by Dakota Krout
~ Chapter Nineteen ~
“What just happened?” Aten’s breathless shock summed up the feeling in the air admirably. Joe frantically opened his combat log and scrolled through the most recent notifications. He saw the messages waiting for him and grimaced, sending a screenshot of them to Aten.
Ritual ‘Unnamed’ has encountered a creature! Taglock deployed … success! Taglock has encountered Rock Monster (Ancient). Gravedigger’s Requiem effect activated!
Critical success! As the Rock Monster’s bones and carapace are entirely made of earthen materials, all other portions will vibrate past them!
Calculating… due to having no skeletal structure or carapace to protect from the crushing weight of the earth above, Rock Monster (Ancient) will take 1000 points of crushing damage per second!
Rock Monster (Ancient) takes 1000 crushing damage, Rock Monster (Ancient) regenerates 200 health, Rock Monster (Ancient) takes 1000 crushing damage…
Joe had seen enough. Giving off a nervous chuckle, he explained what had happened to the people around him. The Guild Commander stared at him, eyelid twitching a bit as his hands clenched into fists and relaxed over and over. Aten took a deep breath and bellowed a deep laugh. “Ha! Instant dungeon, just add water and a dash of betrayal! So what you are telling me is that we now have access to an instant dungeon, a mine with a huge amount of the densest and most difficult-to-damage metal we have ever seen, and somewhere in that same mine will be a Core from a level thirty-two Ancient creature? Couple that with the fact that we can directly claim this area tomorrow? Don’t be nervous, Joe, you’re getting a raise!”
“But… all those villagers…” Cheering erupted around them as the guild members heard Aten’s words, so Joe went unheard by the people.
Aten smiled around at the excited members of his guild and gave an order to set up a campsite. He pulled Joe aside and asked if it were possible for him to place some protections around the area, or else it was fairly likely that they would sustain some losses overnight. Joe agreed to do the work so long as the materials were provided by the Guild, and soon, he had a pile of goods to work with as well as a high-quality health potion. Aten wanted to see if the grade of the optional potion would impact the potency of the ritual. The use of such an expensive potion drew no complaints from Joe, as he too was fairly curious to know what would happen.
While the temporary barriers and tents went up, Joe focused on drawing out his ritual. He had been given a fairly large chalkboard to work on, and he was using his own chalk to fill in the aspects of the ritual that he needed. Checking his notes again and again, he made sure that there were no errors in the design. Joe chuckled as he made a small change which allowed him to specify the area that the ritual affected. The last time he had made this ritual for the guild, he had simply made a massive ritual circle around the entire building. Now, he added the magical equivalent of specifying the radius, and he had a ritual that would work the same if not better.
He walked to the center of the camp, placed the chalkboard on the ground, and added the needed components. Making sure they were in the correct formation, Joe then began pouring mana into the ritual. This was a Novice ritual, so powering it by himself was not an issue. In fact, his mana didn’t even dip below half by the time it was complete. Joe pocketed the Core he was supposed to use up in this ritual, figuring that the people that had handed it over to him most likely hadn’t expected it back… and either way, they would be repaid by the guild.
Activate ritual: Predator’s territory? This ritual will cause creatures of level 19 or below to avoid the area, but any creature level 20 or above will be drawn to you. For using a high-grade healing potion, anyone who sleeps in the area will recover wounds 50% faster, and sleeping in the area for 3 consecutive hours will grant the ‘Well-rested’ effect. Ritual will last for 8 hours upon activation. Yes / No.
Joe selected ‘no’, as it wasn’t anywhere near nighttime right now. He set the ritual so that any guild officer could activate it, then looked up from his work to see a man waiting patiently to speak to him. The unknown person cut a rather dashing figure, well dressed and wearing a wide-brimmed hat with a large feather coming out of it. “Hello there, can I help you?”
“Pardon my forwardness, but it is I who is hoping to help you.” The man unleashed a dazzling smile, making Joe wonder how high his charisma stat was. He swept his hat from his head and took a deep bow. “My name is Papadopoulos Whisperfoot, rogue extraordinaire! I have heard tell of your group searching for an additional member and was hoping that I could throw my hat into the ring, as they say.”
