Phantasmal Party

by Trey Myr

  Ed got up and drank a mana potion, quickly summoning a phantasm and picking up the last Raceshard Lucy brought. "Fox-kin? Interesting choice."

  "Yeah, the merchant I bought these from ran out of pure int Raceshards after those two elves. I didn't want to waste more time looking for another merchant, and the Fox-kin was the closest he had."

  "Works for me. I'll have to look up on evo options for it if it survives."

  Ed quickly Sliced the Fox-kin Shard into the phantasm, and then resummoned it for the Chromatic Sorcery. "One more mana potion. I'm really starting to hate the taste."

  Ed summoned his phantasmal fox-kin, and placed the tip of the last Shard Lucy bought, a firestorm, on the Chromatic Sorcery Shard, and pushed it in. The Shard slid smoothly into the pentagonal patch, and the phantasm vanished.

  ◆◆◆

  The cluster of slimes was busy minding its own business. The large, grey, two meter diameter slime in the center was in the middle of dissolving a humanoid form that might have once been a human delver, or a hobgoblin resident of the Labyrinth. A couple of greyish slimes about a meter across were curving grooves in the floor of the cave, feeding on the rock itself, and three more half meter green slimes were bouncing around, hunting for small bugs or rodents.

  Clouds that shouldn't have existed inside a cave suddenly formed above the cluster, and deep black drops of liquid started to fall on the slimes. If anyone was looking close enough at the drops, they would see that the drops weren't completely black, but rather looked like the light reflecting off an oil stain, with a rainbow of light swirling around over the black background. Multicolored lightning started to flash, hitting the ground and the slimes indiscriminately. Every time a drop of liquid or a bolt of lightning hit one of the green slimes, it would burn, freeze, shock or corrode the slime, seemingly dealing random elemental damage. The corrosive effects, however, never seemed to hit the grey slimes. The storm lasted a bare ten seconds, but that was more than enough to finish off the smaller slimes, and wound the boss enough that a trio of ice bolts and a thrust from a lightning covered spear were enough to finish it off. The aforementioned watcher, were they unaware of the nature of the storm, might have considered this extremely lucky for whoever caused it, as the grey stone slimes would be nearly immune to the earth damage effects. In reality, luck played no part in this.

  Chromatic Storm

  Tier 2

  Level 1

  Essence 210/100,000

  Summons a storm of elemental magic over a circular area with a diameter of three meters.

  Everything inside the storm takes 1-6 damage every second.

  Special

  Chromatic Advantage: Chromatic Storm can deal fire, water, air or earth damage, and will always deal the type of damage most harmful to its targets.

  Mana cost: 20 + 1/second

  "I may have gotten a little over ambitious," Lucy said after canceling the spell. "I can't sustain it for more than ten seconds, and I'll need three hours to regain the mana."

  "You basically just killed the fourth floor boss in ten seconds without anyone getting hurt," James did not sound happy about not getting to use his skills. "So cut it out with the bitching about your mana."

  "How did you even get that insane spell?" Kevin snarled. "It's even worse than Ed and his suddenly armored goblin."

  "I…" Lucy began.

  "Don't bother. You'll just repeat Ed's lies anyway. If you're so set on keeping the bears' secret, why don't the three of you just go for a Family party?"

  With Kevin's arm healed up, the party went straight back to the fourth floor of the Labyrinth that morning. The Labyrinth greeted them with another cave system, this one scoured clean of almost all vegetation by the slimes inhabiting it. The cave was populated by a variety of slimes, ranging from the small green basic slimes and up to the huge stone slime boss. Unlike the party's first venture into a slime floor right before Ed joined them, this delve proved to be almost too easy. Between Lucy's Firebolts, Ed's Lightning Field and the kobold's Icebolts, the party could easily dispose of the physically resistant but magically vulnerable slimes. Lucy's new Chromatic Storm Shard was even more effective against the slimes, and killed the first cluster the party encountered in less than five seconds. It was only the spell's prohibitive mana cost that let the rest of the party contribute.

