Preparing for the Dungeon Dive

Jonah and the twins had to clear their bags out into the areas of their rooms to make room for stuff on the trip, leaving only a single set of spare clothes in said bags. After checking what gear they had at their disposal, which wasn’t much, the three headed for the main room. It had been a little over a week, and the three of them still couldn’t believe the changes they had been through. The main space of the complex, where they usually saw the two dinosaur ladies that were basically housing them while one of said dino women did whatever research she used the area for did her study sessions, was surprisingly empty when the three got there. This was an opportune time for some actual private conversation with each other after the twins had both learned that Jonah was being spied on by said dino women for various reasons. Thankfully, the newest arrival, Ariana, seemed to still be getting ready as well.

“I’m not sure what’s harder to fully grasp,” said Jonah as the three tossed their bags near the door, “the fact the three of us got figures that you expect to see in a porn shoot,” the twins giggled in unison at this, they wouldn’t have found something so amusing the year prior, “or the fact that we are basically in a fantasy setting where anthro dino women and literal genies exist; at this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out dragons, griffins, and unicorns are a thing here. And with the way things are looking, the dragon we do finally meet at some point will have an erotic figure that puts the dino girls to shame.”

“Let’s not forget none of us is technically human, in this world,” said Marsha, “the two of us are half dream spirit, somehow…” she paused for a few awkward seconds, “and you’re a human-like race that can literally impregnate any other race at individual discretions, in addition to making the offspring have traits you willingly instill as part of their hereditary aspects. Honestly, I’m more surprised the two of us were so horny for you until we fucked you.”

“Best instinctual decision of our lives,” said Trisha, “or at least I think so. Marsha’s legs becoming more defined and ass suddenly becoming more gropeable was a bit of surprise,” she took a quick look down at her bust, “and my breasts bumping up a few cup sizes was also a pleasant surprise.”

“The two of you were technically identical twins before all this,” said Jonah with slight amusement, “but coming here shifted the two of you to fraternal twins. Personally, I think it’s a bit of an improvement on your parts; the two of you did seem to complain about being mistaken for each other in social gatherings that you were both **** to be part of, at least the ones I observed.”

“Fair,” said Marsha, “and I agree that it is nicer having more visual signifiers that the two of us are different people; I just wish it didn’t come at the cost of crazy hair colors. While I enjoy having green hair, and Trisha really knows how to rock the blue hair, it still feels like we finally managed to dye our hair.”

“At least until we both found out we were naturally growing those colors,” said Trisha, “fantasy tropes can be weird sometimes, but I think they’re working well in our favor. Even if we are basically in a porno setting.”

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Ulnarka was still looking over her equipment, it wasn’t much, but it should be enough for most typical threats. The currently naked sauropod woman took a good look at her armor; she barely knew a bit more than what was needed to assess magically enhanced armor and sighed rather long in mild annoyance; her armor’s enchantments were at the point where it was heavily advised it be turned over to someone knowledgable in the ways of magic to renew and fortify the enchantments.

One of the reasons Ulnarka was working with Molsalkisa was the fact the ceratopsian woman was a highly capable mage. To be honest, Ulnarka hadn’t had any real ambition. Sauropods and ceratopsians were both social saurians, but she and Molsalkisa were oddballs within their culture because they felt a need to develop independently of their own societies. But the two paradoxically also looked for social dynamics among those outside of their own cultures; it took the two meeting each other to come to this realization.

After one last check over her bag, Ulnarka headed for where the group arranged to meet up; she saw Jonah and the twins in some kind of conversation. Their interaction was cut short the moment one of them seemed to notice her approach. Ulnarka smirked to herself; this was going to be fun, she had done some basic dungeon dives during her training days, but those had been with assigned squadmates she really didn’t feel a connection with; this was going to be with a party of assorted races she felt far more comfortable operating within.

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Molsalkisa looked over her book bag; it was half-filled with scrolls, pens, and parchment; the bag was starting to wear out, and she had really wanted to get a magical bag that could hold more items but just didn’t have the resources to purchase one, maybe she would get lucky and find a magical storage item. After closing her bag and picking it up, Molsalkisa reached out with her magic and called her spellbook to her. The ornate arcane tome manifested near her head a moment later, and she could hear the voice of her younger and more curious self babbling excitedly in her mind. Molsakisa had somehow managed to find a way to awaken her spellbook, but it came at the cost of imprinting a copy of her own personality at the time onto the book itself. As you can imagine, the book didn’t make for much of a conversationalist at the time, and even now, but she was thankful that no one else seemed to be able to hear her book; she would probably felt like she was dying of embarrassment if that had happened.

