Chapter 148 (1/2)
Chapter 148 — Dragged Off To The Adventurers Guild
The next day it was time to return to the surface. As a celebration for conquering the dungeon Fer insisted that breakfast would be Dragon steaks. I had my own Dragon steak with a bowl of rice since I still couldn’t face steak on its own, not for breakfast anyway. It still tasted really delicious, of course. We took a short break after eating then it was finally time to leave the dungeon.
“Shall we return to the surface now?” I looked around, making sure we hadn’t left anything or anyone behind. I didn’t want to have to come back down here again to collect any lost property or missing children.
“Umu, let’s go.” Fer said, still licking his muzzle, chasing the last vestiges of gravy from his third Dragon steak. Dora-chan flew over and hugged my back while I held Sui firmly in both arms as I straddled Fer’s back. Goodbye dungeon, I thought to myself as Fer poured magical power into the Teleportation spell drawn on the wall and everything went black. After a moment of falling in the darkness we were suddenly standing on a magic circle drawn on the floor of a small room, maybe 4 tatami mats in size and surrounded by stone walls.
I looked around, puzzled. “Where’s the exit…” I said as I climbed down from Fer’s back.
“Last time I did this,” Fer said, “a door opened when I left the magic circle.” Oh? As we stepped out of the complex pattern on the floor one of the stone walls moved aside with a grinding noise, letting bright daylight flood in. It had been ten days since we had seen real daylight and I blinked, it seemed too bright for a moment before my eyes adjusted.
“Right then, will we head back to the inn?” I said as we walked out of the small room. I had reserved our room back at the inn before we left for the dungeon, it should still be waiting for us was my thinking. However when we exited we discovered the doorway was right next to the dungeon’s entrance where, of course, there were lots of people around, the guards at the gateway, Adventurers waiting to enter the dungeon, Merchants and stallholders and we were suddenly the centre of a lot of unwanted attention. Please don’t stare like that, please don’t point at us, please please please don’t shout at us…
I hurriedly put Sui-chan in her bag. “Let’s get out of here, quick.” I said to Fer and Dora-chan as I started to push our way through the crowds forming around us but it was too late.
“H- Hey, wait a minute.” One of the knights on guard at the dungeon entrance stopped us. “You lot, where did you come from? That doorway wasn’t there before!” Ummm, you see… I was frantically thinking of an excuse that would let us get away when…
“It’s the way out from the dungeon’s final level.” Fer announced in a loud voice to the whole crowd. “We defeated Behemoth.” Oh Fer, why did you have to say that, I was going to talk our way out of here. Well, once I came up with a good excuse… Fer’s announcement that we had defeated Behemoth spread through the crowd and the noise level increased even further.
“Q- Quick, call the Guild staff!”
“No, get the Guild Master here!”
“Yeah, go and fetch the Guild Master!!!”
“Hurry, hurry!!”
The entrance guards told us to stay where we were until the Guild Master came to speak to us. I thought of asking Fer to just push past them so we could leave, they weren’t going to be able to stop him after all but I knew that would cause us more problems later if he did. I sighed as I resigned myself to the situation and we settled down to wait, trying to ignore the crowds around us and their shouted questions while the guards attempted to maintain some kind of order and prevent us from being mobbed. After a while, I heard a familiar voice ringing over the noise of the crowd.
“Mukouda-saaan!!!” Elland-san, don’t shout my name so loudly, please? Everyone can hear you…
“Mukouda-saaan!!!” I could see the tall Elvish figure of Elland-san now, forcefully pushing his way through the crowd and waving his hand while continuing to call out my name loudly. The guards stepped back respectfully as Doran’s Guild Master broke through the final ring of interested onlookers.
“Ha ha, Mukouda-san, I knew you could do it!” Elland-san said as he grabbed my hand excitedly and pumped it vigorously, nearly throwing me off my feet. Hey, Elland-san, that hurts.
He looked around distractedly for a moment. “Ah, where’s Dora-chan?” The Pixie Dragon had carefully tucked himself out of sight behind Fer’s wide back, having been warned by the sound of the Guild Master’s voice that it was time to hide. “Anyway, I tried to follow you into the dungeon several times…” Eh, were you actually trying to follow us? I shuddered to think of how much trouble that could have caused us…
“However the Deputy Guild Master always stopped me and I eventually gave up trying to get away from him.” Elland-san said with a sad look on his face. Ah, Doran’s Deputy Guild Master, was that the overweight bald man I had seen once in passing at the Guild’s offices, that time Elland-san had dragged me off to his house to cook Dragon steaks for him? Good job, Deputy Guild Master, good job.
“Anyway, that’s all in the past.” Elland-san clapped me on the shoulder. Ouch. “I want to hear all about it from you so let’s go to the Adventurers Guild straight away. Come on, let’s hurry.” We weren’t going to make it back to the inn right away, it seemed as we were led off towards the main offices of the Adventurers Guild by Elland-san.
* * * * *
Soon after we were seated in Elland-san’s room at the Adventurers Guild. “So, what was the dungeon like?” Elland-san asked eagerly, paper and pen to hand.