Egbert was practically seething as he stared at the “Puppy”; dark motes of magic swirled around him as arcane symbols solidified in the air around him. The fuzzy little bastard had accepted the fish people's patron request. How can you even do that? Why would you do that? What are you!?

  Edith stood almost frozen in sheer shock, her fishbone staff raised high. Hank as well had pulled up short, looking back towards her as the eldritch bullshit didn’t fizzle out but instead finished in a grand crescendo, the waters pulsing with purple and yellow light briefly. Every bead of water in the air turned into a dark green haze that filled the room.

  “You crazy old catfish of a wench! You did it; you really did it!” Hank shouted while standing on his hog mount.

  Edith looked at her hands in a stupor. “The family magic is back...we can level again. Our new patron is but a shadow compared to the deep one, whatever it is, but with time and worship…”

  “The deep pond folk! Rose again…but now we might need a new name...Also guys, there are a lot ohhh mean looking shrooms coming this way…” Jeb shouted triumphantly.

  The “puppy” noticeably ducked out of view down behind some houses; Egbert was pretty sure he was the only one who actually saw what had accepted the Patronage. The yokels rushed out of the underground river and into the house nearest the water. Luckily for them, it was one of the ones with a chest.

  Hank and Edith stood at the front door, a noticeable buzz of new energy about them. “Aight, grandkids, you search for that treasure, and you let your memaw and I show you why folks still remember us in our heyday. We sure ain’t where we used to be, but I feel more of the dark goodness flowing through my veins than I have in a coon’s age!”

  Hank blocked the doorway with his mount, and his ecstatic face fell slightly as he saw tides of Ravagers clambering over each other towards the doorway. Yeah...i gotta figure out a better way to cull them sorry man. Hank thrust a hand forward, and the river answered his summons, rising in a pillar before crashing down in a localized wave and scattering the first knee-high wall of mushrooms.

  The knights finally burst into the village at this point, all of them except Carter looking singed and slightly smokey. Egbert wasn’t sure how they got past the pit, but apparently it didn’t include turning the fireball trap off. Joe stared at the literal waist-high wall of Reaver’s little stubby mushroomy bodies piled over the top of each other. They were assaulting the history buff's home; the yokels were in like a zombie horde.

  “Hollllyyy shit.” Joe said in disbelief.

  Reese took quick stock of the situation and pointed to the house farthest from the swarm. “Go! Get in a damn house! That's got to be where the treasure is!” The knights took off again towards the house; more than a few of the ever-growing fungal tide tottered into their path.

  Joe cleared the way like he had been born for it, a spectral shield snapping into place in front of his real one as wide as two men and covered in spikes. He ducked low to make sure the grabby little monsters didn’t get under it and proceeded to prove why fights have weight classes. Inumerable acid-dripping forms were impaled upon his shield as they thundered to the front door. He let everyone pile in before dismissing the shield with a wave, sending a half dozen partially mangled ravagers rolling across the street.

  Remorse aggressively shuffled towards the house, recognizing Reese among the knights and very much so wanting to settle an old score. Reese posted up by the front porch with Joe as the other two ran into the house. He looked at the shuffling butcher's stall inching its way through the carpet of mushrooms and cursed.

  “Oh, fuck off! I only beat you up once! ONCE!” Reese shouted while booting a pair of Reavers off the porch and then BBQing a small cluster with a jet of fire from his sword. Remorse didn’t seem convinced, if anything, changing from small shuffling steps to bizarre, disturbing hops.

  Hoo boy, watching a butcher's stall hop angrily down a street with one eyeball and a poorly hidden tongue is not something I had on today's bingo card, but I really should have. So who's going to be the clever group that goes and buys both of the available keys? Don’t worry, they are on “Special” today—only five gold!

  “What in the actual fuck is this shit!” Carter screamed from inside the house. He and Ben were both standing in the slightly hazy “Herbalists” Room looking at the clusterfuck that was the pile of keys. Occasionally one of the mimic keys would curiously open an eye in the pile before realizing it was spotted, then skitter to a slightly different spot and bury itself back into the pile.

  Ben picked up a small handful of keys from the edge of the pile and looked to the three chests, each with three keyholes. “No, there is no fucking way...that can’t be the challenge, fucking how? Is one of the chests a mimic too?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Carter carefully picked up a key and tried it in the centermost chest. It turned just enough to give him hope before sticking. He carefully sorted that key out and tried another and another and another. He looked back at his growing pile of keys to see a few of them being dragged back into the key pile by the key mimics. “What the fuck!” Carter tried to stab the key mimic but found himself suddenly stuck.

  He looked down at the massive lolling tongue of a treasure chest wrapped around him, its toothy maw slowly widening open. “Oh gods, no, not again.” Carter said quietly a moment before being yanked into its maw with a scream.

  Ben started stabbing at the chest as the key mimics giggled, shuffling the keys back into the pile. “Hurry the fuck up!” Joe shouted into the house; he was holding remorse back with a massive spectral shield and losing ground inch by inch as it pushed him back. It had graduated from a butcher's cart to a butcher cart with arms and legs. It was trying to reach around the shield and pluck Reese from the porch. An enormous dripping tongue was slurping against the barrier nearest to Reese.