Molsalkisa made a check of her spells archived in the book real quick, noting which ones she most likely needed to prepare for use on the trip; she also went and grabbed her spell component pouch and affixed it to her hip, her usual attire would likely be more than needed, it had plenty of enchantments woven into it that could protect her. She turned her earthy green eyes to the door for a moment before making her way out. As she neared the meeting point, Molsalkisa noticed the newest arrival to the area was missing.

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Ariana had spent the past forty minutes clearing out the magical space in her lantern that could act as an effective resting spot within the lantern itself, but it also was able to act as additional impromptu storage for items. Most of what Ariana had in there needed to be cleared out; there was no telling what sort of loot an unknown dungeon could yield; it was best to save space for the really big stuff on the off chance more space was needed for carrying the item in question.

Ariana had only arrived here two days prior, and she was already seeing what her patron/sire was talking about. Also, she needed to keep a closer on this male; he seemed to not be the product of a spell to produce the result of having a male, or something male adjacent; those sorts of things had an effective duration of a small handful of hours, at most but usually only lasted a few minutes. The way she saw others interacting with him indicated he was not the byproduct of magical means, in any of the ways she was aware of.

Ariana rather enjoyed his appearance; something about him was just so appealing to her, and the thought of seeing, and possibly experiencing, his junk did flicker through her head at random and obscure intervals and cause her to feel pulses of excitement the likes of which she had never even heard of before for a few moments during her clearing marathon. After the lantern’s magical pocket was properly cleared, and she was holding her component pouch again, Ariana secured the lantern and her pouch to her sides, the lantern on her right and pouch on her left; she did a quick comfort check of her attire and headed out of the room she had been provided.

Ariana moved down the hallway and met up with the rest of the people that were occupying the ruin; they all seemed to be a collection of eclectic oddballs, but she could be defined as that as well. They were all near the door with their bags by their feet. Ariana was actually a little excited; she had heard about dungeon dives but had never experienced any before this time. Everyone seemed to be excited by the prospects of what they could find.

As Ariana made her way to the rest of the party, they all picked up their bags and slung them over their shoulders. As she made her way over, Ariana heard Ulnarka say, “I recently found signs of this dungeon with Jonah and the twins; for those here who didn’t hear or weren’t fully listening,” Ariana and Molly noticed Molsalkisa looking a little embarrassed as Ulnarka continued, “I hope you all have properly packed for the occasion,” she turned her attention to Molsalkisa for a moment, “I hope your teleportation circle for this area is all prepared in case we need to make emergency exit for whatever reason.”

“I spent the majority of yesterday making the preparations and making sure no errors were in the work,” said Molsalkisa, “I’ve spent the time leading up to the meeting for the day choosing which other spells to prepare for the dungeon dive.”

“I’ll be leading the way, and playing the part of shield for the rest of the group when combat makes itself unavoidable,” continued Ulnark, “once we get the temple that acts as the entryway to the dungeon, we’ll stop for a few minutes for everyone to catch their breath and do some last minute checks. Then it’s off to the exploration.”

“After we’ve gone set ways through the dungeon,” said Molsalkisa, “I’ll be sending a formal report to the overseer for the archipelago, as is part of the arrangement I have made with them. Maybe the rest of you will meet Marina, but that will have to wait.”

Everyone secured their bags on their personage and headed out for the temple. Everyone was dressed in swimwear, Jonah and the twins in the attire they arrived in, Ulnarka in an erotic swimsuit that was made up of bikini bottoms and pasties made of similar material to the bikini bottom with metal panties and pasties atop the swimwear, Ariana in the swimsuit she arrived in.

The Primaria Archipelago had some things about it that were lost to history or just stayed mysteries throughout the records of the peoples of Erotolsia; one of the biggest mysteries was dungeons and how they seemed to operate on their own sort of strange logic at times, unexplored sites with various treasures that were in the stylings of who knows what is always something that can confuse people. And as far as everyone could tell, no records of this new dungeon that had been discovered were available.

It took a few minutes of hiking, and maybe half the party was feeling a little more exhausted than they should have, but they arrived at the temple. While the party was stopped to rest and catch its breath, Ulnarka explained to everyone how the entrance to the dungeon was discovered and how to open said entrance. Ariana tapped her lantern with a bit of excitement; she would finally be able to exercise her magical abilities more extensively than before this point.