The Dungeon Tree

"Wow I can't believe nothing bad actually happened when you said we'll be fine." Felix said, looking over at me with a surprised expression.

I shrugged, "well those flower monsters kinda gave us some trouble. If you can even call it that."

In the distance was the village we had been going for. Hopefully here we could find the rest of my party, or at least some of them. It wouldn't surprise me if we all were broken up into little groups. If the ladder were true, I could only hope that everyone else managed to find a village on their own.

"The village over there seems a little more advanced than the last one." Steven pointed out.

"Well it's next to the ocean so they've got fish for a food source unlike the last village where they could only rely on farming." Felix responded, readjusting his hat.

"I'm surprised we made it here so quickly. I'd have expected it to take a day or two, y'know?" I asked, walking closer to the town with everyone beside me.

"Not really. These islands are pretty small so it takes a week to cross the entire thing. It would be much shorter if the mountains didn't block the middle of the main island." Bea announced.

As we got closer to the entrance of the town, a trident suddenly flew by my head. I slowly turned around and saw the trident stuck in the tree behind me.

"Oh… it's you guys."

I slowly turned my head back around and saw Aoi standing there with the rest of his crew.

Steven immediately drew his weapon and stepped in front of me, "you nearly took his head off."

Aoi shrugged, "you can never be too careful around these parts. All I know is that the sun is going down and four figures I couldn't make out were heading towards the town gate.

"That's… valid." I said.

"Glad you agree with me." Aoi said, pushing past me and Steven and retrieving his trident from the tree.

"So what now?" Felix asked, looking at Aoi.

"Follow me. I'll fill you in on me and my crew's finds."