One major downside of our current situation was that we had no reliable method to communicate with each other now in secret that we had encountered the enemy. Sending private messages required some form of movement from fingers or claws, even if that movement was slight. With a creature of my size, even such slight movements were obvious.

  Thus, the only one of us that could send private messages was Diane, who was wrapped in her projected shadows, her true form entirely obscured. However, neither Bella nor myself could openly respond.

  As I was thinking that, the three monsters introduced themselves. The slime, Rimu, seemed quite friendly, though he was admittedly disappointed by his own race. For some reason, he had expected his slime race to have an innate talent to devour all monsters and absorb their abilities? That would be beyond broken as a racial power.

  The golem, Dwayne, was more of a calm individual, though he was happy to share any information he could with fellow ‘monster’ players like us that needed some help. He even asked about our own races to build up his own knowledge.

  Finally, there was the shapeshifter, Pandora. It was revealed that his race was a doppelganger. His racial ability allowed him to transform into any humanoid entity that he had seen, within reason. When he showed us his true form, it was a dusky grey figure with spindly limbs and a featureless face.

  Given the murder spree that these monster players had been on, I had expected them to be more callous, possibly attempting to fight us to take our own fortunes. However, they opened up to us like we were old friends.

  That was when I realized the problem. Unlike Diane and most of the other players that I had met, these three didn’t take this game seriously. They didn’t think of the NPCs that they killed as actual people, so they saw no reason to feel any form of guilt towards them.

  When I realized that, I felt my entire body tense up in barely restrained fury. I wanted to eliminate the group immediately, and send them back to the League of Assassins. However, Diane was right, we needed to find out which dungeon held the path to the city where monsters gathered. It would be more reliable to do so than to try to have them interrogated, at which point the players would simply delete their characters. No doubt, their Chosen would be far more cunning than the players themselves, and might even have traps waiting in case they got captured.

  With that in mind, I forced myself to relax, letting out a deep breath. “What do you typically do for your ambushes?” I asked curiously. “I assume you sneak into cities or something, Pandora, but I can’t imagine the other two blending in so well.”

  Rimu seemed to grin, judging by the warping of his liquid face. “Not far off. Dwayne can disguise himself as a natural rock formation as long as he’s not moving, and I can slip into tight spaces. So, he just curls up to hide as a boulder, and I slip into the cracks. Then, when Pandora brings some targets by, we all attack together.”

  “Oh, of course Pandora doesn’t join right away. He acts like he’s surprised too, just so he can get any of the mobs that try to run away,” he said in a proud town, as if he weren’t discussing the premeditated slaughter of innocent people. I could see Bella clenching a fist out of the corner of my eye.

  “It’s no big deal,” Pandora said, shrugging it off. “We just need to make sure to swap up our hunting grounds, or the NPCs lock onto us. That’s why we came here.”

  Seeing a chance, Diane spoke up. “By the way, won’t it be hard for you to get back to the main realm now that you’re here? Or is the dungeon city close enough that you’ll be able to leave through there? If you’d like, Cassium can fly us to the area, and we can focus your hunt on the villages or cities around there.”

  Pandora glanced over at Dwayne, who was sitting down on a log. He rested his chin on his fist, thinking about the offer. “It’s a little further south, but not too far. When we told our contact that we had gotten stuck in Chimeris, they gave us directions to the Red Sands Death March. Thirteen hundred kilometers south, where the river splits the three lands. Beneath the still waters, and behind the dead man’s rock. That’s what we were told.”

  “They gave you a riddle for directions?” Diane asked in disbelief, but Dwayne smiled bitterly.

  “Chimeris isn’t properly mapped out yet, so they can only get such distances through measuring the sky. At our typical walk speed, we’re planning to get there in about a month, just in time for the next major update to hit, if they stick to their usual schedule.”

  “None of you have any skills for faster travel?” Bella asked in surprise, looking at the trio, all of which shook their heads.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  “None of our bodies are compatible for normal travel skills like flight,” Rimu explained with a shrug. “And bigger teleportation skills burn way too much mana to train like that. It’d be great if we could get a truck or something, but none of the craftsman guilds sell to monster players. Something about being too hard to individually customize the vehicles for monster body types.”

  Having been briefly lost in thought, Dwayne blinked. “There was one dungeon that was closer, but our contact didn’t recommend it because it was in a protected area, and we probably wouldn’t be able to survive long enough to enter. If we were cool with the death penalty, we wouldn’t take a month to travel manually, just so we could get extra grinding along the way.”

