Irrelevant Jack 3

by Prax Venter

  Skin Minotaur -192 | HP 1,204/1,588

  …

  Skin Minotaur Critical! -1,266 | Defeated

  Jack saw the surviving creature spin to search for its source of pain before they all pulled back several steps and waited as a group for the monster to come floating down through the skin-covered opening onto the path down the island.

  Just when it seemed as if the thing might have given up before coming to them, Jack felt his flesh begin to burn.

  Jack -200 | HP 685/885

  “Up there!” Haylee called out, and Jack had time to look up to see the terrible creature hovering about thirty yards up- it had made a straight line directly to them over the mountains.

  Lex dashed forward as close as she could get and yelled, “Face me!” as a clear sphere of magic expanded from her mouth. The creature was still out of range of both his mining laser and Alt’s eyebeams, but the hanging flaps of skin moved straight for the Bastion, blasting her with its burning flames.

  Lex -200 | HP 838/1038

  Lex -200 | HP 638/1038

  Lex -200 | HP 438/1038

  She held her position as it slid closer and burned for three rounds before the disgusting thing moved down the fleshy ridge and into range. When it was, both Jack and Alt each blasted it in one of its eyes while Haylee ended it directly after with a thin line of white light from her bow.

  “Damn it,” Jack whispered, casting his eyes over to Lex. She gave him a weak smile and then healed herself, then him, and he watched their party’s healer blow most of her remaining mana. The Bastion stopped singing and pulled back to address the group.

  “It might be time to retreat. I can heal one more minor wound, and I still have my Aether Tone abilities, but we haven’t even seen the Boss.”

  “I would hate to lose today’s progress,” Farah said.

  Haylee took a few steps forward up the meaty passage. “We should still determine what’s through the next doorway. I don’t want to give up with no knowledge of what we would have faced if we continued.”

  Jack looked around the group and everyone agreed.

  “We’ll look, but no promises. It might take us several attempts at Floor 49, and it’s a good thing that Alt has been squirreling away items. Losing a Town Level would also be devastating.”

  The group of Heroes and Alt slowly crept along the red muscle ground and past the pools of blood until they came face to face with the second massive dimensional doorway. Despite the darkness on the other side, it was clearly another version of this island, but at night.

  When they stepped through, they discovered that the water in this third iteration was the vast emptiness of space. The ground was hard under his boots, and Jack looked down to see they were standing on what seemed to one continuous slab of glass or smooth crystal. This time, square pools of lava were everywhere on the island and cast enough light for them to see that the rock of this world appeared to be made from uniformly shaped obsidian cubes.

  The towering volcano was backlit by a red glow that had to be a massive amount of molten rock and stood out spectacularly against nebulae suspended in the void around them.

  The group remained quiet as they moved along the grid-like “beach” of this world and pressed as close to the black cubes and bubbling lava as they dared over fear of tumbling over the edge.

  A shudder ran through Jack as he imagined what existence would be like falling in the Tower forever with no hunger or thirst. Would he eventually make that ultimate decision to end his own existence if he found himself stuck in such an eternal nightmare? Jack pushed such morbid thoughts out of his head. He had enough to worry about without dreaming up more.

  Farah crept around the corner to scout out what horrible creatures awaited them in the first area then quickly faded back into sight in front of the party.

  “There’s nothing there.” She shrugged. “Just more square ponds of lava.”

  The others moved forward around the bend in the layout to see a flat, empty space for themselves.

  “Okay,” Jack began, “we know the Boss is out there somewhere, but there could also be invisible foes for all we know. Let’s take it nice and slow.”

  Lex led the way, her sword and shield out ready for anything. The party pressed along the obsidian inner wall, but the area seemed to be truly empty. Encouraged to keep moving, they crept forward up through the ridges made from cubes, and Jack took the opportunity to study the makeup of this layout.

