Phantasmal Party

by Trey Myr

  "I think there's some mistake there, sir. That's floor six and seven loot, and all in pristine condition. Fifteen hundred is what I'd get in the bazaar."

  "You've passssed my tesssst, I sssse," the wyrm smiled, but Ed was sure he heard disappointment in his hissing voice. "You are abssssolutely correct. The right amount issss two thoussssand creditssss. Would you like to purchasssse ssssomething from sssstorage?"

  "Not today, thank you."

  "Are you ssssure? We have quite a sssselection of Shardssss, weaponssss and armor."

  "Not today," Ed answered again, and this time he clearly saw the pain in the quartermaster's draconian eyes at the thought of parting with any amount of money. "But if things work out, I'll be needing to buy bullets from you regularly soon."

  "Very well then," the slightly more cheerful wyrm answered. "Here are your creditssss."

  Ed took the twenty golden credit coins from the quartermaster, and headed back to Ingrid's suite, where Lucy was sitting alone as far away from the appetizingly smelling tray on the low table, her head buried in an electronic reader. "Hey Luce. Something wrong with the food?"

  "Not a thing, except that I don't want to start eating until all three of us are here."

  "I take it Ing isn't back yet?"

  "Not yet. Not that I expected her to be. Old Man Bjørnson could chat a sphinx into oblivion when he's in the right mood."

  "Now there's something I'd pay to see. Anything interesting about what the Luck has in store for us next?"

  "Nothing good. The second journey starts with Sindbad abandoned on an island again, this time for no apparent reason, continues with him hitching a ride on a Rukh bird into a volcanic island full of giant snakes, and ends with him tying himself to a lump of meat to hitch a ride on a giant eagle.

  "That doesn't sound too good. I've just had an encounter with a giant snake though," Ed said with a smile. "Maybe it will count as a trial?"

  "Stein the Serpent having issues letting go again?" Ingrid said as she entered the room.

  "Yeah. I thought he was going to attack me for a minute there, until he learned I might be buying bullets soon."

  "Not very likely. He hasn't eaten a single armsman since he started to sleep in the store room."

  "Does that mean that he used to eat armsmen before?"

  "Nothing has ever been proven," Ingrid managed to hold her straight face for bare seconds before a toothy smile took over.

  Ed had to smile at that. "Any luck with getting a gun for me?"

  "Granddad doesn't have anything ready right now, but he'd been wanting to try a new design lately, so he welcomed an excuse to put whatever administrative work Mother can't handle aside and go tinker in his workshop. He said it'll be ready by morning, and you can have it free of charge as long as you provide detailed reports about how it functions in field conditions. Which is Granddad speech for 'hide where Mother can't find us and tell me yarns about your delve.'"

  "As if there was any place in the Arctology the Ice Queen can't find him," Lucy grumbled, making a show of looking around and waiting for Cathrine Bjørnson to leap out and punish her for the nickname.

  "Not a chance. But she lets him have his little 'reporting sessions' because she's afraid he'll vanish into the Labyrinth for a year or two again. Last time it happened she found him in a dryad grove, and we still get the occasional dryad asking members of the House to send him back."

  "That is not something I think about old Mad-Ved when I look at him," Lucy said admiringly.

  "He definitely doesn't look the part, but I probably have a battalion worth of half human aunts and uncles in the Labyirnth."

  Ed and Lucy could only shake their heads and whistle at that piece of information, and the conversation petered out as the three sat around the table for a very welcome dinner.

  Insistent knocking woke Ed up early in the following morning. Or possibly extremely late the same night, as whatever the bazaar decided would provide the day's light has yet to manifest itself. Ingrid groaned at being woken up, but almost immediately left the bed and starting looking for a gown. "It's probably Granddad with your finished gun, Ed. Could you get some coffee going? I don't think we're getting back to sleep this morning."

  "I'll get on it," Ed answered once his brain caught up with the fact that he was awake, but Ingrid had already left the bedroom, so he got dressed and went to the small kitchenette to prep and start up the makineta.

