The planning phase.

The last time, and only time, you've got on an expedition to a dungeon of some sort, it was planned entirely by Nyllia and her crew. This time, it's all on you. It's risky, but if you can pull this off, you'll finally be confident in the abilities of your own party. What Tom said was true as well. If it ends up being too dangerous, you can always cut your losses and flee. Even if you find some kind of valuable treasure, it might be worth a couple day trip. It's better than doing nothing.

It will be your first true adventure made entirely by you.

This is a critical moment. Maybe I am the hero of this story after all, and it's just taken time to get there. I'll travel out with my party of beautiful maidens, slay my first evil overlord, obtain a sacred blade, and then I'll strike down Ganon or something. Does this world even have any big threats against it? Maybe I showed up too late...

You turn down the alley next to the Adventurer's Guild, and Eva unravels a map of the empire on the top of a barrel. Using the piece of paper Tom gave you earlier, you figure out where on the map this dungeon supposedly was found. It seems to be south east, off the road, through the plains and hills, to the middle of nowhere approximately two days away on foot.

"That truly is out of the way," Amara says. "But perhaps if we are not able to do this dungeon, we will obtain experience simply by the threats on the way."

You gulp. "What kind of threats would be out there?"

Niki speaks up. "Slimes, though not so much the red or purple ones. Usually just blue, but you gotta watch out for the king slimes. Goblins. Orcs sometimes. Wild animals. Bandits. It isn't too deep into the mountains, a forest, or underground, so it shouldn't be too much crazier than that, but you still gotta watch out. Sometimes you run into something bigger, like an angry griffin or an ogre."

"If red slimes dissolve people, and purple slimes dissolve fabric, what do blue slimes do?" you ask.

"Mostly just slam their bodies into you. They're really bouncy, but heavier than they look. Pretty low tier monster. Just sometimes they end up fusing together to make one gigantic king slime, and that can be quite a hefty foe."

"So if we leave today, it'll be a whole day of travel, camping out, another whole day of travel, camping again, and then we should reach it early the next day. This is farther than we've gone before. Are you sure you'll all up to it?"

Eva and Amara nod.

"I've gone much farther than that," Niki boasts. "This is nothing."

"Then let's do it," you declare. "Lucky for us, the weather seems to be getting warmer. Let's grab some supplies, though hopefully not so much that we could lose money on this adventure, and then head right out."