by Prax Venter
Everyone in the group shifted into their usual advancing pattern with Lex leading, Farah and Jack flanking her, and both Alt and Haylee in the rear. The ground sloped downward and curved into a corkscrew, looping them under a natural stone bridge.
“Movement,” Lex called out. It was hard to see in the dim light between discarded torches and the ranged party members let loose on the shadows they could see.
Jack was the first to react and fired off his vibrant beam of energy. He set the left-most creature on fire and now with plenty of light, they all could see they were facing humanoid rat-men with sharpened bone spears.
Scrap Scrounger -238 | HP 657/895
Haylee created a line of white light between her bow and the undamaged one and then calmly called out their weakness.
Scrap Scrounger Critical! -605 | HP 290/895
“Their nose.”
Both monsters rushed forward, and Lex intercepted one with her skilled shield-work while Alt and Jack each got off a laser blast. After that, Farah and Lex took down the final attacker with their blades.
With the enemy swiftly defeated, Lex passed her golden eyes over everyone and then continued to lead them deeper down into the tunnel.
Another pair of rat monsters blocked their path, but this time Jack and Haylee focused their attacks to bring one down first. Its snarling snout filled with crooked teeth lit up as the Angry Sun sent its eyebeams into its face.
While it was distracted, the slender Shadow Blade dashed forward for a decisive Ambush.
“This is a good start on today’s top Floor,” Farah whispered with a grin as she strode back to the group.
“Yes,” Lex agreed. “That’s what’s got me worried.”
Haylee pointed up the tunnel. “I see three more and a bend ahead.”
Everyone turned to see the dimly lit forms of rat-men digging into something on the ground. A single torch lay flickering nearby and gave Jack glimpses of their snapping maws as they feasted.
“I see them,” he said. “Let’s back up a bit and find out how many you can pop before they reach us.”
The four Heroes and Alt backtracked a few yards until the creatures were barely visible to Jack. He wondered if Haylee’s class gave her better vision or something similar.
“She is observant,” Alt answered in his head.
The Dark Prism drew the Woodland Fairy Bow they found down on Floor 44 and began pelting the poor creatures with long-range lines of pure light. Confused at first, the Scrap Scroungers wasted time trying to understand why they were in such terrible pain. Not every hit was a critical, but Haylee eliminated all three charging foes before they could reach the group.
“I love cheating,” Farah said with a crooked smile.
Jack popped up his Inventory and saw a new shield, but it wasn’t better than what Lex had equipped already.
“Let’s try to not take any damage on this Floor,” Jack said.
Lex shot him a look over her shoulder as she led them forward into the dark cave.
“Aren’t we doing that all the time?”
“He wants to have a reason to push to Floor 49,” Haylee said behind him. “And I also want this.”
“How’s everyone’s mana reserves?” he asked.
“Could be worse,” Lex said, keeping her eyes forward. “This helm we found that can grant me Mana per kill is hard to replace.”
“Yeah,” Farah said as she sashayed behind the Bastion. “The restock on each new Floor from the Rest Bonus goes a long way for me. For a time before the healer Kaneen spawned in Emberstone, it was only me and Andor. I dealt almost all the damage when we climbed together, and ability costs adds up.”
Jack thought back to the disturbed young man in white robes who tried to convert everyone against him.
“We haven’t seen a mob of angry Townsfolk with pitchforks at our gate, so I’ll assume your old party member’s crusade against myself and Blackmoor fell on deaf ears.”
“He made his choice.” Her words were uncharacteristically serious.
The party advanced quietly for a few paces, before Jack spoke again.
“Everyone deserves a second chance. If Andor comes back, or we run into him somewhere out there… maybe he’ll want to come back home to Emberstone.”
“Maybe,” Farah said, “but we fought together for years. I knew the man. Losing the woman he loved transformed him into someone I did not know.”