  The cubes were all about three feet on every side and stacked in the exact shape of the volcanic fissures they’d been moving through over and over. Pools of lava randomly broke up the landscape this time and were always filled to the top with the bubbling molten rock.

  Other than getting the Boss to fall off this floating island or stepping in a pool of lava, no ideas were jumping out at him.

  They repeated the same cautious approach for the plateau where they’d fought multiple enemies in the previous iterations of this island, but Farah reported that the area was also devoid of adversaries.

  “I don’t like this,” Haylee said. “With no foes, I fear the Boss will be comparatively more difficult.”

  With nothing stopping them from finding out more about their third Floor 49, the party continued to push forward along the smooth glassy path and up around the blocky volcano. When they reached the same summit for the third time on this repeating island, they caught sight of what had to be the Boss for this Floor.

  Standing alone with his furry hands wrapped around a two-handed hammer was an enormous Minotaur. Not a bone or a weird flesh one, but a gargantuan one. Its three eyes were glowing a bright blue with short forks of lightning continually radiating out of the middle one. It wore an ornate leather kilt with glowing runes and a silver ring pierced its nostrils.

  “He has to be fifteen feet high,” Farah whispered.

  Haylee pointed behind the imposing monster. “There’s no further doorway and there appears to be an Exit Orb.”

  Jack’s eyes picked up the small throbbing light of the distant orb and nodded. This was the Boss Chamber.

  “Without getting too excited about actually doing it, anyone have any suggestions on how to fight this thing?”

  “Without knowing more,” Lex began, “I could always use my Shout and Aether Mist synergy. It’s worked on hundreds of bosses so far and this might be a straight melee fight.”

  “I’m betting he has a special attack with that third eye,” Farah added. “Maybe lightning instead of fire.”

  Haylee poked her head back around the black bricks to take a second look.

  “Given what we’ve fought on this Floor, it might have similar and potentially devastating special abilities.” Her grey eyes flashed once and then she turned back to face the party. “And its weak point is the bottom of its hooves.”

  “Perfect,” Farah said.

  Jack scanned the area and noticed that there were far more and larger pools of lava around the walls of the Boss Chamber. Some were overflowing and dramatically spilling their contents down like neon taffy into other pools below, lighting the whole area with a warm red glow. At least if this monster tried to climb over a ridge to get at them, it would have to sink its weak spot into at least one vat of magma. The huge creature stood in the middle of a space Jack estimated to be about 150 yards and was surrounded by high walls. That meant that a hit-and-run strategy might work if they could somehow keep it from following them through this one opening that led to the sloping path where they stood.

  While the others mentally ran through their dwindling options, Jack moved close to one of the walls and rubbed his hand over an obsidian block’s smooth surface. Every edge was beveled inward giving everything around them a faint grid-like appearance.

  “Alt,” Jack said out loud as he drew his sword. “I can’t break my sword, right?”

  “No,” the Angry Sun said turning to face him. “There should be no way for you to physically damage equipable items.”

  With a g
runt, Jack jammed his cheating blade into the seam between two blocks near the edge of a row. There were eight cubes above, and it took some force, but he was able to wedge it in and pry them apart. He yanked out his sword and peeked into the small gap.

  “We can move those?” Lex asked, her eyebrows high.

  “Alt,” Jack started again. “Can I stick this sword in lava?”

  “I suppose you could, but you might burn your hand getting that close.”

  Jack searched for a good spot to either build a wall and/or spill lava… yet his mind was distracted with something about what Alt said about damaging equipable items.

  “Wait a minute,” he said, holding up a finger. “Alt, are you telling me I’m holding several tons of an indestructible building material?”

  “I- I’m not sure. The world was not designed with that use in mind.”

  “Jack,” Haylee said and pulled his attention on her steady gray eyes. “Tell us...”

  “Imagine a wall around Blackmoor covered with trash-value shields for starters,” he said. “Better yet, if we work in a homemade pulley system, we could have an impenetrable gate.”

