Into the Darkness: A Fantasy LitRPG Adventure (Axe Druid Book 4)

by Christopher Johns

  “Once the pact is formed, I can shift between elemental partners at will for a mana cost equivalent to me intelligence divided by the number of partners I have.” He scratched his head and sighed. “I don’ pretend to know all the math, never was all tha’ good at it, but the stronger I get, the more intelligence I gain, right? So, I get smarter and stronger, and pay the price to summon stronger elementals.”

  “That’s cool and all, but what’s with the metal glove?” James lifted Fainnir’s left hand and tapped to with his knuckles.

  Pebble raised his hand. “That’s the living metal.” Pebble motioned to the mixture of steel, iron, and copper. “These metals are the weakest of the elementals other than just pure stone like me, but the living metal acts as a catalyst to the summoning. It will change as he summons more powerful members of my family. But this shows that he was able to summon a shield.”

  “That sure as hell wasn’t a shield,” Bokaj interjected. “That was a golem.”

  “Not a golem, golems are weak and made of clay or flesh.” Pebble said, scorn heavy in his tone. “This summoning was for a shield it is a classification of the Warrior Caste of elementals. The weakest among them, but still very much stronger than I. They are not the brightest, as you may have noticed.”

  I heard a chuckle, but I didn’t know—or care—who it had come from.

  “Well, this is a very interesting turn of events, and it’s super nice getting to know the intricacies of the Elemental Caste system, but we have to move on,” Yohsuke butted in and began the process of putting out the fire and handing out the toast that he had made. Nice and crisp with a good helping of butter and some cinnamon and sugar on it. Lovely. “Let’s go.”

  We swiftly packed up our things and moved on from the room, Pebble leaving us so that Grav could be there for Fainnir. I allowed Bea to come out of the collar, and she stayed near me for the time being.

  As we wound deeper down into the earth, the light from the lichen above us grew dimmer, and dimmer, until eventually, we had to stop and have Balmur cast his light spell, but even that seemed to be too dim.

  “Let me see if I can’t make something, give me a second.” I closed my eyes, then rebuffed myself. This was a teachable moment. “Fainnir, come here. I’m going to explain the process of making new spells to you, okay?”

  He nodded enthusiastically, so I closed my eyes and began my process.

  “First, I ensure that I have a spell or intent in mind for what I want. In this case, I want to create a spell that makes light that I can control. I have an ability called Fox Fire that allows me to control a type of fire that sticks to a target and exposes hidden creatures and objects by lining them in the flames. Cool, I know. But I want that control and aspects of it.”

  I focused my mind and thought of the forge inside my head that allowed me to create things with my tinkering abilities. I stoked the flames with my mana and added Fox Fire as the base, explaining the process to Fainnir as I went.

  “Next, I want to ensure that my intent is on being able to fully control where the flames go and how much light they give. So, I will ‘hammer’ that intent into it as I channel more mana into the spell. Now, I also have tinkering with shadows, so I will also add a little shadow manipulation and push the shadows away to expose more to the flames.”

  I finished the spell by focusing more on it being malleable to my whims. I wanted to be able to shape it freely as I would. Finally, another touch of shadow magic and I had a new spell that had cost me roughly 566 MP to make.

  Exposing Flames – Caster wills malleable light into existence that allows him to see a great deal, both in plain sight and that of what would be hidden. Cost: 87 MP. Duration: 1 hour (or until dismissed.) Range: 600 feet.

  “Guard your eyes, everyone.” I had no way of knowing how bright it would be until I cast the spell. Once I did, I could see the glaring light even behind my eyelids. I lowered the intensity of it with a thought and a small trickle of mana until it was bearable. Manipulating it, other than moving it, cost a couple points of mana, but at my level, that was perfectly fine. Once I fully adjusted, I could see that the stairs and this section of the tunnel down seemed to have been dug out by crude tools of some sort. Widened and made taller to support taller travelers. That was odd.

  “Let’s go,” Jaken whispered, and we set out once more.