“You do not have your own team? If I might ask, how are you in the guild without a party, pop… papa… Mr. Whisperfoot?” Joe stumbled over the name a bit, but he thought that he recovered admirably. He had to blink a few times even during that short discussion; the bright colors that the rogue was wearing were starting to hurt his eyes.
“Ah, yes, I can see the confusion. I was added to the guild simply because I know Aten in real life. I have tried out a few teams, but none of them were… hmm… how to say it… right for me? Also, please call me Poppy, nearly everyone does when I give them the chance.” Poppy grinned as he stood tall. Obviously, he had chosen his name to mess with people, making Joe feel a bit nostalgic about his old teammate, Guess.
“Alright, Poppy. We do need another member, but I can’t promise that it’ll work out. If you fit in well, that’d be great. Now, we try to work as democratically as possible, so I need to ask the others before really giving you the green light, but I don’t think there will be an issue if we call this a trial run. Can you tell me your class and level? A bit about yourself if possible?” Joe sent a party invite to Poppy as he spoke.
“Excellent!” Poppy thought on his words for a moment. “I am a level seven Duelist. My class grants me excellent bonuses against enemies if I am fighting them one-on-one. Hmm. My main weapon is a rapier, which grants armor penetration like you would simply not believe. Careful attacks allow me to fight well-armored foes as easily as if they were fighting me nude, simply making them slower targets for me.”
“Do you often find the time for careful attacks when a battle is ongoing?” Joe wasn’t trying to be insulting; this was something he would need to figure out eventually. Technically, he could learn any skill from any class. In time, he expected that he would learn swordplay. Sure, it might be a hundred years or so, but…
“There is always time to carefully choose a target,” Poppy gushed ecstatically. “In fact, it is far more efficient and economical for anyone to fight in a manner that uses skill instead of power... wait… I think Berserkers and the like are able to do extra damage from wild blows?”
“Makes sense to me.” Joe shrugged and started walking. “We are planning to go into the dungeon in a little while; do you need anything before we go? Sleep, food, or healing?”
Poppy went thoughtfully quiet for a moment but ultimately shook his head. “Unless we wanted to get a few hours of sleep before we went, I can’t think of anything. We don’t know how long we will be in the dungeon, but if we wait too long it will be nighttime and the creatures may become harder to fight.”
Just then, they came upon the remainder of the group, and Joe made a few quick introductions. Bard was the only one who had anything to say about taking in a new member. “Ye joinin’ tae group just ta walk with legends? Ye here ta take advantage o’ tae double exp? Or are ye actually gonna stay in the group?”
Jaxon smiled at Poppy, the ghoulish expression on his face almost causing him to leave the group right then. “Anything you choose is fine, though I would like to know as well. If you won’t be around very long, I don’t need to be on my best behavior around you!”
“I’m staying!” Poppy quickly squeaked, hand on the hilt of his rapier as he stared at the wiggling fingers inching toward him. “If I’m allowed to, of course. Jaxon was it? Would you mind telling me what your charisma stat is at?”
Frowning, Jaxon coc
ked his head to the side with the swiftness of a bird looking at a worm. “Does it matter? I see that it does matter to you. Let me see, I’ve gained two points since joining this group, so it is now at… four.”
“Four? You only have four points in charisma?” Joe sputtered, incredulous even as Jaxon’s past actions became much more understandable.
“Well, yes.” Jaxon was now looking directly into Joe’s eyes, not blinking at all. “When in character creation, I had the option to reduce unneeded stats to boost others that were more necessary. Didn’t you do the same?”
“It’s all becoming clear now,” Alexis muttered into Bard’s ear, quickly looking away before Jaxon could meet her eyes.
“Jaxon, when your charisma is below ten… you have serious penalties to any kind of normal interaction. The worst part is that you can’t tell what it is that you are doing wrong, so you just get in trouble for what you think is no reason at all,” Joe explained succinctly to the Monk.
