by Dakota Krout
“I got accepted as a disciple of the Royal Masseuse, so I can give all of you extra-relaxing massages at the Beginner ranks!” Jaxon offered his news cheerfully. No one replied, so he just quietly continued humming.
“Made ah new song,” Bard muttered when everyone stared at him. “Modified Haste spell that makes it feel like time is moving at eighty percent while we move at regular speed. It isn't ah time spell, just boosts your speed, thoughts, an’ reaction time. Only lasts ah minute, so don't go crazy.”
“That's super useful, Bard.” Joe’s brow was furrowed, already deep in thought about how he could put it to best use. “How often can you use it? Once per-”
“Hour.”
Joe nodded at Bard, “Got it. Clearly, reserving it for a Boss fight would be great, but you’ll see when we are in trouble. Always feel free to go all out, guys.”
“Shouldn’t we hoard everything we get and only use it after we have defeated all challengers in our path?” Poppy smirked as he spouted game logic. Before anyone could comment, he held up his hands in mock surrender. “Joking, of course. As for me, I basically worked on my skills. Oh, and I got my first Specialization.”
There was a round of congratulations, then Jaxon voiced everyone’s curiosity. “What is it?”
“Honorable Duelist,” Poppy proudly stated. “The class ability I gained with it allows me to begin a duel, and we are moved to a private space where nothing can interfere in our combat. It’s called ‘Instant Arena’.”
“I think that happens when Champions of Deities fight each other,” Joe mused. “That sounds really handy. Is death the only way out of there?”
“Death or surrender,” Poppy affirmed. “If we surrender, we get sent to our respawn location and get a hefty debuff. Not as bad as dying, but if the person who surrenders goes after the other person again within a day… the debuff doubles, and the loser automatically loses a single item to the honorable winner of the first duel. Ya know, because they acted dishonorably.”
“You need to defeat others in honorable duels to get your class rank up?” Alexis guessed.
Poppy touched his nose with one hand and pointed at her with the other. “Got it in one. Expect me to vanish all the time, because I plan to blaze through the levels.”
“Well, let’s hope that you can't get too far on this trip, just from sheer lack of things to fight.” Joe nodded at the others and pulled up his status screen. “I think we have everything that we need in order to at least start this challenge, so I think that it’s time we got to it.”
They vanished in a flash, reappearing in the grasslands near the coast just as the sun was setting over the sea. They hurried to the coast, arriving just as the final rays of light seemed to turn the entire body of water into a sparkling pool of blood before shifting to black as the sun vanished, followed by the moon bathing the watery world in silver.
“That were practically song-worthy.” Bard looked up and stuck his chin out to point. “Yup, full moon, just as Jess said it would be.”
“Now all we need to know is if she was right about the water levels.” Joe was moving along at a speed just shy of jogging, keeping his eye on the coastline. “There it goes! She was right! Keep an eye out for other groups!”
“Of course, I was right!” Jess announced, making Joe flinch and shy away. “I told you that the full moon should make the water recede almost far enough that we would be able to get to the underwater dungeon building thing.”
“When did you get here?” Joe asked her after he recovered from his shock. “I thought that-”
“She was with us all the way back at the Guild, Joe. Pay attention!” Alexis barked at him.
“Well, it wasn't like I was trying to ignore her; I’m just focused on-” Joe cut off his words as Jaxon put a hand on his shoulder.
“Joe. Do you understand the issue here?” Jaxon waited a moment, but there was no reply. “Right now, you are a leader, but you might not be one for much longer if you can’t figure this out. There is a dichotomy to leadership, and every choice has two extremes. If you cannot find a balance between the two, you will topple over and lose it all. Right now, the balance you need to find is between micromanagement and abdication.
“If you become too focused on controlling every little aspect, you leave no room for the others to step in and find their own niche. They simply become combat automatons. Too little oversight, and people begin to think that you don't care about them.” Jaxon sighed, then smiled as he dropped his hand. “The other option you have is what I did! Become a follower in the party, and you can just cruise along, doing whatever you want while someone else makes the choices for you.”