A noise that took Jack a moment to identify as growls and barking echoed to them from somewhere ahead and ended all conversation. Everyone instantly became battle ready. As the group approached the place where the rat-man had been feasting on a pile of rotting bones, they found that the way forward was blocked by a solid brick wall.
It took a few moments of searching, but they eventually found a small side passage dug into the cave on the far-right side. Jack had seen a lot of caves in his lifetime and could tell that the open section of rock that ran along the bricks had been dug out recently.
Lex led them into the narrow passage that was only wide enough for them to move one at a time. The barking and various animal noises grew louder as they moved, and Jack started to hear the rattling of chains.
The path along the wall grew dark as there were no torches lying on the ground along its length, and Jack was thinking about going back and grabbing one they’d passed before until he saw faint light spilling out of a hole in the brick wall ahead. The heap of bones and other random garbage piled near this breach made it clear that the Scrap Scroungers they’d encountered had made a home here.
The ragged hole opened into what appeared to be a storage area within a basement interior of a building. The Bastion used her sword to quietly remove the moldy burlap tarp partially covering the hole and the smell of caged animals jumped in intensity. They followed Lex deeper into Floor 48 around piles of dusty crates and spiderwebs, ready for the inevitable fight that could come from any direction.
The party navigated the ancient storeroom and came to a deteriorated wooden door at the far end. It was clear that there were a group of snarling beasts on the other side, and Jack readied himself for a fight.
Lex attempted to pull it open as quietly as she could to get a peek, but the rusty iron hinges let out an abrasive squeak. The creatures that were certainly not dogs began to go insane, barking and pulling on their chains.
The whole next room looked like a mix between a kennel and a jail with iron bars everywhere. Two rows of fleshy beasts barked, snarled, and howled along each side of the room, straining against the chains wrapped around their necks. The area was wide enough for the party to pass through the middle without the strange restrained monsters touching them, but Jack was inclined to put them all down anyway- for various reasons.
There were torches lining the walls in this new area, and his eyes had adjusted enough to see that the monsters had the basic appearance of absurdly muscled pitbulls, yet their eyes were replaced with clusters of stubby tentacles and their mouths were at least two sizes too big for their heads.
“Silence!” a man’s voice called out from somewhere, and Jack froze. The dog creatures did not listen; their full attention was still locked on the Heroes waiting by the open door to the storeroom.
Lex backed away and wordlessly indicated the barrels and boxes around them, intending that they hide.
“I’ll whip you all to sausage!” the voice called again before Jack caught a glimpse of a taller rat-man wearing a brown robe stepping out from another room before finding a place to hide behind a stack of barrels.
The animals continued to snarl and bark, and Jack was wondering if the furry man had left when his rodent nose peeked into the storeroom, his black nostrils flaring as he tried to detect anything amiss. Lex had left the door open, and that was apparently enough to make this creature curious.
Then something he either saw or smelled caused his beady eyes to narrow, and the humanoid rat spun back around with a sudden quickness.
“Intruders!” he yel
led over the viciously clamorous animals, and Jack’s party sprang into action.
Haylee darted out of cover and activated a Withering Stare, slowing the fleeing rat-person. Jack moved in front of her and got down on one knee before blasting him in the back with his Mining Laser through the doorway.
Rodentia Kennel Warden -238 | HP 771/1,009
The rat-creature hissed from the damage but moved as swiftly as he could toward the closest dog-creature. Angry Sun Alt came in low near Jack and fired his eyebeams at the Warden’s legs as Haylee fired a Light Ray over both of their heads.
Rodentia Kennel Warden -380 | HP 391/1,009
Rodentia Kennel Warden -319 | HP 72/1,009
“Intruders!” the rat-person screeched again as he fiddled with the closest beast’s collar. A moment before Jack’s vibrant red beam dealt another round of damage and finished him off, the Kennel Warden succeeded at his final task.
Lex stepped near the door to the storeroom as the vicious snarling creature blitzed straight for Alt and mashed her round metal shield into its huge head the moment it entered. The monster slid to a halt and attempted to bite the Bastion’s face as Farah appeared out of thin air and sunk both of her daggers into its meaty back.
