Second Realm

by Michael Chatfield

  Rugrat moved through quickly.

  Erik shifted it over and jumped through. The portcullis dropped behind him. In the tight, enclosed space, the noise seemed to be its own thunder.

  They moved through the hall quickly. They passed tapestries that showed people offering blood to the altar before a man standing there, his body made of glowing light, accepting their sacrifices. The sacrifices looked almost pleased being able to sacrifice their blood for the man on the temple.

  At the corner of the hallway, there was a part that continued forward. There was a dead runed circle on the ground.

  “Dead teleport of some kind. Looks similar to the ones in Alva,” Rugrat said. “Stack left corner, ready?”

  “Set.” Erik squeezed Rugrat’s triceps.

  They turned the corner.

  “Hallway twenty meters right,” Rugrat said.

  They moved through the hallways and came to a hallway that started to turn back on itself.

  “Let me test something,” Erik said.

  Rugrat nodded as Erik used his Dungeon Sense ability for the day.

  He didn’t get any more information on the dungeon but with the ability, he locked onto the dungeon core. He shared the location to Rugrat to update his map as well.

  Their maps showed it being below, but it was a big splotch covering a forty meter sphere.

  Now there was a sphere with a radius of just three meters.

  The closer we are when we use dungeon sense, the greater accuracy it achieves. Erik thought to himself.

  “Let’s keep going then,” Rugrat said.

  ***

  Jasper had conveniently dropped off the issue of having people running around with such high-level equipment at Elise’s feet as he and the rest of his trading group departed Alva Dungeon.

  They might be just traders but all of them were level fourteen. Still, they had an escort of four people from Alva’s military to help them cross the Beast Mountain Range.

  “All right, next stop, Vermire Trading Outpost,” Jasper said.

  Chapter: Dungeon Hunters

  Erik and Rugrat entered another room. It was built up like the first. Manacled skeletons hung from the walls and then more were placed on different pillars around an altar.

  There were traps with poison that were meant to paralyze and more thunder mines.

  Rugrat took his time looking through the room before he stopped and waved Erik over as he moved away from the wall he was inspecting.

  Erik tilted his head to Rugrat in question, covering the two other doors that led out of the room and weren’t the one that they had come in through. “What is it?” Erik asked.

  “There’s a secret door here. It has a lot of runes on it so I can’t see what’s on the other side. If I didn’t have my Simple Inorganic Scan that is used to see through things, I wouldn’t be able to find it. The runes make detection magic hard to work.”

  “Well then.” Erik moved his rifle to aim at the door. “Shall we see what’s behind the mysterious door?”

  Rugrat moved to the side and found the right button to press. He hit it and moved back, raising his rifle.

  There was a series of clicking noises and then a rolling one. The wall pulled back and then rolled away. A blue fog rolled over them as Rugrat threw out night pearls to illuminate the area.

  ==========

  You have entered a Mana-dense area. Mana Regeneration increases by 2.

  ==========

  Erik moved through the door. The night pearls weren’t necessary. The fog was lighting up the room, as were the spiritas occupants.

  They were in a fifty-meter by fifty-meter room. With four altars arranged upon it. Three of the altars were arranged in a triangle around a central, larger altar in the middle of the room. Roaming around it were glowing spiritas. They looked to be people but instead of being made from flesh, they were closer to a Mana-created creature that resembled a human.

  Erik and Rugrat took this in as they walked through the door and fired on the five closest creatures that were looking at them.

  There were six melee types, three mage types, and a heavy armored knight that looked like a whole bunch of anger and pissed-off Mana.

  Erik and Rugrat fired at the closest melee spiritas’, killing one each.

  The regular melee types’ speed was terrifying: one that had been nearly one hundred meters away closed the distance in seconds. One of them rushed Rugrat from the side. Rugrat turned to fight it but the Mana creature turned its arm into a blade that it stabbed into Rugrat’s side. The blade went through the opening in the side of Rugrat’s armor, piercing Rugrat directly.