Joe tried to argue, “But isn’t that what you just told me not-”
“Ah, but that’s my choice. I’m not the party leader.” Jaxon winked at him. “See the difference?”
“Why are you so good at this?” Joe looked at Jaxon, somewhat concerned at the shift he was seeing in Jaxon’s mindset.
“Joe, I’m over ninety years old now. I think?” Jaxon replied with a pearly-white smile. “I’ve had a lot of positions in life, as a follower, as a leader, and now I finally get to just do whatever comes naturally!”
Jaxon skipped away, then laid down and rolled down the incline to where the waterline had been. Joe watched him stand up and promptly fall over again, too dizzy to stand straight. “And he says I need to find balance…
“Just another thing to work on.” Joe added ‘leadership training’ to his constantly growing list of things to do. He had been in the military and in a leadership role there, but not really. As a medic, he had been attached to another platoon and had been given free reign whenever he needed to do his job. He was only the uncontested person-in-charge during life-saving crisis moments. Other than that, he mostly followed along with the person who was running the combat operations. In fact, he had been a follower just like Jaxon had been describing. This - being in charge for real - was harder than he had thought it would be.
“Follow the maps I gave you!” Jess called from the side of the hill as they waded over sucking sands. “There are going to be a bunch of drop-offs, and some of them will have monsters!”
She didn't follow them the rest of the way, opting to hang back and watch their progress via her increasing class experience gauge. Thanks to her giving each of them a map of the area, they had a small minimap that they could follow around some of the more treacherous zones. When the water was up to their chests, they were nearly a half mile away from dry land. Bard suddenly dropped underwater, only to come sputtering back up a moment later. “Looks like that’s the end of the easy part.”
“Alright, I have our lead boots ready to go.” Joe spit out a mouthful of salt water as a wave splashed over his face. “Activate.”
Ritual of Leaden Boots activated! Time remaining: 3:59:57.
Instantly, the group stopped bobbing along with the water, standing still even as heavy waves smashed into them. Alexis coughed and yanked the cork off her bottle, managing to jump high enough to suck in some of her poisonous concoction. She was the shortest, so she went underwater as soon as she came back down.
I really don’t want to turn my aura off.” Joe grumbled lightly as everyone else took a deep inhale of the oddly pink cloud, and ducked underwater. He joined them a moment later.
You have been poisoned! Air is now impossible to breathe! Time remaining: 38:48.
Joe dismissed the information and started walking along the bottom of the sea. He got to the edge of the land, and hopped off. That was also when he took his first breath of water. His eyes bulged out as water rushed into his lungs, and he tried to cough it out, only to find more rushing in to take its place.
He was also falling much faster than he had thought he would. Joe had jumped off the equivalent of a cliff, and was falling almost as fast as if he had jumped off a real one. He hit the ground at the bottom hard, but he managed to mitigate the damage fairly easily, thanks to his Master ranks in jumping
. Still, there was blood in the water from all the bones that were poking through the skin of his teammate’s legs. Joe tried to heal them, but the spell didn't pass through the water.
Struggling to walk over to each of them individually, Joe cast Lay on Hands and managed to get all of them fixed up. None of them could speak with their lungs full of water, so they motioned toward the murky depths and began walking across the silty ocean floor. Luckily, their minimap didn't need actual light to operate, and Darkvision allowed Joe to see a decent distance; but seeing through the shifting water was a different story.
The briny liquid burned their eyes, and the group struggled to stay in a cohesive formation as they walked. Still, they got near to the underwater dungeon and looked up. With the moon now shining from above, they were able to see what looked like a school of fish swimming around a small mountain. If this area hadn’t been highlighted by Jess’s maps, they wouldn’t have known that those weren't fish; they were a combination of monstrous eels and sharp-fanged predators.
It was time for the next part of the plan. As an overly-curious monster fish got close, Poppy’s blade flashed out and sliced it in half. Blood flowed outward into a cloud, and the group dashed toward the hidden entrance as quickly as they could. If they were too slow, they would be caught in the chum and the incoming feeding frenzy.
