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.