by Prax Venter
Jack cut his hand through the air. “Either way, I’m over it. Seriously this time.”
“If the monsters have abilities,” Haylee said quietly, “this Floor’s Boss might be more difficult.”
“Difficult or not,” Jack said, “let’s go free this beast.”
- 18 -
The party formed up again behind their Bastion and moved out into the torch-lit stone hallway. To the right was a huge set of metal double doors and to the left was more hallway leading deeper into the Floor 48.
After their stealthy infiltration had been exposed during their last fight, Jack expected to run into more resistance, but the immaculately clean hallway was free of foes. That was until they turned the first corner and saw three Knights and two Acolytes waiting for them at the next intersection about fifty yards away.
“You evil monsters shall come no further!” one of the robed Rodentia yelled before both mages launched their wide projectile attacks from behind the protection of the metal-covered Knights. Their green energy waves almost filled the entire hallway.
“Back!” Jack called out and everyone retreated behind the corner as the robed rats’ spells began washing down the hall, one after the other.
“They’re not advancing,” Farah said as she peeked out between the green, pulsing waves.
“I will handle this,” Haylee said as she moved closer to the torrent of magic colliding with the back wall. “There should be enough of a gap between casts.”
Jack nodded, and the Dark Prism pressed her back against the polished bricks of the hallway as her gray eyes focused on the nearby waves of energy. The pulses came at about two-second intervals giving Haylee just enough time to aim and fire. Everyone tensed as the young Hero spun out into the hallway and nearly walked directly into the last blast. She drew her bow, held her breath, and launched a Blue Shifted beam of light before spinning back out of the way.
Rodentia Acolyte Warden Critical! -1,220 | Defeated
Too bad she could only do that every ten minutes.
The sound of metal on stone echoed to them from down the hallway, and it became clear that the enemy had decided to shift from defense to assault. Angry Sun Alt used the form’s high mobility and zipped out to blast one of the advancing Knights before another burst of green magic forced him back around the corner.
Jack had a moment to wonder why there was no damage notification before Alt said, “Shield.”
The enemy was getting closer, and they had to do something. A plan began to form in Jack’s mind as he turned to his party.
“I’ll draw the magic, Haylee and Alt, take out the mage- now!”
Jack dashed out into the path of the advancing enemy and saw that they were a bit closer than he expected, and within range of his Mining Laser- but that wasn’t his plan.
The Rodentia Acolyte sent his next wave at Jack, but without two of them, the energy only covered half of the space. He employed his high dodge and narrowly sidestepped the blast as he drew his blade across the empty space in front of him.
Rodentia Knight Warden -190 | HP 1,176/1,366
… x2
Rodentia Acolyte Warden -190 | HP 929/1119
Behind him, Alt and Haylee hopped out and attempted to focus down the last spellcaster with a synchronized attack, but the rodent mage ducked behind one of the Knights, and the skillful warrior took both attacks on his shield.
“Fall back!” Jack yelled as he leveled his blade on the middle Knight and activated his Mining Laser.
The advancing group of rats had slowed to effectively block the incoming attacks, but Jack’s fiery ray of death ignored shields and armor.
Rodentia Knight Warden -238 | HP 938/1,366
The smoldering Knight stopped in place and adjusted his shield, but it was no use, and he took another round before the enemy party began rushing forward again.
Rodentia Knight Warden -238 | HP 700/1,366
Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw everyone but the Shadow Blade sprint back down the long hallway to give their ranged attacks more time to whittle down the heavy armored Knights. With Farah’s position in mind, Jack held his ground as long as he could in the hopes that his movement speed would allow him to land one more round of death ray damage without getting hacked to pieces by the three wrestler-sized rodents stalking toward him.
Waiting until the absolute last minute, Jack angled his blade upward under the helmet of his target and landed a final Mining Laser critical before rolling sideways to avoid a sword slice intended to remove his head from his body.
Rodentia Knight Warden Critical! -462 | HP 238/1,366
The cold stone floor met his shoulder as he tightened into a ball, gaining rotational momentum. He then hopped on to his feet as one of the other advancing Knights brought his sword down in a vicious overhead strike.
Jack lifted his sword up to parry the attacker’s blade and sparks burst outward as metal met metal. The strength of the blow sent vibrations down Jack’s arm, and he clenched his jaw as he danced back another step from the brutally strong rodents.
He’d done his job and drawn them around the corner, and it was time for everyone else in Jack’s party to rejoin the fight.
Alt took advantage of the Knight’s desperate attempts to impale Jack and found an opening for his eye-lasers to defeat the highly wounded one.
Lex Shouted again, pulling attention of the rest as she rushed back into the melee, and her actions gave a hidden Farah the opening she was looking for. The Shadow Blade appeared beside one of the two remaining Knights and stabbed both her blades up under his helmet.
Rodentia Knight Warden Critical! -1229 | Defeated
The spell-casting foe held up his hand to try and deal some final spiteful damage, but Haylee and Alt both blasted him from range before he got it off.
