by Ryan DeBruyn
As they approached, that same clear line of delineation could be seen as trees turned a dark brown and green that was so dark even in the sunlight it looked black. Rocky touched one of the trees, and it felt almost soggy. He pulled back his hand and shook it, disgusted with the feel of oil it left on his skin.
“Rocky,” Sela called his name as he examined the tree. “Rocky!” she tried again at an increased volume level, but he was distracted trying to figure out if these trees could be saved. “Rocky!” she screamed, and it finally got his attention. He turned to look at her and Zippo, but they were both looking at something in front of them. Rocky turned and saw a mound of rock pockmarked with a great deal of caves covering its surface.
That looked exactly like the entrance had to LFD; the only difference was that the rock was black and stained with what might have been watermarks.
Oh no! I hope that isn’t the Little Friendly Dungeon!
Chapter Sixteen
Sela and Rocky stood just inside the largest cave’s entrance and looked back at Azoth. The massive beast kept trying to squeeze in and join the two. It was an extremely humorous sight, as Azoth kept tucking his wings in and then moving forward, expecting a different result.
Each time he neared the entrance, he would inhale and try to suck in his belly, but the problem wasn’t his slim hindquarters, it was his shoulders. He backed out of the cave with a piteous wine and mentally sent to Rocky, “This clearly not same place! Azoth fits last time! Silly caves.”
Rocky looked over at Sela, who had one hand on her stomach and another over her mouth, trying to cover her giggles. He then chortled, “Sorry, buddy, we need to check this out. Can you bring Zippo back to the Territory? He needs to tell them where we’re going.”
They had tried the radio to get back in touch with Joe, but either they were out of range, or there was interference in this area. Either way, they couldn’t just explore the Dungeon and possibly be stuck down there for days without having the people who were running the Territory in their absence appraised of the development.
Also, maybe I want to protect Zippo a bit. I kind of like the kid.
Azoth whined and sent back, “No, Azoth fits. Wait for Azoth!” He then tried a few more times, even pushing in far enough to get himself momentarily stuck before pulling back in a bit of a panic and ruffling a good portion of his wing feathers. Looking at the feathers, his head fell. “Tell stupid Dungeon make bigger for Azoth!” Then he let a sulky Zippo, who had also voiced complaint, mount up, and flew away back to the Territory.
Rocky, who still wasn’t one hundred percent sure this was LFD, turned to Sela, who had stopped laughing and looked thoughtful. “He really just wants to be included, I think,” she spoke softly before turning to Rocky. “Let’s get this over with so we can hopefully continue on to the site if there’s time!”
Shrugging, he turned and walked further into the cave. A couple meters later, a resounding boom sounded, and he was greeted by a very familiar message.
Welcome to the Long Forgotten Dungeon
You have entered in a group of two, suggested group size 5-10.
Good luck!
Level: 1 ++
Age: 28 Days
Floors – 12+
To exit the Dungeon, you must defeat the final boss.
Rocky felt his eyes narrow. He was extremely happy to have found the ‘Little Friendly Dungeon’ but that welcome message had changed pretty drastically since the group’s last visit. First was obviously the age, which had increased by twenty-six days. Second was the number of floors the Dungeon now contained, which led Rocky to believe this was going to take a lot longer than a few hours. Finally, the Rank had two pluses beside it? When they had cleared the Dungeon before it had been given a Rank of Level 1, mostly because the only monster inside had been a level one bunny rabbit named Thumper, who Rocky had cut in half.
He focused on the two plus icons, and a new pop-up window overlaid itself on to the Dungeon notification.
+ Dungeon has possibly gained strength enough to be classified as a different level since last clear.
++ The Dungeon has been visited by an entity or group that failed to clear it, and Dungeon has possibly gained strength enough to be classified as a different level since last clear.
Rocky knew that LFD had gotten stronger since his last visit, as he had personally traded the Dungeon ten creatures’ corpses for his dimensional bag. However, who had tried to clear it and failed? Did failing to clear the Dungeon mean that LFD had killed humans?