Just before he ducked into the relative safety of the entrance, Joe looked up at the shining moon once more. The silver disk was now coming through a sanguine filter, and chunks of monster flesh were beginning to rain down. A sign of things to come, or an auspicious start?
Chapter Nineteen
They were standing at the bottom of a huge tube. Staring up its length, the only thing Joe could think of was the similarity to missile silos. Jess had already searched this for any way in, but going to the top was the only way to progress. Joe looked at the others and nodded, then mentally commanded the ritual to stop.
End Ritual of Leaden Boots? Caution: this will end the ritual for all [5] of the people it is impacting! Yes / No.
Joe thought ‘yes’, and the group started to rise through the water swiftly. Once again, he was pleased by his forethought in making sure that all rituals he had a hand in designing would contain that mental shut-off feature. It might have been paranoia, but his rituals should never be able to be used against him unless he wanted them to be. They slowed about ten feet from the surface of the water, and Joe checked the timer for the poison. He frowned at the fact that there were still four full minutes left. On one hand, he was pleased that they had made good time trudging along the seabed. On the other, they would need to wait underwater for another handful of minutes.
He shrugged and activated his Aura of Neutrality. The timer on the poison started dropping by two seconds each second. They swam to the top of the water when there was about a minute left, and Alexis directed them all out onto the shore when there was twenty seconds remaining. She went first, and started heaving. Water poured out of her lungs, and everyone went wide-eyed as they realized what she was doing. Their lungs were full of water! In a few seconds, they wouldn’t be able to breathe with that in their lungs anymore!
You have entered the Dungeon: Lessons of The Dark Age.
All of them worked to expel as much water as possible. Even so, when the timer ended, all of them began coughing furiously and painfully. They were shaking in fear, pain, and exhaustion by the end, and Joe couldn't stop the tears that leaked down his face. They mixed in with all the water on his face, but it was still a hard moment for him. “We were basically just waterboarded with salt water for ten minutes. That… that sucked so bad.”
“Right…” Jaxon agreed.
“Getting poisoned sucks,” Poppy grumbled.
Alexis sat up and glared at all of them. “We made it, didn't we? Yes, a potion of water breathing would have been great, but they are single-use and really hard to make or find!”
Joe held up a hand. “Alexis. You did an amazing job making this and getting everything ready. None of this is on you. It’s my fault for not understanding what would happen when we used it. All of you, my bad. I’ll try to find a way to make it up to you.”
His words calmed the situation instantly, though it was the kind of awkward calm that comes when people wanted to yell and had the wind pulled out of their sails. They all stayed there for a few minutes longer, then stood in clean and dry clothes. Joe’s aura had been working the entire time, so even their residual soreness from water-filled lungs had vanished a few minutes previously. Then they had simply needed the time to get their heads back into the game.
“What’s next?” Bard grunted out. “Findin’ ah pit of lava that we need ta squat over an’ dip our b-”
“I think,” Joe cut off Bard as quickly as possible, “that there are mainly just monsters and such.”
Bard grumbled to himself, but led the way forward. When they got to the first turn in the tunnel, Joe asked everyone to halt as he activated the anti-personnel wind blade ritual that he had created with his Coven ahead of time. After he set it in place, they continued forward, moving at a snail’s pace. “The annoying part of all this is that we need to go all the way down, pretty much to the same depth that we entered the place from. If we could have gone through the wall, we would have been there by now!”
“Too bad we don't have any sappers on our team.” Poppy got the group to chuckle at that; they all knew that trying to blast their way into a dungeon was likely a good way for the system to slap them with penalties. “Where were the enemies supposed to be?”
“Oh, they’re all over the place!” Jaxon pointed at the walls, making everyone’s gaze over snap to stare at him. “You know, deeper in. Jess was excited because almost everything in here is mechanical instead of magical. Apparently we aren't going to see magically overgrown spiders, but we might see a robotic spider monstrosity!”