  One of the mage spiritas fired out a spell. It missed and hit the wall, blowing the stone away. The magical discharge hit the melee thing that had attacked Rugrat, throwing it back and tearing its blade from Rugrat’s body.

  Erik yelled as Mana rushed through his body, focusing on his foot. He drove it down into the melee spiritas a few times until a tombstone appeared.

  Another blast whistled over Erik’s shoulder.

  “Rugrat!” Erik turned and fired on another mage taking potshots at him.

  “Working on it!” Rugrat fired at another melee spiritas coming in at them.

  Erik put his rifle away, casting a ball of Simple Range Heal at Rugrat as Mana rushed through his body once again.

  With his state of mind, the Mana destabilized as it came out of his fist. It detonated like a shotgun going off.

  The melee spiritas was missing its head. There were four more behind it, as all the spiritas in the room were rushing over.

  One was disabled, another heavily wounded; the melee type was flickering with Mana as its power was going wild.

  The other two were far back enough so that the attack missed. One that dodged out of the way let out a scream, shaking in rage as it threw its hands to the side, its fingers elongating into claws.

  Erik, who had seen the heavily wounded spiritas, couldn’t do anything as the blade finger spiritas leapt at him.

  Erik’s left fist slammed into the melee spiritas. From the Mana Detonation, his right fist was in a bad way but his body was already starting to repair the damage. If it was someone who hadn’t tempered their body, they might have crippled their hand or been in so much pain that they were unable to do anything else.

  Erik had coated his fist in poison and Mana. The spiritas dropped to the ground.

  “Fuck you, Edward!” Rugrat yelled, firing his rifle. ‘Edward Blade Fingers’ was hit and pushed back, only just staying on his feet.

  The other two didn’t seem to care as they lurched forward.

  Erik didn’t look to stop their attacks but moved to intersect his armor with their hands as they turned into blades.

  They were pushed back by their attacks, giving Erik some room.

  He turned on his right foot and slammed his left foot forward. He pulled out two healing potions, throwing one to Rugrat and drinking the other.

  As he spun, he saw that Rugrat was looking in better condition and had a tube in his mouth, connected to a camelbak of healing potion.

  Erik used Mana Detonation on his left foot.

  Another explosion of rampant Mana went off. Everything in a five-meter cone was affected, killing another spiritas. Two more were wounded and a mage that had been disabled wasn’t able to recover from his wounds.

  More were piling in and Erik looked as though he were going to be overwhelmed.

  Rugrat leaned on one side and fired his rifle, firing around Erik to hit the spiritas mages that had spells prepared, ready to hit Erik if there was an opening.

  Their spells went wild, causing them to yell out in pain, but they weren’t heavily injured.

  Erik dodged a punch. His storage ring flashed as a shotgun appeared in his hand. Erik fired it one-handed. If it was a normal human, they would be lucky if they just hurt their hand and got hit in the face with the shotgun. Erik’s high Strength
allowed him to fire it like a pistol.

  The spiritas’s chest disappeared as the Mortal-grade iron cut through the spiritas.

  Killing the spiritas before, he had seen that poison didn’t work on the spiritas at all.

  “Reloading!” Rugrat yelled out as he changed mags.

  With the melee spiritas thrown back, it was the opening one of the waiting spiritas mages needed. With a flash of lightning, one of the mages unleashed a powerful stun spell. Erik cast Ranged Heal on himself as he saw the attack coming in.

  Erik was hit with a blast in the chest and flew backward as his entire body tensed up. A Mana spear shot through the air as fast as a bullet. Erik was trying to get up as it pierced his armor. His armor took away a lot of the damage but the Mana rushed through his body, running through his Mana channels and tearing them apart.

  Erik hit the ground. The Mana spear dissipated as Erik let out wet coughs.

  The Ranged Heal did healing over time, so it would work for a few more seconds. Rugrat didn’t want to think what would happen otherwise. He pulled out a couple vials of healing powder and threw them close to Erik. They broke on the ground and they released a cloud that Erik inhaled to help with his wounds.

