Getting there along the way had some hardships. The first of many was that it was so slow. It was a bunch of low level NPCs and some level 10 guards. Some infighting had to be broken up. One merchant accused the other of taking his belongings. The other furiously denied it. It turns out there was a third merchant that was pulling the strings. A bandit militia attacked as a wheel broke. The guards and my party had to hold them off while the others hurried to fix it. Since I was so high leveled, it was more of a seek and destroy mission. There was a separate bandit toll that we had to clear out. I just knocked them out with my hooves. The leaders of the caravan said they were valuable as bounties if they were taken to the city dungeons. I left that to them. Overall, the merchants were not as despicable with their attitude as the slaver or the knights. They still regarded us with suspicion and a bit of loathing or fear, but they understood money was money. As long as we were working for free and keeping all the bandits and internal disputes at bay, they could tolerate us. I respected that. We lucked out.
Hired guard was a perfect cover as we went passed the city. There were loads of guards and knights at the gates, but they could not single us out in such a large crowd of people. I saw our chance. We quietly slipped away from them and continued onwards to the border. We did not go to the stations with the guards. That would be very dumb. Instead, we went to an area no one was defending and crossed over that way. I had already checked the encyclopedia about Klaka Kingdom. There was slavery, but it was not chattel slavery. You served as a slave for crimes or for not paying your debts. Therefore, you saw a lot more human slaves than in other countries. The most popular opinion on other races was that one should be judged by their character and not their racial traits. It was still a very rigid hierarchy with humans at the top though. Rather than negative discrimination against non humanoids, it was positive discrimination for them. If you were not human, you had to work twice as hard to get half the recognition, but you did not have to be worried about being kidnapped and enslaved.
I was still on my pilgrimage to get to the dungeon. The site was actually not that far from the border. However, the path was not as travelled and it was teeming with large monsters. I looked at my companions and seriously asked if they wanted to continue or go our separate ways. "You are out of Chegow. That means you are free. If you have no intentions of joining the Church of the Sky there is no reason to go inside the dungeon." Ossie looked a bit put out. "My family has always been followers in the Church of the Sun. I don't want to be the odd one out." he admitted. I nodded. "You and Kyoko can leave. You have you're own adventuring to do. Just... you might not want to go back to Chegow anytime soon. At least until they forget about what we did." He went a bit pale. "Yeah... I'll keep that in mind." Ossie and Kyoko left the party and got off my back. As they began walking off. I looked at the centaurs. "We follow you." Korenio said. Xenios nodded. I smiled and the three of us went southeast to get to the entrance of the dungeon. We fought treants, gnolls, goblin raiders, and tribal orcs.
Just as we reached the entrance of the dungeon, the sun set. It cast us in darkness as we looked up at the massive structure. It was if two pyramids touched tips. One of them was upside down, perfectly balanced on the tip of the one at the base. We went inside. There was a hallway with lit torches on either side of us. On the walls were images and hieroglyphs. I did not know what they were saying but we reached a door. On the door, it said "All who enter blindly seeking favor will perish. Only those with wisdom will survive to bathe in the Spring of Aether." That was probably where we had to purify ourselves to join the church. I was ready. The other centaurs looked like they were ready as well. I placed my hand on the door and we had to make our way through the first floor of the dungeon. It was a maze like layout. We had to navigate the space using the walls to give hints about what we should do. It was hard as we were three centaurs. Our bodies were not made for nimble dodges and ducks. That is what caused us to take so much damage on certain traps. Nonetheless we made it to the stairs.
