Let's head directly into the cave near the volcano's base. Upon entering, it is *HOT*. In many spots, it hurts to even walk on the ground here. At several points, we have to stop and drink healing potions to.

The monsters are easy to kill, and there is not much challenge. We don't explore any chests in the dungeon because we need no equipment from any of the chests and are super rich. There are no real puzzles here; it's just pain. Overall, this makes the dungeon a rather quick one; it may actually be the fastest dungeon we've gone through so far in the game.

Kary may be the most worrisome boss we have faced since Garland in the first dungeon. She hits like a brick and has enough health to force us to take a second turn attacking her. Luckily, she doesn't have any magic, and we take her out in the second turn and then progress to take the fire orb for ourselves.

With the fire orb now secure, we hear word of a temple in the sea to the far west. So we take off in the airship and travel towards the rumored location. We find a town that we haven't yet been to, but we see nowhere nearby to land our ship. We search around and find our way down the river near a small desert. We exit the boat into our canoe and trek to Onrac.

Onrac is a lovely town with a stream running down the center. We visit the shops, finding nothing of interest, and check in at the Inn. Once we are well rested, we head to the piers, where we find a girl who says we must first have Oxyale to be able to use the submarine to visit the temple. We lucked out there! We show her that we do indeed have some Oxyale and head down to the water temple.

We are entreated to a deep blue underwater realm full of hags, grey sharks, sea snakes, sea trolls, and lobsters, which are apparently poisonous. We are having a more difficult time down here than in many of the other battles we have fought recently. But the rewards are equally worthwhile, so this is definitely a place that we want to explore.

Now, we had a pretty reliable source that there is an item of much repute for black belts in this dungeon called a ribbon. This item can be put on and will protect the bearer from all status effects, which is desperately needed! So our goal is to head into the temple, get this item and return to the surface with prize in hand.

This seemed like a relatively straightforward plan. We got down a few levels in the shrine and were getting close to the room where the chest containing the ribbon was. When a couple of ghosts appeared! Scared of the idea that they had some random spell that might insta-kill our heroes, we began to run. But alas, we were not able to get away. Worse, though these Ghosts did not seem to cast much if any, magic, they did hit hard, and we just gave up a turn trying to escape. We tried killing them, but not before PCRD fell to them.

In a panic, Jane sprinted out of the shrine and back into the safe havens of an Inn bed of Onrac. We decided that we would need to become more practiced before heading back into the shrine's depths, so we began to explore the area near Onrac.

Outside of Onrac, we take a trip up the river further. We find a waterfall that Jane decides to get closer to in order to cleanse herself of the stench of her friend's death. Upon closer inspection, she finds a cave behind the waterfall, which almost never happens, and we decide to go in.

The waterfall cavern is full of mud golems, mummies, cocktrices and their kin. Mostly, they are easy foes to defeat; we are already well-versed with mummies from our time at Astos's castle eons ago. After much exploration, we stumble upon a room guarded by a bunch of cocktrices, we are entirely concerned by this. Even though these have been seen going all the way back to the earth cave, they can turn us to stone. With only one hero remaining, that would be a quick wipe! Thankfully, we dispatch the group without incident.

Once we were past the guards, we found several chests to explore. Much of the chests contain loot of no value, but we find a cube, which the local robot wandering around tells us we will need to reach the floating castle. And we also find a ribbon! If only our sources had told us there was a ribbon here, we might not have lost Pcrd quite as quickly!

That being said, having only a single hero has dramatically hastened the amount of learning that is done when defeating monsters, and Jane soon becomes a mighty force! We return to the water temple in Onrac, going through a maze of rooms, passing by Pcrd's body, and finally reaching the water orb guarded by the mighty Kraken. It takes a few turns to get past the Kraken's many tentacles, but finally, we have the water orb in hand.

After leaving the temple and gaining a quick rest to repair, we return to our flying ship and travel to a tower in the desert that we had seen previously. Like Onrac, there isn't a great landing space nearby, but we find one small spot near the mountains that is too far away. We land and wander into the desert and find the tower locked!

Shoot! I completely forgot there was something else in the water temple that we needed to get! Back we go! It's fine, this will allow us to gain more experience for some future trials we are bound to see.

Going a different route within the water temple, we find the room we are looking for with little effort and find a Slab in a chest. But we look at the slab and see foreign words on it! We will need to find someone to translate it for us. There was that doctor back in Melmond, maybe he could help!

When we return to Melmond, the villagers still don't realize we saved them. *SIGH* But we find Dr. Unne and hand him the slab. He quickly translates it and tells me to bring it to Lefien, a small town near Gaea, and they can help us get into the desert tower as they helped build it!

Like many locations nowadays, there again is no place to land a skyship near Lefien! This is a disturbing trend! In fact, the closest location we could find was a long way, so we landed there and began the long trek to the town. We get there with little difficulty; once there, the town is pretty barren. Only a couple magic shops, no items, weapons, or even an Inn to recuperate! We talk to many citizens and happen upon one who gives us a chime that will allow us to enter the tower in the desert, which he calls the Mirage Tower.

Finally, we are getting somewhere! We return to the tower, and sure enough, the beautiful music of the chimes lets us in!

Today's XP totals are:

Runecrafting: 1; Aurum: 1; Dominus: 1; Glyphus: 1; Iteron: 1; Dracorius: 1