Risen World

Chapter 178: Taking Jayce's Group on Another Expedition

For a while they all watched as Henry started to set up the main buildings at the center of town. Of course it would take the robots sometime to put the things together, but he was already moving onto the next thing he planned to work on at the moment. He made sure to leave a space in the center of town for the specialty building to be placed after they started up a guild under Joshua, he also set aside some room for a guild hall for members to gather at in the territory for missions and other things that would be handed out.

After a while of watching Henry start to put things together Joshua thought it would be best if they made use of the time that Henry was busy working on the town structure. Even though Joshua, Lilly, and Amy had all come a long way during their time leveling to try to catch up they were still a ways behind the other three and they needed to start closing that gap. Of course this would naturally happened if they explored with them as long as they contributed and the system felt that they weren't being carried along, but Joshua wasn't the type that liked to waste time. That's when an idea came to him and he decided to send a message to someone else while everyone was following Henry over to another location.

It didn't take long for the person that Joshua had told to come over to show up. Jayce and the rest of his group were all looking wide eyed at the large walls that surrounded the town and all of the robots that were walking the perimeter. If Joshua hadn't invited them then the system would have given them a warning that they were walking into someone else's territory. Luckily Joshua remembered to put all of their names into town registry so that they can come inside while the place was still under lock down orders. He also made sure to put anyone else he knew that he might bring to the territory in the future into the listings as well. He'd have to get Laura and Madalyn to tell him the names of anyone he didn't know in particular that they brought along so that the turrets wouldn't try to shoot them down. Of course when the guild is up and running and they have a more stable town he will lighten the restrictions, but until then this was the best way to protect the place from beast that tried to enter the area.

Soon Jayce, Julia, and the rest of the group met up with Joshua and his friends. Jayce was over eager as always as he came running over while waiving at them. "Boss I'm here!" He said with excitement while the rest of his party just shook their heads at his antics.

"Yeah, yeah I'm glad you guys could make it." Joshua said with a sigh. He had told Jayce not to call him boss so many times at this point. It made him feel like some kind of mafia member or something and that wasn't exactly the kind of image he wanted to portray himself as.

"This place is amazing, it's actually the first time I've ever seen a territory being put together." Julia said as she looked over the place. She noticed that Henry seemed to be the one putting things together and walked over to see how everything worked. She had no problem following along with Henry's ideas and even gave suggestions unlike everyone else who just looked at the two of them a little weirdly. When she noticed the weirds looks she fixed her glasses a little bit before speaking. "What? I was studying architecture before all this happened in the first place. I have no problem giving some advice to his designs."

The others nodded in understanding before they started introducing themselves to one another. After the introduction Joshua decided it was time to explain to them why he had them come to meet up in the town in the first place. "Well I asked you guys to come here so that we could get you guys to grind some levels. At the moment Henry is busy setting up the town and I'm sure that's going to take a while knowing the way he likes to handle things." Joshua said getting a nod from the others.

"So I'm guessing you have a place nearby if you called us here instead of somewhere else?" Julia asked after she had finished giving Henry her suggestions on a few things. She would come back and help some more after the lay out for the place was done and they would focus more on individual buildings.

"Yep. Lilly and I have checked out a couple of territories that are locked up between this town's territory and the mountain range behind it and one of them has a dungeon that I figure you guys are ready to train in. The other dungeon might be a bit out of your league for the moment, but it will be the next place you guys train after that. I will warn you that dungeon is fairly long and annoying to deal with." Joshua said getting a small chuckle from Lilly and Tank.

"Yeah on our last expedition it took the two of us forever to clear the place. It was a level fifty dungeon and all, but it was more annoying than challenging if you ask me." Lilly said with a small smile. "The other dungeon we haven't explored ourselves yet, but it is a level forty-five dungeon so it should be around the level for you guys to train at."

"Wait you two do know we're still level thirty-nine right?" Marcus asked a bit weirded out at the way they were talking about a level forty-five dungeon like it was a push over and not worth their time or effort to worry about in the first place.

"Yeah so? We were both level forty when we took on the level fifty dungeon for the first time. I think you guys can handle it." Joshua said with a big grin. "Besides we'll be going with you for the first time around, just don't expect us to help out much. We'll stay out of your party and let you guys do most of the fighting the entire way through. We'll only help out if it becomes necessary at some point. The only way you guys will be able to keep up with us is if you challenge yourselves."