  Fainnir walked beside me, Grav underground and Bea on my right with the others behind us as a rear guard. Maebe was closer than normal, but that was to be expected because her presence was calming.

  And I hoped that mine was the same for her. Then again, she was more at home here than anyone, so… I was just being a whiner.

  “When we get to the next rest area, we need to sit down and touch base. With each other and Vrawn,” I spoke quietly so she would hear me, and she nodded. “I know that you’ve spoken to her, but I feel bad.”

  We had come to the entrance to the floor by the time I finished speaking.

  “Kill the lights,” Balmur surprisingly ordered. I dimmed mine until it was almost translucent, then snuffed it out entirely. “Fainnir, you’re on, be careful.”

  I could see nothing, but I heard his excited breathing as he pressed the door to the next floor open.

  Dark corridors of the same kind of roughly worked earth greeted us, tunnels dug out by something that smelled musty.

  A whispered, “Grav, where are the enemies?” Fainnir, it sounded like he was just ahead of me.

  I could feel Bea’s uncertainty, she didn’t care for not being able to see.

  “All around,” the simple elemental replied. “Close. Far.”

  “He really isn’t bright, is he?” Muu harrumphed sarcastically, earning a smack from someone. “Hey!”

  “Shut up!” James whispered hoarsely. “Let’s go.”

  Fainnir led first behind Grav, and off we went into the tunnels. It wasn’t too long before we found the makers of these tunnels, and I was definitely interested as I hadn’t seen any in this world so far—kobolds.

  Not quite lizardfolk—more like an adjacent cousin?—who were roughly the same size as goblins, their mouths more beak-like with sharp teeth and lither forms than their taller lizard cousins. In the lore back home, kobolds were related to dragons, and depending on the color of their scaly hides, you could kind of tell the type of dragon they were likely serving. These ones were copper-colored. And even more surprising was their level.

  Kobold Miner Level 18

  We were on the thirteenth floor, so they should only be level 13. Something was wrong.

  I tapped Fainnir on the shoulder and gave him the hand signal to freeze before addressing the others, We got trouble y’all. These guys are level eighteen.

  Shit! Jaken growled. You think the dungeon may have tried to adjust the levels after the behemoth invaded? To try and keep from being taken over?

  It’s possible, but we really won't be able to tell unless we learn more about dungeons in general, and we got shit to do. Yohsuke paused for a moment before coming to a decision. Muu, you’re still a lower level, you join their party, and Zeke’ll be your healer. The two of you will have a more active role to play in the fighting if need be, but Fainnir needs to at least try. Should be easier with Grav there, but who knows. Play it smart.

  I thumped my chest and sent Muu an invite, which he readily accepted. I could see his health bar in the corner of my vision, where I focused. It was a good feeling.

  “Okay, Fainnir, we move on as scheduled. Muu and I are going to be taking a more active role in this, so don’t worry too much.” I let him take that in before I laid the heavy on him. “But this is still you learning, so I want you to do your best and not take stupid chances just because you know we will step in, okay?”

  “I’ll be wary,” Fainnir shrugged to loosen his shoulder muscles a little and brought Behemoth’s Claw out of his belt loop and into his hand. “Kobolds are a crafty sort what burrow into our tunnels from time to time. We shoo ‘em off, but they ne
ed cullin sometimes, and this time they’re nae livin’ creatures, but creations. May their gods or creator show them mercy. I won’t.”

  The first fight came seconds later, Fainnir and Grav both attacking with Earthen Spears that came from the top and bottom of the tunnel like gnashing teeth and pierced the whole way through the little creature, his stone pickaxe clattering to the ground from his grasp. The spikes stayed, but the noise attracted others, so I cast a softer version of Exposing Flames.

  Two more scrambled through the sides, one of them taking a throwing knife to the shoulder that made it cry out, “Grafh!”

  “Grav!” Fainnir snarled and pressed forward. The large elemental backhanded the injured one snapping its beaked head to the side and shaving about 15% of its HP off. The uninjured one charged Fainnir with pickaxe raised and a battle cry on its tongue.

