by Ryan DeBruyn
Amber and Smith even nodded, but Sela finished shaking her head emphatically. “If we pause for too long here, the Dungeon can start respawning mobs and traps under Atlantean Code. Additionally, every delve or puzzle Dungeon must provide a safe haven in a boss or puzzle room for a full rotation after a group defeats it.” She pointed into the room. “So it is better to defeat whatever is in that room first, then take a break.”
Shit.
The group was silent for a long time, no one able to come up with any other questions. Sela nodded once and then held up a hand in invitation. Rocky took it, and he held his up to Zippo. Soon, the whole group was holding hands for support as they stepped across the threshold.
Chapter Thirty-Two
As they walked over the threshold, ticking clicks sounded, and Rocky felt his hand clench. Beside him, Sela punched him in the arm. “You are stronger than you look. Let go of my hand if you are going to try to break it!” He felt his cheeks flush and looked over to his other side where Zippo was wearing a slightly pained expression. He released his vice grip on his hand as well and apologized to them both.
The group continued to walk forward and entered a large, perfectly circular, cathedral-ceilinged cavern. It would have been beautiful if someone had chosen to give it any semblance of décor. Instead, it only had a raised stage to the left side of the entrance that spanned a quarter of the space. Sitting on a chair on that stage was a black-robed skeleton holding a very familiar staff. Thinking it was Apothis, Rocky used Analyze and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or nervous from what he saw.
Rattleshirt
Level 22
Journeyman–Master of Bones
Health Points 1,250/1,250
Boss
Pretty sure we just wasted that whole day because this is a boss room. Stupid delving Dungeon making traps. Honestly who does that?
He knew he was just tired and complaining about anything at this point; if he was honest, a few people in the group leveled from the grind, and that was a good thing. Rattleshirt planted his staff with a boom and pushed out of his throne. “Finally, Apothis got to have all the fun and leave the Dungeon! But not Rattleshirt!” The skeleton’s jaws clacked together as he spoke, making it seem like someone was using him as a puppet. “No, Rattleshirt, we need you to stay and guard the Dungeon. Apothis is special, Rattleshirt. He is a Dungeon boss, yes, but also a minion of Apep.” He accompanied his speech with a raised hand that mimed talking at him.
Zippo beside him looked at Rocky with a raised eyebrow, cocked his head, and pointed at the eccentric creature with one finger, seeming to ask, what in the abyss was going on? Rocky shrugged in answer as the party pulled out weapons and started to get ready for combat.
Rattleshirt finally ‘remembered’ them and shook himself. “Right! Time for Rattleshirt to shine!” He raised both of his arms and the staff. Four red streaks shot out from its head into the far side of the circular cathedral from the stage.
In along the wall where the red streaks struck, four Bone Reapers began to take shape, coming to life from the stone beneath them. The bones were literally forming from the obsidian stone of the room. With each bone created in their slowly forming bodies, the room gained a bit more size. He shook himself and screamed, “Take them out before they form! Amber and Sela, you are on the boss!”
The group, having fought together the entire day, jumped at the commands. Zippo Firewalled a forming creature in one corner, and Smith threw his two spears at two others, knocking them off the glyph that a charging Rocky could now see under their feet. As soon as the creatures were dislodged from the spell and the formed bones were pinned to the wall, they stopped drawing materials to themselves. Mid-charge, Rocky changed tactics and shouldered his target off the spell. His creature was knocked free and stopped forming but began slowly walking back to the spell circle in nightmarishly uncoordinated steps.
Rocky saw that he wouldn’t be as useful as another member of the party and yelled, “Sela, switch! Keep them off the spell circles.”
Sela had been trying to stab Rattleshirt when his order came through. The boss skeleton batted away her strikes with his staff and did the same with Amber’s thin fencing blade simultaneously. On the run, Rocky summoned his Shadow Clone and saw it blink out of sight as Sela disengaged from the boss monster. Rattleshirt saw an opportunity now that he was only facing one opponent, and he released his staff with one hand and shot that arm forward towards Amber.
