Another high-pitched whine of the giant sword swinging down again stopped him in his tracks – he wasn’t going to be able to run behind the behemoth. Instead, he turned to the side for a few steps and then ran back under its legs as quick as he could, hoping to confuse it enough that he could finally escape and come up with a better plan.
It worked…kind of.
Although he managed to confuse the Woodman, the side-effect of that was a shuffling of its feet – right when he was passing through its legs. An enormous wooden foot slammed into him and launched him across the room, landing only about 20 feet away from the tunnel. He stumbled to his feet despite bruises (and possibly a few broken ribs) up and down his body, rushing to get into the safety of the tunnel before the sword came back and sliced him in half.
He managed to stumble inside without mishap, barely missing Deecy, who was taking up most of the passageway all by herself. After downing two more Health potions, he leaned up against the rough stone of the tunnel and thought about his options.
I don’t have enough Power to kill that thing right now, nor can I think of anything else I have access to that would do any better than what I have right now. Maybe I can wait for my Power to refill? It will probably take a couple of hours to get enough to finish it off, but it’s the only thing I can think of.
However, less than a minute later of watching the Giant Mega-woodman stand stock-still in the middle of the room staring at his location in the passageway, Fred saw a small part of the massive defender fall off. Is it falling apart—nope. A Juvenile Woodmen stood up from what had fallen off and trotted in his direction. He didn’t want it to get too close, so he popped off his special Fireblast spell and destroyed it before it was halfway across the distance.
He now had only a little over four more casts of the offensive spell before he was out of Power; every five minutes he would regenerate enough to cast another one, but he didn’t think he’d have that long. Another minute went by and then two more Woodmen fell off the giant, coming toward him in staggered formation so that he couldn’t get both at once.
In desperation, he attempted to use the lower-cost original Fireblast he had adapted from the Elementalist a month or so ago, but it barely made the sword-wielding mobile tree pause as it shrugged off the attack. With another four or five casts of it, he thought it might do damage to kill it, but then he would end up spending more Power than for his one-shot kill special Fireblasts. Quickly, he slotted 4,000 Essence into the original spell to raise its level and effectiveness…only to find that it did do more damage, but also cost more at the same time. It was now powerful enough that it would ultimately cost the same at the end, however.
Before it was too late, he finished off the two Woodmen with two of his combined Fireblasts and then looked at his available Power:
Power: 420/6400
Soon he would have enough to cast another three Fireblasts, but what then? He looked down at Deecy with resignation and said, “I’m sorry, Deecy – it’s time we turn back and try it again another day. As much as I want – no need – to continue, I think it’s better that we retreat—”
“Who said retreat? We’re Adventurers in the Core Power guild and we don’t retreat – unless there’s good gold in it!”
The voice coming from behind him startled him for a moment, but then he smiled as he turned around.
Standing inside the tunnel behind him were Metch, Raspel, and Harriette – all D-Rated members of his guild. And behind them, naturally, was a sheepish-looking Eisa.
Chapter 38
“Hi Fred. I’m sorry, I had to find out what you were doing here, though I only intended for just me being here,” Eisa found herself apologizing. “The others followed after, however, and caught up just before I got to the dungeon.”
Fortunately, he looked like he was happy to see them, especially since he had just been talking about retreat. She had warned the other three about the Dire Wolf companion that Fred had, but they were still startled at her docile appearance as she walked out from behind him.
“Whoa – that’s a big wolf – are you sure it’s tame?” Harriette asked in an aside to her, but it was so quiet that Fred obviously picked up on it. He looked down at Deecy and his smile disappeared.
“Yes, she’s…‘tame’, I guess you could say. As much as I appreciate seeing all of you, you really don’t want to be here right now. There’s something that I have to do that you shouldn’t be connected to in any way.”
She had heard that same thing that morning – and it still didn’t deter her. “I told you that I was here for you no matter what. And these three didn’t want their guild leader to go into danger alone.”
Raspel was usually close-mouthed, but the small man suddenly spoke up in a quiet voice. “My much-older brother is in a guild near the capital; he says that the requirements to join were quite extraordinary and expensive. Not only that, but they don’t work together nearly as much as everyone in this guild does. And that doesn’t have anything to do with them – it’s you that has brought them together. Actually—” he cleared his throat as if he was embarrassed— “it might have a lot to do with the crazy amount of coin they are earning, but that is all because of you. I’ve never heard of another guild paying its members – they usually just take and give back as little help as possible in exchange. But with you and your guild, it feels like we belong to something greater than what we could do for ourselves.”
The little man closed his mouth with a snap, looking like he had just exhausted an entire year’s worth of words in those few sentences. Metch and Harriette looked fairly shocked as well, so Eisa figured it wasn’t a common occurrence for their friend to talk so much at once.
“Uh, yeah – what he said,” Metch lamely followed up with, banging his fist against his high-quality steel chestpiece as if to emphasize his point.
“I couldn’t have said it better myself, Raspel.” Harriette tossed her flaming red hair out of the way so that she could look Fred right in the face.