  "…ank you very much for this, Granddad," he caught the tail end of Ingrid's words, "but you didn't really have to work overnight for this."

  "I don't work overnight any more, what am I, Nut?"

  "Egyptian gods now? I thought we were on Slavic mythology puns this week."

  "Eh. Churn a bog long enough and you'll run out of mud to sling."

  "That one wasn't much better," Ingrid winced. "But it doesn't change the fact that this really wasn't that urgent a request."

  "Yes, but I had the idea that steel elemental extract can be mixed with ice aspected essence in liquid form and that they'll work like an epoxy that you can treat as a liquid at room temperature and then permanently harden with a mana jolt into a superhard metal that would be suitable for a rifle barrel, and I just had to try it and then I had the prefect barrel and I could just stop and leave it unfinished and…"

  The gurgling sound signaling that the makineta's lower chamber was nearly empty recalled Ed into the kitchenette and made him miss the end of that particular jumbled sentence, but he wasn't sure he really needed the kind of explanation Daved Bjørnson was giving when coming out of what looked like some kind of crafting trance. He removed the makineta from the fire crystal stovetop and disconnected the upper part, pouring the coffee into four espresso cups.

  "…so you see that I absolutely couldn't stop the work in the middle. But I still didn't work overnight, since it's not technically morning yet, so there's certainly no need to tell your mother about it," Daved Bjørnson was still winding down from his speech when Ed returned to the sitting room with four cups of espresso on his tray.

  "Good morning, sir. Would you like to join us for a cup of coffee?"

  "It's Daved, my boy. And I should really go get some sleep, so no more coffee for me."

  "Goodnight, Granddad," Ingrid said and kissed the old gnome's cheek. "I won't tell Mother that you worked overnight."

  The old tinker grinned at her, not looking the least bit tired, and left the room, just in time to miss a decidedly not properly dressed Lucy stumbling out of the bedroom towards the smell of coffee.

  After a much needed cup of coffee (two cups for Lucy), the three opened the box Old Man Bjørnson brought with him. The weapon inside was very clearly based on the Winchester Model 70, and chambered for .308 Winchester rounds. 'Based' being the operative word, since the wooden stock and body of the classical rifle were replaced with the iridescent purple of what could only be dire nautilus nacre, and the metal parts were the light blue of a glacier.

  "He made this by hand in one night?" Ed asked incredulously.

  "He probably had at least some of the parts ready, since it's the same basic type Uncle Matthias uses. But yeah, high tier tinkers work scarily fast when they're properly motivated. And there's nothing like breaking everything we know about metallurgy to motivate Granddad into a frenzy."

  "Do we have some standard ammunition around? And a range I can use? I want to zero and get used to it before we might depend on it to save our lives."

  "I'll take you to the range after breakfast. We should have more than enough rounds to satisfy you. But we should swing by the quartermaster's on the way and get some of his rounds to use when zeroing. They're not quite identical to the standard NATO round, and you'll want to account for the difference."

  "Makes sense to me."

  Two hours later found Ed in a surprisingly large indoor range, shooting round after round into illusory targets that popped up at random times and distances. It only took a few minutes for Ed to realize that the rifle had an e
xtradimensional feed system capable of holding far more than the standard five rounds, and after an hour of near constant shooting, that the barrel stayed cool no matter how many rounds passed through it.

  Satisfied with both the performance of the rifle and his own familiarity with it, he shot the remaining standard NATO round in his rifle and opened it for cleaning, receiving another pleasant surprise at the sight of the sparkling clean interior.

  "Your grandfather does very good work," he told Ingrid, who was practicing throwing her new spear in the next lane to the left. "This rifle would make half of the US drool just thinking about it."

  "Heh. There's a reason Granddad is considered the best crafter in the Labyrinth, and his Classshard is only a part of it."

  "I'll reload this with the quartermaster's rounds, and we'll go pick up Luce and head towards Katya and the Labyirnth?"

