by A P Gore
Noah nodded, and they walked back inside the circle of the cave’s influence.
Today, the entrance glowed with a soft white light, and a prompt appeared in front of him indicating he met all the requirements for the dungeon. Apparently, the dungeon had a subcategory which mentioned a chance dungeon. When he asked Rihala about it, she explained it meant the dungeon had a chance to spawn a boss five levels higher than them.
“Shall we?” He glanced at Rihala’s mesmerizing lavender eyes as she studied the dungeon’s entrance. She knew many things, despite being a low-level demon. Maybe her mom really knew all those things she kept talking about.
“Yes, Noah. For the Zedusa’s sake.” She stepped through the cave door and vanished.
Noah followed her.
The first thing Noah noticed was a red bar at the top of his vision. It was small but filled his complete vision when focused. It was the dungeon progression bar. He willed it away, and it settled below his health bar. He willed the interface to disappear entirely. A couple days back he’d learned this, and it was proving useful to prevent unwanted notifications during combat. He had managed to reduce them previously, but losing the whole interface made his vision sharper and more lifelike. He could forget he was in a game this way.
Noah studied the room they were in. It was a small room, filled with green mushrooms and sponge-like plants covering three of the walls. The fourth wall was filled with a bookshelf containing dozens of books.
The mushrooms glowed with a faint green light. Noah peeled one, and a property appeared.
Healing herb: Can restore 5 life upon consumption.
“Look at this.” He held the fungus out to Rihala. “It will restore five health.”
Rihala grabbed it and threw it away. “Don’t touch anything. My mom says level restricted dungeons are mostly filled with illusion magic. We have to be careful in here.” Her voice was filled with care, and it touched Noah’s heart.
“Are they?” Noah trudged forward and tried to pick up a book. His hand moved through the bookshelves like it passed through the air. The books were all fake. An illusion. “You’re right. We need to be careful around anything we see.”
Rihala approached the only other door present in the room carefully. Her tail moved in the air on its own and wrapped around her waist as she inched closer to the door. Maybe it, too, sensed they were moving into danger.
Putting that thought aside, Noah followed her. The door led them to another cave opening. Rihala stood in front of it like a statue in a museum.
“Rihala?” Noah touched her shoulder, pushing her slightly aside so he could look at the cave room. His legs froze in place when he spotted why Rihala was standing still. The opening lead to a small room covered in stone walls. A door was visible at the other end of the room. The floor of the room was covered in patches of lava. One of his zombie rats stumbled forward and landed on one of the patches. The next moment, their lungs filled with the smell of rotten flesh, disgusting and choking. “What the heck? How are we supposed to cross this? Fly?”
“I don’t know. When I tried to touch it, my skin burned.” She extended her hand. The scorch marks on her fingers perturbed his heart.
“Please don’t do that again.” He brushed her palm with his thumb.
She nodded. “But there is no way to the other side. Even the ground between the lava is scorching.”
“Do you have anything with big ice damage? Like making frost on the surface?”
“Ice shot may produce that effect. But I doubt it would be sufficient.”
“Let’s try.”
Rihala pulled her bow from her back and nocked an arrow. Then she paused, closing her eyes and chanting something. The arrowhead started glowing blue. At first it was just a tiny point, but as the time passed, it transformed into a circle encapsulating the whole arrowhead, and then the blue lines started flowing from Rihala’s hand toward the arrowhead, infusing it with some energy. Ten seconds later, Rihala shot the arrow a couple feet away from them. The moment it hit the ground, frost spread across the surface, covering a half-foot-wide area around the arrow head.
Noah was about to jump with joy, but then the ice melted like cheese on a hot pan. Noah loved cheese, but he hadn’t seen it anywhere in the game world yet. One more thing added to his bucket list of things to do before getting back to real life. When he’d first entered the game, he’d looked forward to the day he would be out in the real world. But lately, not so much.
One of the threads binding him there was standing right next to him.
Damn, Noah! Get those thoughts out of your shitty head, and concentrate on the task ahead. You have to go back to the human side, and these two problems stand in the way of your goal.
“We’ve got more trouble.” Rihala’s voice trembled with fear.
Noah’s eyes flicked in the direction she was staring. Multiple rats were standing at the other corner of the room, glaring at them with gloomy eyes. But they weren’t normal rats. Their skin was covered in fiery patches.
Noah shot a poison orb, hitting one. A quick look at damage notification revealed,
You have dealt 63 damage to level 5 fire rat.
A quick cast of perception told him that rats had 400 life each, and there were six of them heading slowly toward them. Noah hit one of them with a fire ball curse, but it dealt only 10 damage. His guess was right; the rats were resistant to fire damage, and that meant... “Rihala, can you shoot one of those with your one second ice shot arrow?” She’d once told him that the extra boom ice shot required 10 seconds preparation, but she could use that skill at low power if she fired it within one second.
“That skill is ineffective against level 5 enemies, even with the added damage of the rare bow. My mom says don’t waste anything.”
“Just try it, babe. And for God’s sake forget your mom sometimes,” Noah replied, irritated.
Rihala gave him a scorching glare. He had crossed the line.