Un-Dog Experiment Critical! -1,286 | 13/1,299
With a flash of her blade, Lex ended the creature’s existence.
Un-Dog Experiment -99 | Defeated
Everyone backed away from the center of the storeroom and waited for the torrent of enemies sure to come flooding toward them, but after a few minutes of savage barking from the remaining thirteen Un-Dogs in the kennel, no one else came.
“It’s possible nobody heard him over all of that,” Lex said, sheathing her blade and pointing at the bizarre riled-up creatures still chained to the walls.
“We should leave them alive for now,” Farah suggested. “It might seem odd if they all were instantly silenced.”
Even though these monsters would happily erase the people Jack cared about, the idea of killing all of them still tied up didn’t sit right with him. And Farah made a good point.
“Yeah,” he said, “if we are sneaking into some weird monster-making laboratory, I’d rather use this noise as cover.”
Lex nodded. “Sounds good.”
“We should, however, come back for their high-value item drops,” Haylee added.
“That’s also a good point,” Jack said, looking into her gray eyes. “But let’s get moving before another rodent comes sniffing around.”
Lex led the group in a single-file line again as they moved between the chopping teeth of the strange mutated dogs. The clusters of wiggling tentacles they all had instead of eyes was extremely off-putting, and Jack decided to keep his eyes on the Bastion’s backside instead.
After they passed the occupied kennels, they came to several empty ones and a small side room with a cot and a table where the Kennel Master must have come from. They moved past the otherwise-empty room and came to another wooden door.
Lex carefully pulled it open and on the other side of the underground kennel they discovered another storage room- except this area was much cleaner and mostly dominated by enormous kegs. Bottles of (probably) wine, stacks of cheeses, and hanging slabs of cured meat took up the rest of the space, but there were no rat-people to be seen. The party shut the door behind them and as they slowly crept through the fully stocked larder, the sounds and smells of the kennel began to fade.
Eventually they navigated the maze of foodstuffs and came to a wide set of stone stairs leading up to another level. Lex stopped and deferred to their party’s sneaky Hero.
They’d done this countless times over the last several days, and the Shadow Blade wordlessly and soundlessly crept up to scout the way ahead. Jack wondered exactly how many Floors they’d all cleared with her as she activated her Hide ability and vanished from sight.
Alt whispered the answer in his mind. “Not including this one, 395.”
Jack couldn’t help but feel disbelief.
“Well, you went from 1 to 40 with her the first day. Then after retaking Emberstone, it was 1 to 41, 1 to 42, 1 to 43… and so on. All those Floors add up, Jack. To 395, specifically. Taking it one day at a time has served you well. I also can’t believe you haven’t taken advantage of Elevator Alt yet.”
Jack sent him back a mental shrug. They’d talked about it, but no one was ready to skip hours of their lives just yet.
Farah padded back down the stairs and motioned for everyone to move farther back into the storeroom. Once they were several yards away, she gave her report.
“They lead up into a barracks with rows of beds. There are three of the monsters in black robes sitting at a table and reading.”
“Which monsters?” Jack said, thinking of the dog-beasts around a table with their strange tentacle eyes smearing over the insides of their wireframe spectacles.
Farah shot him a look. “The mouse-men.”
“Can you reach them before your Hide runs out?” Lex asked.
The Shadow Blade nodded. “Probably. Certainly, if there’s something distracting them.”
“Why don’t I open with a double Omni Strike,” Jack suggested. “Then Alt and Haylee, you blast away at two. If Farah can Ambush the third, we might be able to take them out before they can raise an alarm.”
With their plan set, Jack followed Farah back up the stairs with Haylee and Alt close behind. They tried to quiet the footfalls, yet with all of them advancing there was a good chance the rats would be alerted anyway so Jack sprinted up the last few steps.
