<~> Chapter 33The four of us sat in the shadow of a rampart as we silently watched a patrol of suits of armor walk by. We’ve been sitting here for at least half an hour now but I’m sure we have the timing down now. I looked at the pair of wooden double doors on the edge of the tral tain, they seemed unassuming but it’s hard to know what we’ll be walking into.

  “If we open the doors into a hall filled with soldiers then we'll have to double bad figure something else out. If it’s somewhere we tio sneak around we keep going.” I whispered to the group.

  Everyone nodded in affirmation and we tio wait for the round of guards to pass. Just as we saw the suits of armor start to round a er we all darted out of the shadow and quietly jogged to the doors we’d been staring at fes now. Torien, our resident rogue, quietly cracked the door and peeked inside befiving a signal and slipping in. I felt relieved as all four of us made it in before Torien silently closed the wooden door behind us.

  Ihe tower was not what I expected from the outside. Rather than any kind of room, we were instead in a corridor that didn’t at all respect the curve of the tower’s walls. In fact, the left hallway tinued down straight, well past where the tower would have ended. It looks like the spaside the tower doesn’t really correte with the view from outside the castle we had been traveling through until now. Oher side, the right hallway tinued for a bit and sharply turo the left after a while.

  “So girls, left ht?” I asked the group.

  “Left!” “Right!” excimed the twins in unison.

  “Well…” I turo Bel. “How about you?”

  “Uhh… Left,” she answered after looking bad forth a bit.

  “Sounds good to me, hold on a sec though.” I slipped off my backpad pulled out some of the regur chalk I bought. “I’m not sure if the monsters in here are able to track us or not but this pce looks like we’re bound to get lost if we don’t leave some markings.”

  In front of the door we entered from, I drew an arrow pointed inwards surrounded by a circle.

  “Alright, if you get separated somehow, try to follow the arrows I leave on the ground. Torien, you take the lead and look for traps? Other than that we should go in the normal formation. I’ll be right behind you Torien.”

  She nodded and started walking slowly in front with her eyes on the floor. I kept my eyes up and my extra rge sword at the ready. The hallway wasn’t cramped but it was too small for me to use my sword normally. The borrowed instincts I was relying on guided me to hold my sword up bany other hand almost as if I was using a spear for thrusting. It wouldn’t be easy, and my movements would be more predictable but it would still probably be better than trying to use the dagger length broken sword still on my waist.

  We tinued on for a while until there was a sharp right turn in the hallway. I pulled out some chalk and put down an arrow indig the dire.

  “ I borrow a stick of chalk Lilith?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks, there’s a trap up ahead and I don’t really have the proper tools to disarm it. If I mark it out we should be able to avoid it pretty easily.”

  She went up ahead a bit while I kept watch, after drawing a few lines of chalk around an irregur blob she came back. We kept going like this for a while, Torien occasionally going ahead to mark off traps for us. It was eerily empty the eime since we entered.

  “Is it normal for the mazes in dungeons to be this quiet for this long?”

  “Not really,” Man answered in a hushed voice, “but this dungeon is likely pretty young. Between the hallways and traps, it probably just didn’t have the ability to fill this area with monsters yet. I wouldn’t drop yuard though, some mazes like to send monsters in swarms or leave only a few big moo wahe maze.”

  We kept walking for what felt like hours, Torien did an amazing job marking off every trap before anyone else got near it. The path forked numerous times and a few times we even ran into our own arrows after following a loop so we had to take a different path through. It seemed pretty clear the maze had to overp in pces and it was easy to firm sine hallways pletely traveled through others in a few points past a short bend. It retty disorienting and messed with your sense of dire.

  Finally we came across a single wooden door much like the oered through. It would have been a scary sight if it wasn’t for all the chalk marks I’d been making this eime.

  “Alright Torien, you’re up. Check for traps and see if anything is oher side of the door.”

  She nodded and began to check the door. After seemingly finding something she started scratg at something with her cws until I heard a loud twang sound followed by a dull thunk. She jumped bad drew a dagger but there wasn’t any other rea. Slowly she opehe door and peeked in before sighing in relief and opening the door fully.

  Ihe small room was an odd fountain blurbling with water and aical looking door oher end of the room. I thought the room looked a little odd but after wandering nonsensical hallways for hours who was I to judge what was weird anymore.

  “Oh gods finally!” Man excimed much louder than I would have expected.

  I turo her in shocked fusion. Torien and Man expressions held a ton of relief but Bel shared my fusion.

  Torien noticed our fusion and started to expin, “Rooms that are shaped like this with a fountain in the ter like that,” Torien poio the fountain, “are always safe rooms. Monsters aren’t able to enter rooms like this.”

  “Really?” Bel asks with a ed tone.

  “Yeah, it’s actually rather on knowledge among adventurers. If anything I’m a little surprised you two weren’t aware of it.”

  “I… see… Well, we havely been adventurers for very long…” Bel timidly added.

  “Well sure but these rooms often e up quite a bit in stories and stuff.”

  “Torien, be ’s not like we expected to enter a dungeon. You ’t bme them for not doing their research,” Man chided her sister.

