The clang of steel rang across the campyard.

  Rayne stepped back as Jason’s axe came down, splitting the dirt where he’d stood a heartbeat before. Dust kicked up around them, coating his boots and the sweat that rolled down his neck.

  Jason grinned, lifting the axe again. “You’re fast, I’ll give you that, but you’re holding back too much. Come on, Rayne. You’ll have to swing harder than that in the dungeon!”

  Rayne tightened his grip on his sword, its edge dull from the spar. “If I swung as hard as I could, you’d lose your head.”

  Jason barked a laugh. “Big words for a twig like you.”

  The others chuckled from the sidelines. Kesh sat on a rock sharpening his dagger while Heins leaned on his sword. John and Nate had a small pile of bets going, tossing copper coins back and forth as if this were the highlight of their week. Even Quinn, who rarely spoke much, watched with his arms crossed, smirking faintly.

  Welix hadn’t joined them, having decided not to go on the rescue quest after the ordeal against Marcus. Rayne didn’t blame the man.

  If he could, he would have taken it easy for a while too.

  Rayne swept off the sweat from his brow and sighed. The afternoon sun blazed through the clouds and made everything worse. But he didn’t want to stop.

  He had been fighting in the Swiftwind style and could feel his [Sword Mastery] being close to levelling up.

  Rayne circled Jason slowly, his boots crunching over gravel. “You swing that thing like it weighs nothing.”

  “That’s because it does.” Jason smirked, raising the axe onto his shoulder again. “Maybe you’ll get there one day.”

  Rayne moved first this time. His sword slashed low, aiming for Jason’s leg, but the brute twisted his hips, the axe handle meeting the strike with a heavy thud. Rayne pressed forward into his guard, his strikes growing quicker, sharper—each one meant to ruin the big man’s balance.

  Jason parried easily at first, but the rhythm changed. Rayne feinted left, ducked under the axe swing, and jabbed forward. The dull edge of his sword hit Jason’s ribs with a satisfying smack.

  Jason grunted and stumbled back a step.

  “That one counted,” Nate shouted from the side, raising a hand.

  Jason glared at him, rubbing his side. “Don’t go betting on him.”

  “You’re the one losing, big guy,” Nate added, laughing.

  Rayne didn’t waste Jason being distracted and lunged again. The brute saw it just in time and blocked it with his weapon.

  Steel clashed against steel, but Rayne was nowhere near Jason’s natural strength despite his inflated stats and had to sidestep.

  Jason took advantage of that and swung his axe to the left. Rayne ducked under it and used the momentum to enter his guard again, ready to end it.

  But Jason predicted it and put down his axe. Rayne’s sword bounced off the handle and he jumped back.

  Jason came at him hard, swinging wide. Rayne dodged, rolled on the ground, and parried the follow-up strike that came from the other side. His arms trembled from the impact, but he stayed firm.

  They went at it for another minute, both panting now, neither able to break through the other’s defense.

  Rayne could feel his muscles burning, sweat rolling down his temples. But he knew this practice would come in handy in the dungeon. Other than trolls, he had no experience fighting an opponent bigger than him. And the journal had often mentioned that there were larger monsters in almost every dungeon.

  Hence, he had found Jason early in the morning to spar. The others had joined in for practice.

  Both Jason and he kept fighting till they exhausted their muscles. Rayne hadn’t gotten the skill level up, but he was satisfied seeing how Jason’s hands were too tired to pick up his axe properly.

  He hadn’t won but hadn’t lost either.

  Jason seemed to recognize that. “Any more sparring and we’ll be crawling to a healer. And probably fall to the first monster in the dungeon.” He paused, giving him a smile. “You’ve gotten better. I knew you were good when we fought Marcus, but you are really quick.”

  “I need to be, or I’d have a blade stabbed in my heart,” he said, sheathing his sword and making his way towards the others. Jason followed him. “And I’m still not good enough. I need to level up my [Sword Mastery].”

  “Spoken like a man who’ll die of overtraining,” Kesh muttered from his rock.