“Ah, that would explain why the guards kept showing up when I adjusted people, even though they kept asking me to help them feel better?” Jaxon seemed to be deep in thought–nodding at some internal process–and missed the wince that passed over the others faces.
“Adjusted?” Poppy spoke out loud, causing the others to look at him with wide eyes while shaking their heads rapidly.
“Sure, I’d be happy to!” In a flash, Jaxon was beside the Duelist, hands flashing outward. His fingers and palms struck at full force, instantly leaving bruises. Poppy took a sharp breath, but in that same moment, Joe healed him. The pain vanished, leaving behind an excellent buff. Poppy had a look of wonder on his face that turned to fear as a set of long needles appeared in Jaxon’s hand.
“How’s that? Do you have any habits you’d like to break?” Jaxon blinked and then smiled. “Oh, look at that! I gained yet another level in a charisma-based skill! Thank you all for your concern, this talk has already been beneficial.”
Poppy coughed, stepping back as Jaxon lifted his needles and stared at him. You could see the question in the Monk’s eyes–he was wondering if this ‘Poppy’ fellow was a smoker. “What… um… what was the skill you just increased?”
“Intimidation.” The word seemed to shake the air like a lion’s roar as Jaxon spoke it. “Oh, look at that! There is an active component as well! Who would have guessed?”
“If we ever find some charisma-enhancing gear, I vote that we force Jaxon to wear it. All opposed?” Joe looked around, but there were no nay-sayers. Jaxon was preoccupied reading over his skill again, else he may have had something to say.
“Speaking of gear, fearless leader, are you wearing anything beyond the starting clothes under your lovely robe?” Poppy already knew the only answer he would accept; he had been able to inspect and assign a value to all of Joe’s gear by this point.
“No, my strength is too low for me to…” Joe slapped himself on the forehead hard enough to do damage. “I used to be too weak to put anything else on. I bet I could even get a new weapon!” He looked at his cleric scepter, thinking, not for the first time, that it looked quite a bit like plywood.
“There are a bunch of merchants in the guild; I can show you where to go if you’d like,” Alexis offered quietly. “We should really be prepared when we go in the dungeon. I get a bad feeling from this place.”
“Maybe it was the lightning.” Jaxon looked at the walls and nodded. “That was what did it for me.”
They made their way over to the merchants, and even though the man gave Joe a good price, getting equipment for his level that he could also wear cost him a solid chunk of gold. Joe didn’t buy anything too extravagant since he was going to specialize soon, but he did take Alexis’s advice to go into the dungeon well-prepared. He walked away from the mobile store wearing a new set of clothing that increased magic resistance and mana regeneration by a point, a pair of shoes that increased movement speed by ten percent, and best of all, a new scepter!
Cleric scepter (Blessed Oak). Adds 10-15 blunt damage on strike. -15% cast time when casting Cleric spells. 20% chance to use ability [Turn undead] on strike. To cast cleric spells while holding, simply focus your will, intent, and mana into the scepter; it will do the rest. +1 piercing damage. (Augmented with Titanium Taglock)
Joe tried to cast a shadow spike with the hand that was holding the scepter but found that he was unable to do so. It was understandable that he couldn’t use the weapon for a different style of spells, but it still sucked. This was a tool devoted to usage by Clerics, and… he skid to a stop and turned around. Against the protests of those waiting, he jumped to the front of the short line that had started to form and blurted out a question. “Are there single-hand tools that Mages use for casting, and do you have any?”
The merchant could have been angry that Joe had stopped the flow of customers, but he had just made a hefty profit off of him. Joe had no bartering skills, and since the merchant was a player, his charisma and speech skill did nothing to save Joe money. With a wide smile, the merchant gave his answer, “I sure do! Let me see what I can find here… level nine? Mhmm… here we go! What we have here is called a ‘casting orb’. All you need to do is cast your spells into this orb, and it will save an imprint of them. Then you pass mana into the orb, and you will be able to cast the spell over and over.”