The man of the hour looked between them all with a serious look on his face, before he stared down at Deecy as if trying to communicate with the Dire Wolf. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Ok, if that is your wish, but don’t say I didn’t warn you – hold on a moment.”
Turning around again, Fred looked into the room he had obviously come out of a few minutes ago and she saw one of the wooden “men” she remembered from their visit before running toward their tunnel. Metch slung his massive shield off his back and started to step forward; however, the wood man exploded into pieces as a giant fireblast erupted right where it was a moment ago.
She was about to ask Harriette why she did that but stopped when she saw a confused expression on the Mage’s face. Although she didn’t know for sure, she thought that the red-haired woman was an Elementalist, but it was considered overly rude to ask – so she always thought of someone as their base class no matter what. It helped to prevent any confusion and hurt feelings if she were to guess wrong.
Anyway, the look on her face stopped Eisa from asking; now that she had a moment to consider it, the Fireblast didn’t look anything like the ones she had seen Harriette cast. It had streaks of black and even blue running through the red, orange, and white colors of the fire – completely abnormal and thoroughly unlike anything she had seen before…anywhere.
“Sorry, but if you are determined to help, we need to start soon because I’m almost out of Power. Soloing this place wasn’t hard, necessarily, but it sure used a lot of my reserves up.”
The fact that he had defeated the other six rooms all by himself was impressive; since he hadn’t really shown his class abilities before, she had no idea how powerful he was – especially since he said it wasn’t hard. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a single class that could do this all by itself. She didn’t have time to ponder or ask about any more, as they all rushed into the last room in the dungeon following Fred.
She had just finished this dunge
on about a week ago with a different group and knew exactly what they would find – more of the wooden soldiers. At least, that’s what she was expecting, but it wasn’t what they found.
She stood next to the other guild members who had come with her, their mouths as agape as hers. How…what…where did this thing come from?
The giant wooden man took a step forward that shook the ground, finally prompting Metch and the others to get moving. “What did you do to piss this thing off, Fred?” the fully armored Fighter asked over his shoulder, as he broke ahead of the others with his shield out in front of him.
“I don’t know – I wasn’t expecting this either. Be careful, that sword is really powerf—” Fred began to say. Metch wasn’t listening, however, as a single sword swipe was enough to launch their tank halfway across the room. He hit the ground and flipped end-over-end, eventually rolling to a stop; fortunately, he got up fairly quickly – though he was limping a little on his way back.
Eisa immediately used her Vitality Transfer spell, wincing a little at the pain as it was transferred and amplified into healing energy inside of Metch. By the time he got back to position in front of the wooden behemoth, he was walking normally again.
Everyone else had stayed back, waiting for Metch to fully engage and get the monster’s attention before attacking – though she couldn’t see Raspel. Which wasn’t very surprising, as he was adept at disappearing and reappearing at the most convenient moments; it was what his class was known for, after all – surprise attacks from unexpected quarters.
“We need to whittle it down using our spells – that’s the only way I can see to defeat it. With more damage to it, it should get weaker,” Fred told her and Harriette.
“We need Metch to get its attention first—”
“There’s no time for that – he won’t last long under the onslaught unless we weaken it; that first blow was only a glancing one. He probably won’t be able to take a full-on attack.”
She and Harriette wanted to argue, but the next moment Fred turned out to be correct. Even holding his shield over his head to protect himself, an overhead chop from the enormous sword was enough to crumple Metch’s defenses, sending him to the ground in a heap of broken bones. Eisa immediately sent a few more healing spells his way, relieved that it was taking – and that their tank wasn’t dead.
With delay being an obvious death sentence for Metch, Harriette immediately sent Fireblasts toward the monstrosity, followed by a few larger (and different-colored) ones from Fred. I still want to know how he is doing that. As for herself, once she had sent as many healing spells toward Metch as she could, she started throwing Shadow Strikes toward their large target.
With their tank recovering slower this time, he wasn’t able to get up fast enough to prevent the massive wooden man from walking past and targeting the spellcasters stationed near the entrance. With burning pieces falling off of it as it moved, she thought she could see it visibly shrink after every attack.
Still, within two ground-shaking steps, it was already close enough to attack them; they broke off their attack and started to run when Raspel appeared out of literally nowhere and stabbed his two long, high-quality steel daggers into one of the wood soldier’s legs, slicing off a sizable portion of wood as he pulled the daggers toward him.
That attack pulled its attention away from the spellcasters – which was fortunate for them – but then the slowly shrinking-but-still-deadly sword swung straight down at Raspel as the giant wooden man twisted to attack behind him. Their Scout managed to perform a very fancy acrobatic maneuver as he flipped backwards to miss most of the attack, but even he wasn’t fast enough to avoid his boot being clipped from the sword stroke.
It didn’t look like it initially hurt him too much, but it threw off his backflip and he ended up landing in a heap with something snapping somewhere in his body with a hollow-sounding *crack*. Shock must’ve been dulling the pain, because it wasn’t until he stood up and tried to put weight on his left leg that it collapsed beneath him and he started to scream. Eisa ran a few steps closer in order to get close enough to use her Vitality Transfer spell, but she knew it would be too late as the sword came down again.