LFD has been in the area around Chalk River the whole time, though, hasn’t it? That also brings up the question of why it’s right outside my Territory.
Not feeling the greatest about the possibility of LFD killing people, Rocky looked at Sela. Her face was solemn, and she just nodded, seeming to have come to similar conclusions or at least preparing herself for trouble. As they looked at each other, Sela pulled two daggers out of her bag, and Rocky mirrored her when he saw the action to form his liquid sword into a thin longsword. “Not going to transform into your cat form?”
Sela shook her head and turned to slowly stalk away, entering sneak and Stealth. A disembodied voice of Sela called back through the darkness and was repeated on the radio, giving a strange double to the conversation, “This way we can discuss enemies we see after each fight. I will go first. Enter Stealth and Dark Cloak and radio in whispers if you see enemies.”
Rocky initiated both of his skills and crept along the hallway until he saw the walls slowly branch outwards and form a large, circular room. A mound began to materialize into his view as he got closer to the entrance for the room. The creature was slumped into a lump in the middle of the room. At first, Rocky thought it was already dead because of the Boar’s bleached white and paling skin. However, he used Analyze.
Irradiated Wild Hell Boar
Level 18
Apprentice-Tusker
Health Points 490/490
This definitely didn’t bode well for LFD, and Rocky felt his heart sink as he whispered, “It looks like the Dungeon might be infected. This might mean we will have to destroy LFD. I’ll attack the Boar first; you go second.”
The radio clicked once in response, which Joe had taught them would mean affirmative in covert operations. Rocky struck from Stealth with his sword at the back of the mound’s neck. His sword cut deeply, and as the Boar squealed and raised its head, Sela materialized with two daggers, taking the beastly-sized Boar in the throat. It slumped over dead, and Rocky looted the creature but received nothing. Rocky was debating about skinning the creature when he heard noises reverberating down one of the exit hallways.
“What is that?” he whispered and looked over to Sela, who’d gone pale in the face.
She hissed out, “The Dungeon is sending everything against us! It’s just like I am used to! Go into Stealth and communicate under radio silence! Left exit out—go!” She took a step, breaking into a jog and vanished in the middle of one step towards the left exit away from the noises coming down the passage on his right.
Entering Stealth, Rocky moved quickly to the left exit hallway, which didn’t have any noise he could hear. Three quick clicks made Rocky hug the wall as four simian rats flew by him in a frenzy. Again, their hair and skin were bleached white.
Irradiated Rat Monkey
Level 15
Apprentice-Winged Monkey
Health Points 315/315
One radio click after the monkeys passed told him Sela was continuing. He glanced back and saw that the room they had just vacated was now slowly filling with all types of monsters. He felt his eyebrows rise as he saw more streaming in from other corridors.
Blinking, he turned and moved as quickly as he could to follow Sela. A few moments later, he clicked his own radio four times, requesting Sela to flash out of Stealth. Her form flashed momentarily in front of him, and they continued lightly jogging through the darkness. They reached the next room, and Rocky was beginning to believe this
first floor was a similar honeycombed setup to what they had navigated the previous run through.
Once in the next room, Sela exited Stealth in a dark corner and stood still for a moment until he joined her. As soon as she saw the dark fog touch her hand, she smiled. “Unless you want to take on every creature in here at the same time, it would be best to do this as a Stealth run.” Rocky looked questioningly back the other way, but sensing the question in the silence, Sela continued, “I really don’t think we can take on the monsters in here. The ones back there weren’t that strong, but traditionally, every floor gets stronger until the last one!”
She took a deep breath and looked deeply into the fog where she thought his head might be, then continued to whisper, “If we bring this whole place down on us, I feel like even we will be in trouble.”
Realizing he hadn’t said anything and Sela couldn’t see him through the shroud, he softly answered, “I’m following your lead, Sela. You have more experience in this.”