  “Or one who doesn’t want to die in a dungeon,” Rayne replied.

  That shut him up good. Kesh seemed to be the most terrified of entering a dungeon, but he saw others fidgeting at the mention of it. Only Jason seemed to take it well, and he wondered if he had entered one before.

  It didn’t matter much if most of them had only heard horror stories about it.

  Rayne swept up more sweat before sitting down on the ground. He decided he needed to give them a briefing so they would be better prepared to enter the dungeon tomorrow.

  He took out a few notes from his pocket that he had made based on the journal.

  “What’s that?” John asked, and the others leaned in.

  “Notes. Captain Baker gave me a journal about a soldier who recorded his delve in the dungeons, and I wrote down everything useful I read in these notes. How many of you know how to read?”

  “I can’t,” Nate muttered, frowning.

  “Me neither,” Quinn added, then looked at Jason. “I don’t think Jason can either.”

  “Not the Valerian tongue, no.”

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Rayne wondered if he knew some other tongue or if that meant the man was a foreigner. But that was a conversation for later.

  He looked at Kesh and John. “You two can, I’m guessing.”

  Kesh nodded. “Enough, but I don’t have practice writing.”

  “I learnt in my adventuring days,” John grinned. Rayne passed both of them a page each.

  They squinted their eyes at it as they began reading. Kesh seemed to have more trouble with it than John.

  “Read it and explain it to the others. It’s just the most basic information written on it, but it would be helpful.”

  “Why not just explain it to us yourself?” Nate asked, leaning against John, who was busy going through the note.

  “Because I know you’ll have a lot of questions and would even disturb me in my sleep to ask. It’s better if you bother these two.”

  Nate scoffed but didn’t say anything. Both Kesh and John took ten minutes to go through the note before explaining it to the others. Rayne had read more of the journal in the morning and had written down only the things the nameless soldier had experienced in more than one dungeon.

  But the more the others got to know about the dangers of the dungeon, the more their faces paled.

  “How are we supposed to deal with pressure plates that send flames at us?” Nate asked, scratching his head. “The army certainly ain’t providing us potions for burns.”

  “I believe it’s the scouts’ job to find them out and inform the others so they can avoid them.”

  Quinn frowned. “I never learnt how to identify pressure plates.”

  “I believe Captain Clark’s squad will have scouts for that. Don’t forget we’re just tagging along.”

  Rayne agreed with Kesh. But a part of him wasn’t looking forward to it, especially after how Shawn had talked down to him. In the meeting, Captain Edran had also seemed more annoyed by Clark than anyone else.

  He couldn’t help but think there was politics involved.

  “What are you thinking, Rayne?” Nate asked, and everyone’s attention went towards him.

  “Just if the squad tagging us would be amiable to work with us or not. You saw how Shawn behaved with me.”

  Jason grunted. “We don’t know if he’s going to be the one leading us. There are a lot of squads under Captain Clark. What we should be focusing on is whether we can bring back the men or not.”

  Rayne nodded. It was pertinent to focus on things he could control than not. “Jason is right. If we find Bran and the others alive, we’ll bring them back. That should be our goal.”

  He got a few nods, but Kesh sighed, his eyes focusing on him. “What if we don’t find them alive?”

  Rayne didn’t speak at first, then an answer came to his mind. “Then, we bring back their blades to honour them. But regardless of whether they are alive or not, tomorrow we will know what happened to them.”

  ***

  Rayne had prepared for the dangers of the dungeon, but no matter what, he couldn’t prepare for bad luck. Especially as he found the one person he didn’t want leading them through the hills, barking orders.

  “Increase your pace, bastard. We don’t have a whole day. We need to be at the entrance of the dungeon before afternoon and enter it.” Shawn’s voice made his ears wince, but Rayne picked up his pace.

  The man had been targeting him since they had left the camp, and he fully believed that Shawn had given him and his party the rear to berate him as they moved up the hill.

