by Dakota Krout
“…Sure.” She looked at me like I had started spewing Orcish. “An-n-yway that is why you were able to make a soul stone to house Dale’s Center, while the configuration had been set by Spiritual energy, the pattern was easily replicable as it was a physical change. It all comes back to the fact that you are a very different type of Core. I’d say one of a kind, but, well. Dale.”
“Knew you would...” Dani muttered, grinning as I huffed at her.
~Nine~
Dale smiled happily at how his bag clinked as he walked along. “Today has been a good day.”
The others agreed, as they had each made exceedingly good money. After finding several chests, both standard and hidden, they had to slow down and adjust their pouches so they would stop banging against their sides. They were just coming to the end of the fifth main room, the second floor having expanded. Sitting down, they began cultivating with as much focus as possible.
Tom was drawing in as much at a time as he dared, his open meridian helping by drawing off a good portion of his Essence and keeping it circulating. This allowed him to pull more into his Center without worrying about damaging himself. Remembering Craig’s orders to not cultivate out of the dungeon, he pushed himself even harder.
“HA!” Adam shouted, making the group collectively reach for their weapons. “Did it!” He looked around with his grin slowly fading as he saw the sour faces looking at him. “Oh, uh… Sorry. I just regained my D-rank five.” He had dropped a rank by using too much Essence in an Incantation during the fight with the Distortion Cat a week ago.
“That was way faster than expected!” Hans clapped him on the arm, “Great! Easier to get to a rank when you’ve been there before, isn’t it? Don’t worry, it happens sometimes.”
Adam looked at him curiously, “You have lost a rank in the past?”
“Yeah… everyone wants to try enchanting at least once, ya know?” Hans ruefully sighed. “Let’s just say there is a reason you should buy them and not make them.”
The others fell silent as they thought of his words; they had all thought about enchanting in the past. Rose shook off the sudden melancholy first, “Well! Are we ready to hit the Boss room? Raile is waiting for us, and I promised Grandma Chandra that I’d bring her some fresh Raile steak since we are eating it so often. She’s losing money.”
They all jumped to their feet and got into formation, cheering themselves on and getting mentally prepared to fight the massive Basher. They cautiously marched into the final room of the floor, noticing differences immediately. Adam informed them of the most obvious, “The Silverwood tree is gone!” He called in a shocked tone.
Dale started sweating with unadulterated fear; if the tree was damaged the Dark Elves would most likely kill everyone in the area after torturing them for a few weeks. He looked around the open, flat room for any sign of its whereabouts, noticing the glassy floor just as Raile charged them.
“Here we go!” Hans whooped as they tensed their knees, throwing themselves out of the way and scattering. “Our first real Boss fight as a team!”
Rose responded as she began launching arrows at the presumed weak points in Raile’s armor, “What, the Cat didn’t count?”
“Nope!” Hans did a cartwheel over Raile, missing being trampled by inches. “That was some kind of wild monster that got in here. This is a real test from the dungeon.”
“A test? Hardly!” Tom roared. “This rabbit should be cooked well and served to me, not disgracing this dungeon with its weakness!”
This statement shocked the others so much that they paused a moment too long, and Dale took a light blow to the edge of his breastplate, heavily denting it as he was thrown away. Ignoring Dale, Raile turned slowly and stared directly at Tom, pawing at the ground just before charging. Tom stood still in defiance, not moving until Raile was almost in striking range. Then he swung his mighty Warhammer back and around, coming down on Raile’s head with enough force to shatter the protective armor and send shards of stone into the soft brain below.
Raile’s momentum was transferred downward as his head stopped moving, and his body flipped. It began coming down on Tom, but he braced himself and dodged almost entirely out of the way, losing only a bit of skin as the rough armor met his unprotected flesh.
“Ha! I was certain of my ability to defeat this foe alone; this validation of my increasing skill pleases me greatly.” Tom looked at his teammates with a huge smile on his face, bleeding from small cuts where razor-sharp stone shards had sliced him.
“Did you… taunt Raile?” Hans unbelievingly exclaimed.
“Just so!” Tom nodded, “I was under the impression that he was an intelligent foe, and it was a pleasure and honor to defeat him. My insults do taint my victory, but I felt a great need to know my progression for certain.”
“This was way more fun than fighting that demon Cat was!” Rose was flushed with victory, already spending the rewards in her mind. “Is there another chest in here somewhere?”
“There it is!” Dale shouted exuberantly, jumping in the air and whooping. The others turned in excitement, ready for treasure, but were disappointed to see Dale looking downward.
Adam raised an eyebrow, “The treasure is under the floor?”
Dale shook his head, “No! The tree! There is another floor, and the tree is below us! We’re gonna live!” This comment earned him a few odd looks.