She smiled and crinkled her eyes before softly asking a question herself, “The issue is how to coordinate better than the radio clicks we are using. Any ideas?”
He didn’t really have any great plans for this situation. He’d thought about it before, but the need for absolute invisibility ruined his initial thought of using his clone to lead the way. They, unfortunately, hadn’t purchased any sort of tracking devices. Rocky scanned the room they stood in and saw a pile of white on the other side of the room. With a smile, he instantly remembered a great many childhood memories playing with the white rocks. When he grew older, he’d never looked into exactly what the rocks were made of, but assumed it was either limestone or some sort of metamorphic rock.
Regardless of its components, he walked over and picked one up to test it out. “Where are you going?” Sela called in a whisper as the fog moved away with him. The rock left a white line on the wall just like he remembered from all those decades ago. Smiling, he placed ten in his bag and then walked back. Sela saw the return of the dark fog and relaxed. “Did you think of something?”
“Follow the white line on the wall. The creatures shouldn’t have the intelligence to follow it,” was his whispered response to raised eyebrows from Sela. Then he walked along, dragging the chalk along the rock every so often. The grating of the rock on rock was the only thing not beneficial with this plan. In the future, he promised himself to carry something like a laser marker or something that would be silent. However, for the current purposes, it would have to work.
Rocky led the way and kept his eyes peeled for any traps that might exist. Last time the two had been in the Dungeon, there’d been a few basic false floors and swinging rocks. This time, it seemed that no traps existed as the two of them navigated around the honeycombs, avoiding the monsters that had gone back to idling in the middle of each room. Each creature was clearly infected by the Irradiated Ether, and the further they traveled, the more worried Rocky became for LFD’s core.
Before too long, they reached a room that had a balcony with a railing that overlooked a spiral staircase that circled its way down along the wall. Rocky began to descend and finally noticed a few traps on certain steps. They were clear as day to him as the stairs on each side of them had clear wear from foot traffic, but these stairs were accumulating dust and also were very rough stonework. To indicate the stairs to Sela, he put an ‘X’ on the step above each one and below, but a snort told him that Sela wouldn’t need that in the future, as the signs were far too obvious, and she may be better at seeing traps then he was.
Maybe in the future, she should lead…
The stairs continued to go down with options to exit on to each new floor every level they climbed down. However, unlike Dungeons he was used to in games, this one didn’t force him to leave and find another staircase to continue further down; the stairs just spiraled down into the darkness below. After the fifth level and the fourth trap stair, Rocky felt his eyebrows rise as he thought of something and clicked his radio to whisper, “Who is traveling up and down these stairs?”
“I didn’t even–” Sela was cut off by a very alien-like scream from above them. It echoed through the hallways and reverberated from rooms all around them as they stood statue-still on the stairs. The screams had a very eerie feeling to them; they sounded so animal-like, but the noise was also familiar in a way Rocky couldn’t place. A moment of hesitation was all it took before they began sprinting down the steps, jumping them two or three at a time in their haste.
Now that they were traveling fast, Rocky used his radio to notify Sela of any trap stairs he saw, ignoring pure silence for speed. The stairs were so obvious that he easily saw them even two or three steps away, but he knew his vision was much better than hers in the semi-darkness that the glowing moss failed to completely push back. When they reached the bottom floor, they heard a great cacophony pressing down the spiral staircase. A moment’s pause and a loud splat sounded in the center of the room followed by a few more.
Rocky blinked and tilted his head, trying to understand what he was looking at. What followed was a moment of horror so profound, he froze as more and more twisted shapes crashed into the floor. Luckily, Sela’s questing hand found him through the Stealth and Dark Cloak and reefed his arm hard towards the doorway. As they exited, the haunting sound of falling human corpses chased them through the exit on to the eleventh and final floor.
Rocky exited Stealth and dropped Dark Cloak as he felt his mind stutter. Sela exited Stealth in front of him and slapped him hard in the face. “They are already dead. They were dead long before they hit the ground. They probably aren’t even human but creations of the Dungeon! Let’s go!”
