Underworld - Through the Belly of the Beast: A LitRPG Series

by Apollos Thorne

  Name: Elorion Edwards

  Age: 17

  Level: 261

  Health Points: 71,516

  Mana Points: 19,312

  Endurance: 3,768

  Mana Per Minute: 3,062

  Attributes

  Strength: 430

  Dexterity: 437

  Constitution: 471

  Intelligence: 607

  Wisdom: 1406

  Stat Points: 20

  In comparison to the person, I had been when I had first been captured I was on a completely different level. For the Mistress’s dungeon, I was basically overpowered. I had Vampire’s Might that gave me a huge boost to my stats after sucking Lord Darius’s power, bringing my base HP up to 28,516, and my Durable Full Plate Mail of Life that more than doubled my HP by giving me an additional 43,000. Then there was my extraordinary 3,062 Mana Per Minute if I used my Channeler’s Orb that gave an additional 250. It allowed me to keep my spells active and replenished the mana I used quickly. If I took the time to meditate I could double my mana to just over 38k MP. I was nearly invincible against anything that we had faced in the Head Mistress’s Labyrinth.

  It was what was outside of the dungeon that worried me. The Mistress had once given me advice that made it sound like she had walked this same path of building a Wisdom-based character as I was. If that was true and she had been at this for a thousand years, then the amount of power she possessed had to be unfathomable. I had seen her defeat Lord Darius while he was shrouded in a glacier of ice using the very element he was so talented in. I wasn’t overpowered against the likes of her but at the most an annoying insect.

  The real question I considered was what items should I wield as I entered the Bone Palace? My shield had a massive 60% Magic Dampening, but it was difficult to carry in the same hand as my Channeler’s Orb. Not that I really needed the extra mana per minute with my current setup. Fluid Body and Fluid Mind had a base cost of 5 MPM each and Advanced In The Buff with a base cost of approximately 800 MPM. I didn’t need Skeleton General’s Defense when wearing plate mail, so that gave me a little extra MPM.

  I pulled up my passive magic bonus to help me consider what to do next.

  Intermediate Mana Flow Understood

  Mana rejuvenation is now calculated by 2 points of mana per minute per point of wisdom.

  Base mana is now 5000.

  All spells cost 40% less mana to cast.

  All spells are 40% more powerful when cast.

  The greatest benefit of having excess MPM was that I could cast a lot of offensive spells and my MP would be restored so quickly that it was as if they had cost nothing. So, was substituting my remaining 2k MPM for 1,750 worth the protection the shield could offer? I really didn’t know. Up to this point, I really hadn’t had to depend a lot upon defense. That could change, and I didn’t have the experience needed to really weigh what the shield was worth. 250 MPM was worth 250 Lesser Health Bullets, 35 Intermediate Health Bullets or 6 Advanced ones. A shield could save my life…

  Since I was walking into the unknown, I decided the shield would probably be the most useful in a death-defying situation.

  With my silver scepter that gave +50% to Light Magic in one hand and the dull-faced kite shield in the other, I left the armory with the key to the Bone Palace in my possession.

  I was not surprised to see Aeris leaning against the wall waiting for me. She had gone off with the others to introduce them to the magic bacon when I mentioned I needed to use the restroom.

  “You’re leaving without me,” Aeris said. It wasn’t a question.

  “I am,” I replied. “The imp will let the Head Mistress know about Nava. It should buy us some time.”

  Kicking off the wall, she strolled toward me. She didn’t look surprised. She stopped a few feet away and reached an unarmored arm up, placing her hand on my steel-encased chest.

  “Fine, but two hours from now I’ll have everyone meet you at the palace gate to get an idea what you have found out. I plan on clearing Skeleton Sentinels until then. It’s about time I catch you.”

  “You can try,” I teased, even though I didn’t feel very playful at that moment.

  “I think it’s time I show myself a little more attention.”