Out of the ground at Amber’s feet, an obsidian spear shot upwards and nearly skewered her heart. At the last second, Amber jumped up, and the with a screech, the spear shot through her leg, arresting the leap. As Rocky closed, he saw Rattleshirt prepare to strike at her again, this time using his staff to bat at the awkwardly hanging form of a screaming Amber.
Still eight feet away, Rocky cast Dark Blade and used a single Ether-charge, targeting the base of the obsidian spear and Rattleshirt since he was stepping forward to attack. Rattleshirt just managed to change his attack into a horizontal block as Rocky’s vertical dark phantasmal strike began screeching against his magical staff. The strike pushed Rattleshirt’s feet back and simultaneously broke the obsidian spear, unceremoniously dropping Amber to the ground in a tangle of limbs. He used a quick Dark Mend on her and rushed by.
To buy the A-Team member time to get back into the fight, Rocky went all out as he closed. He struck with his Soul Blade in a diagonal slash, planning to cleave through his own Dark Blade skill. The red staff pulsed, and Rattleshirt tilted his weapon to deflect his original Dark Blade into one of the walls where it dug into the rock and changed tone to an eerie wail. Rocky’s diagonal strike made it through, however, and broke the creature’s clavicle before rebounding and bouncing the flat of the blade harmlessly off of the head of the creature.
Both combatants staggered from the blow, but Rocky got his guard up first as Rattleshirt shot the butt of his staff at Rocky’s head. Angling the blade, Rocky deflected the strike over his head and reposted towards the boss’s ribcage. Since the Dungeon boss never reset himself from his first strike, Rocky’s strike hit and broke off a rib bone. This time, though, Rocky pulled back his strike and entered his guard again.
Rattleshirt shot his hand towards Rocky, and seeing the familiar motion, he leaped to his left before setting his feet again and chopping vertically down on the arm. His blow broke the skeletal ulna, and again, Rocky didn’t follow the attack up, instead choosing to return himself to center. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Amber chugging a potion and the others keeping the skeletons off of the glyphs.
The fight continued like that for a few short seconds, with Rocky chipping away at Rattleshirt, keeping the boss distracted. Then a healed Amber and his clone entered the fray simultaneously. Based on the timing, it seemed that the Shadow Clone was waiting for an opportunity to do the most damage. As Rocky jumped backwards to avoid an awkward vertical strike from Rattleshirt, Amber lunged forward, hitting the boss in the sternum and sending a skill pulse through the creature’s bones. With uncanny timing, two black daggers attempted to sever the cervical spine that held the boss’s head.
It was a masterfully timed strike by both of the combatants, and Rattleshirt definitely felt something as his body shuddered. Instead of his head popping off, as Rocky kind of hoped for, a pulse of red magic jumped from Rattleshirt’s body and flung all three of them away. Rocky and Amber were catapulted off the stage and landed on their backs with a sharp exhale as the breath was forced from their lungs by the hard floor. His Shadow Clone bounced off the wall behind the boss and came down hard but didn’t disappear.
On the stage, Rattleshirt lifted his staff, and it began pulsing with a red aura. They were all forced to look away as the brightness overwhelmed them. A moment after he averted his gaze, Rattleshirt cackled and shouted, “Come to me! Transform!”
The red pulse shot out from the staff as it began to crumble into dust, impacting on the wall with a rush of air. The two Dragon Heartstrings
that adorned the staff quickly wrapped around Rattleshirt’s wrists. Then a few things happened in the compared dimness that followed. First, the bones that were still attempting to form Bone Reapers and the ones that Zippo heated up until they were blood red and immobile flew towards Rattleshirt as he continued to cackle. Second, a bunch of small holes opened up in the circular cathedral in the direction of the tunnels they just fought through.
Rocky blinked as the bones started to form something that looked like two massive shoes. A moment later, some tiny chips and bone fragments began zooming in through the holes in the domed ceiling. They joined the other few bones and finished forming a pair of massive shoes that seemed welded to both of Rattleshirt’s feet. To prove Rocky’s thought wrong, both of Rattleshirt’s feet slipped out of the encasement as he continued to cackle. His body rose to hover fifteen feet in the air. He held both his arms out in a move that seemed to exult in power and closed his eyes.