She reached into his pack and pulled out a mine in each hand and threw one right at the bottom of the stairs. As Rocky started moving, she threw another a few feet into the hallway they were now sprinting down. As they saw the telltale brightly illuminated archway that had depicted LFD’s final room the last time, Rocky stopped and dropped out his final four MKZ Goblin Turrets that he had from the shop. They each had just over a half charge, and he didn’t expect them to last for more than fifteen minutes.
As soon as he mentally commanded them to target any enemy that approached, he turned and sprinted into the final room to the sound of the first mine exploding behind him. Dank, stale air peppered his back as he froze a few steps into the room. “Thumper?” he managed to squeak out.
Ether Corrupted Thumper
Level 18
Apprentice-Undead Basher
Health Points 1,337/1,337
Boss
The creature that stood in front of him was closer in size to a workhorse than the tiny, cute rabbit that he had killed on his last visit. He got a single glimpse of its twisted, mutated form before it sprang off massively powerful hind legs directly at him. Rocky’s eyes widened as the massive, sharpened front teeth flew towards him, and he pushed hard to his left. The Dark Cloak saved his life for the hundredth time as it helped him move farther and faster than he could on his own. Even with its help, he felt three stripes of fire bloom into existence on his chest.
He attempted to swipe his sword at the creature, but it flew by him so fast, his sword whooshed through the air instead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sela transform into her Predatory Cat form and wink out of sight.
I get to be the tank. Thanks, Sela.
Rocky turned around and had another instant to take in the massive rabbit’s form crouched on the wall before it was bounding back at him. Rocky pushed off the wall as hard as he could, and this time managed to fully avoid damage as he rolled and came back to his feet to follow the rabbit’s path across the room.
Oh, come on—it’s using the walls to move faster; gravity, you are a cheating Succubus!
“LFD!” Rocky screamed as he began his next dodge. A second explosion went off behind him, and he felt sweat break out across his back. They didn’t have time for this. Additionally, to make a bad situation worse, his commitment to a d
odge in a direction was noticed by Thumper, who adjusted course and jumped choosing a path that would intersect his. Rocky plunged his sword into the ground and felt his arm jerk, and his momentum came to a jarring stop.
As the rabbit flew towards the spot that Rocky would have occupied, Sela appeared in the air above the beastly creature and dug her claws into its back, followed by her long, vicious sabretooth canines. The rabbit let out a growl and hiss that was deep enough that Rocky felt it and heard it simultaneously. As the creature attempted to get up, he charged.
With Rocky closing in and Sela clawing at its back, it still managed to get back to its feet. It swiped at him with its front claws, attempting to keep him back as it bunched its legs and got ready to spring. Rocky avoided its front paws and ran his sword down the side of one of the offending limbs. Suddenly, the rabbit bounded backward directly at the wall behind it. “Sela, drop!” Rocky managed to scream out in desperation.
She let go, fell off of Thumper’s back, and fell straight down. She managed to get even with the creature’s bottom legs as it slammed its back into the wall with a loud, thunderous boom. Sela’s health dropped, but it wasn’t drastic, thanks to her quick reaction. She quickly began clawing and biting at any piece of exposed undead bunny flesh in an attempt to free herself.
As Rocky pushed off hard and worked up to a full sprint, he heard the next line of defense, the MKZ Turrets, start ionizing and discharging behind him. If Sela wasn’t in the way, he would have cast Dark Blade, but as it was, he created a Shadow Clone and felt it fracture off of himself mid-sprint before it entered Stealth and vanished.
Honestly, I am getting really sick and tired of being the bait.
Surprisingly, his clone popped back into existence, and he realized he’d better be careful what he thought in the future, as it assumed those were orders. However, this particular decision was much better for him. So Rocky traded Dark Cloak for Stealth and ran through the front of the black cloud, which now hovered in a roughly humanoid shape where he released it. Thumper touched back down on to the ground, and Sela disengaged and rolled away, snarling at the rabbit.