Chapter 175

PUNISHMENT:

Infraction stemmed from Bullying I (Mitigating circumstances : Inside Dungeon, 50% lowered punishment) : 1000 experience lost.

Punishments until Bullying I upgraded to Bullying II : 1/3.

Ajax brought up the notification he had gotten in the middle of taking out the wolves and swearing under his breath.

“Seriously?” he muttered, “Guess I’ll need to be more careful about this in the future.”

He brought up his Retribution to double check some things.

RETRIBUTION :

Repeated and extended fighting and killing against much lower levels has been noticed. THis is strongly discouraged, Punishment : Bullying I applied.

Bullying I : all experience and skill gains from fighting substantially weaker enemies reduced by 20%. (A substantially weaker enemy is considered from your level with a baseline. A creature with less than 90% of your level yet no less than five levels below you is substantially weaker.)

There it was, the discrepancy that had made him all but ignore the retribution since the day he had gotten it. Nowhere on it did it say that he will be punished by losing experience for going against it. Not only that but two thousand experience was a decent chunk, it took him a full delve to get that much towards the end of his time in Lessis.

More than that however he didn’t if the cost of the punishment was contant, was only the first of the three for two thousand experience, was the next one more, or would they only cost more once the Retribution upgraded Bullying? And most important of all, what would happen if he was brought below zero on the experience he had in the current level?

“Useless commoner.” Ruppert hissed as Ben was wrapping his bitten hand after having bandaged the leg. “Couldn’t you have done that before they jumped me?”

Under normal circumstances Ajax would have simply ignored the noble but his attitude had been getting on his nerves the entire time he had been tracking the deer, the punishment and loss of experience is what pushed him over the edge.

“My job here is to make sure you don’t wind up dead, getting injured is part of delving.” He shot back. “Best you learn the dangers of not always being aware of your surroundings with a simple bite, most die learning that lesson.”

“Why you - AGHHH” he started to answer back before Ben tightened the bandages around his arm.

“Leave it be.” Ben said. “You know he is right. Seems we still need to get used to the changes in the dungeon, here monsters are more likely to work together to make sure we die and even act slightly outside of the patterns their species would follow on the outside”

This was the reason they were taken by surprise. A griffin would have always gone for the bodies of one of the dead deer as it was simply a bigger prize that came without a fight. Not only that but the wolves would have simply waited out the fight and cleaned up anything that was left behind instead of trying to take on the victor.

“So, what should we do now?” Ben asked, he was a leader that valued the opinions of his party members.

“I say we keep going.” Annabeth said after storing the two cleanly killed deer in her ring. “Those wounds don’t seem too bad, a light healing spell and we should be able to push on.”

“Our instructions were to turn back if any of us were injured.” Rick countered.

“We should head back.” Ajax said as he pointed to the edge of the clearing. “Or at least I’m not carrying him if we have to later.”

“Oh yeah, definitely heading back.” Lexi confirmed as she looked where Ajax pointed.

The spiky leafed shrubbery Rupert had rolled through once the wolves let go of him wasn’t all that poisonous, for a level twenty-four like them at most it would give them a slight rash for a few hours. But considering the open wounds it would have gotten in, they all knew his arm and leg would swell up to three times their normal size in less than an hour's time and the bleeding would be hard to control after that without a proper healer.

“Yeah, can’t risk it without a proper healer.” Annabeth agreed.

“So we’re going back.” Ben nodded at the decision, there was no need to wait for Rupert to give his opinion considering the way his expression twisted when Annabeth first suggested they keep going with just some minor healing and having him tough it out.

“Which one of you kept track of our location?” Ajax asked as they all turned to him.

“Looking at the mountain.” Rick quickly picked up what he meant, after all Ajax wasn’t here as a real member of the party, him tracking down the deer could already be called too much but all that did was just remove some wasted time they would have spent wandering aimlessly, returning to a pre established safe point was something they needed to all keep in mind. “We need to head that way.”

Rick confidently strode off in that direction with everyone moving behind him. “This is the right way.” Ajax confirmed as he moved in behind them. “But which way did we just come from?”

“Why does that matter?” Rupert snapped.

“All floors beyond the first have a random layout.” Ajax answered. “You won’t know the map beforehand and they get bigger as you delve deeper into the dungeon. You have to keep in mind where the exit is, especially in maze floors.”

Ajax’s words made all of them freeze for a moment as they looked out through the trees having a hard time locating a direction now that the mountain was obscured by the canopy. They quickly started moving again but remained silent as they thought about it.

“If you find yourself in a cave or tunnel system without a way to keep track of your direction then change your approach, don’t randomly choose a path.” Ajax tried to teach them something he remembered from his classes back on earth.

“How would we change the approach?” Lexi asked, eager to make conversation now that Ajax started to open up a bit.

“You pick a side,” Ajax began to explain. “Left or right it doesn’t matter, and then you follow that wall, if there is a crossroads you always take the first on the side you chose.”

“That fails the moment you hit the first dead end.” Rupert shot back, but Ajax also saw the others also nodding along to what he said.

“It doesn’t actually.” he let out a small sigh. “You’re still looking at the passage as a whole.” he paused for a moment as he tried to remember how his computer science teacher explained it to him.

“Imagine that you have to traverse the entire maze by keeping one hand extended and in permanent contact with the wall.” He began. “If you ever hit a dead end you’ll find yourself naturally turning around but now but now the side of the tunnel you are touching has changed, when you come back to the crossroads you’ll take the second road in the direction you chose.”

“And what if there is no exit?” Ben asked clearly interested in the idea.

“If there is no exit you’ll eventually end up back where you started.” Ajax answered.

“This isn’t all that much better than going in a random direction, all you have to do is find one tunnel guarded by something you can’t fight and it falls apart.” Rick said.

“It does fall apart if you are looking for another exit and you run into something like that.” Ajax admitted. “But in a dungeon you should almost always be able to turn back, all you have to do is switch the hand that is keeping contact with the wall and walk forward, you’ll be retracting your steps all the way back to where you started.”

The next few minutes were quiet as all of them tried to visualize the example to try and find a flaw with the logic only for none of them to be able to come up with anything. “It does work.” Lexi exclaimed in her usual happy mood. Their discussion ended there however as they all arrived at the camp healer Ungus had set up to find they weren’t the first team back, they were in fact second to last.

“Looks like even the experienced team slipped up.” Ajax picked up the whisper as they entered the campsite.

“Which of you need medical attention?” healer Ungus quickly approached them.

“Rupert stuffed two wolf bites and the wounds may have been exposed to redpatch leaves.” Ben reported quickly, his military bearing showing again.

As Ajax looked around he saw that Dave’s group was the only one still out there. Both the group led by professor Silvertongue and instructor Gatecrasher had returned and each had a single member patched up and resting on one of the cots healer Ungus had set up.

It took another two hours before Dave’s group returned unharmed, but judging from the blood splattered on Dave and how it had dry and wet patches it was clear he had had to step in more than once, most likely not being so liberal with letting the nobles get hurt as Ajax or the professors were.