With one Knight left surrounded by Lex, Jack, and Farah, the fight was over. The concept of demanding surrender entered his mind, but the snarling creature swung his sword with a madness that offered no quarter, and Jack shoved the distracting thought out once again as he drove his blade up into the creature’s throat.
Silenced filled the hallway as everyone regrouped after the battle.
“That was beautiful,” Lex said with a huge grin for Jack. “Maybe you should be up front more often.”
Jack agreed. “We need switch up our tactics as we gain new stats. Stacking movement speed and dodge seems to be paying off.”
Farah shot him a sideways smile. “It’s that potent shaft of metal along your thigh, my king, that gives you the impossible advantage of absorbing rare abilities.”
Jack shook his head. “Despite my advantages, we’re still a team. A team that wiped out five rat-dudes without taking a point of damage!”
“Rat-dudes…” Lex repeated. “I love your words.”
“Speaking of advantages,” Alt said, “check your Inventory for a new high-value bow.”
Jack smiled as he willed the system interface to open. “I will always find it funny that these monsters carry around weapons they can’t use.”
“Why?” Farah asked as she crossed her long arms. “You’re literally carrying thousands right now.”
Jack rolled his eyes and then focused on finding Haylee’s supposed upgrade.
The Beast Warden - [Bow | Value 246]
| Dmg: 120 |
| Max MP +35 |
| Hit Chance +0.09 |
| Crit Chance +0.09 |
| Magic Power +30 |
| Regain 1 MP per attack |
~ The universe rewards action
The thing did 11 more damage than her current bow- more with the slight boost in Magic Power. And that special augmentation basically made her normal Light Rays free to fire.
“You’re going to love this,” Jack said as he opened a trade window.
The Dark Prism’s gray eyes went wide as she swapped her current equipped item for the upgrade.
“I do love this,” she said as she held the black metal bow out for every
one to inspect. Tendrils of green luminescence swirled and throbbed around on the limbs of the weapon giving the clear impression that this was a magic-infused item.
“One mana per attack?” Lex said, her eyebrows arched high. “I’ve never seen that type of bonus.”
“We’re high in the Tower,” Farah answered, awe clear in her normally sarcastic voice.
The Dark Prism clenched her fist around the new weapon and held it high.
“Let’s put it to good use.”
They all agreed, and after the short rest to let their cooldowns reset, they began pressing forward again. Not far past the point where the last group of enemies had tried to hold them off, the party came to the place the wardens must have been trying to keep them from reaching.
The first thing everyone noticed was the otherworldly lizard creature in the center of a large pit with four beams of green light focused on it from each direction. It had one giant eye, six legs, and a massive maw frozen in a primal roar. Instead of teeth, it had hundreds of tiny tentacles similar to what the Un-Dogs had for eyes back at the kennel. Its black, alligator skin pulsed with the same green color that danced in Haylee’s new bow, and there was no question that this was the beast the enemies had been referring to.
“Are these keeping it dormant?” Lex asked, pointing to the mirrored device in front of them. All four of the ornate, mystical contraptions were perched on ledges that encircled the pit, about six feet up. They each altered the light spilling from holes in the high ceiling then redirected the new green-tinted energy toward the motionless creature.
“I believe so,” Haylee said as she inspected one closely.
Jack let the others figure out the devices as he walked around the edges of the complicated room to make sure they weren’t missing anything. Where there wasn’t a mirror, the path around the pit was covered with walls giving him some ideas of where to place their ranged attackers. He moved to the back side of the room and stood looking down on the frozen beast’s back from one of the gaps in the wall.
The Exit Orb pulsed softly near the frozen monster’s tail, and its existence banished all doubt that this wasn’t the Boss Chamber. Directly ahead of the beast was a set of wide stairs leading up to the hallway they’d come from. It certainly wasn’t stuck down there if it suddenly came alive.
“There is a lever here,” Haylee called out from below. “I believe we can rotate these devices.”
Farah pulled out her blades and shrugged. “Then let’s rotate them and destroy this ugly thing.”
“Not so fast,” Jack said as his mind raced. “We’ve got a real opportunity here to control how this Boss fight plays out.”
“Absolutely,” Lex from directly across the room. “Maybe we can utilize those long hallways as we did before.”
He mentally backtracked through the Floor and came to settle on the experiment dogs still chained up down below. Were they just going to slaughter them as Haylee suggested? The idea of letting the monsters free and getting them to fight the Boss popped into his head but orchestrating that seemed challenging- that was if they even fought on their side. There was a chance that for all their work, they’d only make the boss fight more difficult. No… but there were still many opportunities to mess with this thing frozen helpless before them. Stabbing it now was something they should try, but they’d all need to get way the hell back before running that test.
Then Jack’s roving imagination found a possible option that made his heart skip a beat.
“That couldn’t work,” he mumbled to himself, “could it?”
Alt answered from below.
“Potentially brilliant, Jack. And no reason not to try it.”
“What?” Lex asked, turning her golden eyes from the beachball-sized orb to him.
Jack grinned. “I don’t know if we’ve ever had a Boss in such a compromising position on a Floor such as this. They don’t want us to free the beast? Fine, let’s tie it up instead.”
