The Flying Emporium

“You can still change your mind, you know. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to; we can still turn around.”

She had been so excited. Yet now, standing in front of the menacingly swirling portal…

So intimidating!

Now she didn’t feel quite as confident anymore. She hesitated. And judging by the giant man’s words, it showed. But the ones that followed immediately erased all her doubts at once.

“I’m sure Sev would be glad to have you back.”

“No! I want to go. I’m sure,” she said with conviction and tiny, clenched fists. Hearing the name of her boss made her determined.

He hadn’t wanted to let her go. He had been worrying way too much.

She had to beg him. Make so many promises. Until he finally relented.

After that, she couldn’t just turn around and call the whole thing off.

And it would be so much trouble for Sam as well.

No, turning around was no option!

Besides, he said it would be safe. There was nothing to fear.

“Hmm. Alright then,” said the man after giving her an intense look and before turning around and kneeling down. “Hop on then.”

She moved forward, but after only two steps stopped again, not knowing how to proceed; even kneeling, the man seemed as tall if not taller than her boss standing up.

‘Maybe if he lied down flat. Or if I had a-’

As if reading her thoughts, the [Berserker] folded his hands low behind his back, creating an impromptu mounting block.

It still required some effort on her part, but soon she had made it past the halfway point, up the stone-like muscles. Where she again stopped in her ascent.

Back when she had lived in the small town and even later on in the even smaller trading post, she had seen others doing it, riding piggyback, that was. Those with parents.

Now she was thinking back to just how exactly this worked. If she remembered correctly, they usually sat on both shoulders and with their legs dangling down on either side of their parent’s neck.

But this neck in front of her… the degree to which she would have to spread her legs…

Again she hesitated, and again it was as if the man knew exactly what she was thinking. Or maybe unlike her, for him, it was simply not the first time going through these motions.

“Onto my shoulder. The left one,” he specified.

One or two minutes after starting her climb and only slightly out of breath, she had taken her seat upon the man’s wide shoulder, with her right slung around his neck.

“All set?”

“Y-yeah,” she tried to sound confident.

“Alright. Hold on tight then.” With that Samuel stood up, inevitably causing her to do just that; the muscle mass she was sitting on sprung into motion and the distance between her and the ground drastically increased even further - holding on even tighter than before was all but instinctive.

Yet, after the initial scare, once the man stood upright, it wasn’t actually all that frightening. He didn’t budge at all. It was as if sitting on a sturdy rock. Even when he was moving, to her great relief, it was barely noticeable and not at all what she had feared, judging simply by Samuel’s rough appearances.

In reality, this much body control was, of course, very much expected of a high leveled and accomplished adventurer like him, and nothing much to write home about.

“Well then, off we go,” he stepped closer to the portal.

“Y-yes!” she agreed, still apprehensive but with newfound confidence.

The next moment they stood somewhere else entirely, and Samuel didn’t immediately continue moving.

Crossing over took some time to getting used to, and few crossings were more disorienting than that of the Garden.

From the outside, it was one of the more ordinary looking dungeon entrances, with its portal located in some nondescript cave, not at all betraying what would await intruders on the other side.

It made the contrast all the more extreme, and it didn’t help the newcomer experience that whoever had come up with the dungeon’s name apparently fancied themselves some sort of comedian.

This wasn’t a garden.

It was a green hell.

One which assaulted all senses.

Trees and other plants everywhere. The various shades of green and brown closing in on them.

The feeling of the damp, thick air on one’s skin.

The smell of exotic flowers mixed with the stench of death; almost palpable.

And the unexpected noise. Screaming animals. The chirping and buzzing of insects. Birds screeching at each other. And the rustling in the undergrowth caused by whatever else lived in there.

Not to speak of the temperatures which might have been bearable if it wasn’t for the humidity.

None of this seemed to bother Samuel, but he knew better than to immediately rush forward and instead gave the girl some time to adjust.

Even when he finally did start moving again, he took it slowly to begin with.

Pointing things out and explaining them.

He started by once again assuring her that despite the menacing atmosphere in here, there was nothing much to worry about.

