Lance and Reilly were met with the same stone room with torches they remembered from the last time. As Lance entered he looked around immediately to notice it was smaller and that there was only one other door. From it a male and then female stepped out. Similar to them they were a duo. Lance tried his best to come off friendly as everyone stepped towards the center of the room.

  "Hi guys! I'm Lance" Lance stated his name whilst also trying to keep himself a bit vague. Out of everyone here he seemed the most well equipped. Reilly simply wore a dress and held a staff. Lance had a pan tied to his left forearm with bat leather, the last of it he had, and an axe. Other than that he had his bat leather clothes. The man in front of him wore the same starter clothes that he and Jack started with. The main difference was this man had a small pouch on his hip and a dagger on the other side. The woman who seemed to almost hide behind the young man had a shield and mace, without a doubt, the weight of the two almost unbearable for her small frame.

  "Nice to meet you Lance, My name is Courage and this is my sister, Valora. This isn't our first run, but unfortunately my sister died on our first attempt. It really sucked actually. I'm guessing you've done well." Courage said, signaling his sister to step forward. Seeing that she was almost terrified, Reilly chimed in.

  "Hi Valora, I'm Reilly. Don't be too afraid Lance is pretty resourceful, and I can heal. We'll be fine. I'm a mage class. What are you guys?"

  "I'm actually a Tamer class although, um, it's not as easy as you would think." Courage said darting eyes towards Valora.

  "I'm a Peacekeeper class." Valora said very sheepishly. The tremble in her voice showed how little confidence she had, as well as the fear she seemed to already hold.

  Lance thought really hard about this style of introduction. On one hand he could see the benefits to getting familiar with the other party members classes. On the other he wondered how knowing such a thing isn't particularly specific. He surmised that even though knowing the title one had, perhaps the individual character may not be the same as far as abilities. This still gave him a dilemma, looking the way he did holding a pan and the axe, it wouldn't be a far jump for anyone to assume he was the dungeon chef, and saying that he was chef class could only wag the metaphorical finger harder at the truth. The hard bit was his style of fighting, his abilities, he was stuck. Rather than avoid cooking he decided he could play it off that this was the base attire for the class. He finally answered. "I'm a Chef class. I'm not that guy though. I'm sure if we stick together we can get pretty far. How far did you guys make it last time?"

  "Oh we made it to an area with a large spider boss, that's where she.. got knocked out then later died of poison. We beat the spider but couldn't really continue. A couple more members needed to rest and heal. One by one we slowly began to log out, until I was the last person around. I never found the next checkpoint." Courage said a bit down trodden.

  Reilly began to tear up then she stepped forward and gave Courage a hug. He seemed to be caught off guard and looked at Valora. She seemed to look away feeling shame. Reilly broke the almost awkward moment by her sudden show of compassion. " I know it's a game and all but seeing your sister die sure couldn't have been easy for you. And to stick it though, really shows me you live up to your name." She gave a quick smile and then Lance spoke up.

  " I promise that I will do my best to take care of us. Can you grab that torch over there please?" Pointing to the torch by the doorway they entered from Courage went and grabbed it, and Lance to theirs. Once back together he snuffed out his torch, rolling it on the ground in the dirt. Then he gave it a good chop down the center, after doing so he sighed. Taking the two pieces and handing one to Reilly he relit his top half against Courage's. Gesturing to Courage who seemed almost shocked but then understood handed his torch over. After the same couple whacks the second half plopped off and as if from nowhere another rolled next to it. Lance smiled and then handed over two pieces back to them, stuffing one down the side of his boot as obviously as he could. He stood up and winked at Courage. " Alright let me see what our routes are. Oh and do me a favor if you guys see any spider's let me know. It sounds weird but just trust me."

  Reilly nodded at the siblings as if to emphasize. The group then left the entrance chamber. Once again the stark darkness and far off drippings in the silence echoed, to Lance alone the sound was quite calming. The others began to steel their nerves, brandishing their weapons following his path. Courage to the rear borrowing his sister's shield keeping her between himself and Reilly. Lance turned around and lit another torch handing it to Reilly.

  "Okay so from what I can see, either we go straight and likely fight or we take a path that's rather jagged to our right" Lance noticed all three paths once again. Although the layout of the rocks and bends of the path were completely different he could see the similarity in them. Rather than take them to the most dangerous path he opted for the safer choices.

  " We vote for whatever you feel more comfortable with. I can hold the rear, Just keep the ladies between us and I think we can handle it." Courage gave him a quick nod. Reilly and Valora just agreed and nodded as well. Lance pressed on down the main path holding the torch in his left hand above his head. After a short while in the silence Courage spoke up.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  " Hey, you said you needed spiders? I see a few on the rocks over there." Lance then began to search using his Discern Ingredients. Noticing his eyes glow red faintly, Courage raised a brow but didn't say anything.

