Chapter: 190

“Six iron bars. Yes. Let me check the price.”

The hatch closed for a moment before Lillian returned.

“Six iron bars will be 72 gold.”

Jay handed her the money and the hatch closed again while a familiar light shot out from under the door.

Lillian returned with the iron bars, Jay stashed them in his inventory and left, not wanting to waste any time. He went back to the lobby and left the association, jogging towards the dungeon.

“It’s about a 20 minute jog, I should only spend an hour and a half there so I don’t get back too late,” Jay calculated as he jogged through the floating gate of the association, making a sharp right turn towards the dungeon.

The adventurer association was located on a hill on the north-east side of town, though the guild itself faced the east since the road coiled eastwards around the hill.

The dungeon was located north from where the guild was, down the mountain and slightly deeper into the rocky forest.

Compared to the forest on the south parts of town, there were many more rocky boulders in the northern forest and the trees were a little less dense, making it noticeably easier to travel through. This was due to the presence of the mountain, with the guild on top, as well as the association managing the trees – for both line of sight, and as resources for the palisade walls.

Jay didn’t realise this till now, since he had no reason to come here, but a quarry was being set up here – or that was what it looked like to him anyway.

Much of the vegetation and dirt had been cleared away from a small area here and various workbenches and tools were around. A few rough stone blocks had been cut out of a flat cliff face. Near them was a few empty tents with some different chiselled stone blocks.

Jay guessed this was new as he had never heard about it, so perhaps it was a preliminary step to a stone quarry, a test of sorts.

“Maybe Sullivan’s upgrading the walls,” he thought.

Jay kept walking, and it didn’t take long at all for Jay to reach the bottom of the hill.

To his surprise, there was a stone path here. It was vaguely in the same direction he was going, so he decided to follow it.

“Huh, useful path.” It led him straight to the map marker “It must be part of the dungeon’s entrance.”

The path came to a small compound with a broken down stone wall. It seemed like the ruins of a stone tower that used to have quite a thick stone wall surrounding it; though both the tower and wall were crumbled.

There were two stone statues at the front of the wall. They were 7-foot tall, towering over Jay and clad in thick stone armour with huge stone swords, kite shields and T-visor helmets.

Oddly, the statues both looked brand-new, as if they were chiselled yesterday and placed her overnight. They were quite contrasting to the destroyed tower they were protecting which was mostly just a toppled pile of stone blocks.

A few other adventurers were here too. Some were having lunch together while others were strapping their armour on more tightly as they prepared to enter the dungeon.

Strangely, no plants grew within the broken down walls; no grasses, moss or even insects. It was only cracked and dried out soil. The only thing living inside the walls were Jay and the other adventurers. Someone spotted Jay and went to greet him.

“Hey. You’re here for the dungeon? Want to join our party? It’s easier with more.” the adventurer was recruiting people to his group. So far, there was four of them sitting nearby in a circle, all tending to their weapons as they prepared to enter soon as well.

“Thanks, but I prefer to go solo.” Jay said.

The adventurer pursed his lips “Oh ok all good.” was all he said, but his expression seemed to say “Ok, it’s your death wish I guess.” as he returned to his small group.

Jay walked further into the centre of the compound, towards the ruined tower.