Starlight Necromancer

Chapter 56 - Clerics

Kyla looked back at Lynol, and her head slowly proceeded to drop down. She intertwined her fingers with each other, and clearly seemed to want to figure out a way to avoid the question.

"Erm... I..." She muttered, but she soon realized that there was no way for her to get out of this conversation. With a deep sigh, she readied herself for her answer, "I... I really like dungeons..."

"...What?" Lynol asked with a wry smile, "There's not some special artifact hidden in there that only you know about? You're not trying to trick us to get our items? You just... really like dungeons?" The swordsman asked with a wry smile on his face, before Kyla slowly nodded her head.

"Yeah, but that's not too weird, right? I mean, there's so much we still don't know about dungeons! How could you not be excited about it?!" She asked, her voice getting more and more energetic after she spoke, "Each dungeon is completely unique, but why is that the case? We know that dungeons have a certain level of ego, but how deep does that ego actually go? That's... that's why I'm here..."

"Huh? Couldn't you just pick a dungeon that's easier to go through then?" Foster asked with a wry smile, wondering if he made as little sense as Kyla did when he was speaking about astronomy to his friends. The cleric immediately shook her head, "No! It has to be this one!" She nearly seemed to demand, as if she was a child about to start pouting because she realized she wasn't going to get what she wanted. Foster, Lynol and Octer slowly looked at each other, and with a glance discussed what it was that they were supposed to do now. Lynol seemed to just want to go back to town immediately, since he thought this whole thing was a waste of time from the beginning, but both Octer and Foster were really quite curious about what was going on exactly. And since, in this discussion, it was two against one, Foster and Octer won.

With a triumphant grin, after winning a discussion that never even took place, Octer turned toward Kyla, "Alright, let's just take a seat over there." He said, pointing at some logs that had been placed here quite some time ago, seemingly just as some sort of bench-replacements.

The group sat down on the logs, and everyone was intensely looking at Kyla, waiting for her to start explaining, while she kept staring down. Once more, she seemed to want to think about what she should say to not seem like a complete maniac. After a good bit of thinking had been done, she let out a deep breath.

"So... Basically, the difference between a 'conquered' and an 'unconquered' dungeon is substantial. The people that first conquer a dungeon are given something special to commend that feat, right? A special item, a skill, and in rare cases even a class... And during that time, when this reward is given to people, is the only time when a dungeon's core will actually talk to people! Meaning..." Kyla said, trying to catch her breath, as Foster slowly finished her thought.

"Meaning that being the first to conquer this dungeon will be your only chance to speak to a dungeon core?" He asked, and Kyla immediately nodded her head, "Yep! That's exactly it~! So you understand, right? Does that mean that-"

"No, no, that's not all there is to it, right..? Right..? You're risking your life, just so that you can talk to a dungeon once? I know the strength of your class, and you clearly seem at least somewhat competent. If you just trained a few more years, got some proper experience, then you would be able to take this dungeon down easily with a decently constructed party." Lynol pointed out, "Since all you want is to speak to the dungeon, you don't care if the reward is otherwise useless to you, right?"

"Yeah, but I can't wait that long!" Kyla exclaimed, "They're planning on 'blocking' this place!"

"...Blocking?" Lynol asked, since this seemed to be something he wasn't particularly familiar with either, and Kyla took a deep breath before she chose to start explaining.

"Well... like when you close off a bottle with a cork, they want to permanently block off the entrance to the dungeon. It's what usually happens to 'fail' types, it's surprising that this one survived as long as they did... This usually happens by them just encasing the whole entrance in a huge hunk of metal. There's only very few dungeons that can change the position of their entrance, so it's usually enough to just... to just basically suffocate it, and cause it to die off." Kyla explained to the group, "That means this is the only possible place where I could maybe get the chance to speak to a dungeon."

"...Couldn't you just hire a large party, with the actual skill to get through there, to come with you? Why did you have to search for a random group of people instead?" Foster asked with a light frown, when Kyla slowly turned her head to the side with a wry smile.

"Dude... no fucking way..." Foster let out with a wry smile, and the woman sitting in front of him was clearly trying to avoid eye-contact with everything she could.

"So, you tried doing that, but failed, and instead started trying with random people you met at the market?" Lynol asked, but Kyla immediately turned her head toward him, "No! I was trying to figure out how to do it alone! I heard rumors about someone selling a map for this place, and that's when I met you guys!"

Lynol let out a deep sigh as he rubbed the bridge of his nose, "Do you know when exactly they're planning on blocking off the entrance to the dungeon?"

"In a month? Maybe two?"

"...Then why the fuck did we have to go so soon?" Lynol asked with a wry smile, as he turned his head to the side, "Well, what would you expect from a cleric..."

Suddenly, the conversation seemed to take a slightly different turn. Foster and Octer looked at each other, both having a hunch about what was going to happen now, and neither of them particularly wanted to hear it.

"Wait, what's that supposed to mean?" Kyla asked with an annoyed frown, as she stood up. Lynol did the same, and the two just stared at each other. Lynol scoffed slightly as he looked back at her, "You know exactly what I mean. You clerics do nothing but trust blindly, you don't ever actually think for yourselves. That's why you didn't think about how stupid this whole plan is."

"Stup- What did you just say? Clerics aren't stupid!"

"Well, if that's the case, you're not much proof for it." Lynol rolled his eyes. For some reason, he had clearly built up some form of animosity toward clerics, although neither Foster nor Octer had any idea why that was. They knew a good bit about each other, but by far not everything there was to know.

And while those two weren't sure what they were supposed to do, a small verbal fight broke out right in front of them.