Very quickly, I was put onto the defensive. I was a Sage, but they have lived in this region all their lives. They were horrified anyone would want to delve in a dungeon full of undead. I could get that. "Where are they now?" she asked. I did not know. "How can you not know!? Were you not using the tower to spy on them!?" Tsukasa demanded. "I was. When they were defeated, we left to get a meal in town. I could search for them, but there is no guarantee that they will stay wherever I find them. If I go out and they leave, I will have to search all over again. Playing cat and mouse with adventurers is not a good use of my time." I said calmly. In my mind, this was nothing more than the game playing out as intended. There was no reason to fret over something like this. That was not good enough for the lord and lady of the castle town. "You'll bring a curse on us!!" she spat. "Use your clan and arrest them! I want them brought before me. Now!" Tsukasa demanded. At that point, all I could do was obey. Kōridoro and Hedoro were told to look for 3 Players and bring them here. It worked.
When Kōridoro and Hedoro had finally brought them in, the 3 brothers were all pretty uncomfortable. Kōridoro was not making it a secret that he was ogling all of them. It was just how he was. He was always looking for a good dick to ride. There was an alpha, beta and omega among them. I could only shake my head at his antics. Hedoro was totally unbothered. None of them were female. I quickly dismissed them. Both of them returned to their normal routes. Tsukasa and Hoshiko were still pissed off. I was still pretty surprised that we needed to have an interrogation. Tsukasa was extremely upset. He chewed them out for doing something so "foolish and dangerous". I simply rolled my eyes. The brothers were totally confused. "Don't you know that you could have spread a curse of undeath to us all!?" Tsukasa yelled at them. They had no clue what to say. One of them looked at me for some assistance. I furiously shook my head at them. There was no way that I was getting involved here. Not only were they chewed out, they were told to leave us and never return to their town. It was an exile.
Indefinite exile was pretty crazy. Nothing in the logs about the dungeon said anything about curses that could spread to NPCs. There were 3 treasures to be claimed. As the main reward for their heroic efforts, there was a chest with 666 gold coins at the deepest room of the dungeon. The boss of the dungeon dropped a dagger that dealt an additional 15 points of necrotic damage. A mini boss on the second floor could be fought if you gave an alternate solution to the puzzle on that floor. If defeated, it had a 50% chance to drop a kite shield that could resist radiant damage. The other 50% of the time, it dropped 999 gold coins. None of the treasures were cursed. I had to look over the logs again. Then I saw it. This dungeon was short. This made it good for intermediate leveled Players. It was not so long that you would be ground down if you were low level. It also had the 5 puzzles to keep the stronger Players from just brute forcing things. Once a dungeon was cleared, it took a week in-game for bosses to respawn. On the fourth level, there was indeed a sacrificial altar to a goddess of death.
Xenobiology could only roughly describe the truly horrid appearance of the abyssal creature that could be prayed to. During the week cooldown, one could use the altar. I read that through her dark "gift", one could unlock the powers of a vampire. That was actually pretty concerning. Not only that, but on the first successful clearing, death knight paladins would start to flock toward the mountains and become hostile mobs during the nighttime. I could understand why they were adamant this not happen. "I just checked the the archives. No curse of undeath will be able to be spread." I said. The adventures looked vindicated. "However, clearing the dungeon will cause evil warriors who want to worship an evil deity to lay in wait in the nighttime so that the altar on the fourth level can be used to convert people into undead vampires." I continued. "See!? That is even worse than the warnings of our ancestors." I shrugged my shoulders. "As a Sage, I must do my duty of giving guidance on how to clear the dungeon. That is not something I can change. We might put warriors on the mountain."
