The Lesser One

by Zeppy Cheng

  Our little group of eight Adventurers plus six apprentices — including me — gather in the staging area on the alley side of the Association headquarters. Mary, our thief, stands in front of the group. Mr. Tuffman, a tank, stands in the center of the full-fledged Adventurers. Surrounding them are Jesus Lorenz, a marksman; David Spinner, a healer; Fera Willcox, a DPS or damage-per-second fighter, dedicated to dealing as much damage as possible in as short a time as possible; Turner Williams, another DPS; Gilly Sanderson, a multi-class; and Bismark Chrone, a technician.

  The apprentices are me, Evan, Sarah, Rick, Blake, and Tom. Each of us carries a large backpack that will eventually get filled with loot.

  I haven’t taken any practical classes yet, so I am placed in the middle for safety. Once I learn how to fight and “crawl” properly, I can join the actual formation. For now, I am just dead weight.

  We head towards the dungeon. It’s not too far from Central Park, tucked away behind a little office block. Not prime real estate, but not a bad neighborhood either. The dungeon’s portal shimmers in the center of an alley. Dungeon portals only appear where there is enough space — which is usually outside on the street. This one is no exception.

  The dungeon we enter is covered in ice. Sounds bounce around clear, glacial walls and echo far into the darkness ahead. The air swirls around in flurries of ice-cold gasps.

  My breath clouds in front of me as I pull my jacket closer, thankful that Evan recommended I grab it before we left the guild floor. It had been hot, wearing it in the New York summer. Now I’m grateful to have it.

  Mary holds up a hand. “Contact.”

  A couple ice golems approach. I feel adrenaline spike through me at my first view of a dungeon creature. But nobody else seems concerned and our two DPS members put an end to the monsters’ existence, cool as frozen cucumbers. A couple of magic bullets later, and all that’s left are item drops and floating circles. It’s the first time I’ve experienced actual combat. Despite the monsters’ relative harmlessness, my hands are still shaking with adrenaline.

  It is the apprentices’ job to collect the item drops and help our technician, Bismark, vacuum up the circles with his weed-whacker-esque spirit vacuum. The items in question are crystallized forms of a monster’s physical essence. Circles or rings are concentrated spiritual power.

  I know from Spirit Circle Id-Rep (or at least from the book’s lists of illustrations and descriptions) that these were low-double-digit monsters, perhaps between ten and twenty. Spirit Circle Id-Rep pretty much covered everything I need to know about Spirit Circles in order to deal with them. Not to mention what working with Dr. Barrimore taught me.

  No Adventurer in their right mind would absorb such circles. Any ring below fifty or so that is actively absorbed into an Adventurer’s psyche will destroy any potential their companion spirits have. It’s like opening with the Paris defense in chess. A total misstep. These unwanted Spirit Circles are instead processed into spirit cheese by Adventurers. Spirit cheese, a sort of pureed Spirit Circle, is a powerful industrial product. When refined, it has both physical and psychic properties. It can be turned into a variety of useful products, including industrial lubricant and low-cost, high-energy nutritional shakes.

  On the other hand, items, the physical manifestations of dead monsters, have special properties that make them different from any physical object originating in our dimension. Their origin and composition are mostly a mystery, despite decades of research, so even the ones from low-value monsters are valuable. A drop from a twenty-year monster can go for over a hundred dollars on the wholesale market.

  It seems hardly worth it to risk life and limb for such a trivial amount of money, but dungeons have to be cleared anyways. Items generally help reduce the operating costs for the guilds.

  It only takes a few minutes to clean up the items and circles, and then our party is on the move again. The drops are split among the apprentices; I carry a single radiant icicle in my backpack. It’s a lot heavier than I would have expected, but it’s not more than a thick textbook. Heavy, but just light enough to be portable. A complex feeling.

  With the mess cleaned up, the party continues through the crystal ice dungeon. Evan flicks a piece of bone between his fingers as we cross through a passage within a wall of ice. The reflections coming off the smooth blue surfaces make everything seem realer, as if they exist in some sort of super existence.

  “Can you not do that?” says Blake. “My Wolf spirit keeps diverting its attention to the bone.”