“Oh. Well.” Rose spotted the chest tucked away on the far side of the room, its exterior a bright but not glowing golden color. “There is the chest!”
All of them moved to collect their rewards, and even a highly-relieved Dale peeled himself from his view. They pulled open the chest, finding it filled with silver coins and potions. There was another pickaxe in the chest that appeared to be inscribed, as well as a set of arrows that glowed with bright enchantments to their enhanced vision.
“Dibs!” Rose called, pointing at the dangerously barbed arrows. She lifted them out and let Hans scoop the coins into a bag he had with him. “Shall we sell the pick, or is one of you feeling like taking up mining as a hobby?”
“Let’s sell it. I know a guy that would be happy to get us the best price for it.” Dale thought of his new friend Tyler.
Hans eyed him, “Don’t forget that the Guild still gets a cut, no matter who you sell it through.”
“Of course! I was just thinking we could bypass the listing fee that they make you pay at the Guild auction house. If we go directly to a merchant, we’ll get more.” Dale assured his friend.
Tom was eying the stairs leading down into darkness, “Dale, how would you feel challenging the next floor? After such a fast fight with the glorious Raile, my blood screams out for battle.”
Dale went silent, “Well… we have no idea what is down there. Should we wait for a report?”
Hans nodded, “That would be a wise plan.”
“I’m up for it.” Rose offered as she tested the balance and flexibility of her arrows, ruffling the fletching to inspect the craftsmanship. Adam made a noncommittal noise when the others looked at him.
“Perhaps… just a peek to see what awaits us?” Tom pleaded, edging toward the stairwell.
Dale looked around, each of them nodded, and Hans shrugged. “We can at least see what the next floor looks like, I suppose.”
They walked down the stairs for several minutes, the angle making them seem to walk a far longer distance than it actually was. At the bottom, there was a small room with three doorways spaced oddly far apart.
“What do those symbols mean do you think?” Adam pointed to the carvings above the doors.
Hans grunted, “No idea, but unless I miss my guess this is also a doorway, but closed.” He pointed at the square stone-like symbol, “Maybe it is the exit? It opens from the other side, you think?”
/> “Well, let’s take a look. Which one do you want to go in?” Dale put the matter to a vote.
There were three votes for the ‘fire’ door, hardly surprising as two members of the team were fire Cultivators. Hans clapped Tom on the arm, “Go team hot stuff!”
“Hot stuff?” Tom considered the words. “If you mean the fire of battle with which we temper our souls, I agree to this team name.”
Hans blew out a lungful of air slowly, “You know… you just… let’s just go, Dale.” They all stepped into the darkness and took a few steps when Hans stopped them. “Wait. Do you see that?”
They looked about them, but Adam was the one who answered. “I see nothing. The Essence is very dense on this floor though.”
“Exactly. Too dense. Stay here.” He walked forward a few feet and vanished to their enhanced vision. “Where did I go?”
“Didst thou… find a tunnel, perhaps?” Tom called uncertainly into the darkness.
“Nope!” Hans was in front of them again. “Stop enhancing your sight, watch and learn.” He reached into his pack and produced a light potion. He shook it without opening the vial, and it began glowing brightly. Within moments they were able to see as far as the tunnel extended, at least until it took a sharp turn. “Now, enhance your vision again.”
They did as instructed, and their range of vision suddenly dropped to a few feet. Rose broke the silence, “How strange.”
“Agreed, this will make it much harder to watch for traps.” Dale mentioned as an afterthought, “And monsters.”
“On the plus side…” Rose smiled as she suddenly plopped to the ground. “Our vision is being impaired by free-floating Essence.” She began cultivating, causing a small competition as they all attempted to clear the air in the tunnel.
~Cal~
“What’s that? Sorry, I was looking at my garden, another group chopped all the plants down.” Dani told me sourly.
“Yes, but to be fair they aren’t being attacked and they are getting a lot of Essence. It makes sense to me.” Dani looked at the other group in the area, “At least they aren’t getting a chance to relax.”
I had been haranguing ‘The Collective’ since they first reached this floor. Luckily for them, I didn’t have fine enough control of the Essence in the room to make and control large groups of Cats. I could either make a few and control them well, or make a swarm and let them run rampant in the dungeon. Since I didn’t want a large group of uncontrollable Cats in the area…. Whoops! Back on topic. I had intermittently been sending squads of Advanced Bashers or individual Cats at the group, and they had slowly begun falling to my war of attrition.
I had just had a successful sneak attack! While they had been focused on the Bashers, a Cloud Cat had gracefully drifted down the long, straight hallway behind them and savagely torn into their healer. The screams of the healer had only lasted a moment, but it was long enough to distract the other members. They had each taken a few wounds from the Bashers, including one nasty burn from the Hellfire on the horn of an Impaler. Not enough to take them down, but more than they were prepared to deal with without a healer.
