into the Sea of Trees. The lady was already showing clear signs of exhaustion, so the captain diluted a potion in water and handed it to her. The moment she sipped it, the foul taste rose up — she could neither swallow nor spit, and held it in her mouth for a long moment before finally gulping it down.
“It helps restore your strength, my lady.”
Even at rest, the mercenary corps never slackened their watch on the surroundings. The exploration team had cleared out most of the monsters, but not all.
During the breaks, Yurik would sometimes dig up a few herbs — nothing as common as what the market stalls sold, but the rarer varieties. He'd roll them up in paper and tuck them safely into his sack. Dried thoroughly and ground to powder, they'd prove useful someday.
“Want to chew one?”
“Ugh, no thanks.”
“It's bitter, but it's good for you.”
“You sound exactly like my granny, I swear.”
Acho, the tomb raider, declined the herb root Yurik offered. He took the root back, popped it into his own mouth, and chewed away. Sharp and pungent, but quite palatable. …Perhaps his taste buds had gone somewhat out of order from all the vile potions he kept drinking.
After a solid half day's travel, the expedition at last arrived at their destination.
They stood in the heart of the Sea of Trees, the scenery identical whichever way one looked — but when a small rocky outcropping was pulled with all their might, the ground split open with a low groan and revealed an entrance. The dungeon first-timers crowded around it, gazing at the sight in wonder.
“That's damn fascinating.”
Yurik felt a very faint flow of mana beyond the passage. There was certainly something in there.
But it was far too late to enter at once — the sun had already tipped past its peak, and darkness was settling over the forest.
The expedition made camp once more near the entrance, and the superstitious mercenaries started up their nonsense again.
“They say ghosts show up around here!”
“Shit, don't scare us, you bastard.”
“No, for real, I've seen one!”
The ghost-fearing mercenaries threatened that the jokers would be wishing for the latrine later, because no one would dare go with them and they'd just have to foul themselves right where they stood.
Yurik was reminded of the old days. He used to be terrified of ghosts, and every night he would take his brother's hand on the way to the privy.
However deep the night, however sleep he'd been wrenched from, his brother would always smile and go along.
And now, it was Yurik's turn to take someone's hand.
“If you're frightened, I'd be happy to accompany you.”
Apparently, the mercenaries took it as a tease.
“Aigoo, you want to hear that from the baby of the team? Pull the other one!”
Thankfully, there were no ghosts.