  Reese was busy keeping the swarms off of their mobile shield expert, twirling to and fro, booting, slicing, and blasting mushrooms off the porch as they wandered around the edges of the shield. “Seriously, guys! We can’t hold here forever!” He screamed, his eyes locked onto Remorse’s overexcited single eye.

  Ben’s very frantic, frustrated voice shouted back, “HEEEELLLLPPPPP! EVERYTHING IS A LIE!”

  Egbert at this point was popping popcorn into his mouth as fast as he could chew. The other treasure chest mimic had caught Ben squarely by the butt cheek, and the tiny legion of key mimics were slowly wandering over to him for a nibble. Egbert popped back over to the yokels to take a peek. Let’s see how they are doing. I’m a bit concerned the housewives haven’t made it yet. I’m going to have a real bad time if they all die and the husbands come for revenge…I can probably sell their ashes though…assuming they die in the fiery loot pit…hmm, I’ll add that to the list: crematory services…

  Hank and Edith had combined their fishy might. Hank had pulled the river right on over to the front door, and it was being held in a swirling semi-static dome across most of the front of the house. Edith had her staff clutched in a fishy embrace and was weaving it in complicated patterns punctuated by jabs. Every jab she made, a ball of briny water would shoot from Hank's dome and splash across a myconid, then purple and black tentacles would rip from...somewhere, grabbing the myconid and pulling it into the splashing water, never to be seen again. Is...is...she feeding my mushrooms to my “puppy” as some bullshit sacrifice? Where are you, you fuzzy little asshole? I'm going to unmake you!

  Egbert started zooming around his dungeon both to see where the other groups were and to see if maybe he could find the “Puppy.” He couldn’t get a refund, but he could probably afford a fifty-stride pit with spikes at the bottom for it to take a vacation in. He didn’t find the "puppy," but he did find the housewives. Is everyone in this place some kind of secret idiot savant?

  The housewives, led by a stick figure of a woman with her hair in the most painfully tight bun ever imagined named Samantha, were currently fighting the man grabbers in the pit and winning. Lines of twine were magically weaving from one woman to the next in beautiful patterns. Nearly living in its movements, it took the form of a baby blue knitted dragon soaring over nearly the entire span of the pit. Each claw held one of the man grabbers, the rope hopelessly pulling against its surprising strength.

  A woman in a pink frilly dress had a monocle over one eye, her hair pulled roughly back in a bandana, and a screwdriver in her mouth. She was kneeling next to the Homing Grabber, face pinched in concentration and elbow deep in its mechanisms. It was making a desperate clicking noise as she proceeded farther in, popping off a panel Egbert didn’t even know was there.

  Samantha gestured sharply, and the dragon's wing somehow sheared through the ropes attached to the grabbers. “Remember Hook! Loop! HOOK LOOP!” She shouted out as the ritualistic magic they were using continuously became more and more realistic. The dragon gaining greater and greater details. The other women shouted back in cheerful excitement, “HOOK, LOOP, HOOK, LOOP,” before swinging their hands down in unison in an explosion of threadlike mana that was added to the frankly insane ritual happening in the pit.

  If this is what my first month is like, I tremble at the mere thought of what I might have seen in a year of this insanity. But besides that…STOP BREAKING MY GRABBERS! What in the hells classes do you people even have? Egbert examined the housewives finally and realized he might have been being a bit of a presumptuous prick by just assigning them “housewife” as their nomenclature. More importantly, he had underestimated the shit out of the threat they offered.

  None of them was below level seventy, which was fucking terrifying to begin with; when your average adventurer retired between level fifty and seventy-five, anyone who made it beyond that started pushing into the realm of the elite. But even worse, they all had the exact same class, or at least variants of it close enough not to just be a coincidence. That was red flag at least number two, that Egbert had ignored.

  Red flag number three was Samantha herself. He had a second-tier magic user in his halls, and she was about thirty seconds from being in the same warzone of a room his core was in. [Samantha Tillery Tier-2](lvl29) [Loom Master Of Magic]. Oh, I have gone and messed up, haven’t I? I went and gave magical seamstresses a taste of Zip Dust. They will probably scour that room clean of all life to get ahold of it... the poor other delvers... Oh, I need to evacuate the rest of my drugs!

  Egbert flew back to the grow room and began roughly melding stone over exposed jars and pulling the plants into hidden alcoves before sealing them off. The room now looked like a drunken miner had had his way with it, but at least the “potion ingredients” weren’t all right in the open anymore. He didn’t fancy the metal door separating the rooms’ chances if Samantha summoned another literal dragon to knock it down.

  With a final, well-synchronized weave of the ritual, the dragon that looked far, far too real now began gently plucking the women from the completely defeated pit and setting them beside the door to the next room. They took a few moments to straighten dresses and, in a few cases, bonnets before forging on ahead.