  "Works for me. I think I'm up to a decent skill level with this, finally. I think the Labyrinth counts throwing the spear as throwing a javelin, so it isn't covered by my Lancer class."

  "You could probably get the ability for it if you go to light horseman on your next rankup, but…"

  "But I'm better of going heavy horse, yeah. I'll just have to learn it the hard way."

  Ed finished loading thirty rounds into the feed system, and the two left the range in the direction of Ingrid's suite, where Lucy was still canvassing the One Thousand and One Nights for hints about Ed's next trials.

  After swinging by Ingrid's room to pick Lucy up, the three left the Arctology and met Katya at the stairway to the bazaar, before entering the eighth floor for the first time.

  The Labyrinth presented them with a hardwood forest. Hundreds of old oak trees stood far enough apart from each other to provide room for their huge canopies, and the forest floor was littered with their fallen acorns.

  Acorns which provided food for the forest's dwellers: huge wild pigs, each as tall as a man and weighing at least half a ton. The beasts were natural tanks, with tough armored hides and huge amounts of hit points, and would attack by charging at anything that moved, gaining enough momentum to knock even Ingrid off her feet, a fact that became painfully obvious when she tried to stop the charge of the first boar to greet the party.

  The pig ploughed into Ingrid's shield, knocking her down and stomping on her as it ran through, barely even slowed down by the armored hobgoblin. Fortunately for Ingrid, her own high hitpoints boosted by Ed's barrier skill got her through the charge alive, if battered and down to a third of her max.

  Fortunately for the delvers, they quickly discovered that while the bulky boars were practically unstoppable once they picked up steam, their very bulk made them very bad at turning around or stopping, and the boar took almost two minutes to circle around and charge at them again, which gave more than enough time for the phantasmal nymph to fully heal Ingrid, and for the rest of the party to prepare for it.

  Ingrid dropped her shield in favor of a short broad bladed boar spear, and when the boar came charging again, Ed placed the phantasmal cat-kin where the boar could see it and charge at it, leaving the rest of the party free to attack, and the giant pig was subjected to Firebolt, Acid Bolt, arrow, bullet and spear. The cat-kin was agile enough to jump away at the last moment, and the giant pig squealed its frustration and pain as it ran back into the woods, starting its wide turn again.

  In the end, it took five more passes before the great beast went down, but the party suffered no more damage during that time, and after harvesting the boar's tusks, the party continued on into the forest.

  The rest of the delve went smoothly after that, and the floor seemed to have no boss fight. The only things of note during their trek through the forest were the cat-kin's Butcher Skillshard maxing out, and the clockwork archer reaching level three of its Archer class, giving it a new bonus Shard slot. Prepared in advance, Ed had a Heartseeker Shard ready for the Archer and a Stealth Shard for the cat-kin, which he Sliced as soon as they left the forest behind.

  Heartseeker

  Tier 0

  Level 1

  0/100 essence

  Passive skill

  Increase damage of critical hits by 10% per level per tier

  Stealth

  Tier 0

  Level 1

  0/100 essence

  Stealth is the skill needed to hide in plain sight and move without making a sound.

  Higher levels of the skill decrease the chance of being revealed.

  Cannot hide from any sense-type Shard of tier 0 and above

  Stealth is broken when the user attacks or uses any other active skill.

  A quick lunch later saw the party in the ninth floor of the Labyirnth, fighting an orcish warcamp.

  Taller and broader than their hobgoblin cousins, the smallest of the monsters was as tall as Ingrid and twice as wide across the shoulder. They were wearing crude hide armor and carrying primitive but heavy clubs and spears, and seemed to be nothing more than a collection of individual warriors, with little cohesion and no leadership.

  This was another straightforward floor, and while the orcs were stronger individually than any of the party members, their lack of cooperation meant that the organized delvers could easily gang up on one or two orcs at a time, and slaughter them with little trouble.

  They made their way through the sprawling war camp slowly and carefully, waiting for opportunities to ambush isolated orcs without the rest catching up and charging them en masse, and took three hours to scour the camp free of the grunts.