“Why doesn't that make me feel better?” Alexis spoke up, frantically going through her poisons to find something that might work on metal enemies. “Why is this the first I’m hearing about this?”
“It’s on the map.” Jaxon shrugged innocently. “She made a legend for us. Look at the silver triangles. ‘Likely mechanical enemy’. She made all of these in record time and barely got time to hand them over. It isn't surprising that she didn't get a chance to explain every little thing.”
“Oh.” Joe examined his own map, and found exactly what Jaxon was referencing. “Yup, there it is. I guess her snakes didn't start any of them up? Either they won't do anything, or maybe they only get hostile when people get near them?”
There was silence for a long moment, then Bard cleared his throat and nodded at the walls. “Looks like Dwarves are ah thing in this world.”
The party studied the walls as they walked, and realized that this was likely the Dwarven history in pictograph form. They walked past dozens of what appeared to be tribal-style Dwarves, then found a new style just before the room opened up. On the last image, a Dwarf was standing above the others with a crown on his head while the others kneeled. Then the pictures turned into a smear of red that seemed to bleed into the now-open room ahead of them.
“What do you think that all meant?” Joe’s senses were tingling… this was important, he just knew it.
“Well, to me, the walls are letting us know that we are about to fight something.” Poppy spoke in a too-friendly tone that they had started to associate with him being snarky. “Perhaps I am incorrect, and we are going to make some friends in the space ahead! I’m certain all the blood is just a misunderstanding.”
“Oh, thank goodness.” Jaxon sighed with relief. “I’m always looking for new friends!”
“He’s being facetious, Jaxon,” Joe stated wearily. They stepped into the room, and a door hidden in the hallway behind them corkscrewed closed with a long hiss of steam. Words started emitting from the room in front of them, but the language was so archaic that it was nearly impossible to understand more than a single word.
&
nbsp; Tu sequere et vestigia tua maiorum. Win. Probare te digna tua est.
“Pretty sure that whatever tha’ was about, we need ta smash those shiny bois.” Bard hefted his axes as mechanical Dwarves entered the room through doors that had been hidden in the walls. Doors opened behind them as well, and more Dwarves began to pour into the room.
“How are we supposed to…?” Joe trailed off, looking at the dozens of Dwarves that had surrounded them. One detail seemed to jump out at him; Joe stared at the sigils that they all wore, noting that there were five different ones, and all the Dwarves were separated by the sigil they wore. “There! Go stand with that group!”
Joe ran to stand in front of the group that had been wearing the same symbol as the ‘King’ of the pictograph. His team followed, and the room devolved into an all-out brawl. The Dwarves they had sided with didn't attack them, and Joe was glad that he hadn't stayed with the ones that entered behind them; they were wiped out in under a minute.
They found that most of their attacks dealt damage, but were overall fairly ineffective against the mechanical Dwarves. They seemed to ignore direct magical effects like Dark Lightning from Joe, though he could bind them pretty easily with his solidified shadows. Jaxon could be seen punching a metal Dwarf, and a moment later, Lefty and Terror were trying to chew through them.
Bard managed to bust them up with his axes, and Alexis’s crossbow was armor-piercing, so her bolts pierced through the plating easily. Poppy was having a great time, his rapier designed to be extra-effective against armored enemies. Though they were mechanical, they still dropped as a real Dwarf would be expected to do when stabbed in the eye. Soon, the four other tribes had lost seventy percent of their forces, and the rest kneeled.
Crude Dwarven Tribesman (Autonomoton) X22 defeated! Experience gained: 220.
‘Their’ Dwarves hoisted their axes and hammers into the air to show victory, and all ‘defeated’ Dwarves were dragged away as Joe's group was escorted down the tunnel. They came to a fork in the path. Bard rumbled, “Ah’ve been readin’ the pictures we’re goin’ by. If ah have it right, this whole place is a repeat of history, ah lesson or summat. Ah think that a turn in tha tunnel means a choice that we are supposed to already know.”