  “The stronger you get, the more help you can be,” I said, encouraging her. “Besides, once I explore, I’ll come find you if it seems safe enough. Hopefully, the Bone Palace will follow the same pattern as the rest of the dungeon and just be slightly higher in level than the Skeleton Sentinels.”

  “You say that like you don’t think that will be the case.”

  “I don’t, but I could be wrong. Eventually, we will meet someone who’s our match. What do we do then? We are great at killing idiot skeletons, but what happens when we run into an expert magic user? I just hope we survive long enough to figure it all out.”

  “Then don’t do anything stupid and come back when you realize how awesome I am.”

  I snorted. “Yes, mom.”

  “Do I really look like your mom to you?” she asked as she rose up on her toes and was suddenly very close.

  “No,” I whispered in reply.

  She pushed against my chest with both hands, casting herself back. With a wink as she backed away, she replied, “I didn’t think so.”

  Entering the mess hall, she left me alone.

  Casting Intermediate Heal on myself, it was time to get busy. I funneled more MP into my Advanced Muscle Buff and took off at a decent jog. When I passed by Russ, this time I went around him, waving as I passed.

  All my pent-up anxiety about what I should do next had been swept away like bone dust in Aeris’s wind. I wouldn’t have admitted it, but mixed with my fear, I felt a twinge of delight. I secretly hoped that I ran across an opponent that I could go all out on. I needed to find out what I was capable of. And fast.

  Chapter 6 – The Bone Palace

  As I entered the Skeleton Sentinels I didn’t waste any time. Standing at the entrance, I extended my scepter and started to push mana into its shaft. At its peak, three arching spikes of silver directed the magic to one point. This seemed to filter my magic and magnify it, adding the 50% strength to my Healing Spells. It took five Intermediate Heal Bombs to clear each section of the room.

  After that was done, I marched forward, letting my Skeleton Warrior grab any loot that met the right criteria.

  When I reached the halfway point I slowed, noticing someone was standing at the gate of the Bone Palace. Swallowing hard, I recognized him right away as the Head Mistress’s Lich in his butler disguise.

  Continuing toward him, I tried to approach without showing any signs of my apprehension, but if I had to guess I was doing a pretty poor job of it.

  When I was about ten feet away I stopped and nodded to him in greeting.

  His disguise would have been a terrible one in the world above. He was as wrinkly as a raisin but stood with perfect posture. He didn’t look real.

  “She’s right. Mistress Nava,” the Lich said in a throaty gentleman’s voice.

  “You were there?” I asked, swallowing down another reason to be worried.

  “Not exactly. What’s important is that I heard the conversation.”

  That complicated things. Did that mean he had the ability to listen to all of our conversations? Did he know what Aeris and I were planning?

  “What was she right about?” I asked, not wanting to assume anything.

  “It is only a matter of time before the other succubi take advantage of the snack at their doorstep, so to speak, when the Head Mistress is preoccupied,” he replied. Raising his finger in the air, he held it up to halt my reply. “You have less time than I feared. I will keep an extra eye on the succubi, but twenty-three days from now I will go with the Head Mistress to a lunch engagement. We will be gone for three days. When I’m gone I will have little power to protect you.”

  My eyes shifted to the floor as my mind wrestled with the logical outcome of having to deal with the other succub
i.

  “How many succubi live here?” I asked.

  “About two thousand at any given time, but only those with the title of Mistress, the succubi leadership, know of your existence. Still, they number over fifty.”

  “Two thousand?!” I said, blown away. I had expected a couple dozen, considering I had only seen two with her at any given time…

  “Yes. Above us is what’s called the Cavern Level. Most of the Underworld exists at that depth beneath the earth’s crust. The Head Mistress’s palace is similar to a small town. A lot of personal dungeons are built just beneath the Cavern Level like the one you are in now. It’s called the Dungeon Level for this reason.”

  “What level is the average succubi?”

  “Most of them are in the low thousands. The fledgling Succubi might be in the hundreds, but the Mistresses are ten thousand or more.”

  I found my legs starting to get woozy. Even after all we had been through, we were undoubtedly newbies. There was no hope staying here.