  The hill they climbed on led to a ridge. Trees dotted around them everywhere, but he hadn’t even seen one bird. At least the ground was solid, and none of the soldiers had any problems with the trek.

  Rayne took a look around them and wondered if a dozen soldiers, including his own party of seven, were enough for surviving the dungeon. He’d expected far more, but he guessed that Commander Evans didn’t want to send too many soldiers in case they also didn’t return.

  Their quest was also to only check the first level of the dungeon, pick up any clues of what might have happened, and then return.

  If they didn’t find any dead bodies or signs of the soldiers being alive on the first level, they couldn’t head deeper.

  Rayne didn’t like it since there was a good chance the squad had headed to the second level, but he wasn’t in command. He was just a forsaken that needed to abide by the rules.

  “Do you think Shawn volunteered to enter the dungeon just so he could throw you in front of a monster?” Nate came up beside him and asked.

  Rayne gave a glance to Shawn, who had paused briefly to check on a claw mark on a tree. “That depends. I don’t think his hatred for me is that great to risk himself in a dungeon. But who knows? Will you help me out if he tries that?”

  Nate chuckled. “Sure, but only if the monster isn’t scary.”

  “Every monster is scary,” Heins said from the other side. “Is there a monster that can be called cute?”

  “I’ve heard the merfolk are pretty,” Nate replied. “A lot of sailors choose to go through their territory in case they manage to seduce one. Apparently, they’re far prettier than elves. And even a common elf looks like royalty.”

  The conversation soon moved from merfolk to elves to other races that were deemed conventionally attractive in the world. Rayne didn’t join it, having no knowledge of the world outside Valeria, but he did wonder how it would be like to meet an elf one day.

  He knew they had their own languages, so communication wouldn’t be possible. And they weren’t known to be friendly to humans either.

  His attention only went back to the dungeon once they finally reached the top of the slope.

  It didn’t take long for Shawn to tell them to hasten their pace.

  They jogged through the grass till they reached a stone outcropping on top of the hill, and there, Rayne saw it.

  The entrance to the dungeon.

  Rather than a cave with a slope leading down, it was a portal—a swirling disk of dark energy that was twice as tall as him and as wide as their group. Electricity seemed to move through it, and it cast a purple light on all of them.

  Rayne’s skin prickled as he stared at it.

  A few of the other soldiers gasped as they looked at it, mesmerized before Shawn’s voice took their focus. “We will be entering the dungeon one by one. Gravson will enter first, then the others will follow after two minutes. If there’s any danger on the other side, jump back immediately,” he said, then looked at Rayne. “Your party will be after mine. Understood?”

  Rayne nodded, happy with it. He surely didn’t want to be the first to enter the dungeon.

  As Shawn’s men moved to check their gear and line up to enter it, Rayne asked his party to do the same. He had brought four health potions with him, rope, and an extra pair of daggers just in case.

  He checked them one by one as Shawn’s men lined up to enter the dungeon.

  Gravson went first. He was a middle-aged scout who had apparently been in quite a few dungeons. The surface of the dungeon rippled as he put a hand on it, and it swallowed him whole.

  “Do you think he’s okay?” Kesh asked, already looking scared.

  “Yes, dungeon entrances normally don’t have any traps or monsters hanging around,” Jason replied. His words confirmed that he’d been in a dungeon before.

  After two minutes, the next of Shawn’s men entered. Then another. And another. Like that, only Shawn was left, and he gave a glare to Rayne before the dungeon swallowed his body too.

  Once his party was the only one left, he asked, “Who wants to go first?”

  No one replied. Even Jason only looked at him with a smile.

  “Guess I will be the one.” Rayne shook his head and took a step towards the portal.

  He stood at the threshold and looked at the reflection of his face in the swirling black. It was distorted, stretched, as if the dungeon was already trying to pull him apart.

  Behind him, the world was sunlight and wind. Ahead, it was darkness and the unknown.

  He exhaled. “Let’s get this over with.”

  And stepped through.

  ***

  Note - Corrected the dime a dozen thing. Mages are valuable.