As good as it was to approach my next level, the bomb had unforeseen consequences. The blast had taken out the rats, but it also carved a chunk out of the mine wall. The dungeon structure shook, and mud fell down and pattered on the floor. This wasn’t good.
“I thought dwarves were supposed to be good at building mines?” I said.
Smoglar glared at me. “I thought Tinkers could aim their bombs straight? This place hasn’t seen a dwarf in decades, you git, so it’s ready to fall apart.”
Brian put his fingers to his chin. “We better hold off on the bombs for now, Janus. The last thing we need is a cave in.”
“I’m not dying under a pile of mud,” said Smoglar. “That’d be embarrassing.”
I pulled my dagger out of my inventory and equipped it. Without my bombs I didn’t feel as tough, and I knew that I’d have to get better at my Knife Play skill. I was never going to be a strong fighter, but Knife Play increased my chances of a critical hit. That could be the difference in a melee fight.
Before we went on, I opened my character screen and inspected my core stats.
Unallocated points: 4
Strength: 2
Agility:3
Intelligence: 20
Endurance: 3
Charisma: 13
My stats were a little lop-sided, but I was planning a build that maximised the advantages of my Tinker class. That said, I was going to have to even it out a little if I had to use my dagger. I knew that agility made my attacks quicker, but it also had the effect of improving the likelihood of a critical hit. I loaded 2 points into that stat.
Next, I needed to be sure I wouldn’t fall down in a heap the minute a rat bit my arse. Endurance would increase my HP, but it would also give me an improved resistance against damage. Hopefully that would extend to guarding me against poisons and plagues. I knew that loading my remaining 2 points into endurance wouldn’t make me a colossus, but everything helped.
Agility increased to 5
-Attack speed increased to 4
-Critical chance increased to 23% [Knife Play modifier]
Endurance increased to 5
- Hit points increased to 152
- Plague resistance increased to 2.7%
- Poison resistance increased to 4.6%
With that done, I inspected the loot left behind once the rats’ bodies had evaporated. Their gristly meat and skin remained on the floor after their spirits had departed, but none of it was diseased.
Items Received:
Rat Meat x4
Rat Skin x4
“We’ll have to keep going until we find plague rats,” said Brian.
We had to be careful. Smoglar’s attacks would do more damage than ours, and he was guaranteed to kill at least a couple of rats in one hit. The problem was that where he excelled in strength, he lacked speed. One bite was potentially all it would take to give us the plague, so we needed to dispatch them quickly.
That was how I found myself at the front of the pack. The passageway was too cramped for us to go side by side, so Brian walked behind me with his hatchet in his hand. Smoglar trailed last, muttering to himself about his relegation to the back of the pack.
We followed the dungeon through twists and turns. The deeper we got the colder it became, and a foul smell rose in the air. At points, it became so thick that we could hardly breathe. The plague rats were close.
As the trail led us further into the dungeon we encountered a few groups of vermin. Brian and I used our one-handed weapons to dispatch them. In one particularly focussed slash of my dagger, a luminous light filled the tunnel, and the rat in front of me was torn apart by my blade.
Knife Play skill increased by 20%! (60% until level 2)
The tunnels seemed to run on for so long that I began to get the impression we were in a maze. I knew that to get out, we could just retrace our steps. All the same, it seemed like we were being led further into a pit of darkness.
Finally I felt a draft on my face and I saw a weak light glowing ahead of me. Walking forward, I realised that the tunnel opened up into a cavernous room. We followed it until we reached the heart of the dungeon.
It was as big the dining hall of Ambergrim fortress. Stone had been laid out on the floor, and flags of it were stained with dried blood and rotting carcases. The walls were made of marble, and although the polish had long-since faded, I could still see the carvings of old dwarven symbols. The most impressive sight was at the far end of the square-shaped room. An entire section of the wall had been carved away, and in its place was a twenty-foot tall sculpture of a dragon. Its eyes were stern and they seemed to stare at me so intensely that for a second, I thought it might break out of its stone casing.
“This is what I’m talking about,” said Smoglar, walking into the centre of the room. He spread his arms out wide as if to display the intricate carvings in all their glory. “This is what dwarves used to do. Can you think of any man who could do this? Or any giant?”
“Come on,” said Brian. “You know we don’t talk about race.”
We followed Smoglar into the centre of the room. This was the end, it seemed. The passageway we had followed had taken many twists, but it hadn’t given us any other paths to choose or any ways to change direction.
I walked away from the centre and to the edge of the stone floor. A moat surrounded the flooring. It was ten feet wide, and a green mist rose off it.
“I think we’ve found the source of the plague,” I said.
Brian looked at me. “What’s that?”
“There’s a moat running alongside here. I’m no expert, but I don’t think water should be green and stink to high heaven. The rats must have been drinking from it.”