  The melee spiritas were recovering and looked to Rugrat in anger.

  The mages were already creating new spells.

  ***

  Rugrat’s blood boiled. His mind, his body—it was alive; he was on full combat high. He knew he had to deal with Erik but he hadn’t lost his mind. He had to deal with the threats that threatened them both or neither of them were going to get out of this.

  Rugrat fired on the mages, piercing right through the magical formations they were making.

  The Mortal-iron cored rounds interacted with the spells.

  One spell went catastrophically wrong, exploding in rampant Mana, killing the caster and badly wounding the other.

  The biggest and baddest spiritas in the room, the knight, swung at Rugrat. It was the biggest but also the slowest, covered in armor.

  Rugrat instinctively cast Explosive Shot on the round inside his weapon. He came up and stuffed the barrel between the knight’s helmet and chest plate, and pulled the trigger.

  As Mana-altered beings, the spiritas had a weakness to Mortal iron. The Explosive Shot buried itself in the knight’s skull and went off, sending shards of Mortal iron through its body.

  Rugrat was pushed back, but the knight’s armor had contained most of the explosion.

  Rugrat saw Erik out of the corner of his eye. He still had a big hole in his chest and Erik’s face was pale from shock; his mind was a mess and unable to put together a coherent thought. Thankfully, the cloud of healing powder was accelerating the healing and Erik’s own Body Like Stone increased his ability to regenerate.

  Rugrat’s rifle snapped up, putting Explosive Shots into the remaining melee types.

  He changed weapons and pulled out Big Momma. Red lines ran from his hands over the weapon and into the magazine as he cast Explosive Shot.

  It took but a second as he kicked the knight’s armor that had remained standing up to the ground. He fired on the mage before they were able to cast; his round pierced through their spell as they were just releasing it.

  The Explosive Shot hit the spell, causing it to detonate and then detonating itself. The Explosive Shot and the spell went off; the mage was torn apart, leaving a tombstone.

  Rugrat checked the area quickly and rushed to Erik, pulling out healing potions and tossing down his rifle.

  “Erik, talk to me, buddy. How are you doing?” he said—more like yelled. He tried to contain his own panic at seeing the hole in his friend’s chest as he poured the healing powder directly onto the wounds.

  Some clarity started to return to Erik’s eyes. Rugrat knew it was only Erik’s constitution, the combination of healing spell and healing potions, keeping him alive.

  Rugrat tossed the empty Health potions to the side and put one of his hands on Erik’s chest.

  The air in the room stirred as all of Rugrat’s open Mana gates drank in Mana from the surrounding area as he poured out Focused Heal into Erik.

  The fog in the room was being stirred up and commanded by Rugrat, turning him into the focal point of the room. The power Rugrat was pouring out was incredible. Erik’s chest was being stitched back together at a visible speed.

  The room started to shake, including the three altars that were arranged in a triangle in the middle of the room.

  Rugrat moved around Erik and pulled out another healing potion. Looking toward the center of the room, he poured the healing potion into Erik’s chest.

  Erik let out a grunt as Rugrat felt the healing on Erik’s body accelerated. Erik’s face was a snarl, but Rugrat could tell that Erik was using healing spells to repair his Mana channels.

  The altars rose up and moved to the side.

  Coffins rose up from underneath. They were made from mithril, but the normally shiny metal was covered in what looked like rust.

  From the pictures, Rugrat knew that it wasn’t rust—it was old blood.

  The coffin lids opened and hands extended out to grab the sides of the coffins.

  “Shit.” Rugrat stepped over Erik so he was kneeling over him. His back left knee touched Erik still, so he could use Focused Heal as he pulled out Big Momma.

  Rugrat took his time sighting and firing. With his increased reaction time and marksman skill, there was about two or three seconds between each shot as he nailed the hands of the things that were trying to get out of the coffins.

  One lost its hand while another lost their grip and fell back down. The last started to rise up.