  Kevin, it seemed, was not at all happy. His skills were almost entirely useless against the slimes, and while his arm was functional, it was still painful enough to be irritating.

  "Whatever. We'll grab the loot and get out. I want another floor four run today, and then tomorrow we'll think about going for the fifth."

  The slimes all dissolved into harmless puddles upon death, and looting them mostly meant picking up their cores, which had varying alchemical uses depending on the type of slime, and could also be rendered down into free essence by a skilled alchemist. The boss, however, had a very welcome surprise for the party.

  Stoneskin

  Tier 1

  Level 1

  Essence 0/100

  Passive

  Decrease physical and magical damage by 1% per level

  Ingrid held up the grey Shard she picked up from the puddle that used to be a giant stone slime. "I've got a tier zero Stoneskin here. Anyone wants it, or do we sell and split?"

  "I want it!" Kevin said at the same time as Ed's "I can certainly use it."

  "Anyone else?" Ingrid asked.

  James shook his head. "If an enemy is close enough to hit me, Stoneskin won't help. I've got better uses for my slots."

  "Ditto," Lucy agreed. "This is far more useful to the front line then to us."

  "Put it to a vote then. Who is in favor of giving the Shard to Kevin?"

  "Don't bother," Kevin shouted at them. "I know you two will give it to Ed anyway." Kevin stormed towards the door and left without a backwards glance.

  "Poor Kevin. Getting his arm broken by that wolf shook him," Ingrid threw the Shard to Ed. "It still makes more sense to give it to you."

  "But I can see why he'd think we were favoring you," Lucy added.

  "I do hope he'll calm down," James said. "He's a decent leader, despite being a drama llama. Ram. Drama rama. Yeah, that works."

  By the time Ed left the Labyrinth, Kevin was out of sight. Ed went back to his room at the Pug, promising to join Lucy and Ingrid for lunch after finishing his rank ups and Slicing. His Summoner Classshard was maxed during the delve, giving several rank up options.

  Summoner

  Tier 0

  Level 5

  Closed

  The summoner specializes in summoning and empowering both called and conjured allies.

  +2 Int

  Store Pattern – When unsummoning, lets the summoner to store the summoned creature in his aura, letting it be recalled without spending more mana

  +1 Shard slot, useable for buff Skillshards

  Aura Channel – all buff Skillshards can be shared with one summon per level, but cost double to use.

  Rank up options

  Summoner (tier 1)

  Battleweaver (tier 1)

  Phantasmal Spinner (tier1)

  Horde Summoner (tier 1) requirements unmet

  Ed was familiar with three of the options. The plain Summoner rank up was obvious, and would increase the abilities granted by the tier zero class. The Battleweaver would let him turn his Lightning Field into walls and structures made of lightning. The Horde Summoner, which Ed would need to Slice more summoning Skillshards to unlock, would let him clone his summons into a veritable army.

  Ed's original plan on Slicing the Summoner Shard was to go for the Horde Summoner. It was a rarely used option, since most summoners tend to abandon their summons after the fifth floor of the Labyrinth and favored the Battleweaver's abilities, but Ed's thought that his evolving summons would make the horde option viable even higher in the Labyrinth.

  The Phantasmal Spinner was new, and something he'd never heard about. Ed mentally clicked on the phan
tasmal spinner option, and his eyes widened when he saw the class description.

  "What the hell does that even mean?" he asked the empty room, or perhaps whatever was controlling the Labyrinth. "Who would even agree to that?"

  Ed quickly declined the rank up option, planning on working towards the Horde Summoner option. First, however, he really needed to boost his mana before his summons started costing too much for him to use.

  Ed took out a Manaflow Shard and Sliced it, noticing that in the still-open description of the Summoner class, its state changed from 'closed' to 'locked', indicating that he couldn't safely rank it up until one of his other Shards was maxed.

  Next, Ed recalled his kobold from its stored pattern, and Sliced a Mage Armor Shard into its Sorcerer class. Despite what James said earlier, healers and ranged damage dealers did get attacked on occasion, and a little precaution might save him from having to resummon it during combat.