I opened a healing potion. My HP bar was almost full, so I wasn’t in dire need of it, but I drank it back all the same. Once the bottle was empty, I carefully lowered it into the green water and scooped some of it up. The liquid swished in the bottom of the vial. As I screwed the cork back on, I held my head away from it so that I didn’t breathe it in.
“We don’t need the rat meat anymore,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that simple,” said Smoglar, his voice higher-pitched than usual.
When I turned around I saw what he meant, and I was so surprised that I almost dropped the vial of plague water.
Something had joined us in the entrance of the room. At first, I couldn’t see it clearly. I made out only its vague form, and it seemed to be shaped by mist. The figure stepped forward, and as it did, I saw it clearly.
It was a creature taller than Brian. Its skin was scaled and had small spikes protruding from it. Its head was almost a triangle shape, and two curved horns stuck out from its scalp. It opened its mouth and roared at us, sending a gush of rotten-smelling wind in our direction. I focussed on it and appraised its stats.
Pit Demon – Level 45
HP: 2390 / 2390
Strengths: ???
Weaknesses: ???
“Close your mouth and get ready,” shouted Smoglar.
The demon stepped forward. The ceiling seemed to shake when it moved, and flecks of dust fell down. This was no place to use bombs, but we needed a plan. From the way the monster stared at us I guessed that it didn’t want to have a chat. We needed a course of action, and we needed it quickly.
“Smoglar, you’re the tank again,” I said.
“Tank? Next to that thing, I’m a grubrat.”
“All the same, what else are we going to do? We can’t use bombs because the whole place is one badly-aimed explosion away from burying us. This is the only chance we have, and we just have to take it.”
Brian nodded. He had rarely looked worried on our travels, so I didn’t like the look of fear that had spread on the giant’s face.
“Take as much damage as you can,” I said. “Brian and I will keep you topped up with potions, and in between, I’ll try and get a few critical strikes with my dagger.”
The demon stare
d at us with curiosity, looking at us as if we were just morsels. I wondered if it understood what we were saying. As if in answer, the demon snorted. It spread its arms out wide and I saw thick muscles bulging against its skin. It opened its hands to reveal claws bigger than Brian’s head.
“Good luck,” I said. I put the plague water in my bag. In one hand I gripped my dagger, and in the other, I held a vial of healing potion.
We turned to face the demon. As he approached us, I saw that the skin on his chest was cracked. Pale faces peered out from in between the fissures. They seemed to be made of flesh, but their expressions were set in looks of anguish, as though they were souls that had frozen in torment.
Smoglar gripped his axe in his hand. The dwarf might have been foolhardy at times, but I had to give it to him. Faced with a creature much taller than he was and a hell of a lot stronger, he barely showed any fear. He rushed at the demon and lifted his axe in the air.
As he struck it, a flash of red light enveloped him. His axe hit the cracks in the monster’s skin, and the demon reared back. It let out a roar that was louder than the explosion of even the biggest bomb I was capable of making, and I felt my ears ring long after it stopped.
Smoglar had scored a critical hit, but as I looked at the demon’s health bar I saw that it had moved hardly an inch. This was going to be a long, grinding battle, and that was if we were lucky. We didn’t have a great deal of potions between us, and I hoped our meagre supply would hold out. The thought of leaving the dungeon crossed my mind, but the monster blocked our way.
As Smoglar dealt damage to the creature and took some of his own in return, I heard a sound. This wasn’t the snort of the monster or the crack of Smoglar’s axe, but something else. Soon, I got the sickening realisation that it was the stampede of dozens of tiny feet.
Rats poured out through the entrance of the tunnel and joined us in the cave. For a fleeting second I thought they might help us, but the snarls they made confirmed that I was wrong.
The rats plainly didn’t want to help us, but I realised that they might not have a choice. I had upgraded my Snake Tongue to level 2, and there it had changed to something else; Animal Whisperer.
How does one whisper to animals, anyway? Did that mean I had to squeal like a rat? Somehow, that didn’t appeal to me. Instead, I stared at the rats. As they bared their teeth and scurried toward us, I imagined myself delving into their minds and tweaking their synapses. The dungeon around me started to fade and I felt myself focus deeper and deeper. I became aware of a low murmur around me and I realised that I was hearing the rats’ thoughts. Tugging on the strings of their minds, I tried to transform them into allies.
Animal Whisper failed.
There were too many of them. I needed to hone my skill by increasing my intelligence. I guessed that until then, manipulating a group of creatures was beyond me. It might have worked if I could focus on one rat at once, but I didn’t have time.
The demon swiped at Smoglar with a giant claw and caught him on the chest. The dwarf grunted as the wind was knocked out of him. His armour held firm and stopped the claw tearing him apart, but he fell to the ground, and his HP drained until it almost ran empty.
Sensing our weakness, the rats moved in closer. To have any chance of killing the demon then we had to fight it alone; if we had to contend with the rats at the same time, we had no hope.