  “What do we do,” I asked.

  “I think you already know. You need to finish the first level of the Bone Palace and get out of here while you still can. Once all of you are gone, the convenience of having you close by will be gone and you’ll be much safer than you are now. After you’ve left, you will only have one real option. You need to build your own Dungeon to protect yourselves. I will do some research on the best place for you to set up shop, but it will take me some time.”

  “Thank you.”

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment.

  “One more thing,” I said, stopping him from going. “Why are you helping us?”

  The smile he gave me added even more wrinkles to his unreal face.

  “It took me years to convince the Head Mistress to go through with this plan. After seeing your progression, I believe even more that it will end up being of great benefit. Other than that, you will find out soon enough. I am not your enemy. Also, remember that you need to get through the first level of the Bone Palace quickly, but don’t forget to learn all the lessons it was designed to teach you. It will help you by giving you a firm foundation for how magic works. Without that, even if you do survive the succubi now, you won’t last much longer out in the Underworld.”

  With that, he started to dissolve into dust before my eyes. Instead of turning into nothing, the dust accumulated in a cloud and blew off toward the room’s entrance.

  I stood alone with the Bone Palace before me. I sat down and started to Meditate to accumulate all the mana I could carry. It wasn’t long before I reached 38k MP.

  Coming to my feet, I saw a high, arching door that was made up of hundreds of bone pikes fastened to one another with no visible space between them. They were twice my height at their peak. Even the crossbar was made of bone, with a padlock the size of a newbie skeleton’s chest cavity holding it secure. It was locked at the center where the double doors met.

  I opened my inventory, depositing my scepter momentarily, and grabbed the Bone Palace Key without having to look. With a deep breath, I cleared the distance to the door in a few strides. I removed my helmet from my inventory and placed it on my head, lowering its visor. I cast Invisibility and Shadow Step, still unsure if there was really any use casting them both, but insistent on being prepared.

  I looked down, giving myself a once over. The outline of the green runes on my barrel-chested breastplate were visible in my ethereal form. Still, no one could see them unless they could somehow see through my invisibility spell. I was sure higher-level mobs would just spot me in the magic realm as I had been able to see Travis with Mana Sight. As powerful as my Invisibility spell was, I couldn’t depend on it being undefeatable.

  I cast Skeleton Warrior’s shield, which encased it in bone. I hoped it would help protect them and keep them from being damaged if I ran into the need to use them for something other than looks.

  My Skeleton Warrior came when called. He had collected only a handful of drops. With a spinning motion from my finger, he spun around and offered me his pack. Looking inside there were a couple of silver coins, an interesting skull cap that gave +60 to Intelligence and a really impressive War Hammer of Howling. It added a combination of Wind and Sonic damage on contact. It was one-handed, so it was a little out of Skyler’s wheelhouse, but I’d offer it to him as a peace offering for stealing his kills earlier. I didn’t know him well enough to know if he would hold it against me.

  With a command, my Skeleton Warrior jumped up. With my inventory open, I moved to catch it. Ducking its head, my Skeleton disappeared into its contents. It had worked on the Imp, so I hadn’t hesitated to store my Skeleton Warrior in my inventory. Of course, I removed Skeleton General’s Defense from him while he was in storage to save on MPM.

  As a last course of action, I downed one of my Experience Potions that would give me a bump after every kill I made for the next 24 hours.

  With everything in place, it was time.

  Reaching forward, I placed the teeth of the Skeleton Key into the mouth of the bone padlock. It clicked when the key was in place and I turned it.

  Instead of the padlock falling off the crossbar, the key was slurped up into the lock as it started to retract. The bone of the padlock folded in on itself. When it had fully compacted into a small cube, it started to roll, end over end up the holsters that held the crossbar securing both doors. As the padlock devoured itself, it multiplied when it reached the holsters into something like hundreds of little Pac-men. First, the crossbar and then the door were eaten away. Starting in the middle it worked its way out until it had devoured the entire door.