They were only on the dungeon’s first floor.

Most dungeon monsters were very adept at judging the difference in strength between them and the unbidden intruders; out of their own volition, driven by their own survival instincts, they would never attack those who were significantly stronger or higher leveled than them. Unless it directly concerned the core’s survival, that was.

But with this simply being the first floor with many others to come and the difference in strength being as large as it was, there was virtually no danger to her. As long as she stuck close enough to him, so that Samuel’s own aura, as he called it, would cover-conceal-her own; this was also the reason he wanted to bring only one person, he explained.

Reassured, she started asking questions of her own.

“You called it a dungeon right now. I thought this was a raid?”

“Hmm. The lines between the two are oftentimes blurred. It usually refers to the danger involved, and the number of people needed to clear the thing. In some extreme cases, that means one group’s raid is another group’s dungeon. In longer dungeons or in cases like this where the dungeon as a whole is still unconquered, we usually end up declaring some kind of threshold floors. It’s usually somewhat arbitrary, but in the case of the Garden, depending on who you ask, the first ten to fifteen floors are usually considered a dungeon; beyond that, the Garden turns into a full-blown raid which requires way more in terms of coordination, communications, preparations, experience and simply raw strength to advance. In the higher floors of these raid-levels, I might still be able to survive on my own, but something like we are doing right now would be unthinkable down there.”

Unseen by him, she kept nodding in response.

“I’ll speed up a bit now,” Samuel warned.

Where previously he had been carefully climbing through the thicket, he now started to either savagely break through those obstacles or nimbly skipped over them, making the girl scream in a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

Still, he didn’t stop his explanations fully, though now he had to raise his voice even further for it to reach the girl, even though she was sitting right next to his head.

“There are, of course, some exceptions to the rules I just told you about. But those are rare. In the early levels of the Garden, it is mostly plant-based monsters that lack said instinct of self-preservation and therefore could potentially be dangerous. Again, not all of them. And even fewer try actively hunting for their prey. Most try luring their would-be victims into their clutches by tempting them with loot or via pheromones; easily avoidable with some resistances and experience.

Think of them of more like organic traps. Only a small subset of them, and all of them vines, might try to strike at us. But even if those try to ignore the existing difference in our strengths, that doesn’t mean I do as well.

It’s basically impossible for them to remain undetected or be fast enough in their attack for me not to notice; much less both at the same time.

Maybe some mutated feline or reptile might have some more luck in that regard, but those are even rarer up here.“

Speaking of reptiles…

Samuel kept moving freely through the undergrowth as if he were in an open area seemingly not restricted in his movement at all, only stopping on some occasions to point out especially noteworthy parts of the local fauna and flora.

Like the many herbs which made this dungeon of special interest to many alchemists.

Or some of the especially brave- or stupid- monsters that were native to this dungeon’s habitat; a hybrid between lizard, monkey, and … pig?

Those never made any move to attack them, only observing them from what they thought to be a safe distance.

Their scaled curly tails causing the girl a particular delight whenever one of the creatures realized they had been spotted, and started scurrying away up above them through the dense canopy.

This only happened twice–most inhabitants had more sense than getting so close to them- though Samuel assured her that he had spotted quite a few more of them in the distance; she could only believe him; it was hard for her to make things out in here, with her range of vision being severely restricted by all the green and with Samuel not going out of his way to actually hunt let alone kill any of these comparatively low leveled monsters she had no way of actually knowing.

She didn’t understand how exactly the man was navigating through this environment, but in less than a way too short hour, they had reached a waterfall; now they weren’t far away from their actual destination anymore, she knew.

Samuel slowed down and begun to travel downstream for a few minutes until the waterfall’s deafening sound had disappeared in the backdrop.

And indeed, they had made it.

Here at the riverbank the view was somewhat more open, and soon even she could make out some wooden structures.

Not the same as she had from time to time seen hints of in the treetops above them, but rough, temporary, but clearly human-made structures.

In way too short a time for her liking, they had made it to the Eagles’ camp.

But at least there was still the way back.