Which was deflected into the ground as Metch threw himself over Raspel with his shield protecting them both. The impact was enough to jostle the injured Scout, but Metch fared much better this time with only a grunt from him and a single large dent in his shield. That thing really does look smaller now.
The rest of the fight went as smooth as possible, as Metch was able to get to his feet and actually stay there as he was battered from multiple sword strikes – which became weaker as Harriette and Eisa kept casting spells to whittle the wooden soldier down. Fred was eventually able to cast another one of his special Fireblasts, which shrunk it even further. Eisa had healed Raspel fully by that time and he added his own damage to theirs, speeding up the process.
When it was only twice the size of a normal wooden man, the not-so-giant-now monstrosity seemed to fall apart, breaking into six individual wooden men that she was used to seeing. They tried to run towards the spellcasters to attack them, but two were picked off by a Fireblast and a Shadow Strike; the rest were gathered up by Metch. Fred even stepped in and sliced apart one of them with his now-upgraded steel knives, explaining that he was out of Power.
Finally, as the last one fell quickly under the onslaught of five determined Adventurers, Eisa tried to relax as she realized that she was breathing hard. That was insane – I’ve never seen anything like that. Everyone else looked tired as well, though she could see smiles on all of their faces. Well, everyone but Fred.
There was a small treasure chest along the far wall, which was a common sight in the final room of most dungeons after a certain Rating. It usually contained some sort of weapon or armor – or even more than one; before the large influx of coin from Fred, it probably would’ve been an upgrade to most of the guild members. Now, however, they could afford to buy something better.
While the rest of them were now looking at the treasure chest with interest (even if it wasn’t something they could use, it would probably fetch a bit if they sold it) – as well as at all the coin on the floor from the melting wooden soldiers, Fred was frowning at something in the opposite corner. “Thank you all for your help – I couldn’t have gotten this far without your timely intervention. However, there is still something that I have to do.”
“What are you talking about, Fred? You finished the dungeon – wasn’t that what you wanted?” Metch asked, his confusion apparent in his face.
That’s what I want to know. She originally thought it was strange that Fred hadn’t gone toward another town to do his investigation, but she figured he was stopping by this dungeon for a different reason. Now she wasn’t so sure.
“Finishing the dungeon was never my…main priority. It was necessary, yes – but only to get to my objective. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to do what I came here for.” He walked toward the opposite corner where the treasure chest was situated, completely ignoring it.
With just a slight hesitation, they all followed after him. He stopped and looked confused for a moment, before saying, “I really don’t think you want to see this or be a part of this.”
She still had no idea what he was talking about, but she was in it for the long-haul. “We’re not leaving until you finish what you came here for – right, guys?” she said, looking at the other members.
They all added their assent, confirming their intentions to see it through. Fred looked at all of them with an unreadable expression on his face, before glancing at Deecy. He looked back at Eisa again, before saying, “Fine, it doesn’t look like you’ll leave this alone, so you might as well follow. Just…try to forget everything you see and hear in there.” He turned back to where he was going before.
See and hear in where? They trailed him as he walked toward the corner of the room and watched him look around for a second like he was searching for something. Sud
denly, he grunted and walked forward – through the wall! They all stood staring open-mouthed as Deecy followed in his footsteps, disappearing as if she was somehow merging into the solid stone wall.
Fred popped his head out of the wall – just his head – and said, “If you’re coming, let’s go.” Raspel immediately stepped toward where Fred’s head had just been pulled back into the wall. It took him only a second before he exclaimed excitedly, “There’s a passageway here!” That got them all moving, especially as their Scout disappeared just as quickly as Fred and Deecy had earlier.
Harriette and Metch followed quickly, leaving Eisa to bring up the rear. Once she got close enough, she could see the passageway they were talking about; however, when she took a step back, the hidden opening seemed to disappear! It was almost as if there was some sort of illusion magic covering it, but upon close inspection she could see that it was just cleverly constructed in a way that made it hard to see unless you were right on top of it.
She had to turn sideways down one part of the…“crevice” would probably be a better word, but within less than 30 seconds she had reached a place where it opened back up into a slightly larger space. Metch was standing frozen right in front of the opening, so she couldn’t see anything; she pushed him gently out of the way so that she could both fully enter…
And to see some sort of crystal floating in the middle of the room.
Chapter 39
The Core Room was a lot smaller than the one his parents had, though that wasn’t surprising; they had told him that they had expanded it to accommodate them both – and to accommodate Fred. In fact, this one was just barely large enough to fit everyone comfortably.
“I…is that…?” Metch asked, obviously unable to complete his thought.
That’s right – I doubt that many humans actually know that a dungeon core controls the dungeons they “delve” through – and even less have actually seen one in person. “Yes, this is a dungeon core. A Nature-faction dungeon core, in fact.”
Dungeon World: A Dungeon Core Experience Page 26