“Okay. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but can you please try the ice arrow?”
Rihala nodded and shot her normal ice arrow. The arrow hit the rat in the eye, and the frost spread to its body, shattering it into pieces.
Rihala lowered her bow, staring at the ice crystals left behind by the shattered rat. “That doesn’t make sense. They have 400 life, and my arrow could only deal 100 damage, and only that with a crit.”
Noah grimaced. Her level 5 skill was doing 100 when it crit, and his level 9 spell was only doing 125 max on crit. “I think it’s the fire resistance. They are highly resistant to fire damage, but that mean they are weak against ice damage.”
“Great!” She rapidly shot more ice arrows at the rats, killing them one by one. She grinned wider with every kill she scored.
“Wait! You are shattering the rats, not leaving me any corpses.”
“Why do you need one?”
“We have to get to the other side, and I have a feeling these rats are the means to do that. Do you have anything that would just add ice damage, but doesn’t shatter them?”
“My normal arrow should do that. Thanks to your gift, it has +3 ice damage added.”
“Great! Use that and kill them. I’ll help you with my spell, too.” He started shooting poison orbs at them, one after another. Coupled with Rihala’s normal arrows, they downed the last 3 rats in less than five minutes.
“What do you have in mind?” Rihala’s tail reached for his waist again once the rats were dead.
Noah grinned. “Hang on. I’ll show you.” He had a creepy idea, which Rihala wasn’t going to like, but it was the best idea he had. Noah turned the dead rats into zombies. They turned into fine zombies, retaining their fiery paws. He commanded them to come closer.
When all three zombies were closer, he commanded one to sleep on the surface between the lava patches. The rat looked at him in confusion and did nothing.
Shaking his head at the dumbstruck rat, Noah kicked it, making it fall on its side. The zombie
hissed at him and stood back up, but its skin remained intact. It was immune to the scorching ground.
“Great, just as I thought.”
Rihala gave him an are-you-crazy look. “What? What are you planning to do with their skin?”
“We’ll tie them around our shoes.”
“No. I’m not doing that. They smell disgusting. My mom will kill me if I go back with dirty, stinky shoes.”
“Do you have a better idea? If we had all six, we could have made a rat bridge. Three wouldn’t be enough, and they won’t lie down one by one anyway. Clearly, they are not that smart. Don’t worry about your shoes. I’m pretty sure we will level up, and you will get nice new shoes.” It was an effective way to get your clothes patched up and cleaned. It even worked for NPCs.
Rihala shook her head firmly.
Noah shrugged one shoulder. “You give me no choice.” He lifted her in his arms. “Shall we do it like this?”
Rihala blushed a deep pink but nodded.
The next ten minutes were grueling, even for Noah. He had no experience with butchering animals, and none at all in skinning them. By the time he was finished, his arms were covered in black blood to the elbow. He smelled like a rat. A dead, zombie rat. Damn, he disgusted even himself.
Noah washed his hands and cut off his shirt’s arms so Rihala wouldn’t feel disgusting. He didn’t want to piss her off with the smell and blood. When he was done cleaning, he was wearing a sort of rat shoes. He cautiously put a foot on the lava patch, expecting a severe burn, but only a small hint of smoke rose.
“Let’s go, girl.” He pulled her closer and lifted her in his arms again. She wasn’t light, but his strength enabled him to lift her easily. His stamina started falling quicker than normal, but he had enough to cross the fifty-foot-long room.
With a pounding heart, he took the first step while balancing Rihala in his arms. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, and they were sending all sorts of wrong signals to his body. He wished it were a different time, that he was taking her to his bed rather than walking over a lava patch. When he locked eyes with her, she closed hers and her tail wrapped around his waist, pulling her closer to him. She rested her head on his shoulder and moaned. “You are so warm, Noah.”
“And you are so soft.” He bit his lips. He was putting his emotions on the table.
Not so early champ!
She pulled herself even closer to him, flattening her breasts against his chest further. If earlier was just a touch, now it was a deliberate push. “Really? You want to feel more softness?” she murmured in a sexy voice that sent electric pulses to Noah’s core.
“If you do that again, I might drop you here and start doing something else.” He winked.
Control Noah!
He needed to concentrate on the dungeon and not on the girl, but it was getting harder with every passing moment.
“Here we are,” he said, slowly lowering her down, but her tail didn’t want to let go. It clung around his waist like it was glued to it.
“Are you sure you don’t want to hold me in your arms a little longer?” Her tail was now slowly slipping inside his armor, then under his shirt.
He held her close to his heart, kissing her forehead. “I have two women to save, babe. You and my little girl, Thia. So, I can’t really give in to these emotions, not right now.”
Her back straightened, and she pulled her tail away, but with a sweet innocent smile covering her face. “I trust you, Noah. With my life. And for the first time, someone has induced hope in my heart that I can be freed too. Thanks for meeting me.” She held his hand and kissed it lightly.
Congratulations! Your commitment to save the demon female has won her heart. +10000 reputation gained with her. New reputation: Ally. She will try to save you until danger threatens her own life.
Experience/Reputation deferred until the dungeon is cleared.