Soon, their leader was gritting his teeth as the others complained around him. So far he was the only one mostly undamaged, and he had resolutely stuffed the body of the Cloud Cat in his bag and marched onward. Now it was obvious they were looking for an exit, and they retraced their steps as well as they could. They even had found where they entered, but thought they were wrong since the door was closed and seamlessly blended with the stone around it. They had been wandering for nearly an hour when I noticed they were approaching Dale’s group and the open doorway behind them.
The leader of the group cocked his head and motioned for his minions to be silent. He looked around the corner carefully, drew a blade, and motioned for his team to get ready to attack. A tap on his shoulder made him wave his hand in a shooing motion as he gripped his sword.
“Ah-hem!”
The leader furiously started to turn, glaring at the offender who had made the noise, only to find a gleaming dagger pressed to his Adam’s apple.
“Well hello there, sunshine.” Hans smiled blithely at the quickly paling man. “You weren’t really going to attack a group from the Guild in here… were you?” He fluttered his eyelashes sweetly.
The man began to bluster, “What? No, of course not! I was just… preparing in case this turned out to be a trap! This dungeon is devious, and we have lost two… three of our group! These two have taken serious injuries.” He waved at his underlings, who helped his case by looking extra pathetic.
“Hmm. Well, you are always welcome to leave peacefully.” Hans stressed the last word and stepped to the side, narrowly missing a Wither Cat as it lunged at the group. It swiped its claws deeply into the arm of one of the members of “The Collective” before running to a safe distance, hissing, and retreating back into the concealing darkness.
“What in the abyss was that?” Hans shouted as he watched the retreating feline figure.
The leader looked away from his bleeding subordinate, “That’s one of the new Mobs. They are on an entirely different level than the ones above. The Essence in the air… I can’t even tell their ranking. They die a lot faster than the armored Bashers, but the wounds they inflict…” He waved at the downed man.
Hans moved in for a closer look. He frowned at the man who was writhing on the ground and beginning to scream, “Cut it off! Oh, Gods, cut it off!”
“It looks like a shallow cut… is it poison?” Hans spoke over the screams.
“The name is Nick, by the way — headman of ‘The Collective’.” The leader said with a worried look at his downed man. “I don’t think so, but I can’t tell for certain. We lost our healer earlier on this cursed floor.” Dale's group had come closer when the noise became audible, so Adam was quickly motioned over. He immediately sent healing light into the wound and gasped, sweat forming as he waged an intense battle. The screams died down, and the man began thanking Adam profusely.
“No, this is not over. I merely delayed the infection until a more powerful healer can fix it.” The cleric informed his now nervous patient.
“What happened? What did it do?” Dale quizzed his friend.
Adam turned serious eyes on his group leader, “Whatever that thing was injected infernal Essence into the wound. The corruption wrapped the meridian, pulling it closed. Then it started forcing its way in, attempting to climb the meridian through a non-infernal affinity channel. I had to wrap the whole thing in a layer of Celestial Essence, and… I slowed it, and eased the pressure, but it will gain strength again soon. It is already dismantling my barrier. He needs a powerful cleric if he wants to live, let alone regain use of his arm.”
They lifted the man, and exited the labyrinth with Hans and Nick providing rear security. Quickly climbing the stairs, they exited my awareness only a few minutes later.
“Cal, I think that maybe this floor is too powerful for the majority of the people that typically come into the dungeon… Do you think that we should tone it down a bit?” She seemed a bit nervous.
I certainly considered her words, before slowly disagreeing with her.
“You think they will agree that the rewards justify the risk then?” Dani queried me seriously.
I wondered where this was coming from, she had always been the biggest proponent of eating as many people as possible.
“Hmm. Okay, that is fair… I just worry about drawing in people that you can’t handle. For instance, that powerful Mage that walks in every morning, avoids everything except Raile and then tears his armor off and butchers him. Do they eat him up there?” Dani curiously wondered.
Dani shuddered when I mentioned this, so I tried to change the topic.
Dani took the bait, “Yes! Not only that, but I have come up with a way to solve the problem.”
“A Mini-Boss.”
My enthusiasm waned a bit,
She laughed, “You are going to like this! There is no real reason to cut down all the plants, right? So, we punish them for doing it! If they cut down a certain amount — let’s say more than half — we allow a Boss to spawn in the room.”
She was silent a moment before answering shyly, “This is the part you… might not like.”
“I want you to put Banes in there.” She informed me to my great disgruntlement.
“Hear me out! That wasn’t the part you won’t like. I want you to upgrade them… and use the tentacles from the Distortion Cat.” Dani directed me.