Rocky looked around nervous, but nothing else seemed to happen. At least he couldn’t see anything else.
A tense minute followed in which Sela, Zippo, Amber, Rocky, and Smith stared at the cackling form of the hovering boss. Everyone took their eyes off Rattleshirt simultaneously and looked at each other. Zippo shrugged and then threw a Fireball at him, testing the situation. On impact, the boss’s eyes snapped open, and in screaming agony, he fell the fifteen feet back to the ground with his black robe alight in red flames.
The group approached the smoldering and screaming corpse in confusion. Rocky used Analyze.
Rattlegore
Level 22
Journeyman – Obsidian Bone Apostle
Health Points 110/12,500
Boss
Burning
Not sure what changed but not willing to let the creature back up and into the fight once more, Rocky decapitated the cervical spine of ‘Rattlegore’. The screaming cut off and grinding stone could be heard in two directions as an exit and the entrance reopened. “Umm… was he expecting all of the Bone Reapers’ bones to join him and create a massive bone suit?” Rocky asked, sounding confused.
Zippo nodded, facepalming a little bit, having his errant thought confirmed by the question. At everyone’s nodding head, Rocky reached out and hugged Sela, lifting her off the ground as he laughed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, oh my god, thank you!” His voice was getting more manic the more he thought about the consequences of the alternative.
Sela swatted his arms away until he put her down. As she dusted herself off, a smiling group of others all patted her back in a much more subdued form of gratitude.
Then Amber interrupted, “So, any good loot?”
Rocky reached down, touched the cooling corpse of Rattlegore, and thought loot. He didn’t receive anything, which caused him to blink in surprise. “I don’t think there is anything on the corpse other than these two Heartstrings?” he responded and quickly placed the items into his bag of holding.
Sela shook her head and moved over to the boot and touched it. A moment later, she was holding a chest piece that was made of dark black bones and seemed like it would be tremendously strong. “Technically, this was the boss,” she stated as she rose to her feet. “You all okay if we hold on to this and tell you what it is after we have a person in the shop unlock it?”
Rocky Analyzed the item as Sela held it.
Rattleshirt's Breastplate of Protection
This breastplate is made from a bone so dark it is nearly black, and appears to be unbreakable.
Quality: Good
Stats: Unknown
Amber put a hand up unashamedly. “I think the material that bone is made of will be better protection than my current chest piece. Think I could at least wear it until we are done here?”
Rocky looked at her current armor. His jaw clenched, remembering whose it had been before it was gifted to Amber. Currently, Amber was wearing Oliver’s set of gear. It was the same set that Sela wore currently. In fact, Rocky left an additional set of Alex’s back in the Territory along with all their current Crystallized Ether.
Sela answered Amber, though, “While the tensile strength of the material may be stronger, currently, it can’t draw on Ether to fortify it. So, unlike the Bone Reaper’s obsidian bones, this won’t turn a blade.” She pointed at what Amber wore. “Trust me when I say that is better.”
Amber blinked, fingering her leather armor that seemed far too soft to her fingers, brain trying to compute the changes to the world and nodding after a time.
The group took some time and looked around the room. They found it to be entirely empty, despite Rocky’s gamer hope for more loot or chests. After that disappointment, he began pulling sleeping bags out of his bag and setting them out as Sela pulled out more premade travel bars that they purchased in the shop and had been eating all day during breaks to regen Ether. They hadn’t expected them to be needed but luckily bought fifty of them, mostly because the merchant’s description for the item was, “Total meal replacement, dude!”
Sela put the chest piece in the bag of holding and pulled out a few sleeping bags. Smiling, Rocky took one of the bundled up, deflated items from her. He had been amazed by the item when he purchased it. It was definitely not the sleeping bag he was used to from his childhood. He turned a small knob on the side, and the contraption began to expand with air rapidly.