  The last thing Ed had to do was rank up his goblin to the Lancer class. Fortunately, ranking up a phantasm's class didn't unsummon it, and seemed to have no effect on the mana cost, so Ed quickly resummoned his kobold and stored both of his summons.

  ◆◆◆

  After a very pleasant lunch, Ed Ingrid and Lucy returned to the Labyrinth stairway to find James impatiently waiting. Kevin was nowhere to be seen, and took an extra half hour to arrive. Without saying a word, Kevin motioned everyone to follow him and marched into the Labyrinth.

  The party found themselves in a hilly meadow, very similar to the one Ed entered on his first solo delve. They could see groups of large horned rabbits scattered around the grass. Unlike the rabbits Ed fought on his first day, these beasts were man sized or more, and at least one in each group was covered in thick rhino like hide instead of fur.

  "We should leave," James said as soon as he saw the biome. "We still don't have any harvesting skills."

  Kevin didn't even bother with an answer, and instead just launched a piercing arrow at a group of rabbits about fifty meters from the party, hitting a rhino hare and causing the entire group to charge towards the party.

  Ingrid quickly took her spot in front of the charging rabbits, ready to stop them from reaching the archer, and the rest of the party followed, taking their regular positions and starting a barrage of ice and fire bolts.

  The magical attacks quickly killed off one of the charging rabbits, leaving the rhino hare and three horned rabbits to reach the party. Ingrid stepped to the side when the rhino hare leaped at her, avoiding its horn and quickly stunning it with a shield bash, while Ed took on one of the other rabbits and his goblin took a second. The third rabbit went straight to Lucy, and only Ed's kobold launching a trio of Icebolts at it from point black range saved her from a possibly fatal charge. The fight was quickly over after that, with the party's melee fighters holding off the remaining rabbits while the ranged attackers focused on one after the other. The rhino hare took the longest to kill, since its thick skin could shrug off everything except for Kevin's pierce skill and the goblin's sharpness enhanced spear.

  "I don't care what got up your hooves, sheep boy," James was shouting at Kevin before the last rabbit even stopped twitching. "But you need to get a grip."

  "He's right," Ingrid agreed after catching her breath. "We nearly lost Lucy right now because you pulled those rabbits before we were ready."

  "If you can't calm down and fight with us, "added Ed, who was holding a visibly shaken Lucy in his arms, "we're all getting back out to the bazaar right now."

  Kevin visibly gritted his teeth to stop himself from shouting at his mutinous party. They stood glaring at each other for long seconds, until finally Kevin managed to get his anger under control. He took several deep breaths, and apologized for endangering the party.

  There was still some tension left as the group set out towards the nearest group of rabbits, but they quickly fell back into their practiced routine, efficiently hunting the horned rabbits and rhino hares.

  The boss for this iteration of the fourth floor was the largest rabbit the party had ever seen.

  Two meters tall at the shoulder and four meters long from nose to tail, the giant armored rabbit shook the earth with every leap. Its horn was as long as a spear, and glittered with the telltale glow of a light element enchantment, and its armor was reinforced with earth magic and thick enough to stop a bullet from an elephant gun.

  The party quickly realized that there was no way to stop the giant rabbit once it started moving, and that Ingrid's stun effect had no effect. The only saving grace was that the rabbit, once moving, had difficulty changing its direction.

  The battle quickly degenerated into the rabbit charging at the party, taking a barrage of Firebolts, Icebolts and arrows and shrugging most of it off. The party would scatter before the rabbit, getting a few more attacks on its back before it managed turned around to face them and charge again. Ed's kobold wasn't quite fast enough to escape the charging rabbit, and was run over close to the beginning of the battle, but the rest of the party proved agile enough to avoid serious harm.

  It took perhaps an hour for the party to slowly whittle away the giant rabbit's health, and everyone was ready to drop by the time it was finally lying dead at their feet.

  Kevin managed to cut off the giant rabbit's horn without chipping it, but the party had no way to harvest its thick hide, which some armorsmiths would pay good credits for. He also found a bright yellow Shard piercing the rabbit's head where its horn used to be.

