My consciousness regained its ground to the rhythmic sound of cart wheels turning over hard dirt. Opening my eyes revealed I was wrapped in a potato sack. My friends lay asleep next to me, also wearing some sort of makeshift clothing. Looking around, it appeared we had found ourselves in the back of someone’s cart. Turning my head to the front, I spotted the old man holding the reins.

"Hey... uhhh," I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to find the right words. "Did you pick us up off the side of the road... uhh, sir?" Trying to speak softly as to not wake the others. "Are you like a good person, or should I be worried?"

"You should sit down and shut up!" he yelled back at me, his voice deep and gravelly. "You lot blocked the entire fucking road. Once I dragged you out of the way, I couldn’t leave you." He let out a sharp laugh before continuing. "How did you manage to pass out with three beauties completely naked in the woods?"

"It’s kinda a long story, haha." I laughed. "Where are we heading?"

"Duskford, trade city. You should be able to... get some new clothes once we get to town," he replied, snapping the reins twice to increase the speed of the horses. "We’re about half a day out. If you want to crawl up here and tell me this long story," he waved his hand at me and patted the seat next to his. "An old man could use a good story now and then, especially if those beauties are involved. Hehe..."

Crawling toward the front of the cart proved harder than I thought it would be. The potato sack kept catching under my knees, the road kept bouncing me around, and every time I almost had my balance, the cart hit another rut like the horses were doing it on purpose.

Once I finally made it beside him, I gave the shortest version of the story I could without sounding completely insane. I told him we were travelers heading toward the northeastern dungeon, that we got jumped by slimes during the night, and that the fight went bad enough to ruin our shelter and most of our clothes.

I conveniently left out the parts about mana bonding, naked group activities, and my dick-shaped system because even I knew there were limits to what a stranger needed to hear before breakfast.

The old man didn’t seem convinced, but he also didn’t seem surprised. He listened with the face of someone who had heard enough road stories to stop caring which ones were true. Every now and then he would laugh, spit off the side of the cart, or ask how slimes managed to beat four grown adults with weapons. I told him the slimes were bigger than normal, which was true, and that I passed out from mana exhaustion, which was also true enough.

He called me a reckless dumbass, said my friends were lucky I had survived long enough to be dragged out of the road with them, then told me Duskford saw stranger things every week.

Celeste woke first, mostly because the cart hit a rut hard enough to bounce all of us an inch off the wood. Her eyes snapped open, one hand reaching for a bow that wasn’t there, while the other clutched the rough fabric wrapped around her body.

For a second she looked ready to kill something, then she looked down at herself and went completely still. "Adrian," she said slowly, her voice calm in the way that meant it was not calm at all. "Why am I wearing a sack?"

Reika stirred next, her ears twitching before the rest of her caught up. She blinked at the sky, then at the cart, then at me sitting near the old man like I had somehow become part of the furniture. Her tail shifted under whatever patched-up cloth someone had tied around her waist, and she lifted the edge with curious interest before smiling. "Reika has worn worse," she said, then looked toward the old man driving us. "Did this man save us, Adrian?"

Valka came awake like someone returning from war instead of sleep. One second she was still, the next she was sitting upright with her shoulders tightly squared up and her eyes locked on the old man’s back. The potato sack around her strained in ways the poor fabric had never been built to survive. She looked down, inspected herself, then looked at me with complete seriousness. "Little man," she said. "Explain why I am dressed like harvested produce."

I rubbed my face and tried not to laugh, because laughing felt like the kind of choice that got me thrown out of a moving cart. I explained that we had all collapsed after the slime fight, that the old man found us blocking the road, and that the sacks were apparently the best emergency clothing available. Celeste’s face grew redder the longer I talked, Reika seemed mostly excited to still be with everyone, and Valka kept tugging at the rope belt like she was deciding whether the outfit had offended her bloodline.

The old man laughed from the front and told them they were lucky he had sacks at all, because his second idea had been leaving everyone wrapped in tarp until Duskford.

Celeste thanked him through clenched teeth, Reika bowed her head so hard she nearly bumped it against the cart, and Valka gave him a grave nod like he had provided battlefield aid instead of potato cosplay. I sat there between all of it, sore, hungry, half dressed, and very aware that somehow this was still one of our better mornings.

[ Nearing Marked Location ]

The dick shaped mini map popped into my vision showing a red dot not far from where we were, the closer to town we got the closer to the dungeon we were getting. My nerves began to twist against themselves until Reika popped her head out the front and gave me a simple smile. Her face was enough to bring my nerves back down.

"We’re heading in the right direction, girls." I said, trying not to sound too suspicious. "Once we get some new supplies and rest up, we head to it..."

The old man let out a dry laugh from the front of the cart. "Rest up, he says. You lot are heading toward the dungeon wrapped in potato sacks and talking like that’s a normal plan."

Before I had a chance to give a sarcastic rebuttal, the trees broke apart ahead of us. Duskford came into view at the bottom of the road, wide stone walls wrapped around a busy trade town with smoke rising from dozens of chimneys. Wagons lined the road outside the gate, merchants shouting over each other while guards checked every cart that passed through.

It would have looked normal if not for the massive black tower rising far beyond the town, half hidden in the gray morning haze.

My system pulsed once.

[ MARKED LOCATION CONFIRMED ]

The red dot on the mini map sat directly over that tower.

Celeste followed my stare and slowly lowered her voice. "Adrian... is that it?"

"Yeah," I said, gripping the edge of the cart. "Pretty sure that’s our problem."