Farah’s reconnaissance was accurate, and he noticed the three gray-haired mouse-men as they noticed him. All of them were actually wearing spectacles perched on their sniffing noses and hooked over their massive round ears.
A white Light Ray and two black-and-white beams passed to either side of Jack as both Haylee and Alt fired, and their streams of energy spurred him into action.
Rodentia Acolyte Warden Critical! -638 | HP 481/1119
Rodentia Acolyte Warden -380 | HP 739/1119
The undamaged creature held up a hand, and it began glowing- possibly charging a magic spell.
Jack drew his Dimensional Blade-infused weapon across the air as a green blob of energy launched forward from the Mage-like rodent. The wide magical attack nearly took off the top of his head as he dropped to the ground to avoid it.
“Intrud-!” one of them began to shout, but Farah appeared and Ambushed him into oblivion.
Rodentia Acolyte Warden Critical! -1,286 | Defeated
The one Haylee zapped with her bow countered with his own magical projectile, and her dodge was nowhere as high as Jack’s.
Haylee -202 | HP 293/495
Lex dashed toward the open archway at the end of this new room as Jack zeroed in on the one with the lowest health and turned the creature’s body to static dust with his Mining Laser. Haylee took out the final mage with a perfectly straight line of light while Angry Sun Alt zipped forward to help cover the entrance.
Jack had a moment to be angry at himself for fumbling the start of their plan before the sound of metal on metal demanded his attention. Two heavily armored rats now stood near the entrance where Lex had intercepted them.
As a well-oiled machine, the Bastion pulled back into the room as she took sword blows from the larger rodent warriors on her shield. The strategical retreat pulled them both into the room, giving Jack, Alt, and Haylee more targets to hit without having to worry about hitting Lex with friendly fire.
The Dark Prism shouted out, “Throat!” as she shot a normal Light Ray just under the right one’s rounded helmet.
Rodentia Knight Warden Critical! -649 | HP 717/1,366
“We will not let you free the beast!” the creature yelled as he swung his sword upward into Lex’s shield. She intercepted it, yet the blow left the telltale special effect of an ability as he knocked the Bastion backward off her feet.
Jack poured on the speed as he sprinted in to melee the two k
nights before they could do serious damage to anyone else. By not firing his Mining Laser he was able to focus on pumping his legs and was able to land a surprise Double Strike jab under the helmet of the one closest to him.
Rodentia Knight Warden Critical! -380 | HP 986/1,366
Rodentia Knight Warden Critical! -380 | HP 606/1,366
Alt and Farah focused on the other one as Jack danced backward from a counter-attack slice that nearly cut him in half. He dashed in again directly afterward hoping for another double critical, but the Knight lifted his reflective kite shield to block his strike.
“Hey!” Lex Shouted from behind and both enemies turned to face her ability-infused challenge.
The opening gave Jack and Farah what they needed to finish their targets with critical melee strikes.
With the fighting over for now, Lex moved directly to Haylee for healing.
Jack sheathed his upgradeable blade into his permeant sheath and let out a sigh of relief. That could have gone a lot worse.
“There goes our no-damage challenge,” he muttered.
“What happened on the stairs?” Farah asked as she stepped up next to him. “Why’d you hesitate?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “They reminded me of Thymus… I guess I just don’t like the layouts like this-” He gestured to the beds around them. There were books piled up, dirty clothes, half-burnt candles, and all manner of things that showed someone’s life. “Layouts with beings who talk to us.” Jack frowned and turned to look at the Shadow Blade. “Speaking of which, did you hear that guy say something about us ‘freeing the beast’?”
“I did,” Farah responded as she crossed her leather-wrapped arms. “It’s probably the Boss.”
The Bastion finished her wordless healing song and both she and Haylee joined the rest of the group standing in the middle of the rat-men barracks surrounded by beds.
“It’s our highest defeated Floor,” Lex said, her golden eyes locked on Jack’s. “Someone was bound to take damage. I’m just thankful no one else was hurt as I picked myself up off the ground.”