  “A gate…” Lex repeated.

  “Remember,” Alt said, “the gate would only be as strong as the material holding it together.”

  Jack shrugged. “What if we hold it together with trash-level spears? Weave it all together.”

  Angry Sun Alt had nothing to say to that, but he felt the AI’s mind spin up with guarded excitement.

  “Maybe we could build this wall and gate over the road near Emberstone,” Farah suggested. “We need to secure what we’ve taken.”

  “Absolutely,” Jack said, trying to focus thoughts on the task at hand.

  Haylee opened her notebook quickly to make note of all this and ripped a page in her haste. She sucked in a breath and drew her hand back in horror.

  “It means it’s real,” Jack said after a moment. “Items crafted with our own hands have no System Sana value, but they are worth far more than any item generated for us.”

  Haylee stared at him, her eyes wide before she swallowed and began scribbling furiously in her homemade book.

  Jack sheathed his sword and pointed at the opening to the Boss Chamber.

  “Okay, I have a plan.”

  - 21 -

  Both Lex and Farah began wedging apart bricks with their blades while Jack shifted Alt into a monster called Dragonstone Grunt they’d tested out a few days ago. The four-armed creature was slow but also absurdly strong and was put to work carrying the loosened obsidian cubes into position. Once placed, Haylee focused on their fine adjustments to make sure there were no gaps between the three-foot cubes of solid stone.

  After they had the start of a good wall arranged across the path, Jack attempted to climb the perfectly flat vertical blocks. The goal was to reach a large lava pool that could spill in front of their new wall. However, to do that without waltzing into the Boss Chamber and possibly triggering disaster, he’d need to climb a stack of thirty-two, perfectly flush blocks. They considered building a stairway out of the thousands of construction resources around them, but Jack thought of a faster way. Jabbing spears and axes into the blocks over his head created an indestructible ladder of handholds. If he could jam them in far enough, videogame physics would eventually start to synergize with traditional physics, and he’d have an immovable object- as long as the blocks above weighed more than he did.

  He pushed his full weight on the shafts of two wooden spears as he forced an axe between two blocks above, and even though his hypothesis seemed to be holding up to the evidence, Jack had spent most of his life knowing that there should be no way these thin lengths of wood could support his bodyweight, much less the force he was pushing against them.

  It took about twenty minutes to reach the top, and his years of climbing experience had come in handy once again. As he crested the ridge, he considered setting up a climbing wall somewhere in Blackmoor so other Heroes could practice the useful skill. Maybe a vertical climb from the beach up the cliff…

  But now wasn’t the time for that.

  Jack willed his low Sneak stat to work overtime as he lowered himself flat on the blocks around him. The three-eyed minotaur continued facing forward, his massive furry chest heaving in and out as he breathed. With the Boss remaining dormant, Jack’s eyes focused on the closest large pool of lava. It was a massive one about ten yards away with more pouring down from yet another basin farther up the ridge.

  Carefully and slowly, he crept along the top of the blocky volcanic fold, thankful there were small furrows he could hide behind. The heat grew exponentially intense the closer he moved to the bubbling magma, and he pulled out his cloak to try shielding his exposed flesh.

  Jack shot a glance over toward the Boss to confirm that the thing was still oblivious before he wrapped the bottom of his cloak around his fist and began prying at a corner block with his blade. A feverish wave washed over his whole body from being this close to molten rock. He needed to work quickly or end up passing out- or worse. With a grunt, Jack scraped a cube out of place and immediately felt the heat become intolerable.

  Jack -50 | HP 835/885

  Jack -50 | HP 785/885

  He crept back from the glowing liquid as it slowly dripped down the obsidian brick wall and noticed the flame icon near the top of his vision.

  Heatstroke -

  Lose 50 HP/1 seconds

  ~ You cannot survive at this temperature

  The damage notification faded after he’d moved far enough away, and then Jack lay down flat behind a one-block ridge to try and catch his breath. He closed his eyes and willed Alt the concept of telling the others that he was fine.