  Sihis room arently the safest we’ve been since we ehe dungeon I id my sword down and sat against the wall. I stared at the uniformly grey ceiling for a moment before deg to broach the subject I had been dreading a little.

  “I’m not sure how much lohis dungeon goes on for but we’ve been in here probably all day. I’m not personally tired enough that I need sleep yet but I don’t know if we’ll get another ce to rest before the end. If we have to keep going for another 4 or 5 hours more we’ll be pushing it.”

  “What’s an hour?” Man asked.

  “Oh, ah, I meant 4 or 5 bells.” Shit I fot about that. People keep track of time usiowers in pce of actual clocks here. At eight in the m they ring the first bell of the day and they ring it again roughly an hour apart all day till 10 p.m. I'm not sure if the time transtes oo o each 'Bell' feels like about an hour of time. It was something I first picked up on when I read the description of the *[Novice Prostitute]* css, after that it was easy to pick up otern while staying in town.

  There was silence as everyone chewed on my words. Torien was the first to break us from our thoughts. “We only inteo take a quick look but now we’re stu here. Sleeping in here will put us a day behind our return date but at least the bonus pay for destroying a demon spawning dungeon should be good. That might give us some more wiggle room on our quota and will at the very least make up for being te. We don’t really have much of a choice but to go forward sihe entrance was blocked. Stopping for some rest sounds like the smarter pn."

  Bel spoke . “ing in here was already reckless enough, we should really make sure we’re in the best shape possible befetting closer to the dungeon’s core. I don’t know a lot about dungeons but it should be the most dangerht at its heart right?”

  The cat girls heir heads in agreement.

  I absently scratched the base of my horn before speaking again, “Maybe we should go a little bit farther and see if there are some supplies to sge that will make sleeping in here a bit more bearable. We didn’t bring in any of our supplies since we didn’t io clear this pce so we don’t even have bo lie on. If we ’t find anything up ahead we’ll just e bad rest.”

  “Sure but let’s eat first,” Man said while slinging her backpack off and pulling out some trail rations. The four of us sat down and started to pull out our rations. I stared at them for a moment before I realized that I wasn’t hungry. Not in the usual sense anyway.

  Sexual Appetite means that I don’t actually o eat and this ration recious since we weren’t sure how long it was going to take before we got out of here. Even if it meant revealing our nature to the twins I didn’t want to waste the sustehey might o survive. I looked at Bel and she gave a small nod to me, apparently ing to the same clusion. I watched her take a small amount of the ration a it before putting the rest bato her pack. I copied the a, eating a small amount for appearances sake.

  Ohing that I was starting to bee aware of though was the heat between my legs. I wasn’t hungry for food but I was starting to hunger for sex. I don’t think it was enough to really affect my as or slow my mi but it was something I might o find a way to solve befoing too much farther. It wouldn’t be easy if we were going to camp in this small room ht but it will probably be necessary to do something about it before this dungeon delve is over. We might o sneak away in the middle of the night, hopefully one of the nearby rooms will have somewhere we sneak off to.

  Torien eyed us suspiciously when we barely ate any of our rations but thankfully she didn’t say anything about it. After the twins ate their fill it was time to prepare to search the adjat rooms. I slung my backpack back over my shoulder just in case and picked up my rge sword.

  I opehe door forward into the part of the dungeon and was surprised to find that it looked pletely different from any of the areas so far. Rather than the cold stone of the maze or the chilly night of the courtyard it was a warm and bright mansion interior. The interior looked well furnished with wooden floors covered by multicolored carpets and rugs. There were expensive looking tables and ets with all sorts of kniacks in them. Despite the unique objects in all of the ets it still seemed like it would be easy to get lost here.

  Uhe previous maze there were also doors along the walls that presumably lead to other rooms which would make the prospect of expl this pce pretty daunting.

  “Let's split up for a little while and chee of the nearby rooms. How about you twins go that way and we’ll go this way for a while?”

  “Lilith, are you sure you don’t wao e with you to check for traps?” Torien asked.

  “It’s fine, we're just going to check the nearby rooms and explore a little bit. We probably won’t go far. Besides, I’m sure you’d prefer to protect your sister over me anyway.”

  She looked like she waue but just nodded. “Alright, we’ll go that way then, but first…” She took out the stick of chalk I gave her earlier and drew a campfire symbol on the door of the saferoom.

  “Okay, let’s try to meet back up in the saferoom in around half an uh, bell by your best estimation.”

  We split up a different dires before Bel and I decided to chee of the rooms. The first door on the left that we checked appeared to be a bedroom with a four poster bed across from an ornate looking dresser with a peculiar looking dlesti it. We stepped in and I closed the door behind us.

  “Bel… This might be poor timing but I’m horny as hell and that bed looks fy. If we don’t take the opportunity to blow off steam now I’ll be starving by the time we’re finishing up this dungeon.”

  Bel gave me a mischievous smile. “Say no more.”

  Saine

  Hello! I like chapters like this where you really get a sense for what dungeon crawling is like. A lot of stories I read skip over this kinda stuff but I always enjoyed hearing about how the characters try to navigate a problem like frequent traps and stuff. chapter the girls get something to eat if you know what I mean. It should be a fun chapter. Thanks for reading!

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