by Trey Myr
“OK gang. Everyone got their shopping done yesterday?” asked Kevin as soon as everyone had at least a hot drink in front of them.
“I’m good,” Ingrid answered. “Shield is fixed, and I’ve got a new tier 1 provoke Skillshard. Three meter radius group taunt.”
Lucy, still focusing almost entirely on her coffee, managed to get out “I couldn’t get a pyromancer Shard anywhere. Looks like Ing’s gramps is buying every fire related Shard in the bazaar over the past couple of days. Nobody knows what old Mad-Ved is up to, of course.”
“Don’t look at me,” shrugged Ingrid. “Even if I wasn’t in reise, I was never part of the famous Bjørnson magitech craze. For all I know, grandad is using them to heat up water for his sauna.”
“Ugh. Old Man Bjørnson in a sauna is not an image I want in my mind,” grumbled Lucy. “Anyway, Ing and I talked about it a bit, and I’m not sure specializing in an element is the best choice anyway. I’m our only elemental damage dealer right now, and it might be better to have some more options, so I settled on getting the generic elementalist Classshard. It won’t give me the damage bonus pyromancer gives, but it will let me change the element of my Skillshards, so I can target enemy weaknesses.”
“So now you can be useless in three more elements? Wonderful. I can’t add any more Shards right now, but I got a cleanse Skillshard waiting for my next open slot. We haven’t actually run into any venomous monsters yet, but it won’t hurt to be ready for when we do.”
“Good thinking James. Ed?” asked Kevin.
“Nothing new yet. Can’t really take any new Shard until my goblin is Sealed.”
“And nothing for me too. Ram-kin won’t give me any new slots, so I'm stuck until it closes.”
By that point, breakfast has arrived, and Ed’s group spent the next half hour in relative quiet, before getting up and heading out of the Pug.
The stairway led Ed's party to a ruined stone room. Shoots of grass grew from the broken floor, some growing up the surrounding walls. The ceiling was completely missing, allowing light from the blood red moon to shine through. The rotten remains of two bunk beds took up most of two of the walls, and a small window let in some more light from the third. A single half rotted door lead out of the room.
Ed summoned his goblin as soon as he entered the room, noting that the spear carried by the goblin wasn't the same spear as yesterday. The shaft was smoother, and head broader and more regular. If yesterday's spear was made by an apprentice weaponsmith crafting his very first weapon, today's spear was made by the same weaponsmith as part of his journeyman test.
"Ruins biome," said Kevin after looking around himself. "Probably undead enemies, but could be beasts or slimes. There shouldn't be traps this low, but we should still be careful. Same order as yesterday."
Nodding her acceptance, Ingrid opened the door and left the room, finding herself in a long corridor leading left and right from their room. The corridor still had most of its ceiling left, but random holes let in enough light to see by. To the left, the corridor continued for about twenty meters, with doors set regularly on both sides, every five meters. To the right, the corridor continued for another twenty meters, with the same doors on both sides, and one double door on the end.
"We'll start with the door directly across from us, and then go left. I'm betting the double doors lead to the boss, eventually, and we'll want to clear the floor before getting to it," Kevin told the group.
Ingrid opened the door across from them, and immediately had to block an arrow fired from within the room. Charging into the room to make way for the rest of the party, she used her new provoke skill, focusing the enemies' attacks on herself and letting the rest of the group enter the room and attack.
The room was a mirror image of the one they started in, except for also containing its original inhabitants.
Two skeletons holding short bows occupied the two corners opposite of the room's entrance, and two walking corpses crowded Ingrid, who was kept busy blocking their rusty shortswords with her shield and mace. She used her shield bash skill on one of the zombies, staggering it for a second, but it appeared to be immune to the stun effect. She managed to block the attack from the second zombie and one of the archers, but one arrow managed to hit her stomach. Ingrid's wince indicated that while her leather armor prevented the arrow from dealing a serious wound, it wasn’t good enough to completely block the damage.
"Ed, take the skellys. One after the other," shouted Kevin as he fired a piercing arrow at the staggered zombie. "Lucy, focus on Ed's skelly. My arrows and the goblin's spear won't do much against them, so we'll work on the zombies. James, keep Ingrid up. Let's get this done!"
As Ed approached the skeleton on the left corner, it dropped its bow and attacked him with its bare boned fists instead. Ed easily kept it out of reach with his quarterstaff, his blows chipping the skeleton's bones, and occasionally shattering a rib. Lucy's Firebolts were more effective, and the skeleton was down less than half a minute later. Ingrid's taunt has expired by then, so Lucy turned her attention to the zombies while Ed ran to the other corner to force the second skeleton to melee. Without the ranged attacks, Ingrid had very little trouble keeping the slow moving zombies from hitting her, and by the time Ed and Lucy finished up with the second skeleton, Ingrid, Kevin and the goblin had killed one of the zombies, and the second was down before Ed could reach them to help.
"Good work everyone. These look like guards of some sort, so we might be in a ruined castle here. Let's see if they have anything of value."