  Quiver of Light

  Tier 0

  Level 1

  0/100 mana

  Creates ammunition fitting the user's equipped ranged weapon from mana and light.

  The ammunition used will do light element damage according to the weapon used.

  Mana cost: 1/shot

  Kevin was quick to lay claim to the Shard, and the rest of the party was happy to give it to him.

  "Let's sell our loot and call this a day," A much happier looking Kevin said to the party. "We'll go for the fifth tomorrow morning."

  Chapter 8:

  The Swamp

  Ed slept that night his head resting on Ingrid's left shoulder and nestled against her breast. His left hand was trapped under Ingrid's broad back, and his right was resting on Lucy's waist where she lay against Ingrid's right side. They ended the previous evening together in Ingrid and Lucy's room, where the knowledge that they would soon be headed to the notorious fifth floor of the Labyrinth whipped them into a bacchanaliac frenzy which lasted until all three fell into an exhausted sleep.

  Ed woke up early the next morning to the insistent call of his bladder. After carefully extricating himself from the tangle of bodies, he went to the bathroom to relieve himself and take a much needed shower. Inevitably, his thoughts turned to the two women whose bed he just left.

  Ingrid and Lucy were as different as night and day. Ingrid was tall, broad shouldered and heavily muscled. The daughter of the Bjørnson family was in the middle of her reise, or 'travel', a coming of age ritual Daved Bjørnson started when his first son turned eighteen. The scions of the family were given their first Shard from the family coffers, and sent into the Labyrinth without any further support. The goal of the reise was to find something new to share with the family, after which they'd join the Bjørnson's frequent research expeditions into the Labyrinth, or spend their time in the safety of the Arctology researching the different Shards and exotic materials found in the Labyrinth. With the family mostly turned towards intellectual pursuits, most of the youngsters chose the tinker or alchemist classes as their first Shard, and would return to the family as soon as they could. Ingrid, however, had no interest in research, and the Shieldmaiden had no intention of getting stuck in the relatively safe expeditions her family was so fond of.

  Lucy, on the other hand, was short and feminine, and had neither the inclination nor the talent for physical combat. Like Ed, she came from outside the city of New Minos, and it was her own choice to risk herself in the Labyrinth
. She wasn't as open about her reasons as Ingrid, and all she would tell him about it was that one day she would be a mage to rival Gandalf.

  Ed himself had so far avoided telling anyone about his reason for entering the Labyrinth. As he went downstairs to the common room and ordered enough coffee for all three of them, Ed found himself thinking about his sister, Bridget.

  Ten years older than him, Bridget spent a lot of Ed's childhood taking care of him when their parents were at work. From as early as Ed could remember, his sister talked about the wonders of the Labyrinth. She'd tell him stories about the exploits of Daved Bjørnson, Derwyn Lewis, Christine Jacobson, Alessandra Bianchi and Adrian Markopoulos , who first discovered the Labyrinth forty years earlier, and she'd sing to him the ballads written about the heroes and villains of New Minos. When Ed was eight, Bridget left their home and entered the Labyrinth, where she soon became a bard herself.

  Bridget swiftly climbed the floors of the Labyrinth, and after two years inside she caught the eye of the House of Adam. All of the Five Families, and the minor guilds and Houses that sprang up around them over the years, were on the lookout for promising delvers to recruit. In a way, the lower floors of the Labyrinth were a testing ground, where hopeful delvers would come from outside of New Minos and pit themselves against the Labyrinth and each other in the hope of securing a spot as a member of a lower guild or an armsman of one of the Families, and Bridget was no different. The young bard jumped enthusiastically on the opportunity to join the House, and was soon one of their most favored vassals.

  It took Bridget three more years to work her way up to the fiftieth floor of the Labyrinth, the highest floor any delver has ever reached, and join a House of Adam attempt to clear the floor and rise higher. It was a well-known fact that the floors of the Labyrinth became larger the higher you went, and the fiftieth floor was easily the size of a continent. Few parties had managed to get to the boss of the fiftieth floor, and fewer still lived to tell about it, and it was a race between the Families and the guilds as to who would manage to finally break through.