  “Protected area?” Bella asked, feigning ignorance. “You mean like a high level zone?”

  “Not quite,” Dwayne shook his head. “Almost directly south from the rift, a nation led by a fallen king. Embedded in the side of the mountain, a monument to the burning dead rests. Since it’s a dungeon controlled by the kingdom, you can only get in if you are either strong enough to ignore the guards, or your stealth is able to bypass them.”

  As he said that, he looked directly at me. “If your race is that inclined to stealth, you might be able to get us in there. Though, I’ve heard that that kingdom recently got a powerful guardian. We can arrange a stampede to draw her away when we are ready to leave, and that should get her out long enough for us to pass through.”

  I clenched my jaw, trying to hold back the growl threatening to rise in my throat. One of the dungeons in Fallcry’s territory had formed a connection with the dungeon cities? Did the so-called dungeon lords set this up intentionally, or was it just a natural occurrence? If it was intentional, they may have planned to use that dungeon as a staging point for a monster outbreak, releasing waves of high-level monsters to overrun the city.

  Diane sounded pleased when she heard their explanation. “That’s a lot better than having to walk for a month, at least. Is there anything else that we need to worry about with this kingdom?”

  Pandora thought it over for a moment, before nodding. “I’ve heard that the king travels with a pair of cute girls, and they can be quite dangerous. One is a redheaded elf who is a master of firearms, and the other is a halfling shadow rogue. But last I heard, they were being hunted down by a group of dragons, and wouldn’t be likely to be present.”

  Bella blinked in confusion. “Is the king himself not an issue? I mean, you can only become a king if you have a ten-star trait, right? He’d need to be pretty strong.”

  I lifted my head, feeling slightly proud before Pandora laughed. “Nah, this king’s just a level one scrub. From what I’ve seen, he only got to this point by relying on his party and using skills above his level. Catch him by surprise, and he’ll go down in one hit. Hell, you might even get lucky and get his trait to drop, since he’s just a trash mob.”

  My brow twitched violently as I listened to Pandora, having to strongly resist the urge to just crush him under one of my claws. Bella brought a hand up to her face, as if surprised, but I could see her shoulders trembling. There was even a faint snicker from Diane, who did her best to control her voice.

  “I-I see. We’ll have to be careful of the other two, then,” she said, and I knew she wasn’t keeping a straight face behind that black cloud she was in. She turned her head to look at Bella, unable to hide the mirth in her voice. “That ‘cute elf’ sounds like trouble. Guns could be really dangerous in a game like this.”

  The tips of Bella’s ears turned red, and her shoulders stopped trembling. “R-right. Don’t want to mess with them.”

  Dwayne arched a stony brow, but shook his head. “Either way, we should get moving. We each still have a few hundred people to kill before we can turn in our quest. Until then, we can only leave the dungeon city from the same entrance we enter through.”

  “Right,” Rimu smiled, looking towards the south. “We should be able to pick off some people from hunting parties in the villages nearby. These NPCs might be stronger than normal, but they’re not too much for us to handle. In fact, we could stop by the dungeon city on the way, and help you three pick up the quest after you bind your spawn point.”

  My eye twitched again at that, but I simply grunted, lowering myself down. “If the village isn’t too far, I should be able to fly there in no time,” I told them, allowing them to climb on my back. Dwayne was heavier than I expected, but it was still entirely possible to fly with the five of them. Most importantly, I wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, so that I could make my report to Wisteria.

  As I was thinking about that, Diane sent a message over our party chat. I just messaged Wisteria and Charlie. Drake, fly a little slower to the village to give them time to prepare. They’re going to put on a bit of a show. Charlie’s men are going to act with Wisteria to pretend to be the bounty hunters from the League of Assassins waiting for them at the village.

  I know you want to kill them yourself, but it’s better to do it this way. If they know that the information about the dungeon city is compromised, they’ll report it to the dungeon lord, who might have a way to close the connection. We need to make it look like we’re fighting the bounty hunters, too. After they get captured, they’ll most likely give it a few days to wait for rescue before deleting their characters. Depending on how much they know, the monster leadership might stage a low-risk rescue operation.

  I let out a small grumble, rising up and flying into the air. “Someone keep ahold of Rimu. I don’t know if a slime will hold up against the wind pressure of high speed flight.”

  Dwayne nodded his head. “Got it, I’ll shield him,” he said, positioning himself more in front of Rimu to block the wind as I began to pick up speed. Though, as per Diane’s request, I made sure not to fly at my top speeds, wanting to give enough time for the others to get ready.