Jaycee stumbled as his surroundings were changed so extremely. He found himself standing amongst a small group of soldiers that were clustered around a door.
He looked toward a man in similar soldier wear but was clearly a higher tier. "You all protect the priestess. Do not let her out of your sight. There's an intruder in the temple. Though we should be able to handle it, remain aware. Protect her with your lives."' The man ordered before taking off through stone hallways.
Looking around Jaycee realized they must've been inside the temple now. He stood amongst other random people who he assumed had been generated by the dungeon. Actually one of the people on the other camps team was on this group with him.
There were 7 soldiers and two of them. When the dungeon said to complete the objective he tried to interpret what that meant. He tried to pull up a screen to show him the objective of the dungeon but found there wwas no such screen. It seemed they would have to figure out what the goal was, but right now, it seemed good to do exactly as the characters in the dungeon asked him.
As the other woman, Kara looked at her surroundings she became shocked at the proximity of these soldiers. And assuming they were aggressive she tried to hack one down. Jaycee being only a few feet away raised a shield in front of her blade which was thrown out of her hand by the repellent shield.
She looked shocked as Jaycee got rid of his shield and pushed her away from the rest of the group. "Chill. We're in here to finish a mission and these people perceive us as just another soldier. Do not do anything out of line and screw this up." Jaycee warned as he pointed her to pick up her sword.
Thankfully he had intervened fast enough that the soldiers hadn't seen her attack just her weapon being thrown. Jaycee wasn't willing to let some dumbass get in the way of his loot. That was the only reason he came out here and he didn't wanna fuck it up now. She embarrassingly picked up her sword and shoved it back in the scabbard. "Are you two good?" One of the soldiers asked.
Jaycee turned and nodded. "Yeah we are. Say, do any of you know what the intruder is?" Jaycee asked. The other soldiers were dressed in completely different attires. They all seemed to come from different backgrounds and definitely did not have any special association with the temple. He guessed they were all paid hires who protect the temple.
"Nope."
"Not really."
"They don't tell us anything." They mumbled amongst each other and held their weapons slightly tighter. Jaycee inspected the walls that had brightly lit torches. Things were a little too open ended for him.
Thinking back to what the higher ranked officer had told them he spoke. "We should go into the priestess' room. Didn't he say don't let her out of your sight."
Some of the soldiers nodded. "Yeah he did."
"I wouldn't mind not letting her out of my sight." One of the soldiers chuckled. Jaycee gave him a disgusted look which surprisingly worked quite well. Using identity he looked at the soldiers levels. They were all between the levels of 25-26. This made his race level less than half of theirs but still they seemed like nothing impressive.
Jaycee led the way as he pushed open the door they stood guard out of. "Ahh! Who told you you could come in here!" A young woman screamed as the soldiers filed into the large open room. It was way bigger than he thought it would be and might as well be a throne room. She sat on a prayer rug and her eyes were wide.
"Direct orders from above. There's an intruder and we are to not let you out of our sight." Jaycee said simply as he found a nice place to stand. He was about 10 feet from the girl but he placed himself between her and the only entrance in the room. There was a bathroom door to the side but Jaycee placed Kara in front of it.
"What?! Where's the officer?" She asked as she began panicking.
Looking at her level Jaycee saw level 26. "He issued us the order before attending to other business. Do not worry he assured us the threat will be taken care of. We are simply a final defense." Jaycee said.
Normally, Jaycee would be a little nervous as to the state of the rest of the temple. It was likely things needed to happen out there that pertained to their objective. Otherwise where did all the other dungeon challengers go. But Jaycee trusted Percy to be smart and figure out what the objective was.
The other soldiers with Jaycee seemed easy to take directions. They seemed to trust him slightly simply from his status as another hire. Jaycee placed two of the soldiers next to the door which was a heavy wooden slab of wood with a small peak hole. The rest were spread around the large room and looked around. Jaycee made sure that no matter what two people were looking at either the priestess or the door.
She didn't enjoy it at all and voiced her displeasure every minute. Eventually Kara snapped at the young woman and yelled. Jaycee held up his hand which silenced Kara enough for him to calm the situation. "I don't have the energy for this. Kara stop. You." He pointed the priest. "You can either annoy the people entrusted with your safety, or you can not annoy them. And know I value myself over the job." He said.
That last sentence garnered a lot of understanding amongst his fellow hired soldiers. They themselves were not hired for their babysitting capabilities but their protecting capabilities. Seeing the pointlessness in annoying them, the priestess instead talked to them normally.
Jaycee walked up to Kara and leaned in to whisper to her. "They're literally characters made by the dungeon. If being annoyed is all it takes I'll have to ask you to go somewhere else in the temple." He said. Kara was hot headed and seemed to not think much before reacting.
That was Jaycees least favorite kind of person. He cursed to himself while waiting for anything interesting to happen.
After about 2 hours of being locked in the room, Jaycee was starting to get nervous. They had decided about an hour in to bar the door with a large piece of wood. Many of the soldiers were startling to get restless too and didn't like the lack of anything.
The priestess had explained that normally people were coming in and out of her room every hour. Mostly it was servants and other priests that were refilling her candles or teaching her more about their religion. Jaycee chatted with the girl as the time passed and found himself learning way more than he thought he would.
He found out they worship a god who's a part of the Hell pantheon. Firstly he learned many things about gods and the universes as a whole. He learned that universes integrate billions of years after each other. So the 100th integration happened billions of years ago. He also got confirmation that gods exist and constantly influence the mortal population.
He had asked many things about gods and the different pantheons and the famous gods. Supposedly there were millions of gods at the point in the dungeon. The events of the dungeon were in the 23rd universe integration.
All the people in the dungeon believed they were in that time, and when Jaycee tried to reference anything about this being a dungeon he was met with nothing. They didn't perceive him saying it, through the system Jaycee guessed. Jaycee guessed that the dungeon was just essentially screenshotted at some point in history and is now a dungeon.
They had been thrown into this series of real events to accomplish a mission set by the system. He didn't know if they were changing what actually happened or what. Maybe the objective was the natural progression of events in the dungeon. But he guessed that they had to change it enough and make sure what happened in the past didn't happen again.
The influx of information from the priestess was overloading his head a little so he took a small break from talking to her. But he loved learning all of these crazy things about the new world he was going to be in. Just as he stopped talking to the priestess there was a knock on the door.
Suddenly everyone in the room was alert and standing as the only interesting thing happened. Jaycee held up his hand as he slowly approached the door. Each soldier on the sides of the door gripped their weapons tighter as Jaycee raised his eye to the hole in the door.