  “What, do spirit dogs like bones now?” says Evan.

  “It’s not funny!”

  Tom chuckles. “It is a bit.”

  “I said it before; I’ll say it again,” says Blake. “My spirit is not a dog. It’s a Wolf. A proud lupus.”

  “Lupus meaning wolf in Latin,” deadpans Sarah.

  “I know.” Evan pauses. “I think I heard something. It’s coming closer.”

  Jesus, the marksman, crouches. He has long hair, scarily similar to his namesake, and his mustache curls up with wax. His eyes are amber and his nose has a small but noticeable scar on it. He is wearing a leather jerkin and carries a compound bow, a mixture of modern technology and ancient purpose. An arm circlet on his left arm carries the symbol of the Riding Valkyries, a Viking helmet Skyrim-style. He doesn’t have to wear it, but still does. No one else in the small party wears it. “It is a polar golem,” he says.

  Mr. Tuffman stops the party. “Gilly, you’re the kite.”

  I learned from watching Dungeon Crawling on TV that to “kite” means to draw a monster out of one area and into a defensive line where everyone will be already in position. This makes defeating monsters safer, as we have already positioned ourselves.

  Gilly is a multiclasser. Her ability is split between warrior and magician, making her technically an Eldritch knight. Her hair is short-cut, blonde, obviously dyed, starting to grow black at the roots. She is wearing a full suit of plate armor. Even so, her agility does not seem to be compromised. Her STR stat is clearly very high. She has the aura of a biker girl. On her feet are leopard-skin boots that clearly do not match her armor. They’re boots of agility. She’s going to need all the agility she can get to do a proper kite maneuver. She runs — amazingly fast — towards the next corner, and disappears around it.

  Evan stops fidgeting with the shard of bone, putting it in his pocket. The whole party is silent.

  Within seconds, Gilly comes careening back around the corner with a rumbling monster at her heels. Two more follow. They are huge golems formed of ice and hold icicle clubs.

  “Fire!” yells Fera, one of the DPS fighters. She materializes axes in her hands and throws them. Four of them can be in the air at one time at her speed, which is a bit staggering to me. DPS fighters really can dish out the damage.

  One ice golem breaks off and heads straight towards Mr. Tuffman. Mr. Tuffman slams his huge shield into the ground in front of his body. The ice golem collides with the shield, which emits a spirit energy in a circle around it. The ice golem pushes to try and crack the shield. The shield emits a gelatinous substance that climbs on the emitted energy and begins to wrap around the ice golem.

  The second ice golem comes straight for me. Its eyes lock with mine. I am more afraid in that moment than I ever have been. I stagger backwards.

  “Shoot!” yells Evan. “Fire your weapon!”

  I fire the cheap bow that I had been given as a precaution. My arrows clank uselessly against the ice golem’s tough side.

  Gilly slides in between me and the charging golem and smashes it with a well-placed spell sigil. The beast shatters into a million crystals, leaving behind a single item that appears in the air and floats downward on a tuft of wind.

  “Gotcha,” she says, winking. In that moment I realize she is quite attractive.

  I shrug the feeling off — she’s twenty years older than me — and manage a gasp, glancing around. While I was preoccupied with my own impending death, th
e first golem had been defeated, its shattered pieces dissolving into magic smoke.

  But Bismark is having a tough time avoiding the third beast’s attacks. His only weapon is a complicated-looking cannon that he seems to be having trouble with. It’s coughing up black smoke instead of deadly projectiles. I guess his experiment, whatever it was supposed to do, has failed.

  Just before Bismark bites a club to the face, Mr. Tuffman rushes up to the golem. Mr. Tuffman emits a pulse of gel energy and the third ice golem stops in its tracks. Gilly touches the golem’s side and it disintegrates.

  Three intricate, beautiful circles of pure energy rise up from where the golems died. They spin with the elegance of a ballet and float up and down as if on a breeze. They seem too beautiful to be true, but I know that they are only fifty-year circles, at best. Not much more than spirit cheese.

  I sigh as Bismark hoovers the circles up with his Ghost Buster-esque device.

