The Extra of The Lunerra

I had a dream. It was different from normal dreams, much simpler, but... very important.

I was back in the dark place I had seen in the first days of the dungeon. The snow-white orb was directly in front of me this time, with barely scribbled words spinning on it. Mana Ascension was active, but there was no backlash even so. And again, even though I didn't know what language they belonged to, I could read the strange letters projected on the orb.

Find the cave, it said this time. Nothing more, nothing less.

Although it was simply writing, without any emotion... I felt a sense of surprise at the text that was automatically translated into my mind, as if... it had not expected me to survive.

Another thing was... that it had a much paler image than before. As if it was difficult for it to even enter my dream.

But that was it, it was a really short dream. Because... it didn't take me long to wake up.

"-rian."

My eyes opened slowly, and the lush green sky greeted me. And then...

"Wake up, come on."

The blurred silhouette of a girl with blonde hair and blood-red eyes appeared in front of me.

"Ah, is it morning already...?"

I didn't focus on her face as I thought about the dream. I simply sat up and stretched.

The first thing I did was to put the dream on the back burner and look toward where the wolves had stood in the night. And... of course, they were no longer there. Lucia answered me at that very moment.

"Yes, two minutes ago. We should start moving forward again."

I paused for a moment before answering, thinking about the dream again, replaying in my mind not only the one this time but also the previous one.

There is an entity communicating with me. It is most likely... imprisoned or something, because it is obviously in pain.

But this is not a normal being. It's an unnecessarily powerful being. That orb I saw, the writing, the feeling it gives... it's far superior to me in everything. But it still needs my help, I think.

The disk sent me to a dungeon where I could find a way to heal Aiden. And with Aiden's condition... the dungeon is obviously not normal. So... I can't simply brush it aside.

Should I continue to trust what I've seen, or should I trust my own judgment...

"I see..."

I stood up, still thinking and trying to shake off the tiredness of having just woken up from sleep.

Sue was already awake, looking in our direction. Lucia had been awake for a long time as she was the last one on watch.

I sighed lightly, this time turning my eyes toward the mountains, which really did look like normal mountains. But the wolves' reaction last night, the dream I had... made it impossible to see these mountains as normal.

Finally, I let out a deep sigh.

All right, then. At least I have a goal now, rather than nothing I can do. I'll keep going toward the mountains, I'll enter a cave... Okay, I can do that. After that... I have no choice but to think about it when the time comes.

"Give me a minute or two to recover. Then we'll continue."

Lucia nodded in agreement, moving to Sue's side. They just waited while I stretched to sober up.

*******

It didn't take us long to get moving. Shortly after waking up, we started heading towards the mountains, albeit a little hesitantly.

We would walk for five hours and then spend the remaining two hours looking for a place to spend the night. If we found such a place in advance, we would settle in directly, of course. But for now, that was not important.

The important thing was... that we had actually left the plain. And with that, our surroundings were changing.

At the very beginning, the ground started to slope. We were ascending higher and higher as if to let us know that we were climbing a 'mountain'. The ground was hardening, the air was getting colder, the winds were getting stronger. But we still hadn't encountered a creature yet, and we had nothing to complain about, of course...

So, we kept going, and when I looked back after about three hours of walking... I had most of the plain in front of me, if not all of it.

It was beautiful. The view of the plain from above was really beautiful. But we didn't have time to dwell on it, to be absorbed in it, so... we kept walking. But the silence that had lasted throughout our walk disappeared toward the beginning of the fourth hour.

"Adrian, Lucia..."

Sue's voice brought our group to a quick pause. Lucia and I both turned to her curiously. Sue... was looking to our right. Soon, she raised her hand and pointed to a spot.

"There's something over there, it looks like a cave entrance."

The word 'cave' immediately caught my attention, then the dream I had just a few hours before... I quickly turned to the spot she was pointing to.

Sue was right. Even though she could barely make it out, when I looked using my mana, there was indeed a cave entrance where she pointed. It was not rocky. It led into the earth at a point where the slope suddenly increased.

Is this... the cave mentioned in my dream? I didn't expect to find one so fast... What if it's not?

I slowly turned to Lucia and she looked at me the same way. Then, I remembered that, dream aside, there were other things we had to watch out for.

Wolves were not coming to the mountains. Their behavior last night had made that quite clear. This meant that not only did we no longer have to deal with them, but also that we were now unprotected at night. That's why it was important to find a place to hide.

But there could also be creatures inside the cave.

"Come behind me, let's check."

Lucia and Sue nodded and quickly moved behind me. Although Sue didn't have any weapon with her, Lucia had her sword ready, preferring to stay alert.

We moved in silence, ready for anything. But nothing happened until we reached the front of the cave, and likewise when we arrived.

With my spear and all my senses ready, I walked along the edge toward the entrance, looking inside the cave.

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Thanks to the light from outside, you could see most of the entrance. It was a big cave. There were almost four meters between the ceiling and the floor, wide enough for us to easily walk side by side and even escape in case of an emergency. No creatures were visible, but that was not all the cave was... It stretched forward, with a slight slope downward, which the light outside was not enough to illuminate.

I poured mana into my eyes and checked again and again, and when I was finally sure that there really were no creatures, at least as far as we could see, I let out a sigh.

"Looks like it's clear inside for now."

The two of them came up to me and looked into the darkness of the cave with me. Sue was the first to speak.

"This place... seems to be going pretty far."

Lucia nodded.

"It's not very noticeable, but our voices echo, and there's air flowing forward. The entrance to the cave is wide, too. It probably goes quite deep."

After she said this, instead of going into the darkness like Sue and me, she took a few steps back and looked toward the mountain.

She didn't say anything, while I... thought.

I have to tell them about the dream. I wasn't sure about anything until now, and I kept it to myself so as not to make them more nervous, but... we can't keep anything from each other at this point. Especially in such an important matter.

"Lucia, Sue. Listen carefully, I have something important to tell you."

The two suddenly turned toward me. Their eyebrows were slightly raised, clearly curious.

I took a deep breath, fixed my eyes on the ground, and then quickly summarized my previous dream and this morning's.

It didn't take me long to finish telling them everything. In the end, however, Lucia simply sighed, although Sue didn't say anything.

"It makes a lot of difference. If your dreams are real..."

She turned back to the cave, her eyes squinting slightly.

"We should go deeper instead of using this place as a shelter."

She paused for a moment, her eyes shifting back to the mountains. She stared at them for a while, then sighed lightly.

"Since this is the only clue we have, I don't think there's anything else we can do. Besides... it's too dangerous to go out at night. But going deeper into a cave?"

This time, Sue spoke quickly.

"Ah... It will be safer inside the cave as the creatures that can't come out during the day come out at night."

Lucia nodded in agreement. She looked first at the cave and then at her watch.

"There seems to be plenty of hiding places in the cave. If not, we can try and make a hole ourselves, there are still two hours to go."

Finally, we decided to do as she said. We went a little further into the cave, but we didn't go too deep, and as we did so... I simply kept thinking, but this time not about the dream. Instead... it was about Lucia and Sue.

Not once did they question the 'dream' I had told them. They believed me straight away, they didn't even think I could lie. Maybe they thought I didn't need to lie to them in the situation we were in, maybe they had other reasons... I don't know.

But one thing I know is... that they trust me. Because they have to, because they are my friends, because I am their only hope... It doesn't matter why.

But I... I really don't want to break that trust.