  “Already done,” the AI responded telepathically. “From down here we can see your plan working, but it will take approximately 19 hours for enough of the spreading molten rock to matter.”

  Jack grunted a silent acknowledgement and went back to pry loose another cube. After 200 more points of damage, Jack was able to wedge open a steady flow of glowing, goopy magma. Feeling burnt to a crisp, he moved away from the intense heat and back down the equipable item ladder, pulling them back into his inventory as he descended.

  Lex was waiting for him at the bottom, and she spent the last of her remaining mana on restoring some of his hit points.

  “How was being cooked alive?” Farah asked as the rest of the team approached.

  Jack returned the Shadow Blade’s crooked smile and moved past her to check out the roadblock they’d built. He climbed up the steep staircase stacked up its backside and surveyed his handwork from below. There was now a few feet of lava pooling up against their wall and more was spilling down in syrupy, glowing globs.

  “Now we wait,” he said, climbing back down.

  “This is called cheesing, correct?” Haylee asked.

  Jack laughed. “That is correct, my student. If this works, we are totally cheesing this Boss. It’s possible he’ll be immune to the damage or something else, but chains worked on the last one.”

  “Why cheese, though?” Lex asked. “What was it about solidified milk that relates to abusing the environment in your old world?”

  “Uh…” Jack began trying to think of a way to explain it when the blue, dragon-like creature Alt controlled gave his own explanation.

  “It’s called a social meme. A behavior coming about within a culture and mimicked from generation to generation. It began to shift from your standard definition, Lex, to one that denotes a cringe-worthy action or something awkwardly quaint. Eventually, when more complicated games of strategy came about, people devised tactics that would abuse loopholes in the rules. The strategy would be legal but considered bad form in honorable matches, and players began referring to such a behavior as cheesing.”

  They continued to chat about different types of games from Jack’s old world while they built some more walls along the path for extra safety. He spent some time describing empire-building games and how he
was never any good at them- always attacking too soon or staying behind his defenses for too long.

  “It’s why I appointed Harrak, Sol, and Demi as Town Leaders,” he said. “I’m not smart enough to do it all.”

  “Nor should you be,” Farah said. “I still haven’t decided if I will stay Mayor of Emberstone for long.” She nodded to herself then shrugged. “We’ll see.”

  They rearranged the structure of the layout to suit their needs for about an hour before checking the lava’s progress.

  “Oh wow,” Jack said when he saw the glowing orange pond they had created.

  “It covers just over twenty-three yards,” Alt said out loud while seeing through Jack’s eyes.

  “We ready for this?” Jack turned to ask his team.

  They’d created more obstacles and roadblocks down the path back to the portal in hopes that they would slow the Boss down enough for everyone to dash back to the Exit Orb. If it came down to retreat, Alt volunteered to sacrifice himself to the massive minotaur and give them more time.

  “Let’s cheese this Boss,” Lex said, holding her fist up.

  “Let’s cheese the universe,” Haylee amended.

  “Then get up here,” Jack said and climbed down so their sniper could take her position.

  Everyone watched the cloth-armored Dark Prism move to the top of their barrier. She glanced down into the glowing pool of lava, narrowing her eyes against the heat, then reequipped her bow and focused on her target.

  Jack barely heard her whisper, “This is our world,” before she held her breath and sent a Blue Shifted Light Ray into their final enemy for the day.

  Floor 49 Boss -646 | HP 5,554/6,200

  A bellowing roar echoed around the blocks of obsidian, and Jack saw blue flashes of light from within the Boss Chamber. Haylee ducked out of sight and hopped down the blocks as fast as she could, then hid behind Lex and Alt while they all began backing away.

  The ground shook as the hammer-wielding giant rushed toward their molten dam. Jack heard the creature’s strides falter as it drew close, but the damage notification made it clear it’d stepped in the lava.