Hey all, next chapter of RPG story is finished. I would like to thank all of you for your comments and rating. I hope you would like this chapter.
Huge thanks to Netrepid for helping with edit.
Asher woke up early the next morning, the trip to the Academy will take them some time. He checked again to see if he had packed everything. He stopped at the door to his room. Looking at it, thinking that there was a chance he would never return here.
He thought that even if he would return in a year, he would be a different person. After a year of exploring dungeons, he will probably not want to live here anyway. He will probably want to find something together with El after they end the Academy. Something that is much closer to the dungeon.
He considered that maybe they would look for something for all members of their team, sometimes the whole team lived together, especially if they could afford that.
He frowned. They were living a few hours from school, and that is the closest entrance to the dungeon. He was curious how the goblin yesterday found them so far from it?
He shook his head, he had no way to find an answer now, maybe in the future after they finished at the Academy.
Asher turned and went to the main room, where his parents were waiting for him.
He spent some time with them yesterday, but they were still concerned. At first, they tried to convince him to not become an explorer, but with time they accepted, they couldn't change his mind. His parents never wanted to become explorers, and preferred to live a normal life.
"We will miss you, Ash. Please be careful." His mother hugged him tightly and didn't want to let him go.
"I promise, mom, I will be careful. I will return in a year, when I graduate from the Academy."
His father only nodded at him with concern on his face. Asher tried to smile reassuringly, but wasn't sure if he accomplished it.
"Bye, Asher," said his mother.
"Bye mom, dad." He left through the door and waved at his parents. He moved towards the direction of Elara's house. They were supposed to meet at the bus station. He was there first, it was a few minutes before he saw Elara coming towards him.
She came to him and hugged him. "Are you excited too?" Elara asked.
Asher nodded, "It's today, finally we will join the Academy."
She smiled. "I can't wait to go to our first dungeon."
He moved his hand towards her side, which was wounded yesterday. "Are you healed?"
"Yeah, I'm completely fine. I told you it was just a scratch."
He looked at her with concern, but she just grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the bus that was standing at the station. "Come on, let's go, Ash."
He nodded once and they both entered the bus.
---
The trip took them almost seven hours. Even when they left early in the morning, it was past afternoon when they entered Dart City, which was built around the dungeon. That was also the reason why the Academy was built there. They were supposed to show up there around eight, so they still have a few hours to kill.
They lived so far from the city that they had only visited a few times before. The last time they were here was a few months ago, when they took part in the Academy testing to get accepted.
The bus stopped at the edge of the city. They exited the bus, and grabbed their backpacks.
Asher checked the time, they had around five hours to look around the city. Last time they visited they had no time to see the sites.
It was a rather big city, divided into two parts. One that was closer to the dungeon, more focused on exploring, there were smaller houses there, where explorers lived. You could find some shops and places connected to exploring. The people on the other side of the city were less interested in exploring. There were blocks and skyscrapers there, where people lived a more normal life than explorers.
"We have a few hours before the meeting at school, " El said. "Do you want to go look at the gate to the dungeon?"
Both of them had never seen it before. There was no good occasion, or just no time to go see it when they last visited. He liked the idea, and it would pass the time.
"Yeah, we can see how it looks."
Elara turned on maps on her phone and said, "Okay, we need to go this way."
They went through the streets of Dart City. There were a lot of people there, walking around and living their normal lives. At first, when the city was built next to the dungeon, people were coming here to live when they wanted to interact with the dungeon. But as the city grew bigger, and safer, people started to just live their normal lives not connected to the dungeon.
They walked around the town for twenty minutes on foot. They saw additional walls from some distance. These were built around the entrance to the dungeon to make it safer, but monsters rarely left dungeons through gates now. Gossip said that they found some other ways, but no one knew how and where.
"We need to find the entrance through this wall. It should be to the left." Elara said, and they went along the wall.
"It's there," Asher pointed ahead. They were four guards standing by the small entrance through the wall.
"Four guards? That's quite a lot, especially since monsters stopped leaving through this entrance." Elara said.
"Maybe that's one of the reasons why they don't leave through here anymore. And normal people probably feel safer when they see protection like this." Asher considered while they were closing the distance to the guards.
The guards were well built, and in full armor with weapons by their side. They were all focused on their phones, but one of the guards looked at them with a bored expression.
"You are new members of the Academy?" He asked them.
"Yeah," Asher answered, and it brought attention to the rest of the guards.
"You are not jumping in the dungeon already?" The same guard continued, while Asher noticed that three others were staring at Elara.
"No, we only want to see the entrance. It should be safe?" Elara answered and asked. Asher didn't like the guards ogling her like this, and wanted to just enter and leave them behind, so he grabbed her by the hand and moved towards the entrance.
"Yeah, just don't get into it, and you will be fine." The guards moved out of their way, and they went past them.
They went through the entrance one after another because it was a small, three meters long, two meters high, and one meter wide passage. If some monsters in a horde would get out of the entrance, they would be easily repelled here, not being able to attack together.
When they left from the tunnel, Asher turned around, and saw that they were looking into the tunnel after Elara, and he frowned. Elara grabbed his hands and pulled him away. "Come on, Ash, they are just some assholes."
Asher turned around and saw the entrance to the dungeon for the first time in real life. He had seen it before on the internet, and it didn't look impressive. Now, he didn't change his mind, it was just a black wall - a few meters long and a few meters high. But that was all of it, a black wall with nothing special about it.
"Well, it's not very impressive," Asher said. Elara looked at him and shrugged, then pointed to the side at a few people standing next to the wall.
"They are going to enter in a moment." Both of them looked at the six people who were checking through their items. From their equipment, it looked like they were experienced. They were making last checks to see if they had everything. Their team contained four men and two women.
They both observed the team, and after a moment, the group moved towards the entrance, and they just entered the black wall and vanished from view.
"Yeah. That was a bit anticlimactic." Asher said, looking at his girlfriend.
El grabbed his hand. "Okay, we can't go in, there's nothing interesting here. And I can think of much more exciting things to do rather than staying here." Asher looked at her curiously, but she had already started to pull him back through the tunnel. This time one of the guards who stayed silent before turned towards them.
"Hey baby, if you want to have fun, with a real man." He glanced at Ash dismissively. "I'll be free in two hours."
She just walked past him, pulling Asher by the hand. When the guard was behind them, she said without looking back, "I already have a man." Asher followed her with a small smile on his face.
Elara pulled him through the streets, constantly looking around as if looking for something.
"What are you looking for?" Asher asked after a few streets.