Jay was led to Grundel’s hut, and entered this time.
It was about as pathetic as Jay expected. He had a wood bed covered with some long grass and fibres, with the addition of a table which was just made from more sticks.
“Ah, Jay. Lovely. I trust your information gathering went well?” he smiled.
“Oh yes. I know everything I need, and then some. I’m completely prepared to slay the knights tomorrow.” Jay said in an honest voice, lying to his face.
He wanted the elder to think he was successful in order to gauge his reaction.
Even since Jay began to feel suspicious, he also had Red come back closer to the village, scouting the forest and looking for any potential messengers going to warn the knights about his presence.
He could send more of the skeletons to scout the knight territory for him tomorrow after he began his journey, but for now he wanted them with him for his protection - packed up inside his gauntlet as living blueprints.
“Ah, I see… Good.” he nodded innocently with a warm smile.
As far as Jay could tell, Grundel was not surprised, but instead was truly, genuinely glad.
“Perhaps the leader isn’t working with them?” Jay thought.
“Well Jay, I have decided to thank you for deciding to save us, so I have a feast for you so we can talk.”
“Oh?” Jay looked around, confused, but then Grundel pointed to some clay bowls on the table and pushed one towards Jay.
Jay didn’t even realise there was food in them as the wooden hut was quite dark inside and because there was hardly anything in the bowls.
The ‘feast’ was a few morsels of sweet meat with a purple, bitter sauce, and some green crunchy leaves on the side.
Served in a small clay bowl, it was hardly enough to even count as a snack.
Jay simply thought it was an ornament of some sort.
Jay glanced at the leader’s bowl, and it had about half as much food as Jay in it, and didn’t even have any pieces of meat.
It seemed that despite being hardly a snack in Jay’s eyes, these small pieces of meat were dearly and costly to the village elder, and he was eyeing Jay’s bowl with a sense of desperation.
Grundel was clearly dissatisfied with his small bowl of crunchy leaves, but he knew you don’t make friends with salad.
Jay felt sorry for the man who seemed nice enough, so he offered him some pieces from his own plate.
“Oh, ah, no thanks. It was made for you, to honour you sir. It would be an insult if you didn’t accept it.” He quickly refused.
“Well then… how about this?” Jay smiled as he pulled out a piece of cooked meat from behind his back.
It was one of the pieces that Blue cooked.
“Then you will accept my gift too. I’m sorry it’s not seasoned.” Jay added.
Grundel’s eyes bulged as he saw the meat in Jay’s hand.
“Wh-what.. Where did you get that?”
“Same way as everyone else, hunting.” Jay shrugged and laid it on Grundel’s plate.
The meat barely sat on his plate for a second, and Grundel picked it up with both hands and began to furiously devour it as he looked around, making sure no one was trying to spy through the cracks in the wall while he quickly swallowed it.
After swallowing it, he seemed excited,
“.. hunting? Are you… from outside the cliffs?”
“What do you mean?”
“The cliffs. The giant, endless cliffs that surround these lands. Did you come down from them?”
“Uh. I guess you could say that.” Jay shrugged.
Grundel looked teary-eyed, almost like he wanted to cry.
“Is there a way back?!” he asked, his fists now clenched around his table and snapping some of the sticks which made it.
Jay assumed this was a better explanation than saying he entered the dungeon - and Grundel wouldn’t have been able to comprehend that answer anyway, so he went along with it.
“Sure. I came down the cliffs, but there’s no way back… uh, my rope snapped.”
“No…” Grundel looked helplessly at the table, he sat there for a moment in shock.
“...enjoy your dinner.” he frowned.
“What’s the problem, Grundel?” Jay asked, and continued to eat his meal, which was quite an effort since its quality was quite… undesirable.
Grundel sighed.
“We are surrounded by cliffs, all of us. The other villages, the knights… and then there are these cursed roots, coming from the tree the knights protect.”
“We’re trapped inside a crucible with no escape.” He looked directly into Jay’s eyes.
“Say, is anyone going to come looking for you?”
“Ah, no. I am a lone explorer.”
Jay's words seemed to be like the last nail in the coffin of Grundel’s hope.
“I see…” he said weakly, looking at his broken stick table.
Jay somewhat sympathised with the man, as he was technically trapped in this dungeon too.
For now.
Unfortunately, he had not noticed the cliffs yet, as the forest canopy was thick and they were probably quite close to the centre of this crucible.
“Well, do finish your meal. It will honour us.” he frowned with a nod.
After finishing, Jay took the opportunity to ask a few more questions:
How many knights are there? Armour? Magic? Weapons? Battle tactics? The castle - how big, its defences, soldiers?
There were no accurate answers, only guesses - though Jay did find out there were some knights with actual metal armour, while most others wore leather armour of some sort.
Probably not full-body suits of armour since it seemed everyone in this dungeon was poor.
As for weapons, it seemed they had access to metal weapons, most of which were swords.
Nothing mystical, enchanted, engraved or socketed with gems.
The rest of Jay’s questions went unanswered, but he at least knew he was dealing with a stone castle; it was not some impenetrable fortress covered in runes.
As for magic, well, after some more questioning it seemed these dungeon-humans didn’t have access to mana, and the mental block stopped them from thinking about it for longer than a few seconds.
They didn’t even have classes.
After all the questioning and some light conversation it had become dark outside, and Jay was feeling quite tired after being on guard all day.
With his helminth still secretly curled around his shoulders, he thanked Grundel for his hospitality and went back to his stone hut; it was hard to miss since it was the only one with stone walls.
Getting inside it was almost pitch-black, but Jay decided not to bring out his luminous orb in case it freaked out anyone who may see the light.
He placed his comfortable swag over the bed and with a yawn went to sleep, knowing he was guarded by his loyal parasite.
Sometime later in the darkness of the night, he felt his neck being squeezed tightly.
The helminth was trying to wake him up.
Something was wrong.
Jay breathed heavily and saw that his door was open.
He could instantly tell that someone had sneaked into his hut as he saw their silhouette.
They were standing over him; both hands raised in the air, clasping a jagged stone dagger.