Not having the experience notification until then worried him. Well, it seemed it had come after all. He also spotted his dungeon progress meter had moved into the amber color. He hoped that meant they’d cleared the first room.
“Thanks for coming into my life, babe. Let’s move ahead and see what the second room has in store for us.” He turned back and found two fiery, skinless rat zombies following him. He was their master, after all.
23. Raining Fireballs
It was a big mistake.
To step into the next area without probing for danger was a big mistake. Noah paid for it when the first fireball blasted him and reduced his life by 50 points. The next one scored a double crit, reducing it another 150.
He didn’t even know there was such a thing as a double crit before he read the bright red notification. Rihala’s tail pulled him back to the safe zone—a five-foot-wide area next to the doorway.
“What the heck was that?” Noah dropped to his knees, peeling open a vial of health potion and emptying it in his mouth. His life slowly climbed back to full. “I thought this was a level restricted dungeon, not a double critting fireball barrage. This is hard!” He stared at the dust-laden deadly pathway. Black marks dotted it, and the smell of scorched earth hung in the air.
“Who told you to jump in?” Rihala dropped next to him on the rough ground with an annoyed huff and took his face in her soft hands. “My mom always says, ‘DO NOT jump into an area before scouting it with clear eyes.’ Just give it a careful look first. That’s all I’m asking.”
Noah gave her a quick look. She suddenly looked like a fiery, feisty demon, totally different from her usual shy, sweet, clumsy—and at times dangerous—self.
He liked her this way.
She shrugged. “And there is a three second timer between the fireballs’ trigger. Have a closer look.”
Noah looked at the path with empowered eyes. She was right. The fireball barrage started after three seconds from the far end and quickly moved across the path. Bam-bam-bam. The barrage stopped just a foot away from the safe zone. Every fireball took half a second to reach the ground, and there were a total of ten of them.
“Can you run fast enough?” Rihala asked.
“I bet I can.” Noah smiled—a crooked smile, as he realized he had a skill for this. “I love this game, Rihala. You get a skill for everything.”
“Game?”
“Never mind. You are as real as my life, sweetie.” He kissed her cheek, quite close to her lips. It left Rihala pink-cheeked.
“Let’s time this out. How fast can you run?”
“Let me show you.” It was her turn to give him a devilish smile. She dashed forward when the fireballs started hitting the ground, sending dust all across the way through the mountain walls. She vanished from his sight and reappeared ten meters ahead. Sitting on a sloped wall, on the balls of her feet with the help of her tail, she waved and blew him a kiss before vanishing again and reappearing next to him.
“Wow! That was crazy.” Noah admired the slithering beauty standing next to him. She looked all soft and curvy, but she was deadlier than any woman he had ever met. “How did you do that?”
“That’s my demon trait. Speedrunner. I lack physical strength, but I make up for it with speed. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be able to carry you.”
“I don’t think I can run that fast, but I’m damn sure I can cross the halfway point with my skill. But what about the one fireball that would hit me?”
“We have to soak that damage and move forward. Once we are beyond that point, we can walk. Our task should be to meet up at the farthest fireball possible so we’ll have more time. Just be safe, okay?” She traced a nail over the back of his hand. “My mom always says—"
“Don’t worry, sweetie. I just need to run as fast possible, take one fireball and continue running. Sounds easy.”
She settled into a running stance. “I’ll go first. Just watch.”
“Wait. Take this with you.” He handed her a health potion. She might not need it, but he couldn’t let her go out there without a backup.
She blinked her eyes with compassion and winked at him.
In the next round of fireballs, she zipped forward, moving like a lightning bolt passing through the air. She only stopped once, embracing the impact of the fireball and then instantly moving forward.
The hit took 150 of her hit points, which was almost one quarter of her life. And then she was standing at the other end of the pathway, waving at him.
Noah breathed heavily, waiting for the next barrage to start. He activated his spirit run. He dashed forward with his heart in his throat. The last experience of a scorching fireball burning his skin wasn’t a good one.
He met his first fireball at the middle of the pathway. The second, a step later. And a third, a step after that.
Something was terribly wrong.
The burning sensation dulled his movement. His life dropped below 100 points as the third fireball burned his shoulder.
But he couldn’t lose now.
Blackness clouded his vision as he dropped to the ground.
A last bright ray of fire winked at him before he lost his senses.
Noah expected to wake in the respawn room. His heart pained him, because without him Rihala couldn’t beat the dungeon. He prayed to every god he knew that she’d abandon the dungeon and get out. He couldn’t see her die. Not now. Not ever. But it wasn’t in his hands anymore. The dungeon mechanism shifted in the middle. The fireballs started shooting backward when Noah reached the middle point. Like the dungeon had sensed the weaker prey and changed its strategy.
“Shit!” He opened his eyes, but he wasn’t in the respawn room. He was staring into two big lavender eyes. His pain was decreasing, along with Rihala’s life. She was pushing her life into him.
“No, stop!” He coughed. His health bar was just at 100 points, and even speaking a word was excruciating for his lungs. “Health potion.”
She gave her health potion to him.
“No, you… drink,” he said, coughing hard.