  Fainnir pointed behind it and bellowed, “Snake!”

  The kobold simply snarled and tried to plant the pick of its weapon into the dwarf’s noggin. He parried the strike with his axe, then kicked the kobold in the stomach at the same time a metallic-bladed limb slashed through the kobold’s right arm and sent the limb arcing into the air with a reptilian screech of agony.

  Fainnir capitalized on the distraction and buried his axe into the creature’s skull. He went to look for the other, but Muu stood over it with his short spear freshly bloodied. “Good job, Fainnir. Very nicely done.”

  “Good job with the trying to distract him too, but maybe do it before they’re trying to pick your brain?” Bokaj suggested teasingly, and the dwarf snorted.

  “Game time—game faces,” Yohsuke reminded us. Maebe stayed quiet, which was unusual, but then again, we were focusing, and she needed to be sure we could handle our shit.

  The next few fights went roughly the same way, though Fainnir was doing better each time. He would score a strike and rebuff the first attacker with his axe by throwing it, then cast Earthen Spears with Grav to kill one of the kobolds, then summon his weapon to his hand after the second was engaged with Grav. If he didn’t kill it fast enough, Muu would end it.

  Eventually, we came to a large room where I cast Life Sense. I regretted it almost immediately. There were at least twenty-five of them within range of my spell, and that wasn’t nearly the extent of the room.

  I snagged Fainnir by the collar of his cloak and hauled him away from the door.

  Houston, we got a problem. I growled to the others, explaining what I had found. There’s no way we go in here without it being a blood bath and putting Fainnir at risk.

  Let him know what’s going on after we back up a little way, and he can decide how to proceed, Balmur suggested. He knows roughly what all of us are capable of, so he should be able to reason with the tools at his disposal.

  That was a really good idea, so it was what we did. Moving back toward the entrance a little, as stealthily as we could, was easier said than done. Dodging corpses and ensuring we didn’t make as much noise as we had been, felt like we were trying to take all the water we had put into a tub back out with a spoon. It was highly likely that we would be walking into a shit show, and we were the main attraction.

  “Well, Fainnir, time to shine.” Jaken nodded to the young dwarf, and the rest of us gathered around. “Zeke?”

  “Right, Fainnir, we’re leaving the planning for this up to you. Everything from the approach to what we do—you will dictate.” He looked ready to balk at the idea, but I gave him a hard stare and raised a single finger. “I will brook no argument from you. You are well aware of the things we’re capable of from us giving you examples and fighting with you and sparring in front of you. If you have questions, just ask. Also, you can figure out the layout of that room easier than almost any of us could.”

  “Right.” He closed his eyes for a moment in thought, and we left him to his own devices for it. This was a lot to pile on his plate, but then again, how old had I been when the Marines had put those corporal chevrons on my collar and told me to lead? He needed to be ready and to adapt.

  We all did.

  “Pebble.” Grav sank into the ground, replaced by the smaller elemental a heartbeat later. “I need you to go to the south of our position and mark out the dimensions and layout of the room where all the kobolds are. Stealth is key. Go.”

  Pebble sank into the ground as he tottered toward the room and left us in silence. Ten minutes later, the elemental returned and gave us a rough, three-dimensional map of the room. “The room is a mining pit, and we are at the bottom that reaches approximately two hundred and thirty-five feet up into the air, is one hundred and two feet wide at the center and another eighty-five feet longer east to west.” His nubs moved inside the outer walls, and floors of stone were added onto them, signifying what looked like landings or stories in the room. “There are floors with crude ladders and landings that lead down to lower chambers. They’re mining.”

  He pointed to several small, well, pebbles, on the map. “These are the kobolds, they seem to gravitate toward low-burning fires and where the food is. Roaming kobolds that are slightly larger have whips and short swords for some reason and wander from group to group. A majority of them slumber right now, but some are awake and on guard duties.”

  “Damn, Pebble!” Yohsuke and James whistled low in unison before Yoh continued, “Wish we had more of that on our side.”

  “We do, Zeke just can’t travel through stone.” Muu shrugged, and my cheeks burned. “He’s not hard enough.’

