A fierce wind slammed into Anser as the roar of rushing air filled his ears.
Beating his dragon wings, he pushed against the tremendous air resistance as he flew over the Wood of Sharp Teeth.
Squinting ahead, all he could see was an endless sea of green. Then, in the middle of the forest, the land suddenly dropped away into an enormous basin. Amid the sparse trees lay the ruins of an ancient city.
Quite a few tents had sprung up throughout the basin, scattered here and there. At its center yawned a massive pit, with faint glimmers of light flickering from its depths.
'That pit... looks bigger than before.'
Anser silently observed a moment of mourning for the Myconid colony, hoping they had enough sense not to take these adventurers head-on.
As he drew closer, however, he realized something was off.
There were far more tents than he had expected. Three particularly large camps surrounded the cavern entrance in a triangular formation. Their tents were uniform in style, and patrols constantly moved around them.
He stopped approaching and immediately took out the Farseeing Scope.
Sweeping his view across the camps, he was instantly drawn to several figures clad in crimson robes. Their flashy scarlet robes and gleaming bald heads were impossible to miss.
'The Red Wizards... Sosk's backup plan?' He wasn't entirely sure.
After all, this dungeon had only been discovered a few days ago. Thay lay thousands of kilometers away. Arriving this quickly seemed almost impossible.
He turned his attention to the other two groups.
One group wore black robes and made no attempt to hide the numerous undead accompanying them. Judging by the holy symbols on their chests, they were unmistakably followers of Myrkul, as relentless as ever.
There had to be something inside worth any price to them.
The third group consisted of black-robed spellcasters as well, except they all wore masks and were accompanied by a sizable force of well-equipped warriors.
'Who are these people? Could the Dungeon of Viheral really be hiding some long-buried secret?'
He scratched his head, realizing his intelligence was probably already out of date.
'Could Brunhilde have gotten trapped inside the dungeon?'
The thought suddenly struck him.
Yesterday had seemed to be the night of the full moon.
His figure flickered, slipping into the Ethereal Plane before slowly descending toward the basin below.
Once he reached the edge of the pit, he ignored the scattered adventurers in the distance and circled the three camps, investigating those left behind from across the planar boundary.
Red Wizards.
Priests of Myrkul.
And the Cowled Wizards.
'There aren't Chosen here too, are there? Why do they keep popping up everywhere like cabbages?'
The Church of Myrkul were outsiders. The Cowled Wizards had come from Amn. The Red Wizards had traveled all the way from distant Thay.
Each faction had come from farther away than the last, yet all three had converged on this very dungeon.
'The Cowled Wizards supposedly worship Azuth... or maybe the god of knowledge and writing? No, that's not right. They've long since become nothing more than lapdogs for Amn's ruling families, chasing profit wherever it leads...'
After letting his thoughts wander for a while, Anser finally decided to head inside.
Brunhilde was, after all, one of Azuth's Chosen—and one of his most important allies. He couldn't simply ignore her.
He descended into the cavern.
Since his true body remained in the Ethereal Plane, everything he saw was rendered in varying shades of gray, like watching an old black-and-white silent film. The scenery felt eerily monotonous.
The once-lush mushroom forest looked as though it had been ravaged by a violent storm—or looted by marauders. It had become sparse and devastated, while the pockmarked ground resembled diseased, scab-covered skin.
Following the chaotic trail left by countless footsteps, he continued deeper underground.
The terrain gradually sloped downward.
Along the way, he spotted several corpses belonging to both adventurers and Myconids. Everything of value had already been stripped from the bodies, and even the Myconid corpses had been torn apart.
Judging by their wounds, they had all died in battle.
'Sigh... I warned you.'
Anser continued onward, this time moving even more cautiously.
Before long, he left the mushroom forest behind, passed through the underground passage, and arrived at the dungeon entrance.
His vision in the Ethereal Plane only extended thirty or forty meters. After advancing a short distance, one dim gray silhouette after another entered his field of view.
Carefully, he circled around them without being noticed.
The dozen or so people were divided into three groups, each wary of the others, yet no fighting had broken out.
'They're getting along this well?'
In his experience, if everyone was after the same objective, shouldn't they have started by killing each other?
After entering the dungeon, he found that the massive bronze door embedded in the ground at the entrance had lost half of itself. The jagged break suggested it hadn't come off easily.
'You people... you've got determination. And you're really broke.'
Anser couldn't help but smile.
The bronze door weighed several thousand pounds at least, but most of it had been embedded in solid rock, making it extremely difficult to remove.
He had considered taking it himself back then, but a Death Knight had been chasing him when he left, so he hadn't dared stop.
Besides, a pound of pure bronze was only worth four or five silver pieces. It wasn't particularly valuable, so after missing the opportunity, he hadn't given it much thought.
Inside the dungeon, the ruined buildings looked much the same as before.
Avoiding the sentries' line of sight, he climbed onto the top of a broken section of the city wall, crouched low as he returned to the Material Plane, and cautiously surveyed his surroundings.
Although the dungeon was shrouded in darkness, normal vision was still far superior to what he could see from the Ethereal Plane.
Silence filled the ruins so completely that he could hear his own breathing. The ancient city had suffered extensive destruction. Corpses of undead lay scattered everywhere, while dark bloodstains bloomed across the ground like flowers of the night.
'A brutal battle took place here... Could it be... the Death Knight was killed?'
He found it hard to believe.
But if the Death Knight were still alive, those people could never have entered the dungeon so easily.
'More likely it was only destroyed temporarily. Death Knights can return.'
With that thought, he slipped back into the Ethereal Plane and accelerated toward the center of the dungeon.
About fifteen minutes later...
He reached the heart of the city.
Standing before him was a pristine white-stone castle, perfectly intact and spotless, as though it had only just been completed. It looked completely out of place amid the surrounding ruins.
'Strange.'
The castle's front gate stood wide open.
He slowly drifted inside, extending a hand before him, but encountered no barriers such as a Wall of Force.
The interior was decorated somewhat like a temple, though no statues remained. Stone pedestals lined both sides of the hall. Judging from the marks left behind, objects had once rested atop them for a very long time—but whatever had been there was now gone.
Every room stood open.
Every one of them was completely empty.
'Looks like... I got here too late.'
A sharp pang hit Anser's heart.
While he'd been out fighting for peace across Faerûn, someone had been quietly looting treasure from his own backyard.
Who could put up with that?
He quickened his pace and entered the castle's central hall.
The chamber was enormous, spanning dozens of meters across. Towering overhead stood massive curved slabs of white stone, arranged into an incomplete ring that formed a breathtaking spectacle.
Both the floor and the stone slabs were covered with densely packed arcane patterns, though every line had gone dark.
'A Teleportation Circle!'
Anser was certain of it.
He hadn't exactly been diligent with his studies, but the knowledge the dice had infused into him had gradually begun forming a coherent foundation. He couldn't fully understand it yet, but he could at least recognize what he was looking at.
He stepped forward.
Before he had a chance to examine it more closely, several figures appeared at the edge of his vision.
He immediately froze, then slowly circled to get a better look.
A moment later, his spirits lifted as his eyes locked onto one particular figure.
'Sosk?!'
After being dragged away by the Death Knight for so many days, not only had the alchemist survived—he looked to be doing quite well.
That wasn't an exaggeration.
He and seven or eight others were moving about freely, while more than a dozen bodies lay sprawled across the ground in every direction.
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