Chapter 8: A favour repaid in full and the riches of a dungeon

Two days straight. The little cleric girl named Roselie slept for two days straight from sheer exhaustion. Who could blame her? It was a miracle that she could cast so many spells a day, not every run-of-the-mill adventurer could pull that feat off. A cleric with experience and affinity for magic comparable to a gold-ranked adventurer could maybe cast 5 to 6 spells a day, and Roselie broke through her limit and casted 7 in the dungeon crawl. And spell casting is exhausting, both on the mind and on the body. In fact, the cleric girl's head was still being pounded with a headache.

When Roselie first woke up, she was disoriented. She was lying in soft bedding, which was definitely not her choice as she always skimmed out on inn accommodation to save money. Most times she would get a room with a hard, wooden bed or when she was especially sore after a long adventure, a straw bed. But the soft and warm sensation on her back was definitely comfortable as she made a mental note that a feather-stuffed bed might be worth it. Roselie slowly roused, both of her arms still sore. She was lying in a large room, with two windows providing natural sunlight into the room, and in the corner was a familiar figure. An elf with long, blonde hair and sharp, pointy ears was sitting on a stool, slowly and methodically restringing her uniquely crafted longbow. 

"Oh hey, you're finally awake." Elluin said "You passed out for 2 whole days, without eating or drinking anything, y'know. Even I started to get worried."

Roselie forced herself to smile and pulled her legs out of the blanket and onto the floor.

"I overdid … a bit. Heh heh…" 

"I mean, we appreciate you, but you gotta look out for yourself too, silly girl! The boys were worried about you."

"Oh! Sir Charlie and sir Harrison? Where are they now?" - Roselie asked forcefully, trying to hide her bashful expression.

"Next room to our. Harrison got up yesterday. Oh, we are in Phaion, by the way. We needed to rest badly and you and Harrison went unconscious by the end of the expedition, so we had to crash in Phaion."

Roselie nodded. That made sense. Phaion was closer to the kobold infested cavern than Serepike. She slowly stood up, after confirming that her legs weren't wobbly, Roselie started to put on her underarmour and vestment. 

"Have you guys checked out the dungeon for remaining loot yet?"

"Nope. Charlie wanted to do it with you and Harrison. And… we haven't even restocked items yet. We need to buy some potions and arrows and the like. Charlie's gun is broken too, so he didn't want to risk going there with just half the party."

"Mmmm that's true. Well, shall we…?!" Before the cleric girl could finish her sentence, a loud rumbling sound emitted from her stomach and blood rushed onto her cheeks, painting a vibrant red on her usual pale white skin.

"Wahahaha…." Elluin laughed out loud, hugging her sides dramatically. This caused Elluin to blush even more and scoffed in protest. "It's…it's okay Roselie! You haven't even eaten yet, let's call the boys and have lunch before we go into town."

Charlie's party chose a large table in the busiest tavern in town - The Two Horseshoes Tavern and ordered an absurd amount of food. If not for Charlie's prepayment, the waiter wouldn't have taken their order seriously. Two barbeque pork ribs dishes, a large serving of braised trout, a shared serving of stew, three spit roasted meat-on-bone and enough ale for a battalion of soldiers. They feasted and feasted, devouring their food at an impossible rate to the surprise of the tavern patrons. Even Roselie, someone who was a notorious picky eater, finished her whole roast dish. Elluin… well, she downed two ales and started to mingle with everyone in the tavern. She jumped on the neighbouring tables with the light and skilled footing of an elf - albeit made wobbly by the alcoholic drink, singing about her party victory against the dragonkin and its kobold army. If one didn't know how pretentious elves acted, they would think elves were all drunkards. 

"Well I'll be damned hahaha! You guys go on and restock your stuff, I'll take her back to the inn." Harrison the human warrior carried the drunk elf on his shoulder to her weak protest, waving to Charlie and Roselie "If you could get my plate to an armourer or blacksmith, that would be great."

Charlie nodded, his hands clutching a bulky leather-wrapped package - the damaged metal plate of Harrison the human warrior.

Charlie and Roselie slowly walked the street of Phaion - only made of packed earth and evidently narrower than that of Serepike. Phaion was a smaller town than Serepike, and it served as a temporary stop for merchants traveling to and from the capital Niliphy. Most housing on both sides of the street were made into shops and storefronts, with exception of some storage houses. The mayor of the frontier town Phaion used to be a jewelry merchant himself, only to settle down and found the frontier town Phaion with the intention to operate and develop the town into a merchant powerhouse and to rival the Lonan Trade Company of the oversea continent. An incomprehensibly difficult-to-achieve dream, but he had set the first brick down by gaining the support of the emperor of the Niliphian empire and successfully built a trading town in the middle of the Niliphian empire. A feat not any merchant can achieve in his lifetime.