  The battle has lasted less than two minutes, and I’m already shaking. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to handle an entire dungeon. Actually being here, rather than watching on TV, is so much different than how I expected it. I’m not the heroic superhero who goes in and singlehandedly defeats a five-hundred-year spirit. I’m a grunt. I’m a red shirt. Nothing more, and it’s scary.

  We continue through an icy canyon, the ice rising hundreds of feet on both sides. Little monkey-like creatures jump in between hollows in the ice. One of them lands in front of me and tilts its little head.

  Several of the adventurers draw their weapons.

  “Steady,” says Mr. Tuffman. “They won’t hurt us.”

  The adventurers put away their weapons, but it is hard to miss their unease. We leave the canyon and the little beasts behind, entering into a maze made of ice and crystal. Mr. Tuffman holds up his hand. “David, roll the string.”

  David lets a ball of yarn fall from his hand. He is a clean-shaven young man with blue eyes and an eager expression. His class is healer, and I believe his spirit has something to do with strings, a category that includes blood vessels, apparently.

  The ball of yarn leads us through the maze with little trouble. We eventually come to another long canyon-corridor with idols carved in permanent ice lining its sides. Double doors mark the end of the corridor, crystal ice, blue veins tracing through carved bas-relief. Mr. Tuffman places his palm against the doors.

  “Apprentices, stay back,” warns Mary. “Fera, take point. Andrew will draw fire. David — you know what to do.”

  The doors open with a dramatic flourish. Blue fire erupts from at least a hundred torches in ice sconces arrayed around a massive, misty room, radiating chill. The dungeon’s guardian sits at the top of the hall. A goat-like head, covered in blue fur, sits atop an immense boar’s torso supported by incredibly huge dragon’s legs. Six arms extend from the monster’s giant sides, four on one side and two on the other. Completing the effect, a pair of bat’s wings springs from the monster’s gnarly back. It holds a gigantic Warhammer, the size of a small car.

  The monster to top all monsters stands, bellowing.

  Four smaller mobs — kobolds — appear out of the mist and charge the party. They are nasty little creatures, with gnarled jaws and beady little eyes. Their fur is matted. Their teeth are yellow. They wear nothing but leather cloths over their privates. Saliva drips to the ground as they approach, clubs and daggers swinging.

  The big boss trundles forward behind them.

  “Gilly! Magic missile — level seven!” yells Mr. Tuffman.

  This means it’s serious. Using a level seven spell is a huge expenditure.

  Sixteen red arrows form above Gilly’s head and fly across the room, four impacting each kobold. Not much happens — the kobolds power through, screaming and waving their weapons.

  “Andrew!” says Mary. That’s Mr. Tuffman’s first name.

  “Right!” Mr. Tuffman plants his shield between the party and the kobolds, a blue spell growing in his hands. “Lorenz!”

  “Blast of lightning!” Lorenz sweeps his hands. Pink lightning rockets forth, striking the boss monster on the snout. Trails of electricity jump between its hairs.

  The boss monster raises its Warhammer and roars. Ice crystals spike outwards from its feet, jutting taller and taller until they’re over my head and still growing, speeding towards us.

  Andrew finishes his defense spell. The result is a gorgeous ice wall between us and the spikes. The spikes slam against the wall of magic, spraying cold sparks everywhere. Two kobolds go for a flank.

  “Turner!” yells Andrew.

  Turner throws several shuriken, which grow exponentially in size as they fly. One takes the head off a kobold. The other kobold dodges, and the car-sized shuriken slams into the ice wall behind it. An impressive spray of glittering blue frozen water spits outward. The dodging kobold leaps for Turner.

  “Fera!” yells Turner.

  Fera sweeps her staff around. “Block!”

  The attacking kobold rams into a green force field. Stunned, it staggers backwards.

  Turner steps through the force field and points his palm at the kobold. “Chill touch!”

  Black sludge spews out from Turner’s hand and covers the kobold. It screams in pain. Miasma rises from its thrashing body.

  The second to last kobold takes another magic missile to the face, splattering blood all over the icy ground. One drop touches the boss’s snout. It eyes us evilly as it wipes the droplet off.