  Finally approaching the largest hut in the middle of the camp, the group prepared for the leader, such as it was, of the orcs.

  The hut's walls were at least nine meters tall, and the door reached two thirds of the way up, so it was no surprise when an ogre burst out when the party approached, roaring a challenge at the approaching delvers.

  Four meters tall and half as wide, the beast wore nothing more than a dirty loincloth, and was holding a club as long as Ingrid was tall, which he waved at the delvers while delivering an incomprehensible speech in the brutish language of its kind.

  Rather than waiting for the ogre to finish its speech and attack, Ed gave his companions the signal to attack, and Ingrid charged at the ogre to stun him with a shield bash and leaving it defenseless against the combined attacks of the rest of the party.

  "This is most disappointing boss fight I have ever seen," Katya mentioned after the large goblinoid was dead. "We could fight stupid ogre with eyes closed."

  "Please don't provoke the Labyrinth like this, Katya," Lucy admonished. "It just might decide it wants to give us more excitement than we can handle."

  "I don't normally agree that there is anyone actively warching us and guiding things here," Ingrid added, "but we have an active Questshard, and provoking Murphy is never a good thing."

  Katya rolled her eyes and went to search the ogre's corpse, retrieving an Impact Skillshard from the body.

  A search of the hunt itself produced a pouch full of credits, which the ogre must have looted from other, less fortunate delvers, and a door out of the floor.

  Passing through the door, however, failed to return the party to the stairway and the bazaar.

  "Katya," Lucy said as she stood at the mouth of a cave opening into a large valley surrounded by impassable looking mountains.

  "Yes?" answered the Drab, her gaze locked at a vicious battle between a group of six armed women with the lower bodies of snakes and a group of winged, blue-skinned people.

  "I told you so."

  "Snake people and bird people," Ed said. "Looks like this is the second trial. What are we supposed to do here?"

  "Tie ourselves to a chunk of meat and have an eagle fly us out of here," Lucy said. "Not sure it applies here."

  "At a guess, we need to choose a side to aid," Ingrid added. "There are more battles going on further into the valley, and I doubt that any of us can sneak through it, except maybe Katya."

  "This is not good thing," Katya shook her
head. "These are angels and demons fighting there, and we are not geared towards fighting them."

  "There's no door back," Ed said after checking the back of the small cave behind them. "And we've already decided that we can't afford to decline the trials."

  A pair of snake women, who must have seen the party appear, slithered up towards them, battle fever burning in their eyes.

  The one on the left had black scales on her snake part, black hair and red eyes, and was wielding six swords, each of a different type. Her green-scaled companions had bright red hair and eyes, and carried a wicked looking hatchet, long serrated dagger and short spear in her left hands and a heavy mace, warhammer and flail in the right.

  The two demonesses charged towards the party, and Ingrid moved to engage the first attacker while the phantasmal dvergr went to meet the second, and the rest of the party prepared to support them from the back line.

  The clockwork Archer fired a perfectly aimed arrow at the sword wielding demoness's eye, but she moved a scimitar to block it almost contemptuously, using the other five to strike at Ingrid, who barely managed to block the rapid and vicious attacks with her shield. Ed had somewhat better luck with his rifle, and his bullet hit the second demoness before she could close in to melee range, but the lead missile splattered against her chest, leaving a small bruise instead of penetrating. Fire and Acid Bolts did little more than the bullets, leaving tiny burns that the demonesses didn't even acknowledge.

  Katya and the phantasmal cat-kin didn't manage even the little damage Ed and the mages did, their knives and daggers sliding harmlessly over the armored skin of the demonesses.

  The green demoness used her hatchet to parry the dvergr's hammer, and her spear and dagger pierced its armor, followed by the mace, hammer and flail, and the phantasm vanished instantly, leaving the demon free to go after the cat-kin.

  Meanwhile, Ingrid was still somehow managing to hold off the sword wielding demoness, but had to slowly retreat under the onslaught, and it was clear she wouldn't be able to keep it up much longer.