"Hmm… What do you need to replenish, Roselie?" Charlie asked his cleric companion. After the dungeon crawl, most consumable his party had had been used up: torches, potions and the like, daggers and spellcasting materials and more. Adventuring was a costly job - if you want to survive, that is. Low ranked adventurers with little to none adventuring experience and terrible equipment will have difficulty in completing quests and will probably lose their lives if they don't party up and rely on their numbers.

"Well, I have to buy some of my spell materials, refill my healing potion stash and my medicinal herbs."

Roselie counted on her fingers while listing her missing items, she trotted behind Charlie, who was glancing around the road looking at store signs. "What about you? Your gun was broken, right?" 

"Mhm… I guess I must wait until we get back to Serepike to get it fixed. For now, I'll use my old longbow…. Oh… That store looks promising!"

"The Arcane Abode? A magic shop?"

"Mmm… I think you might be able to get your spell components in there. Let's try that!" Charlie said while nodding at the cleric girl, waiting for her reply. To which she also nodded.

The Arcane Abode - a humble store that radiated a weirdly well-kept ambiance among the monotone sea of businesses in the village. It had 2 beautiful potted flowering plants on both sides of the main entrance, the store sign was well cleaned and polished, the wooden exteriors looked reasonably treated and unweathered. 

The owner must have been a person with class. 

Charlie thought, grasping the metal handle of the door. 

"Welcome, dear customers!" A silvery, singsong voice came greeting Charlie and Roselie from within the shop "Are you buying? Selling? Or just perusing?"

Taking a few steps inside, Roselie quietly breathed out and took a good look at the interior of the shop. Shelves and glass casings were exhibited on both walls and on wooden stands in the middle of the store. The store was well-lit with wax candelabras and some luminous gemstones of multiple colours on the ceiling. Deep inside was a chest-height counter, barricading the store front from the back, and a woman in black dress, presumably the proprietress of the store, waved at them. Roselie could see multiple magic items framed on the wall, some interesting materials kept in jars and crates and some intriguing potion vials that the cleric girl couldn't identify just from glance. Charlie, on the other hand, stared attentively at the shopkeeper. She was an older lady with a mature aura around her. She was wearing a long black dress and a pair of reading glasses on her nose, which played into the mysterious air of her. But she was familiar. Charlie could've sworn he saw her somewhere before recently.

And it seemed that the shopkeeper also recognized Charlie as she audibly gasped and took off her glasses and frowned.

"Could you be… oh my! Charlie and Roselie!"

"Eh? You are… you are Aubrielle!" Roselie excitedly gasped and started to approach the proprietress. Charlie also recalled the shopkeeper named Aubrielle - she was the unfortunate wife of the late merchant that was held hostage with other adventurers by a wandering orc horde.

"It's been a while, miss Aubrielle!" Charlie followed Roselie and took a good look at the shopkeeper. She seemed happy and healthy though a lingering loneliness could easily be spotted on the corner of her eyes. Her reddish brown hair was braided and laid on her shoulder, adorned with flowery trinkets. "You look good. Is work harder… for you alone?"

The proprietress smiled kindly and replied "I admit it was hard at first, while I was still mourning David. But I took in an … apprentice, if you will. She helped me with chores and handled the shop when I set out to procure more items."

"That's fantastic to hear, please don't be shy and tell us if you need any help, okay?" Roselie gently placed her hands on top of Aubrielle's.

Aubrielle nodded appreciatively and asked "What brought you guys to my humble store today? Oh yeah, where are the rest of your party?"

"They had one too many ale and returned to the inn." Charlie said "We are here to refill Roselie's spell casting components and some other items, if you might have them in stock."

"Certainly, what do you need?"

An hour passed as Charlie and Roselie sat behind the counter and chatted with Aubrielle, filling her in on their adventures of late. They told her of the kobold-infested cave still filled with loot that had yet to be picked through as their party was beaten up badly and the story of the legendary Roc in the Nitiunthon forest. Aubrielle also shared some of her interesting stories and gossip with them. It seemed that to the north of the capital Niliphy, in Menai County, a fishing village was completely destroyed and every villager was slain by a lich. Many adventurers were sent by the Niliphy Guide to take out the lich in a swooping operation, but the lich killed them all. The situation was so dire that the emperor ordered a wall to be raised in order to contain the lich in the area and wizards and witches alike were hired to raise a barrier, permanently entrapping the entire gulf for the safety of the continent.