As usual in the lower floors, the weapons carried by the skeletons and zombies were next to useless. The swords too rusted to be repaired and the bows falling apart as soon as the skeletons using them were dead. The only thing of value on the monsters was a copper corporal's insignia on one of the zombies.
"Nothing but essence drops. I doubt we'll see more than those until we reach the boss." Ingrid said after taking the insignia from the corpse. "Still, if there are four of them in each room, we should get decent essence for our Shards at least."
"Yeah. We'll wait ten minutes to regen mana, and move on," answered Kevin.
The rest of the rooms on the floor were similar to the first. Four undead in each, at least one of them a zombie and one a skeleton. In three zombie rooms, Ed and Lucy took out the single skeleton while Ingrid tanked two of the zombies with James's help, and Kevin and Ed's goblin took out the third. In three skeleton rooms, it proved easier to let Ingrid take out the skeletons, since her mace was by far the most effective weapon the group had against them.
It took several hours to clear the floor, during which Ed received several level up messages, leaving all of his Shards at level two. The party settled in one of the rooms near the double doors to regain their mana before the presumed boss fight.
Eduard Fergusson
Race
Human
Class
None
Shards
2/2
Strength
6
Dexterity
7
Wisdom
4
Constitution
7
Agility
8
Intelligence
7
HP
20/20
Mana
18/18
HP regen
0.7/hour
Mana regen
7/hour
Shard
Level
Essence
Phantasmal Worker
2
16/200
Summoner
2
220/600
Phantasmal Goblin
Race
Goblin
Class
None
Shards
2/2
Strength
4
Dexterity
6
Wisdom
2
Constitution
2
Ag
ility
4
Intelligence
1
HP
7
Mana
4
HP regen
0.2/hour
Mana regen
1/hour
Shard
Level
Essence
Goblin
2
380/1000
Spearman
2
580/600
Chapter 4:
Bears Bearing Gifts
A group of five enemies were waiting for the party beyond the double doors. There were two of the now familiar skeleton archers, two zombies carrying rusted shields and swords, and a single skeleton wearing rotted red robes and carrying a wooden staff topped by a fist sized ruby.
"Skeleton mage!" yelled Kevin. "Ingrid, Lucy, go after it. We need to take it down fast. Ed, take one of the archers, and send your goblin to hold the zombies. James, try and keep the goblin alive until we can free Ingrid to deal with them."
Unfortunately, Kevin's plan didn't last too long. Ed managed to get to the first skeleton archer, causing it to drop its bow and claw at him, and his goblin managed to draw one of the zombies into melee combat, doing its best to keep the larger and stronger monster out of its reach. The second zombie, however, blurred and appeared in front of Ingrid, who was on her way to the mage, and slammed its shield into her face, stunning her.
Lucy launched a Firebolt at the zombie attacking Ingrid, causing it to turn from the shieldbearer and start shuffling towards her. Kevin, meanwhile, was shooting piercing shots at the zombie attacking the goblin.
The second archer started shooting at the stunned Ingrid, scoring a nasty hit to her leg, and causing James to shift his focus from healing the goblin to healing her. The skeleton mage, left alone, launched a sizzling bolt of green acid at the goblin, killing it instantly.
Ed, who had regained all of his mana by then, resummoned the goblin next to the skeleton mage, forcing the undead caster to turn away from attacking the other party members.
Lucy wasn't having much trouble staying out of the shuffling zombie's range, but couldn't actually stand still long enough to attack, and the second zombie managed to hit Kevin with the same dash and bash combo the first monster used on Ingrid, stunning him and starting to hit him with its sword.
Ingrid came out of her stun a couple of seconds, and one more arrow wound, later, and immediately used her provoke to focus the monsters' attention on herself, and ran towards the skeleton mage, just in time to replace the phantasmal goblin, who was hit by a second acid bolt.
"Lucy, focus on my skeleton!" Ed shouted. "We need to start reducing their numbers!"
The two zombies were still trying to catch up with Ingrid, and so weren't an issue quite yet, and Ingrid's shield was sturdy enough to survive the acid bolts at least for a couple of minutes, but the second skeleton had a clear shot at her back, and was hitting her faster than James could heal. Fortunately, the combined attacks from Ed and Lucy were enough to kill the skeleton archer, freeing Ed to go after the second one, and Lucy to start attacking the mage. Kevin came out of stun a few seconds later, and went back to attacking the zombies, quickly taking down first one and then the other.
By then, the skeleton mage died from the combination of Ingrid's mace and Lucy's Firebolts, and the party made short work of the final skeleton.
"This was not my idea of fun," Ingrid said as soon as she got her wind back. "I don't think we should go deeper today."
"Definitely not," agreed Kevin. "This is not a good biome for us. Let's loot the bodies and get back out."
The two zombies both had the corporal insignia the party was used to seeing, but the best loot by far was the mage's staff, the first actual enchanted item found by the party.
Lesser Mage Staff
A staff used by apprentice mages the world over.