“Single-use? Is it just a bank of spells to use?” Joe was uncertain about the usefulness, and the merchant seemed to smell his hesitation.
“Oh, no, no! Here, you can test it. Cast the spell into the orb, then hold it and try to cast your spell without the hand motions.” The merchant pressed the orb into Joe’s hands, causing Joe to nearly drop the sweat-coated glass ball.
“Was this in your pocket…?” Joe gagged softly as the merchant merely shrugged. Joe looked at the baseball-sized orb and turned his mind away from gross images, casting shadow spike into the Mage’s tool. The sphere went completely dark for a moment, slowly lightening over a long second. The previously slightly-pink but clear orb now had a dark pattern in it, clearly the diagram of the spell, though it was too tiny to make out details. Joe looked around for a suitable target and spotted a large boulder in range.
The area around them went silent as the boulder exploded into gravel. For the remainder of a single second, a barbed spike stood in the shower of gravel. The spike had grown since the last time he had used it and now stood waist-high on Joe. He cast the spell a second time and was pleased to note that the orb functioned much as his scepter did, simply speeding up his casting time. He looked back to smirk at the pale face of the merchant. “I’ll take it.”
Casting Orb (Rose Quartz) (Uncommon). Adds 5-10 blunt damage on strike. -8% cast time when casting Mage spells. To use, simply cast the spell once into the orb to attune it, then cast the spell as normal through the orb. Note: This is a single-hand item. Spells that require two hands to cast require a different orb.
As Joe’s group walked to the entrance of the dungeon, Alexis looked at him and coughed. “You know that he was totally ripping you off, right?”
“Yeah, but I still got the stuff below fair market value,” Joe responded with a calm shrug. “I know how expensive it is to play this game, so I’m not going to begrudge someone a bit extra if it doesn’t hurt me too much. I’m still going to tell Aten to keep an eye on him, though. Just because I’m not hurting for cash doesn’t mean some other naive person won’t be.”
“You know, we still haven’t gotten any pay, right?” Alexis smiled dangerously at the Ritualist, who kept his sweating face pointing forward as they approached their goal.
A representative of the guild was waiting for them at the entrance to the dungeon. He looked up from a packet of information, grimacing when he saw the variation in their levels. “Hey, guys. Couple of things here. This dungeon is instant and instanced. That means several things, but here is the main one: the creatures in there are going to be really strong and set to be a challenge for the highest level party member. That is th
e ‘instant’ portion. The instanced portion is a bit… stranger. All the monsters in there are going to be intelligent, but as more parties enter, they will become less intelligent and more ferocious. Their mind and intellect get split to deal with the various parties.”
“Is there a limit to the amount of parties that can go in?” Joe questioned the man.
“No, but you cannot leave until you complete the dungeon or die,” Joe was promptly informed. “So we don’t yet have any good information on what’s in there.”
“Don’ worry about it!” Bard clapped Joe on the shoulder when he noticed the hesitation on Joe’s face, causing the party leader to stumble. “We can handle it jus’ fine!”
These words would be thrown in his face soon enough. None of them were mentally prepared to handle the horrors they would face in this cursed village.
~ Chapter Twenty ~
“So… are they undead, or what?” Poppy whispered far too loudly for comfort. They were looking at the monsters that were wandering around shrieking into the air intermittently. Every once in a while, they would act differently, thrashing around as if they were fighting an unseen enemy. Often, the thrashing would stop, and they would seem to become a bit more intelligent. Rarely, they would crouch down and feed on an intangible and invisible feast. Joe winced at the thought of one of his guild members being chewed on.
“Not a clue,” Jaxon said in a normal tone of voice. “Though from the description the gut out there gave us, they are currently most likely fighting in alternate ‘dimensions’. When they lose in one scenario, they get more intelligence devoted to the remainder of their many forms. Their minds become less spread out. If they win… looks like they’re hungry. We should be extra careful of the ones showing heightened awareness, they might be crafty.”
“Did you call the helpful guy outside of the entrance a ‘gut’?” Alexis hissed. “Did you forget how to say ‘guy’?”