And towards the end of their meeting, Aubrielle took out a small ornate chest under the counter and setted it before Charlie and Roselie. 

"Well, I did promise to give your party a thank-you gift for saving my life. This is it."

"You don't have to! We are happy that you are alive and well and could continue running the store."

"I know, I know. But David would've wanted you to have this." She opened the chest to reveal a large bag with a curious design. It was a slight ochre yellow in colour and had a long shoulder strap. The satchel lid was decorated with an unnerving arrangement of geometric shapes in many colors resembling a face. Aubrielle took the bag out, laid it on the counter and opened the bag to reveal it was a very normal looking bag inside. But what happened next shocked Charlie.

Aubrielle reached behind him and took a javelin on the wall out and slowly thrust it inside the bag. The javelin was obviously too long for the bag, but magically, the weapon seemed to be swallowed by the bag as Aubrielle pushed the javelin inside and took her hand out to show Charlie and Roselie. The bag was still empty inside, as if the javelin was teleported away somehow. 

There was no doubt, Charlie knew what it was. A magic item with the effect akin to an RPG character's inventory back in his world, a bag with seemingly unlimited space inside. 

"This is a bag of holding." Aubrielle explained, reaching inside and retrieving her javelin "You can store any items inside this bag as long as it fits the opening, and it can store hundreds of pounds in weight inside without increasing its actual weight and size. A fantastic magic item for adventurers."

Yes. The bag of holding was an insanely useful magic item for adventurers to store their items. Heavy and clunky bedrolls, tents and rations could just be tucked away and retrieved when necessary, helping adventurers preserve their strength for whatever obstacle they are facing. They could also store potions and items of interest inside the bag of holding and there would be virtually no chance of thievery as only those who knew which content was inside the bag could retrieve them out. Having thanked Aubrielle and asked her repeatedly if she was sure to bequeath such an uncommon item to their party, Charlie and Roselie left the Arcane Abode and went to finish other chores that require tending. Harrison's plate was quickly repaired, polished and oiled, healing potions, stamina potions and other useful first aid items were bought and stored inside the bag of holding, Charlie bought a crate of arrows from a random general store for Elluin. After that Charlie and Roselie retreated to their inn to spend the afternoon and evening, sharing with their party about the insanely wondrous magic item they got for free from Aubrielle, the proprietress of a magic store called The Arcane Abode and all decided that Charlie should hold on to it for the party. The reason was clear and very reasonable: he was a backliner and could support the party with ranged attack, which meant he had more opening to use the bag of holding to its fullest extent and help the party out by passing potions or utilizing support items. Charlie had no objection to the idea other than he had way too much wearables equipment on him already, but it was easily resolved when Roselie recommended him to store his backpack content inside the bag of holding, alongside his longbow and quiver - a brilliant idea that somehow escaped him. But who could blame Charlie? It was his first time meddling with a magic item.

The party had their dinner at the tavern - just a normal dinner this time around as Roselie, uncharacteristically, reprimanded Elluin and Harrison for over drinking and missing out on exploring the town, which was promptly and smugly retorted by the elf archer, saying that she had explored the town in the time when Roselie was still unconscious. But nevertheless, the party had no alcoholic drink to prepare themselves for a productive day tomorrow - they still had a cave full of loot waiting to be scavenged through.

===

It was more comfortable for the party to stroll through the plain and hills without the precaution and wariness of a quest - they cleared out the dungeon already. So they took their time on rented horsebacks and reached the cave entrance after 2 hours of slow trotting. Harrison tipped the guild's scout who was positioned at the dungeon entrance and the party re-entered the cave. Torches were lit and the party slowly unveiled what they went through. The mountain was made of limestone, so a crack on the top of the mountain might have dripped rainwater down and created the cavernous space in the middle of it. Elluin, with her keen vision, pointed out that there were no digging or mining signs, so it was concluded that the kobolds found a natural cave and made it their own. Passing the first narrow hallway, the party reached their first battle. The kobolds were slowly rotting, but thanks to Roselie's prayer and ritual that none of them became undead. But this also meant that the party could not harvest body parts from the kobolds. A quick rummage through the leftovers yielded the party 3 bone daggers, a handful of silver and copper coins and a pair of undamaged leather bracers - all of which Charlie stored in the bag of holding. The scraps could be sold to a general store so the party still decided to go through with the looting. The next few rooms were almost the same, the kobolds were ill-equipped, only with primitive spears and daggers, hide and leather armors. This made the party wonder where they took the items taken from adventurers to - they clearly didn't use any of them. 2 more daggers and a crossbow were scavenged from the next dozens of kobolds - the rest were too damaged to even worth taking back. And the party reached the final room of the cave. It was carefully separated from the main cavern with wooden walls, draped in animal hides and moss - a room made into an altar, where the dragonkin laid charred, bruised and cutted. Dried blood could be observed painted on the cave walls, the ceiling and the floor - both dragonkin's and human's and elf's. A thick layer of black soot clung on the ceiling directly above the dragonkin's body - the result of the gunpowder horn exploding. Under the soot, pieces of flesh and … brain matter were promptly ignored by the party advancing carefully into the altar room. 