  "I'll be back" Lance said as he went over and found some webbed stalactites nearly to the ground, between which a few spiders clung to the fibers. Lance set down his axe and shimmied around in his gear opening the small box sling. A moment later a few squashed spiders were captured. After which the group pressed on again in silence. The pace was rather quick, they hadn't run into anything nor seemingly alerted anything with the occasional idle chit chat between Reilly and Valora. Reilly seemed to keep her mind off of the tension that was keeping her in fear by asking about her favorite idols and if she had a boyfriend or guys she liked. Every once in a while a little giggle between the two had Lance look behind him.

  After walking for some time Lance began to understand the difference between a Hard tiered dungeon and this lesser version. Most certainly the group would have had a much harder attempt down the most obvious path. Looking at the path and seeing the difference from what he remembered made him sigh. It was a pretty boring difference but rather beneficial. The path was wider and less bended and turned. Perhaps just that alone could help some survive. He also noted how the natural ambiance was much louder, a low rumble like noise like that of wind pressure on a car with a slim crack in one window kept the minimum sound up a bit than that of an empty cave. The consistent drippings off in the distance and many more than previous speleothems littered the surroundings creating less hazards from above as well as more sound breaking barriers. Lance smiled. Comparatively this was a much more humble setting and his ability to use the surroundings as a weapon turned into that of a shield. Lance took all this in and decided to get some information to confirm some suspicions with the siblings.

  " Hey so you're still on hard mode Courage?"

  " Yeah actually we both are. Valora just decided to make an alt and is on normal playthrough. She wanted to get a better grasp on things before she came back to Hard mode and lost her last chance."

  Hearing this Lance's eyes grew wide, misunderstanding the situation seemed to bring about some changes to what he knew. "Three hard mode characters and a normal mode made the level change to being this? The level must have a multiplication to difficulty based on how many characters and the modes they're on. Down to four from five and one on 'easy' seems like a quick way to pass a level but I wonder how much that is true, we haven't seen anything yet. Also they are smarter than they look, if i'm right..." Lance thought.

  "Hey so does that mean you have a map Valora?"

  Valora shook her head no. " I had a window pop up that stated playing with Hard mode characters would remove some benefits to my character, one is my map."

  Lance smiled again. "This game is quite cunning. Dangers are always hidden. Shall we test it then." Lance thought. A second later Lance pushed out a loud fart he burst into a deep laugh almost to tears. " Hahaha I'm so sorry I was holding it back for so long I couldn't help myself." He said to try and cover up his bad acting. Lance also tested another thing by doing this, how far would he be able to get aggro. A moment later whilst Courage and Lance laughed while the girls pinched their noses, the far off flapping of wings could be heard.

  " Eyes up people, we got company!" Courage seemed to cut Lance off as he was about to say the same, somehow he managed to break out of calm into a fighting stance at the drop of a hat. Lance smiled and winked at Reilly giving her a nudge to get behind the two of them. Valora gripped her mace and went back to back with her brother.

  Lance stabbed his torch into the ground then pulled up his panned arm like a buckler and stood stalwart with his axe, activating his Discern Ingredients he watched as beyond the speleothems shades of red wove between them. Using his ears and counting he yelled out, " Looks like 4 of them, Get ready, They will be here in just a moment!". Lance grimaced, the pack of four seemed to all come at once. Everyone would be exposed in this formation. Lance looked over at Courage shoulder to shoulder the two held shallow breaths an eager air between them. With his quick glance he noticed a smirk, Lance knew what it meant.

  The Bats wove through the stone spires and were quickly upon them, two dove down at Lance and Courage almost immediately, the pair bashed them away, the other two floated over and swiped at the ladies. Lance swiped his axe at one going for Reilly at the same time she swung her staff forcing the bat to dive away.

  Valora yelled out "Halt!"

  For what was literally just a fraction of a second the bat froze in mid-air. In that moment Valora jumped and smashed her mace directly into its wing causing it to tumble, visibly her arm also took damage and she cried out in pain. The bats continued to swirl above their heads after this. The bats began to become a bit more coordinated in this way, taking turns diving in and out. This went on for a little until two of the bats dove in at the front of Lance and Courage again, disturbing the minute-long tactic they had adopted. This time Lance and Courage swung at the same bat while Lance put up his arm blocking a pair of talons aiming at his head. Courage bashed the bat down with his shield and Lance cut through a section of one wing, the bat tumbled to the ground. Behind them Reilly made a step forward and stabbed the bat Valora had knocked down before right through the back with her staff's bottom. In that moment the last bat circling above dove in at Valora. She screamed and her brother turned around. With zero hesitation he activated an ability.

  "Psychic Cage!"

  Lance looked back as he chopped into the bat on the ground. Reilly had a bat clung to her off in the distance, she was fighting it off with a goblin dagger she pulled from her breast, in upward swings above her head. However what he saw from Courage made his jaw drop.