After approximately thirty seconds, the contraption was set up and ready for someone to sleep within it. It honestly looked like an inflated tent that was made of reflected aluminum. Inside, there was an extremely comfortable pool-shaped air mattress, approximately the size of a queen-size bed. While the roof only allowed him to crawl in, it was the mattress itself that made the contraption expensive. The pool shaped mattress had a jelly-like substance that was filled with nanobots. However, and once you laid down, it would form perfectly to your body, cover you up like a blanket, maintain your perfect temperature, act as a pillow, and even clean you as you slept. All of that folded down into a square that was about the size of a moving box, and Rocky couldn’t be more amazed at the contraption.
By the time he broke himself out of the moment of reverie, everyone had a ‘sleeping bag’ set up, and they were all standing around munching on a meal replacement bar. Sela hadn’t started yet and had instead chosen to kneel down to be in contact with the ground. Rocky walked over, unwrapping his bar, and asked, “Can you tell what’s down there?”
Sela didn’t answer right away. Instead, she took a few more moments kneeling before she stood up and dusted her hands together. Turning around, she firmed her lips. “No idea on what creatures are in the next area, but it is a straight shot tunnel to another room like this one. The tunnel descends slowly another few hundred feet, too.”
Rocky, who was just happy to take a break and rest after the long day, responded with a full mouth, “At least we know it’s a delving Dungeon, right?”
Sela nodded, and a small smile touched the corners of her lips. “You do have a way of looking on the bright side, at least for a Dark specialized class.”
The group surrounded them, and Rocky looked around at everyone. They all survived to this point, and he really wanted to somehow ensure that they all made it through to the very end. He opened his mouth as he pulled out an Elixir of Shortened Sleep, “If we–”
Sela placed a hand on the vial and interrupted him, “I don’t know if we should use the vials. While it may speed up this trip, it will also reset the counters on our Toxic Blood de-buffs. I currently don’t have any stacks but want the possibility of gaining them to drop off overnight.” She paused and looked at the group; everyone but Zippo raised fingers, signifying how many stacks they had.
Only Amber had more than one, and that was due to her most recent brush with death. Amber spoke sheepishly, “My Toxic Blood timer won’t drop off for twelve hours, though?”
Sela nodded. “This place, by Atlantian law, is now safe for twenty-four hours.” She paused, and her head fell and voice grew deadly quiet,
“I have slain many Dungeons in my time, and I have also made the mistake of pushing forward at speed when this refuge was available.” She looked back up, and a sheen of water was covering her startling blue eyes. “It was never the right choice.”
In the silence that followed, you could have heard a pin drop. Sela continued after a time, “We still have time currently, and if time becomes an issue later, that is when we should push on.” People finally started shifting awkwardly after she broke the awkwardness with her follow up. The group quickly disbanded for a time as everyone went around and took care of their own business.
About thirty minutes later, everyone finished going through their notifications, character sheets, and their skill and stat allocations, so the group met to say goodnight before each member climbed into their ‘sleeping bags’.
Let’s hope this Dungeon follows the rules.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The group woke up the following morning and ate another meal replacement bar. Following breakfast, they went through a Meditation and group training session as they would have if they were back in the Territory. In truth, they were waiting the last few hours for Amber’s Toxic Blood affliction to wear off.
After training, they still had about two hours to kill, so Rocky brought up the little iridescent Kobold and her message. “So, what are we going to do about the Guilds and their possible invasion?”
Sela looked at the group and saw the confusion of the others, and so before answering his question, she rehashed for them their meeting in the shop. Afterward, there were a few people who panicked. Amber must have forgotten, or not listened during the meeting, because she shrieked, “We only have a week! I mean that would have been good information–”
Rocky cut her off by chuckling, “Don’t worry; they still have to travel here, so it is going to be longer than a week.” Sela gave Rocky a look full of mirth, and he pointed at Amber surreptitiously and shrugged, trying to convey that he wasn’t the only one who thought they would just warp in.