"I can't either."
"Neither can I."
"If Faith is staying here, so am I."
"Mmm… Meto."
I looked at the five girls who had opposed my decision and sighed. I did originally plan to split the group up anyway, so I guess this is okay as well. "Okay, you five can stay then. The rest of you will go with Iena. Iena, test the theory out by doing thirty minute intervals. It might take a while, but I will wait outside for you if I do not see you if I leave the dungeon. And…. if you run into an issue or find my father, send me a message through our contract."
"Don't worry, Master, I will keep everyone safe. You should stay safe as well." Iena's expression showed a bit of worry.
"I will stay safe," I replied before turning to the others. "You all should stay safe as well. If something happens, just stick together and leave the dungeon as quickly as you can."
After giving a few more instructions, the others left the dungeon while Adel and the others stood there waiting for me to make my next move.
"Let's backtrack over every place we have already searched just so we can be sure we did not miss anything." After everyone agreed, we headed back off, searching every house until we reached the area we had yet to investigate yet.
"Ummm?" Adel looked around in confusion. It was not just her but me and everyone else as well. The reason for this confusion was the fact that we were staring at the pile of wood we had set up. We had walked no more than maybe ten feet from the last house we investigated to find ourselves back at the start of the dungeon.
"How is this possible!? We didn't even walk far enough to get lost!" Sei yelled out. She was not panicking but more in such a confused state that her brain seemed to be hurting. She stood there holding her head with her mouth open, staring at the pile of wood in shock.
"For now, let's leave one thing here in case this is some kind of copy. We can't be too careful. We need to figure out how this dungeon truly works." I say this, but I was starting to get worried. This dungeon seemed too strange. Like it was not a dungeon at all but more of a maze…..
I froze in place when this idea came to mind. "I think I might know why my father was searching for something."
"What do you mean?" Sally asked.
"Well. Let's say this place is not a normal dungeon but more like a huge maze with many starting points. If that were the case, then we would be all starting from different areas, and we just happened to reach the starting point my father got when he first entered the dungeon. Some have monsters in them, like the house I checked when I first entered the dungeon before you all arrived had a wraith. So that was just one of the starting points. In order to progress deeper into the dungeon, we will probably need to find out how to pass through the maze.
"And to do this, I think my father had already figured out that we need to find a certain item of some kind, so we need to do a deeper investigation on what that certain item is or if it is an item at all."
"Faith?" I heard my name called, causing me to turn around to see Iena standing there. "How many times have you entered?"
"It's been a day…. And we have come in and out many times but only ended up here."Iena replied, causing me to frown.
"It's been a day?" I sighed as I realized that there seemed to be some kind of time difference between outside and inside.
"Yes, it has already been a day, and we keep ending up here," Iena replied.
"Alright, then you can stay here with me. We will need to work together because we found something else out." I said and then explained what we had figured out.
"I see... I guess a maze is not a bad way to phrase it. That would explain why you ended back at the start as if the dungeon was saying you went the wrong way or made the wrong choice. So what do you plan to do?" Iena asked.
"We will keep the same groups. But this time, one team will go left, and the other will go right. I already know straightforward does not work. We will enter the village and check what happens if we go off track. If you find anything or get reset, meet at the dungeon entrance, and we will go over our findings." This was the only way to really figure this place out. If we can pool our findings together, we may just find more clues. But now that I think about it, what if the clue my father found was the same? But depicted someone else besides himself? I guess I won't know until we find another clue like that.
"Alright, we will take the left side of the village." With things decided, we split up once more.
My group took the right side of the village. We still rechecked the houses here, but there was nothing new. We then made our way between the houses and began checking the backyards and the other surrounding areas. But what we found were more graves and a very eerie feeling. When we reached the backyard of the house that was the furthest on the right, we came upon a large wheat field. "This is?"
"Should we enter it?" Grace asked. As she went to reach out and touch a stalk of wheat, but as her finger touched it, it was like some kind of barrier was blocking her and a liquidy ripple spread out from where she touched the barrier.
"It seems we found something…. We should return and see if anyone else has found anything as well."
