Wandering Dungeon

Garrett, Kyle, and Blixie walked into the inn across from the adventurer's guild. It was rather plain compared to what Garrett and Kyle were expecting from their memories of seeing fantasy inns from movies and games in their past lives. The room they stood in was about fifty feet square. Round wooden tables surrounded by simple chairs dotted to room. They were surprised to not see a bar top with stools or any barrels of ale around. The other thing they were expecting were people to be eating and carousing at this hour, but they were the only ones there.

A door to their left opened and a small head popped out. Curly red hair framed the small round face and two green eyes of a young girl. A smattering of freckles splashed across her face. The head disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. "Mama, we got guests." was heard loudly yelled from behind the door. The trio in the room just looked at each other and shrugged.

"You don't have to yell Alice. I'm right here and it is not good for guests to hear yelling from their hosts." The door swung open as a women walked through that was the spitting image of the girl from before if she was about twenty years older. She was dressed in a light blue dress with a white apron tied around her waist. "Sorry you had to hear that. You try to teach kids to have manners and I swear they try their hardest to do the opposite." She chuckled lightly while approaching the group. "Welcome to the Slick Pig. My name is Tracy and you have already met my daughter Alice. How can we help you today?"

Blixie quickly spoke up. "My name is Blixie. This is Garrett and his pet slime Squishy. We would like a room please, if any are available. Also, a meal as well."

A small gasp and a squeal were heard as the small head of Alice could be seen poking out around Tracy's skirt, her eyes wide in amazement as her gaze quickly switched between Blixie and Kyle. Tracy chuckled. "Please excuse my daughter. It is rare we see such a distinguished guests such as a pixie and a monster tamer. We do indeed have rooms available, and I can get a meal ready for you in about twenty minutes or so. would you like to eat at one of the tables or up in your room?"

"We will eat in our room please." Blixie responded.

"Very good." Tracy gave a slight bow. "It will be two silver for the room and three meals." Garret fished out the silver the old lady had given them and handed them over. Tracy produced a key from the pocket of her apron and handed it to Garrett. Your room is up the stairs to the right, First door on the left. dinner will be brough up shortly." Tracy then shuffled her daughter back through the door.

Garrett, Kyle, and Blixie went up the stairs that were across the room from the front door and went to the room they had rented for the night. The room contained a single bed nestled against the far wall next to a window. A small table and chair were along the wall to their left. "Rather simple but it will work for tonight." Blixie commented as she flew over and landed on the bed. Garrett closed the door after everyone was inside.

"Why do we even need to rent a room?" Kyle asked. "None of us need to eat, Garrett and I don't sleep, and you can just use Garret's hood as a hammock like when we went through the forest."

"True." Blixie responded. "But, while the link between Garrett and I can nourish me, I do enjoy eating when I can. Besides, we are supposed to be posing as adventurers. Which means that we would need to sleep before heading out. Especially since we established with that old lady at the guild that we had been traveling for a few weeks through the woods."

"That makes sense I guess." Kyle said quietly. "I guess we also need to talk about what we want to do after this. We haven't talked about that since we meet the other day."

"That's true." Garrett said. "This world is not like the games we used to play Kyle. There is no clear-cut objective or goal for us. George told me that exploring the unknown with friends was half the fun of the old tabletops we played. So, I think the first thing we need to do is find our friends that were reincarnated into this world. Then we can figure out what to do after that."

"That's a great idea." Blixie chimed in. "But the world is huge. How are you supposed to find all your friends if they got reincarnated into this world? Did George give you any hints? Can you sense each other?"

"No, and no." responded Garrett. "But if I was him, I would try to get us all together sooner rather than later, because who wants to go halfway through a campaign before being introduced to all the players? So, we will just keep going and we should find everyone fairly quickly I believe."

A soft knock at the door interrupted them. Garrett went over and opened the door to reveal Alice standing there holding a tray with three plates loaded up with a few thin slices of meat, mashed potatoes, and some roasted veggies. One plate was about half the size of the others. "Here are your dinners." Alice said in a soft, almost whisper like, voice, her eyes locked on the tray of food as she held it out.

"Is everything alright?" Garrett asked concerned as he retrieved the tray from her and placed it on the table by the door.

"Sorry you had to hear me yelling earlier." Alice quietly responded back. "Mama is teaching me to help run the inn so I can take over some day, or so she says, but I forget things sometimes."

Garrett laughed loudly at this. "You don't have to worry Alice." He said as he squatted down to be eye level with her. "It can take quite a while to learn everything, and longer still to remember when to use it. It took me quite a bit of time to become the adventurer I am now, and I still have a lot to learn. So don't be sad that you made a mistake. Just keep on trying and you're bound to succeed."

Alice looked up at Garrett with a big smile. "Thanks mister Garrett. I'll work real hard to be better in the future." Alice quickly turned around and ran back through the hall and down the stairs.

"Alice, how many times do I need to tell you, don't run around the inn." Tracy loudly admonished.

"Sorry mama." Alice yelled back.

"And no yelling."

Garrett closed the door and chuckled. He grabbed the tray of food, turned around, and walked back to the bed. He placed the tray on the bed, grabbed a plate for himself and sat down on the floor. "So, what do we want to do for the rest of the night?" he asked and looked at the others.

"What was that?" Blixie asked flabbergasted.

"What was what?" Garrett responded.

"I've never heard of a dungeon core being so caring for a person before."

"Did you forget that George gave me my memories of being human back? Besides, she reminded me of my younger sister back when she was that age." Garrett responded.

"I remember, it just slipped my mind. You are the first dungeon I have heard about that got their memories back after all."

"Oh yeah." Kyle said as he placed a tentacle on a plate and slowly absorbed the food on it into his body. "She was so adorable back then. Whatever happened to her. I haven't heard you talk about her since high school."

"Well, you know how my parents were." Garrett sighed. "They wanted us to do our best in whatever we tried, and my sister felt a lot of pressure from that. So, when she would make mistakes and have setbacks it would hit her really hard. During high school she started hanging out with the wrong crowd and when she didn't get into the colleges she wanted to after graduation she really fell hard. She stopped talking to the family except for holidays sometimes and last I heard she was living in New York but that is about it."

"That's rough to hear man." Kyle responded. "Sorry."

"Thanks, but It's her life to lead. I'm just glad that I found a great group of friends that were supportive when I was younger. I just wish I could have told my sister what I told Alice back when she was that age. Maybe it would have helped." Garrett and Kyle sat in silence for a while as they remembered things of their past lives that they missed. Blixie flew down to her small plate and ate in silence. She understood that they needed some time for reflection. Garrett slowly absorbed the items on his plate and broke them down to learn their mana patterns.

Eventually everyone broke off and started doing their own thing. Blixie fell asleep in the bed, Kyle practiced his Form Control skill and Garrett practiced his Air Shaping skill. Garrett hadn't found a use for it besides keeping the air in his old dungeon fresh, but as a self-proclaimed gamer he didn't feel right not leveling up a skill if he had it. Besides, how cool would it be if he could summon tornados or use the skill to fly, he thought to himself. He wouldn't know without practice.