  Fainnir softly cleared his throat before I could roughly explain the intricacies of traveling beneath the ground to the scaly piece of shit, making me stop before my rant could begin. Our party dissolved and we all received a party invitation from Fainnir, which we accepted.

  “I think I have an idea, do any of you have any poison?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gotta hand it to the kid, man. That was some solid planning, Balmur told the rest of us through his earring as he got himself into position.

  It was a multi-tiered plan that had been very well thought out for something roughly twenty minutes in the works and constructed on the fly.

  I don’t care for the fact that two of us have to stay out of the room while the rest of you are working in there, Muu said, his grumpy mind-voice petulant as he stood in his spot outside the entrance to the room. Maebe was hiding both him and Jaken, where they stood on the sides of the room, cloaked in shadows. It was their job to stop any of them from running away.

  Yohsuke sighed. I get it, and when this is over and we move on, you can play more, but right now, we have a job to do. So put your big boy tie on and lace up your shit-kicking boots.

  I almost snorted at my brother’s joke, but I was more concerned about getting to my own position. I was up on top of the highest tier of the room as an owl with Kayda in her parrot-sized form right beside me. For this first phase of Fainnir’s plan, Operation Tummy Tantrum, as we had affectionately dubbed it, the sneakier party members would go to where the food was kept and enact a little hell on it. By way of poison, of course. Those few vials that Nora had given us would be great, not to mention the fact that I had some of my own that I had been more than happy to give. And would be more than happy to give in the future.

  We found, after James had brought it up, that my vorpal viper form could use venom the same as the normal one could and that in order to use it, it cost mana. For a single use, it had been roughly a hundred mana a shot. So that meant I had eight “bites” worth of venom before my mana would need to replenish. Cool right? I know, I’m just an idiot.

  I had spent five minutes filling vials that Balmur had invested in while we were still in the high elves’ city of T’agnolian Val. He hadn’t said why he had them, but I figured it could have had something to do with wanting to start collecting poisons or venom to augment his fighting.

  Each of us had one of the vials and would go about our duties and communicate when we were done. We didn’t want the venom going into the food itself, b
ut the water that was located by the food. There was a bell by each little station and a kobold cook who stirred a pot of soup, with a large basin of water with a ladle and dozens of earthen cups scattered about.

  I used the shadows to obscure my fox form and stepped as cautiously as I could toward the water. The small kobold yawned tiredly and smacked his lips before trying the soup. He must have liked it because he helped himself to a bowl that he ate greedily with distrustful gaze cast all about the room.I shifted into my fox-man form, then upended a quarter of the vial into the basin and moved on.

  Then a bell rang. And another. And another.

  It’s not an alarm! Bokaj called to us, my heart racing. They’re waking everyone up for the day. Be careful, operation is still on.

  Several angry mutters in a language I didn’t understand echoed, and several of the newly awakened figures trudged past me to get to the water. One of them had even been so kind as to stir it for me before it helped itself to a big gulp of it. A small fistfight broke out, and there was shouting and bickering galore as they fought over the next drink.

  We went about our phase of the mission swiftly from there, some of the little creatures falling ill sooner than we had anticipated. The watered-down venom making them sweat and grow thirstier it seemed. After another ten minutes of skulking in the low light, the next phase could begin, and for that, we had to let Fainnir and Pebble take it.

  As time passed, I noticed that some of the bottom section of the pit became a little less focused. Not like I was having trouble seeing, but that the ground grew softer. Fainnir had come up with the idea that quicksand would be useful, and while he couldn’t really cast that spell himself, Pebble could make it naturally. All it took was a little know-how, and the little elemental had a lot of that going on. Four large sections of the ground grew unstable one at a time and stilled as Pebble worked.

  Phase three, Bokaj muttered. Balmur, you okay with this? You know we can have someone else do it.

  It’s okay, bud. I’m really the best suited for it, I just worry that Yohsuke won't be able to keep up. I could almost hear the smile in Balmur’s voice at ribbing the other man.