"This thing was insanely strong." Harrison said, nudging its corpse with the tip of his metal greave. "When his axe hit me in the rib, I immediately blacked out. I thought I was already cleaved in half."

"Well, almost in half, muscle head." Elluin said, picking up a broken arrow "If it weren't for Roselie, you might have gone and be reborned as a bird or whatever."

"Dragonkin, huh?" Charlie crouched down next to the tattered corpse and pried out a brown-ish scale. The scale was scorched and scratched, but it was still extremely hard. It was as big as his knuckle and glimmered when the torch light shone on it. He had to drive a dagger in between the flesh and the scale to push it out. Charlie repeated the action a few times and collected a handful of scales. "These things… do they have any connection to a real dragon?"

"Well… it depends. Dragonkin and dragonborn are similar in appearance, but the dragonkin are born and serve a dragon directly while dragonborn would travel the world and live among other races' settlements." The elf archer explained while simultaneously trying to remember bits and pieces of information she had learnt before "This one here might be carrying out an order from a dragon - maybe to attack and pillage loots for the dragon's lair."

"A servant, huh?" Roselie said while helping Charlie pull off a few more scales "What if the dragon came for revenge?"

"Unlikely. Dragons are not fools. They are natural schemers, they exercise great caution in any thing they would do - elder ones that is. Young dragons might be fickle and quick to act, but they also definitely not as hard to fight against. There are warriors who specialise in hunting down dragons. Dragon Slayers - or so they are called. They would hunt down any troublesome dragons, so a dragon might seek revenge against us, but it would not act unwise unless it had other motives."

Harrison whistled loudly and exclaimed with an excited voice "Check this baby out, guys." He raised both his arms towards his party, revealing the beautifully, faintly glowing battle axe of the felled dragonkin. The handle was made of metal, woven together into a hard braid, which went through the axe blade and splitted into 4 securing metal wire, wrapped around the shoulder of the blade. The blade was made from some kind of blue-ish metal, and looked as if the air around it was being chilled to the point of condensation. At the point of contact of the handle and the blade, several white ivory materials were embedded, developing the axe in a menacing manner. 

A master crafted weapon, no doubt. 

"Careful, mister Harrison. It could have been cursed." Roselie raised a finger and noted. "You should wrap it up and bring it back to town for a magic caster to identify it. Better safe than sorry."

"I know I know… But look at it! Oh man, I think I might change my main weapon to this thing! The faint glow might be magic, too!"

"Alright, that's enough." Elluin procured a sheet of wool blanket from the bag of holding and threw it toward Harrison "It's yours. None of us could wield that thing, and you could use an upgrade, anyway. But Roselie's right. Stop touching it with your bare hands, the dragonkin might have channeled its last breath into a curse, you wouldn't want to turn into a lizardman, would you?"

"Heheh… it depends… Being a lizard sounds fantastic though." Harrison joked as he wrapped up the weapon and slid it into Charlie's bag "Excuse me, porterman! Hang on to this for me will ya."

The party also found a small vase full of gemstones and some rusty, worthless blades - but absolutely no sign of equipment stolen from attacked adventurers, which was a mystery that the party could not solve with the miniscule amount of information they were given. Not a bad haul for Charlie's first dungeon, and the experience gained was invaluable, vital for his future encounters. The party returned to Phaion to turn in the quest, receive their 800 gold coins reward from the guild and inform them of the dungeon layout for the clean up crew to set out. The assorted gemstones were sold to Aubrielle for 500 gold, for which she said that she would use them to craft a magic mantle a noble ordered. And the party set out for Serepike - back to where they came from after a quest well done.