Brian took a healing potion out of his bag and tossed it to Smoglar. The dwarf was dazed, but with shaking hands, he managed to unscrew the vial and tip it into his mouth.
The demon moved forward. Each time it took a step the whole room seemed to vibrate. For a second I thought about lighting a bomb and just burying us all. If we were to die here, then at least we’d take the beast with us.
I took a breath. I wasn’t thinking like someone with 20 intelligence points, I was thinking like someone with…fewer intelligence points. I reached into my inventory and took out my gunpowder. I quickly ran around the room and spread it in a circle. As the rats moved in closer I lit it, and the powder caught fire and made a wall of flames around us, keeping the rats at bay.
The demon puffed its chest out. It looked like it was going to attack with its claws again. Instead, it took a breath so big that it seemed like it was drawing all the air out of the room. Then, focussing on Brian and Smoglar, it roared. Its foul breath came out with such force that it swept my friends onto the floor, draining most of their HP. Brian struggled to get up, but try as he might, he was stuck. Whatever attack that was, it had held them in place.
That left the demon and me; a Tinker with bombs he couldn’t use and a dagger good for only killing rats. I knew that if I focussed hard enough I could use Knife Play and score a critical hit, but that wouldn’t finish off a creature like this.
The dagger. That was my only chance, I realised, but not the dagger in my hand. In my belt was the Old Serpent’s sting, and I knew that it had a damage of 500. Using it would drain my HP, but I didn’t have a choice.
I equipped the dagger and gripped it in my palm. It felt strange to hold, as though it didn’t want me to wield it. Gripping it tighter, I focused on the demon. I tuned everything else out so that I could no longer hear the crackling flames or the squeals of the rats. I stared with concentration at the cracks in the demon’s skin, and at the faces trapped inside it.
Holding my breath and praying that it worked, I ran at the monster. Red light seemed to gather above me, and I felt a charge run through my hand and into the dagger. Just as the demon lifted its arm to swat me away, I stabbed my blade deep into its waist, making sure it went through the cracks in its skin.
For a second, nothing happened. Time seemed to slow around me, as if in the moments before my impending death, the universe had decided to grant me time to enjoy my fate. I expected the demon to push me away and then finish me with a claw.
That didn’t happen.
The demon roared, but this time it was different. It came out higher pitched, more like a scream than a grunt of aggression. The cracks in its skin glowed red and began to widen, and I watched as the faces trapped inside drifted out toward the ceiling.
As the demon fell to the floor, the ceiling shook and patches of mud and stone rained down. I took my last healing potion out of my bag and ran over to my friends. When they had finished drinking, we caught our breath and watched as the demon evaporated and left us alone in the dungeon.
Level Up to level 13!
Exp to next level: 194
The rats were gone, the demon was dead, we’d found the source of the plague, and I had levelled up. Things were going great, and I was sure that nothing bad would happen again, ever.
And then I remembered that I was in Re:Fuze.
You have used the Old Serpent’s Sting. Any members of the Serpent guild can now find you on the map.
Chapter Twelve
Feidan had already finished his last potion when we got back to him. His health bar started a decline that would have led to his death had we not returned. When he saw us, he grunted and sat up. Sweat covered his forehead, and there was blood on his chin and on the front of his robe from where he had been coughing.
“Did you get the meat?”
“We got more than that, you git," said Smoglar. “Didn’t tell us about the bloody pit demon did you?”
The healer jerked his head back in surprise. “Pit demon?”
“We don’t have time for this,” I said. I took the vial of plague water out of my bag. “I didn’t get any rat meat, but I got this. It’s from the moat that the rats were drinking from. It’s definitely infected.”
“Probably the pit demon pissing in it,” said Smoglar.
Brian boiled a pot of water for Feidan, and then we sat back as the healer used his alchemy skill to brew a plague antidote. The giant seemed enraptured by the process, and he couldn’t take his eyes off Feidan.
With the antidote made, and his HP bar slipping, Feidan drank it back. A few seconds later I focussed on his stats
and saw that the plague was removed.
Quest Complete: Cure Feidan’s Plague
The pit demon is gone!
Reward:
175 Exp
CR500
Items [Unknown]
“Let’s have it then,” said Smoglar. “The CR and the items.”
Feidan’s face still looked pale, though his forehead was free from sweat.
“I told you, it’s in the bank in Iskarg. I’ve got a deposit box with all my CR and a few items I found that I couldn’t use.”
“How come you haven’t sold them yet?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Guess I’m a bit of a hoarder. It’s addictive, you know, seeing the yellow glow above a rare item. I don’t like to sell them.”
Smoglar nodded at Feidan in agreement. His inventory bag was bulging to the point that it looked ready to burst.
Tinker, Tailor, Giant, Dwarf ( LitRPG Series): Difficulty:Legendary Book 2 Page 11