With the information about dungeon updates confirmed by the guides, Hera stepped back out feeling more confident about being here. It would be very hard to finish this dungeon if the lingering thought of other civilizations being around was still hovering over her. Not that that wasn't a possibility. It still could be the case and she knew that, but it was less probable.
As for Eli, he responded right away when she stepped out of her own tent with a large smile and a backpack full of supplies.
"Hera, have you finished your preparations?" the orc asked.
"I did. You said you were going to share with me what you have already discovered."
Eli nodded, "Yes, of course." He quickly pulled out a scroll and used some magic to keep it floating in front of him as he unraveled it to reveal a large map of the area. There was a sizeable chunk of this map that was crossed out with some black lines that pretty much made it obvious he had already searched the area.
"Now, this is not the original version, of course. I wouldn't be doing this with the original," he gestured to the scroll. "But these are the areas that I have already looked and searched thoroughly. In addition to areas that must be removed from the search due to some of the information that was present in a diary that I'll show you in a moment."
The areas that were crossed out included all the mountains, and most of the surrounding region was gone. There was only a path forward heading towards the east that had still to be explored.
"I finished these and these areas," he pointed at blocks of jungle on the map. "And according to this journal, which was recovered from a shipwreck from the last explorer who found Au Dorado, it's near mountains but not at their foot. It would take around a day to reach any of the mountains in the surrounding area. That's why I removed these parts of the map."
He pointed to the places with the mountains. "According to this journal, the city is close to a river. And the streams that lead to the river go through the city. Which means that we must look in places that are either close to a river or have been close to a river in the past."
He pointed to one of the plains in an area that was present on the map. "This has no rivers whatsoever. I did some extensive searching there and even used a few spells of my own creation to make sure I could detect the existence of ancient water. But there was none. The area is dry in comparison to everything else. Here, however," he pointed at another very similar location that was also crossed out. "I could find ancient rivers, but I already made my exploration of the place. There's nothing there."
The Empress was somewhat surprised by the response. Sure, this was a dungeon, and it was likely designed for the dungeon to guide people in the right direction, but she wasn't expecting such thorough exploration of the other areas. Not like this, at least.
"Okay, this is kind of awesome. And are you sure that this region is completely void of any lakes or rivers? We don't know how long ago it's been since the city was built, right?"
Eli nodded. "Right. We have reports that go back 500, 700, and 1,000 years. But we don't know when exactly the city was created. This is the most recent information we have about Au Dorado, going back 488 years. But I am positive that within that time frame, there were no rivers that existed in this region."
The Empress nodded. It was better to trust the orc. After all, this was the first time she ever tried to find an ancient city. Sure, she did locate the Naga and was working towards finding other places, but she never did something like what Eli was doing.
"Got it," the Empress replied. "And tell me, do you know what the levels of the creatures in the region are?"
The Empress knew that some dungeons treated levels in a different way. For instance, the last time she went to another dungeon with orcs, they talked about various realms of power. But a good amount of dungeons treated levels as levels.
Eli nodded. "Yes. I've seen creatures going from level 45 to 50 nearby. Some of them could reach 51 or 52, but for the most part, that's it."
Hera turned towards her court before asking, "And what about birds and other flying creatures? Are they dangerous here?"
Eli paused for a moment. "As in any other jungle, they exist, yes, but they're not large birds. Well, some of them are, but not gigantic ones that would think of us as prey. Why do you ask?"
She smiled and turned to Nimbus, who already understood the plan. The Sentinel changed to his griffon form, and Hera quickly climbed up.
"I figure we might start with an aerial view and go from there."
The orc's eyes went wide in excitement. "This is going to speed up this process quite a lot. I might have missed something too. Thank you!"
Eli climbed onto Nimbus behind Hera. Thankfully, the Sentinel could carry two people without a problem, but the Empress also made a point to ask, "Do you have any way of slowing down a fall?"
"Of course. That's a fundamental spell in a traveler's repertoire. You would never want to be caught with your pants down when you're falling from a high place, would you?"
Hera nodded, but she didn't mention that it took her a long time to learn a spell like that. Still, she added, "Good. If we are attacked by a large creature, we might need to use that spell to drop down and leave Nimbus here fighting in the air."
"Understood," he said with a smile. "Now, do you have a plan for how we approach this?"
Hera turned back and said, "Well, you were the expert. I was thinking about following your lead."
"My idea was to be methodical, go around every area, fly down and check if things are what they seem. But since you are more versed in traveling through the sky, I imagine you might have a different suggestion."
That was roughly what the Empress wanted to do as well. But before Hera could reply, Hoop spoke up with a suggestion. 'What if you just do a quick lap around the area, then we mark everything that seems somehow interesting, and then we can check the other places that Eli was saying he wasn't sure he looked into properly?'
The Empress stopped to think for a moment, considering how she spent the last couple of days. She had been very thorough in her own exploration. Yet, Hoop's idea had some value to it. It would reduce the amount of time she was going to spend looking at random things. And in hindsight, if she had actually focused on big things first, it would be faster to locate those points of interest before methodically combing through the entire area.
Once she decided to go with the Cyr Wheel's idea, she told the orc about that suggestion.