“What exactly are you talking about?” Farah said, sheathing her blades again.
“Chains,” Haylee said, her gray eyes flashing with excitement.
Jack waggled his eyebrows. “Let’s see if we can’t strap this thing to the Exit Orb before we do anything else.”
Lex’s mouth hung open as Farah just started laughing.
“Using everything we can to win,” Haylee said. “Perhaps we could tie some blankets over its eye to blind it as well.”
“Now you’re thinking,” Jack said as he walked all the way around the edge of the pit and rejoined his team by the stairs.
They strolled back down the two long hallways and checked the double doors they found earlier, but they didn’t budge, so they left them for now. They passed back through the rows of beads and back down into the food and wine storage room.
On a whim, Jack tried to pick up a bottle filled with some unknown yellow liquid. The object felt as it should, but he couldn’t move it into his inventory. He pulled the cork out and gave it a tentative sniff.
“Doesn’t smell like anything,” he said. With a shrug, Jack turned and hurled the bottle as hard as he could at one of the stone walls and it exploded in a spectacular shower of broken glass. “Gotta remember that,” he added as everyone stared at him. “The environment is as much of a weapon as what we hold in our Main-Hand slot.”
He was half-joking, but Haylee pulled out her journal to jot it down, and he had to admit it wasn’t bad advice.
The noise got the bizarre monsters chained to the walls barking again, but the party ignored them for now as they searched the rest of the kennel for any extra chains. The rat-person who slept down with the animals had a particularly sloppy living space. Piles of dirty robes, plates of rotting food, and his own collection of empty bottles covered the floor, but there wasn’t a big box of chains waiting for them.
“Jack,” Haylee said, and he turned to see her handing him another book she found on a table. “Look inside.”
He took the grease-stained object from her and noticed there wasn’t a title anywhere on the yellow cloth cover. Jack flipped it open to find every page was blank. The thing appeared to be well used and even some of the pages were dogeared, yet there were no words.
Jack closed the book. “I’m never going to get used to this world.”
“We will,” Haylee said, taking it from him and tossing it on the pile of blankets that served as a bed. “We will learn together.”
With no chains to find, everyone but Lex and Jack left the small room where a virtual being had existed for ten minutes in a hollow facade of a world.
“I know why you feel the way you do,” his wife and queen said as she leaned into him from the side, resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s why I love you Jack. Sol, Andor, my father… you believe everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves. Even fabricated people made from pure energy.”
Jack turned to face her as he wrapped his arms around her thicker leather armor. Lex turned her heavily lidded golden eyes up to his and he couldn’t resist pressing his lips to hers.
After a long moment of mutual affection, Jack pulled back and pulled in a deep breath- it smelled like wet dog, urine, and some other sour smell he didn’t even want to identify.
“Time to put those fabricated dogs down,” he said, and they joined the others out in the kennel.
“Here’s one,” Haylee yelled from down the length of barking monsters. She held up the leash from the one that had been released by the rat-man kennel warden. The length of linked metal loops looked to be about six feet long. It wasn’t enough to get the job done, but there were plenty of others.
Jack, Alt, and Haylee each focused their ranged attacks on one Un-Dog Experiment at a time, trying to end their existence as humanely as possible. The thirteen remaining creatures dropped two items, one of which was a minor Feet-Slot upgrade for Farah. He needed to see the monsters in the Tower as just another environmental resource to take advantage of, but no matter how Jack tried to rationalize it
away, the brutal silence in the now-empty kennel affected him.
“We have what we need,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Alt spoke in Jack’s mind as the party walked back along the rooms and halls to the Boss Chamber.
“I know the line between who or what is real to you has become… disturbed, since you were converted into energy and uploaded into System Sana. Yet, these entities in the Tower are as empty as the book you held a moment ago. They may show outward emotional responses, but in reality, they are akin to the emotional responses you’d get from a bumper on a pinball table. Also, since you damaged the Un-Dog Experiment monsters with the one skill under your Data Mining Path, their pattern has been saved forever. Well, as long as the Corruption doesn’t turn everything into itself instead.”
It did make him feel better, and Jack sent that message to the being that spoke through his sword belt. He glanced down at it and saw the chains he carried over his shoulder clacking on the gold and silver embellishments that coated its surface. He knew items in this videogame universe took no durability damage, yet he adjusted the chains so they no longer scraped his scabbard as he walked.
Each leash had been wrapped around an Un-Dog’s neck and held in place by a hook connected back to the chain itself, making a loop too small for their massive jaws. By linking the chains together they were able to create multiple loops around the frozen Boss’s back legs and tail. Jack made sure to twist every length of chain around as much as possible, and he wasn’t an expert with knots and hitches, but he’d worked with enough climbing harnesses to feel confident with what he was doing.
Haylee grabbed a few of the blankets from the barracks and draped them over the monster before Jack had started, and the thing now looked like a wrapped slab of meat you’d buy from a butcher. The only part that wasn’t covered was the long tail.
“You know there is a chance that it will just snap those chains,” Farah said from Jack’s side as they all looked down at their handiwork, “right?”