"Alright if that's what the boss says then he must be right. Otherwise how would he have passed us up in levels so quickly?" Jayce said getting slightly unsure nods from the rest of them, but at least they looked a little bit more comfortable with the idea after they thought about it for a bit.

"Well then I'm guessing you plan to go do this now while Henry is working on the town?" Aito asked getting a nod in return. "Then we'll stick with Henry and make sure nothing goes wrong here. It'll probably take more than a day to finish this anyways." Aito said as he dragged Adrian over to where Henry was and away from his horrible attempts at flirting with Monika and Julia. Julia just ignored him for the most part or gave him a harsh glare that told him to shut up while Monika was too embarrassed to respond in the first place.

"Don't worry we won't be gone for too long this time. The dungeon isn't at level fifty so it won't take us more than two days most likely. We'll be back before you know it." Joshua said with a smile before he lead Lilly, Amy, and all of Jayce's group over to the stables. Each of them took out a horse to ride on the back of. It was a bit awkward since they were so huge, but Joshua was surprised that the horses were able to shrink down to the size of a normal horse. He hadn't checked their abilities when Lilly was taming them, but it made sense that a mount type creature would be able to resize themselves to the people that would ride on their backs. He checked to see if the dogs had something similar, but they weren't able to resize like the horses were.

Joshua had to control himself a little bit from laughing when he saw the name that Lilly had given the horse that he had picked out. His was the first stallion they had seen that had won the competition between it and the other stallion over the herd. It simply had the name Bully by its level, but the horse didn't seem to care one bit. It still had a prideful look about it and got a bit agitated when anyone but Joshua or Lilly came near it. It was clear that it had a bit too much pride to allow anyone else ride it and that might be the case for some of the stronger stallions they had tamed. You'd have to prove your worth to them if you wanted them to give you a ride anywhere.

The rest of the group mostly stuck to getting mare's or younger stallions that didn't have as much pride as the stronger ones. It didn't really matter all that much since they'd only be used as mounts to get to the dungeon at a far faster pace than sprinting there themselves. After leaving the stables they took their horses outside of the wall before each of them mounted up. Even though the horses had shrunk down they were still fairly large. That was an even more extreme case in Joshua's case since Bully was a big horse beforehand only shrunk down so much. It was fine for Joshua since he was a pretty big guy himself, but if someone like Lilly or Monika were to try to ride him it would look like a kid sitting on the back of a fully grown horse instead of a pony.

Soon they were off racing towards the forest where all of the domesticated dogs reigned supreme. If they went on foot they'd have trouble getting through the forest without having to handle the dogs along the way. If that were the case then Joshua was certain that Lilly would have ended up taming even more dogs which could have taken half of the day away from them. Luckily the horses were far faster than the dogs and any packs that tried to give chase would give up soon enough since the horses had way too much stamina and would simply outpace them as long as they weren't taken by surprise. With Joshua around to check out their surroundings that would never be the case.

When they reached the clearing where the entrance to the dungeon was set out before them it was like none of the dogs wanted to chase them any further. Any dogs that had been following their scent just stopped at the fringe of the clearing and growled at them to let them know that they were all being watched. Lilly looked like a kicked puppy when Joshua told her to leave them alone. They weren't there to tame more dogs, but were instead there to handle this dungeon and see what it held within. They knew it would have to have something to do with dogs, but based off of the fact that all of the dogs seemed to fear coming anywhere near it there was a pretty good chance that something was going on inside that frightened them to some extent. Joshua didn't know what but it would be interesting to figure out.

Joshua hopped off his horse while the others followed suit. There was a mixture of different looks as they all silently watched the entrance to the dungeon with the two statues of dogs sitting out front. Some were excited such as Amy and Jayce who could hardly hide their grins while others were a bit more jumpy like Monika who was worrying about every little thing.

"Alright guys from this point on this is your dungeon run. Amy, Lilly, and I will only help when needed and follow along the rest of the time. The only other time we'll interfere is if Lilly sees a beast that she wants to tame, but if that happens it will probably be too much of a hassle for you guys to try take on alone anyways. Now let's get going." Joshua said as he waived for them to lead the way.

Everyone seemed to look at each other before turning to look at Joshua. "Alright boss!" They all said with excitement. Joshua knew that Jayce was being genuine with his statement, but the rest were just doing it to annoy him.