The darkness was finally banished by the usual white glowing motes of light as they formed both teleporter and treasure chest.

  "Heal," said Felicity, and I had a brief glimpse of quite extensive bandaging—an unwelcome proportion of which was stained red—before her ankle was hidden by the soft glow of her restorative magic.

  Daniel frowned, but refrained from commenting. So did everyone else.

  "Heal," Felicity repeated, this time targeting Lee, who'd sustained a few cuts on one arm. He lacked Stacy's heavy armour or Daniel's medium range weapon, and hence was the only one of the group to end up injured in the boss battle.

  "That went... surprisingly well," cautiously admitted Lee.

  "Not the best experience haul, though," said Ryan, over from the chest, which he'd started to open before it had even fully finish forming.

  "Not enough mobs. Just be glad we didn't need to wait for the boss to respawn, too," said Daniel. "What's in there this time?"

  "Experience crystal. Five hundred points."

  "Ha. It must have heard you complaining about the lack of experience points."

  Not too shabby, but on balance, I'd prefer the skill crystal.

  "Whatever. Let's get out of here and grab some shut-eye. We have the Haunted Graveyard tomorrow."

  "Finally my time to shine," beamed Felicity.

  "Are you sure you're feeling okay?" asked Lee. "You seem... awfully eager all of a sudden."

  "More importantly, we need to find out the Graveyard's bonus task," said Daniel. "There's no guild branch there; this is the closest town."

  "She's hardly as much of an eager beaver as him," I laughed, heading toward the teleporter.

  "Eager beaver? Don't think I've heard that expression before," commented Ryan. "What's a beaver?"

  "It's a..." I started, and then stopped. "Huh. I don't know either."

  Ryan snorted.

  "Hey, it's not like I have some god-like five-digit Memory. I probably heard the expression somewhere once and picked it up without the full context."

  I stepped into the teleporter, and in a white flash, I was back outside.

  "Let's stop off at the guild on the way back," said Daniel as the rest of the group appeared. "Perhaps they already know about the Haunted Graveyard, or can retrieve the information for us by tomorrow."

  "Good idea," agreed Ryan.

  "I'm not sure why they'd go out of their way to fetch information from headquarters for us, rather than telling us to go look it up ourselves, but it won't hurt to try," added Lee.

  Given the late hour of evening, the guild was mostly deserted. Unlike the sapphire city, they didn't have a bustling tavern in their foyer, so with the workday over, there was little reason for anyone to be there. Despite that, the same receptionist was still on duty as earlier in the afternoon.

  "Long shift?" I asked.

  "No?" she answered, somewhat confused. "Just the normal length. So, did you manage it?"

  "Yes!" answered Daniel enthusiastically. "So, what else can you tell us about bonus tasks in the local dungeons? Most importantly, the Haunted Graveyard, because we plan to visit tomorrow."

  "From your question, can I assume you 'conquered' the Meandering Warren?" she asked in turn.

  "Yup!" smugly declared Daniel.

  "In that case, you need to clear it without light aspected magic..."

  Felicity said a rude word. Apparently, it wouldn't be her time to shine after all.

  "That seems... suspiciously easy," said Lee. "It's only zombies in there. Even without Felicity's magic, we can cut them apart easily enough."

  "... You didn't let me finish," continued the receptionist. "You also need to open at least five sarcophagi."

  "Oh..." said Daniel.

  "Oh," I agreed. That made things difficult. The guide I'd read had warned against opening any sarcophagi without someone capable of casting [Heal] or [Purify] in the group. They functioned as treasure chests, but opening one also released a ghost—an undead monster that was immune to mundane attacks. With my non-magical daggers, I had no way of harming such a creature.

  "Do we need to actually kill the ghosts?" asked Daniel, probing just how bad the condition was.

  The receptionist opened her mouth, looked confused for a moment, then looked down. "Yes," she answered.

  "... You have the dungeon's information in front of you," pointed out Lee.

  The receptionist shuffled some paper around her desk, covering up the sheet she'd just been reading.

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  "It's too late to pretend now. We all saw you! What's going on?"

  "I knew you'd come back asking questions. I just wanted to be prepared," she answered.

  "Did you? You sounded pretty dubious of our chances when we last spoke."

  "And here I was, trying to be helpful."

  She wiped away a faux tear.

  Felicity snorted.

  "... If you've got a copy of the dungeon's information, why not just give it to us?" asked Daniel.

  "Because then I'd have to admit not knowing it all off the top of my head. Oh well, here you go."

  She handed over not just one sheet, but an entire quire.

  "This isn't just the Haunted Graveyard. It's all the E-rank dungeons," pointed out Daniel.

  "There is, as you know, something of a push to strengthen our adventurers," said the receptionist. "We can do at least this much. But, in return..."

  "Uh-oh," said Lee as the receptionist slapped down a far smaller sheet of paper on the counter. It looked very much like one of the request slips plastered over the mission board.

  "... You must be joking," said Daniel as I craned to look at the sheet.

  It was a mission to clear out a trio of orc villages. A trio of orc villages. That in itself wasn't too bad—orcs were D-rank monsters, and our party could likely handle a small village of them—but none of the three villages were small. Each one was large enough to have produced an orc chieftain. A C-rank monster.

  Yes, my temporary party was full of C-rank members, and I doubted they'd struggle against an orc chieftain caught alone, but the chieftains wouldn't be alone. They'd be at the centre of a village. It would be the Goblin Den bonus room again, but pushed up by an entire rank. The enemies would be stronger and more intelligent. The quest itself was B-rank. Yes, I'd found D-rank quests easy enough, but that was no reason to go skipping an entire rank!