+1 Intelligence
+10% mana regen
James and Lucy immediately started arguing about which one of them should get the staff, forcing Kevin to separate them.
"We'll take it with us and you can both roll for it back at the Pug."
Ed's goblin had leveled its Spearman Shard to level 3 after the last fight, opening a slot that could be used to Slice any melee-related Skillshard that could be used with a spear, and he split from the party after getting his share of the credits, telling them that he wanted to stay and buy some mana potions for their next delve, and went looking for a new Shard.
There were many Skillshards that fit the requirements of melee-related and spear compatible. There was Leap attack, which would unlock the Dragoon class on ranking up Spearman. There was Impale, which would greatly increase the goblin's damage against armored and pierce-resistant foes. There were any number of elemental edge skills. The problem was that most of the Skillshards that would fit the slot required mana to use, which the goblin simply didn’t have. Therefore, Ed's choice of Skillshard was a simple Sharpness Skillshard. The Shard wouldn't offer the mobility of Leap, the flexibility of elemental damage, or even the large damage increase of Impale, but was instead a reliable, passive damage increase for all slashing and piercing weapons, was always active and came with no mana cost.
Not forgetting the mana potions, Ed got back to the Drunken Pug in time to join the rest of the party for lunch, an event that was accompanied by James's gloating over winning the skeleton mage's staff.
After lunch, the party members all went upstairs and into their individual rooms to rest for an hour, promising to meet downstairs for another delve later.
Ed had just entered his room and was planning on drinking one of the mana potions so he'd be able to summon his goblin and Slice the new Shard, when he was interrupted by a knock on his door.
"May I come in?" asked Ingrid when Ed opened the door.
"Of course. What brings you here?"
Ingrid entered the room and made sure the door was closed and locked behind her, before turning to glare at Ed, hands crossed in front of her.
"Your goblin had a different spear today. I may not be a scholar and tinkerer like Grandad, but I'm still Bjørnson enough to know that summons don't change their shape even when they level up."
“I’m still trying to understand this myself,” Ed answered. “I didn’t find a summon Shard in my delve. It was a goblin Raceshard, and through a really weird coincidence it ended up Sliced into my phantasmal worker, turning it into a phantasmal goblin.”
Ingrid sat down abruptly. “That’s a fairly big discovery there. Does your phantasmal worker Shard gain essence now?”
“It got changed to ‘Conjure Phantasm’, and yeah. It gains essence, but at a reduced rate.”
“That’s a fairly big change there.”
“It gets bigger. The description told me that I could give it more Shards to increase its capabilities, so I gave it a Spearman class.”
“And the spear changed when the class leveled?”
“Got it in one. I was planning on doing a bit of experimenting with it before putting it out on the wiki.”
“Can I get you to keep it quiet for a while?” Ingrid asked. “If we report it to my family correctly, I’ll get to finish my reise and you’ll get the family’s support for finding it out.”
“I don’t want this kept quiet. It can help a lot of delvers to survive.”
“Only until the rest of the families pull the phantasmal worker out of the outside markets, I’m afraid. Besides, my family doesn’t hold that kind of information secret. We’ll get it to the proper scientific journals, get you proper credit, and then it can go on the wiki. Slight delay, but it gets you the full support of a major House.”
“I won’t be able to hide this though. If the spear keeps changing, or if I can rank-up the Raceshard, people are going to notice. Especially since James is streaming it for the whole world to see.”
“Eh. We’re a tier zero party. How many watchers can he possibly have? But you do have a point. We could just sa
y that you got a higher tier summons when it’s time to rank up, but you’ll be crippling yourself by not using enough Shards, or not using the best available Shards. Hel, have you been running around with just the one Shard so far?"
"I actually got a Summoner Classshard after our first group delve. I figured it would be a better direction for me than a melee class now."
"Huh. Good choice. But you won't be able to explain having it at this point, so you won't be able to actually use its abilities. Not to mention that you won't be able to summon a second phantasm without giving the whole game away."
"I know. But the only option I see is to either keep switching groups every time I level up a Shard, or just go solo."
"Which might not be such a bad idea, actually. With your phantasms, you're potentially a whole party on your own."
"Sure, but with a full party we can have ten effective party members, which gets around the five person limit the Labyrinth allows in normal floors."
"What I don't get is how nobody's done this before. We've had hundreds of thousands of delvers over the years. I know we keep learning about new Shards, race evolutions and class rankups, but something like this? 90% of all delvers use Impediments. How has none of them learned of this yet?"
"How do you know they haven't? I wouldn't be shocked to find that the Five have been silencing independent delvers since day one."
"My family would never try to suppress something this big," Ingrid mused. “And if we knew anything about it, Uncle Mathias would be using it by now. ”Then again, I can easily see the Adam bastards or Hermes snobs trying to keep this to themselves. Not to mention Tenebris. Those guys barely talk to anyone. But I really doubt that they could keep this from us Bjørnsons. And if the family knew about this, then I'd know about this."