  A magic circle flared to life on the ground around the altars turned coffins, but it failed to fully activate.

  Rugrat finally saw what was inside the altar-coffins: spiritas knights.

  He didn’t hesitate to fire again when he saw an opening. The knight took a hit to the helmet. The Explosive Shot went off. The force and its weight made it fall out of the coffin but it was clearly wounded.

  The blue circle that had faded now flared back into life, pushing back the Mana fog as a magical circle appeared on the floor. A blue barrier started to form from the ground, rushing upward.

  Rugrat braced himself and pulled the trigger as fast as possible. For him, shooting Big Momma from standing was no harder than shooting his personal rifle back when he had been a normal human on Earth.

  Bright splashes appeared on the barrier as the sound of explosions rang out from his repeated hits.

  Erik grunted as Rugrat ran out of ammunition.

  “Reloading! Looks like a Mana barrier!” Rugrat yelled out as the wounded knight and its two fellows got up.

  The central altar tilted upward slowly.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about that. Someone’s powering that barrier—it’s not a formation.” Rugrat slapped a new magazine into the gun.

  Erik rolled over and started to get up, his face still pale. Rugrat was worried about him; there was still a hole in the front of his armor but his skin underneath was nearly done healing.

  “It’s made of magic but it stops physical impacts. Try the grenades,” Erik said.

  Big Momma disappeared and grenades appeared in Rugrat’s hands. “Good point!” He tossed the grenades at the barrier.

  When they had run into the spiritas, they had used Mana-based attacks and Erik had tested out poison. But not having true physical bodies, the spiritas’ weren’t affected and continued on as they had before.

  The grenades went off, making the barrier shake. Erik got to a kneeling position and pulled out his grenades, tossing them at the barrier as well. The barrier started to shake with all of the explosives going off. At around four grenades, it started to dim and flare, as if it were having trouble sustaining itself.

  Rugrat cocked his head to the side as he felt a disturbance in the room. The fog that had been pushed away from t
he center of the room was now swarming toward it, toward the rising altar that locked into place, completely upright.

  The altar was of a higher quality than the ones the knights who were guarding it had risen from, as if waiting for something.

  “Something is powering its ass up in there!” Rugrat yelled.

  Erik grabbed a Mana potion and downed it.

  Rugrat focused on spells that increased his ability in smithing and augmented his weaponry. Pure destructive magic—he hadn’t looked into that much: if he could make stronger guns then he didn’t need Mana bullet.

  He’d learned it but unlike Erik he hadn’t refined it.

  Rugrat pulled out grenades, tearing the tabs out with his teeth, and tossed them.

  “Shit, that’s a lot!” Erik, now linked to Rugrat’s Mana system, was not only pulling Mana through his own Mana gates and utilizing his own stats, he was using Rugrat’s as well. If he wanted to, he could drain Rugrat of all his Mana.

  The two of them didn’t even think of this as Erik unleashed a Mana bolt. It hit the Mana barrier and fizzled out.

  Erik altered the next one. It hit a few seconds afterward. Added to the grenades Rugrat was firing, it was like a mortar shell, causing a crater to form where the barrier met the floor.

  Erik increased the power, getting used to being linked into Rugrat’s Mana system and the synergistic balance between them both.

  He could only fire a Mana bolt every eight seconds, but with Rugrat compressing his Mana and Erik just needing to fire it, it was like a loader and gunner working together perfectly, adjusting to each other’s needs.

  The Mana bolts landed faster and faster, like a grenade launcher going off.

  “Fuck yeah!” Rugrat yelled out. Erik even grinned slightly at the scene of destruction. The Mana barrier looked to be on the cusp of failing when the central altar exploded. A tall spiritas stepped out. The Mana seemed to be naturally attracted to the glowing creature that was hard to look at.

  The power in the barrier rushed back toward the lord. Erik and Rugrat didn’t pause at all. The knights’ roars as they charged forward was drowned out by the sounds of falling Mana bolts.