  The fourth kobold backs up towards its boss. The boss raises its Warhammer and slams the impossibly large weapon against the ground. Again, waves of icicles race towards the party.

  “AOE!” yells Mary.

  Andrew pulls off an emergency local block, but Gilly and Bismark are not behind it. Bismark whips out a small metal plate that spirals out to become the size of a house’s front. The ice rips into the metal, tearing it up. By the time the ice has shredded the metal, Gilly and Bismark are out of the AOE attack’s range. Stray ice spears shoot out of the ground a couple of meters from where I stand.

  “Hey.” Evan points behind us, back in the corridor leading to the doors. “Looks like we have company.”

  I glance back. A couple of ice slimes are approaching our rear.

  “We must have missed them.” Sarah motions to me. “This is something you can handle, right?” A tinkling explosion reverberates from deeper within the boss room, punctuating her remark.

  These slimes are between twenty and thirty years. For a full-fledged Adventurer, they might not be a threat. But for apprentices, they can be lethal. There are seven of them. I pull my bow out from my pack and string it.

  Sarah stares at my face, then holds her hand out in front of me. “Never mind. You’re not strong enough. You’ll just hold us back.”

  I wonder what she saw in my expression. I lower my bow but do not put it away.

  Evan slides off his pack and takes a martial stance. He is a monk-class, meaning that he fights with his fists and feet. His spirit is, conveniently, Bone — and his fists are full of the stuff. His black belt serves him well.

  Sarah pulls out a staff. She is a sorcerer — she fights with heavy attack magic. Her spirit is a Venus Flytrap. Beside her, Rick materializes a gigantic metal shield and a spear. He is a paladin, mixing defense with magic. His spirit is a type of shield known as a Buckler.

  Blake, the beast master, summons his companion spirit. Naturally, a wolf steps out of a portal. And Tom’s hands begin crackling with electricity. His spirit is the most esoteric of all of us — the concept of Amperage. Unlike its cousins, voltage and resistance, his power is strong enough to kill. He is a technician/mage dual class.

  I have no class — they are assigned after one semester of Practical Party management. The only thing I can do is turn on my Anima vision. Blue and green shapes fly around, giving me info like wind speed, monster strength, and hints at future movements. I’ve been practicing withstanding the barrage of information and interpreting it. I an
gle my bow downwards, though I keep an arrow nocked.

  Evan gives a “kiyap” and does a turning kick.

  Tom holds up his crackling hands. “Lesser lightning!” he yells as tesla coils zip from his fingers and encapsulate the slimes. One of the slimes takes a direct lightning hit and explodes into cold, grey goo. The six remainders approach in their slimy, undulating fashion.

  An explosion reverberates from behind us. Commands, muffled by walls of ice and fire, zing about.

  Sarah makes a sign with her fingers. “Fire Spear!” A halo of fire pops into existence around her wrists. She pulls her hands back, straightening it into a long spear. Like an ancient Spartan, she throws the spear overhead, sending it flying directly into the center of the approaching slimes. An explosion of epic proportions rips a slime apart, damaging the rest.

  The five remaining slimes prepare for the classic slime attack: tackle. Their wet, sack-like bodies tense backwards, gathering force at their ‘feet.’

  Rick slams his shield in front of us. A line of yellow force extends outwards. Two slimes bump into the shield and undulate backwards. The other three leap over the barrier and land among us. One of the slimes plops down in front of me. I grab the first sharp thing I have — an arrow — and try stabbing it. The slime grabs the arrow and sucks it out of my hand, a sizzling liquid splattering around me.

  Useless. I’m useless.

  The other five apprentices are too busy to help.

  My hand begins to burn with icy cold. Slime acid — ice type — crawls up my arm. Frostbite encroaches upon my fingertips. Pain shoots through my bones.

  The slime spits more ice acid in my face. The vision in one eye goes black. The other stings. I can’t breathe. Waving my bow around wildly, I try to get the slime off me. The slime opens its cavernous feeding hole. It widens and widens, and then it lifts over my head and starts to come down around me. I’m going to be swallowed. I can’t believe that I’m about to be defeated by a lowly slime.

  A blast of fire incinerates the slime, sending ice acid droplets spiraling through the air. I pant in relief.