Eli nodded, giving that strange smile one more time, "That sounds like a wonderful idea. It will be much easier, and if things don't work out, we can fall back on the original exploration of this dungeon."
With that, they started moving, going towards the massive mountain on the horizon with the waterfall. They would stop much sooner than the mountain itself, since Eli had already crossed that area out. Hera wasn't sure if this meant that the dungeon had invisible walls.
Although she couldn't remember the last time she saw a dungeon with that kind of limitation. But she was positive that if she tried to go beyond that, Eli would have problems with her and things could escalate. But maybe she could try flying off into the distance to see how far this dungeon would go for.
One thing the Empress took note of was how big this dungeon was. It had been a while since she started to realize that the higher level the room was, the bigger the dungeons would be. The first dungeon she entered, The Archmage's Tower. As a matter of fact, it was just a few studies and a library, not even a full building. And now she was in this place that, according to the map, it was several hundred kilometers wide.
Still, she focused on the task at hand. They moved quickly through the sky with a few birds trying to approach, but a quick Poison Fang was all that it required for them to fly away. They were wounded by it and could recover if they had enough time to do so.
Eli didn't say anything about Hera's way of getting rid of those creatures. He even seemed to watch one of her spells fly with a strange curiosity, but he didn't say anything, and Hera decided not to ask. Maybe it was just the fact that she was a half-snake flying in the air. But since the man didn't say anything, Hera wasn't going to either.
She couldn't feel any hostility coming from him, and while it was possible for dungeons to throw curveballs where someone would betray them, that sort of thing was more common in hard mode, not the regular mode of the dungeon. She truly didn't believe that this orc was going to try to do anything to harm her. Not until they found the city, at the very least.
While flying through the air, they noted down every single anomaly that they encountered. Places with fewer trees for no good reason, areas that were strangely empty, caves that could pose an entrance to the hidden city. Anything and everything that could even give them a small chance to find Au Dorado was noted down on both their maps.
Despite moving faster thanks to Mock's idea, they were still being much slower than they could be, as Nimbus was nowhere near his top speed. Just finishing this first look around took most of the day.
And next came the decision part. Were they going to start looking over those points of interest, or would they return to check the places that Eli had already checked but needed to have some confirmation?
After a very brief conversation that pretty much ended with Hera making the final decision, they decided to first clear off anything that they left behind. She was sure that if the dungeon was being tricky, then the real entrance was going to be in one of those locations, if not in one of the places that they had found today.
Eli agreed, but Hera was almost sure that he would agree with whatever she said. The group went back to some of the areas that he had already searched. It didn't take very long for them to finish that. The places Eli had already searched through and considered suspicious from the sky were nothing special. Just natural formations that looked odd from the bottom.
Eventually, night came, and Eli suggested for them to return to camp. The Empress agreed with that, but since the moon was high in the sky, she also did something else. She asked Nimbus to go around the area just to make sure that the moonlight wasn't going to reveal anything.
After all, that was the type of thing that would happen very often in movies. Some ancient city or another was hidden by the moonlight, or the moonlight would cause a specific interaction with a glowing structure that would make it more evident.
To do that, she used [Royal Quest] to let herself stay behind together with Eli back at camp. The Empress didn't even need to worry about food, as the orc had more than enough for both of them.
They ate and shared some stories, Eli talking more and more about Au Dorado and all the various legends surrounding it. From types of treasures that one might find there to the tales about monsters that could be roaming the area. One of the stories even was similar to what Mock had suggested, talking about how Au Dorado was the city of golden dogs that protected the region.
Eli grew tired and said it was time to sleep. Hera wasn't exactly exhausted, but she figured it was better to follow the orc's schedule. Still, she made sure to keep four members of her court up to watch out for any monsters or anything that could come to harm her. The chosen ones were Crimson, Viper, Crescendo, and Oberon.
Hera went to bed, but a few hours later she was woken up by those who were keeping watch. Crimson was by her bed inside the tent, quietly shaking her awake. She was being extra careful even though they were inside the soundproof bubble that they always created when she was going to bed.
'Hera? You need to come see this.' the Spymaster said in their mind.
The Empress was a bit groggy and frowned at the Crimson, but her voice and the intention behind it quickly made the Ophidianite jolt up. There was a real sense of worry in the titled blade's voice, and that wasn't something that would happen very often. Crimson was making a point of moving very slowly, so Hera followed. They quickly stepped outside of the tent, and the Spymaster just pointed to the left in the direction of the entrance to the dungeon itself.
From between the trees, the same ones that they had passed by earlier, another specter just like the ones that Hera was seeing back in the ruined village appeared. More than that, Hera could see Viper by the edge of their tent holding one of the roots that they got. The ones that could protect them from the specters. Hera had acquired a few extra pieces before leaving the guardhouse, and Viper was now trying to grind them into powder to make a line around the camp.
Beyond that was Eli's tent, and the specter seemed to move through it unbothered by its existence. Almost as if they couldn't even recognize the tent as something that was there.
Seeing that scene, Hera couldn't help but gasp "What the hell is going on?"
#### Author's Note ####
I'll ask you the same thing. What do you think is going on?