  "I only wish I was. With the upper section of our roster so thoroughly gutted, and the army and knightly orders committed to Harvent Canton, things are tight. We don't have the manpower to deal with this sort of thing. Left unchecked, the villages are expanding at an alarming rate, and the way things are going, they'll likely merge between one and two weeks from now. An orc settlement of that size has a good chance of producing a king."

  Another rank up from a chieftain, an orc king would be a B-rank monster. Small fry for powerful knights and the upper echelons of adventurers, but deadly to the likes of us. An orc infestation of that size would lay waste to its surroundings. How many villages faced evacuation or destruction?

  "So you don't care if we die, as long as we whittle their numbers down enough to prevent the birth of an orc king?" spat Daniel.

  "Of course I care if you die! What sort of short-sighted imbecile do you take me for? What would be the point in delaying the birth of an orc king by a few months if there's still no-one around to deal with it once those months are up? We need promising groups like yours."

  "Fine," sighed Daniel, somewhat mollified. "Just to be clear, this isn't a 'request', but a mandatory quest?"

  "Yes. But just to add, there's no time limit. The failure condition is an orc king being born."

  "I thought you said that will happen in one or two weeks, though?" I asked, before realising what she meant. "Oh, I see."

  "Do you?" asked Daniel. "Think you would mind sharing?"

  "We have the option of whittling down their numbers," explained Felicity, taking the words right out of my mouth. "Taking out foraging groups, or any orcs that happen to wander out alone, without touching the villages themselves. That'll delay the birth of an orc king and buy us more time."

  "Good point. That sort of thing should be right up Robin's alley," nodded Daniel, taking the mission slip. "Fine. We'll conquer the Haunted Graveyard, then the Kobold Village, then move on to the orcs. That should give us plenty of time to investigate."

  The Kobold Village was a little out of the way of the direct path from Haunted Graveyard to the orcs, but kobolds were demi humans, like orcs. The experience bonus from the dungeon would apply to them.

  "That's acceptable," nodded the receptionist. "Now, I'm sure you're all eager to eat and rest for the night. Don't let me keep you."

  ... I hadn't even considered food, but the reminder caused my stomach to rumble. Dungeons weren't the best place for eating at the best of times, but in pitch darkness surrounded by monstrous creepy-crawlies, no-one had even mentioned stopping for dinner.

  "Before we leave, I don't suppose you have any advice for killing ghosts without light magic?" I asked.

  "Light-aspected enchanted weapons? Certain materials can make weapons tangible to ghosts even without enchantments."

  "As if we have that sort of high-end gear," complained Lee.

  "Fire magic can burn them, too, even if the mana efficiency is far worse than light magic."

  "We don't have that, either."

  "Then perhaps you should leave that particular challenge until you have some way of accomplishing it."

  Daniel frowned.

  "... I have an idea," I admitted, carefully probing the knowledge instilled by [Blacksmithing].

  "Why do you sound unsure?"

  "Because it's a stupid idea. Like, really stupid. And it'll cost the party a lot of money, and likely delay our departure."

  "Oh?" asked Felicity, intrigued.

  "How much money?" asked Ryan suspiciously.

  "Both of the crystals we've earned so far."

  "Burning through the rewards of two dungeons to beat a third isn't sustainable," pointed out Ryan.

  "What do you need them for?" asked Daniel. "Even if you get a level from the experience crystal, combined with the skill point from the skill crystal, that's still only two skill points. What are you planning?"

  "I'm not planning to use them. I'm planning to get a blacksmith to melt them down and plate a cheap dagger with them. I don't know exactly what the crystals are made from, but I do know it's sufficiently mana-conductive to be tangible to ghosts."

  Daniel boggled. So did Ryan, Lee, Felicity and the receptionist. Stacy may well have done, too, but the stoic tank was too well hidden under her armour for me to tell.

  "Can you do that?" asked Daniel, before turning to the receptionist. "Can he do that?"

  "As much as I've been trying to put on airs of an all-knowing receptionist, I must admit that I haven't got the foggiest."

  "I suggest asking a blacksmith for confirmation," I offered, not quite willing to point out that I had [Blacksmithing] at the final stage myself. Alas, my System-gifted knowledge also pointed out that the resulting coating wouldn't hold an edge worth a damn, not to mention that a single strike on a physical opponent would wreck it. The resulting weapon would only be good for ghosts and other ethereal monsters, and would need to be treated like it was forged from glass. The crystals practically were glass.

  "Again, I feel like pointing out that throwing away the winnings of two dungeon runs in order to beat a third is not fiscally responsible behaviour," said Ryan.

  "It's true that without Robin, the dungeon clear rewards would have been somewhat lesser," said Daniel. "Besides, I'm kinda interested to see if there's an alternative version of [Dungeon Sweeper I] available."

  [Dungeon Sweeper I]? From context, a Mark for clearing multiple dungeons? Yay, more bonuses.

  "Fine. I'll agree to it, but the resulting dagger becomes party property, not his," said Ryan.

  "That's fair," I agreed.

  Not that I was too bothered about the money. After all, I'd seen the value of the reward money listed on the orc job. No wonder the higher rank adventurers only felt the need to do a mission once a month or so.

  With the reward, even split six ways, I could afford some nice equipment upgrades. I might even be able to afford an emergency health potion.

  Lee shrugged. "I have no objections."

  Neither did the others, so we found ourselves with yet another small task to carry out before leaving for the Haunted Graveyard.

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