  With a flick of my wrist, I equipped my scepter and cast Skeleton Warrior’s Sword over my scepter, encasing it in bone.

  Just inside, no more than twenty feet away, stood a humanoid about my height. Instead of clothing and flesh, it was made of brown rock. Its facial features were smooth and well defined, much like a human, but it lacked hair. It was also smooth all over.

  At first, I thought it might be a human that had been turned to stone, but when it noticed that the door had been opened, it took a step toward the entrance.

  It wasn’t in a hurry, but it came all the same. The sound of stone against stone that I expected to hear as it walked wasn’t there. Instead, there were tiny taps from its feet as they came in contact with the ground.

  Funneling 300 MP into my eyes, time slowed enough that I could safely study it for a moment. What I didn’t expect to see was the brown energy that swirled around inside of it with a black sphere in its chest that didn’t get carried off by its internal mana currents. The mana inside of it wasn’t liquid in texture like Mistress Nava’s had been but was thicker than the smoky texture that my fellow captives possessed.

  You have gained a better understanding of Animation!

  Raising a brow, I had to admit it would be amazing to have an Elemental minion.

  Bringing up Creature Indicator, I was able to get a better idea what I was dealing with.

  Earth Elemental

  Level: 311

  Health Points: 10,550

  Mana Points: NA

  Endurance: 5,275

  Strength: 400

  Dexterity: 100

  Constitution: 1,055

  Intelligence: 50

  Wisdom: 20

  As soon as I saw its level my chest thumped in excitement, but seeing its HP was like trying to dry off with a wet towel. It was the kind of HP we had only seen in elite mobs. Still, if I could find an efficient way of killing it, it was a high enough level to give me decent experience. At least it didn’t seem to benefit from a 1,000 Constitution bonus. I wondered if I could drain it with Vampire’s Might…

  For now, I took my time and walked past it. When my mind was sped up through Mana Sight my body still moved at its normal speed, so it felt like my movements were dragging. I avoided any danger by skirting around it.

  Entering the Bone Palace, I found the outside walls were the same bone as the door, bu
t the floor and inner walls were made of red stone. This room looked much like the foyer of a rich manor. There was another high, arching door on the far side of the room. This one was made of red stone with engravings covering it from top to bottom.

  Looking up, I saw a chandelier like a giant strawberry that was made up of hundreds of grape-sized rubies about three stories overhead. If I could figure out a way to harvest it without destroying it, it looked like it would fetch a hefty price.

  The Earth Elemental was the only enemy here to greet me. If there had been anything invisible I was sure I would have seen it with Mana Sight. As I looked around I found two more doors to both sides of the room. Seeing as we were alone, I turned my attention back to the Elemental.

  Alpha Bolt was probably the safest spell I could use against it. It had reached level 91 and did over 4,340 damage and cost a measly 34 MP. The variations I had created, Alpha Bullet and Alpha Bomb, didn’t need to level up separately since Alpha Bolt was their base spell. Alpha Bullet also cost only about 9 MP. They might allow me to tear into it. Or a well-placed Alpha Bomb might one-hit it if I could focus the explosion. It was hard to say.

  Then there were my elemental spells that were also Blue Magic based. Flame Thrower was a real possibility, but I didn’t think its explosive variant Fireball would do much damage because it would flicker out after its initial explosion. I had used Flame Thrower to melt the Stone Lizards, but Aeris’s Wind magic greatly increased its effectiveness. It might take all of my 38 thousand MP to melt through the Elemental’s 10 thousand HP. If there were more of them, eventually I’d test it, but not until I first found a sure way to defeat it.

  To make things more difficult, elements had their opposites, like Earth to Wind or Fire to Ice, but damage spells didn’t necessarily have increased damage against their opposing schools of magic in the way that was so common in role playing games. Throw real-world physics into the mix and it could get downright frustrating. As an example, Wind Magic might not necessarily be powerful against the Earth Elemental that stood before me, but a wall of earth could be very helpful against Aeris’s Gust spell. Not that I had any Wind Magic at my disposal, anyways.