by Ryan DeBruyn
He moved forward and viciously sliced Dark Tidings through the bones, cutting them cleanly like a lightsaber cuts through steel. Smiling, he nodded to Sela, who then piled the bone spears on the mechanism and continued. Rocky had been expecting constant fighting, but they were nearly a hundred meters in and hadn’t seen a single enemy.
At that thought, he thought he saw movement. In the dark tunnels, the enemies were hard to see because they were literally pitch black, but he caught a glint of light reflect back down the tunnel toward them. “What is that?” he asked, hoping to stop Sela. She backed up and got behind him as the creatures drew closer. Once they were in view, he used Analyze.
Bone Reaper
Level 9
Journeyman–Dark Aberration
Health Points 350/350
The four creatures had no skin, and their bones were a shiny obsidian that reflected Zippo’s light. They weren’t humanoid-shaped in the least, having canine backward-hinged leg bones that propelled them forward at drastic speeds, and their arms from the elbow joint on were curved blades. Rocky literally felt himself tense in fear at the dangerous look of these creatures. He shook it off just in time and stepped forward to slash at the lead Bone Reaper.
His blade was caught on the creature’s two scimitar forearms, and he felt a jolt run up his arm from the force of the creature and its speed. Only his increased strength and two-handed grip allowed him to hold on to his blade as he felt his feet slide back. His strike did stop the charging leader though, which forced the following three to try to flow around it close to the walls. That decision cost them as Amber performed a flunge with her rapier-like sword. The strike rang like a bell as it contacted a sternum, and a pulse ran up the blade into the creature arresting its momentum and even flinging it back.
On the other side, they weren’t as lucky, Smith cast a Spirit Ball into the space, and the creature ran through it, causing its legs and arms to lock up. It careened forward into a face-plant body slide as the final member of the pack sliced deeply into Rocky’s arm, which forced him to let go of his blade with that arm.
Mentally, he screamed as his skin parted and hung open, showing bone and muscle beneath, but he swallowed back the bile and forced out a scream of rage as he pumped Ether into his sword. The initial creature who’d been pulling back one of its arms to strike at Rocky was flung backwards in a screeching cacophony as the Dark Blade skill clashed with its two forearm swords.
In quick succession, Rocky cast a Dark Mend on the arm and saw tendrils of smoke begin closing the wound as he also cast Dark Cloak and Shadow Clone. It was a huge expenditure of Ether, but these creatures were strong as evidenced by his updated Analyze on Amber’s target.
Bone Reaper
Level 10
Journeyman–Dark Aberration
Health Points 300/375
Amber was shaking her arm out like the blow bothered her as well. Rocky shouted out to the group, “Focus fire on the one that got through. Get it down so Smith can raise its spirit. I will hold off the others as best I can.”
Recruiting tanks! Looking for tanker classes. I will personally power level any tank we find!
Tilting his head back, he imbibed a Health and Ether Potion simultaneously. The taste of vibrant watermelon ran over his tongue, and he felt his arm mend in super speed, skin folding closed and the puckered, red skin beginning to fade. The electric blue lightning nearly tasted fizzy alongside the Health Potion.
He was going to glance up to check his totals when he saw the fourth and yet unaffected skeleton strike at him again. One of its arms punched forward in a piercing attack while the other slashed diagonally. A quick step right away from the slash put him in front of the recovering Bone Reaper and simultaneously forced the creature to adjust its attacks as its own thrust now hindered its slashing arm.
Not that Rocky was an expert, but a single sword was hard enough. He couldn’t imagine the difficulty of dual-wielding long blades like these creatures. The entire left side of the creature was exposed, and Rocky brought his blade down on its shoulder and felt the blade chip out a small piece of bone before rebounding. Cursing internally, he jumped back as the now recovered Reaper swung at him in the gap his overhand strike left in his defense. The blades swished the air, and the creature bunched its legs to lunge.
The one he just struck was pulling back for another strike, and he took a chance sidestepping through the space directly in front of the creature while leaving one foot braced on top of the creature’s foot. Then Rocky reached out and grabbed the creature’s uninjured shoulder and heaved it into the path of the now jumping Reaper.
The absence of the grating of Dark Blade on forearm swords was his first clue that his skill had run out of juice, and the lead Reaper was now free to attack him again. Rocky quickly stepped diagonally to gain the cover of the two other Reapers who’d just collided and gone down in a crash of onyx bones. The third creature joined the pile up a moment later, and Rocky breathed a sigh, thanking all the gods. He now knew that these creatures were unintelligent.
Zippo, who saw an opportunity, cast a firewall in a tight circle right on top of the creatures, and Rocky jumped back as the heat rose and glanced at the other members of the party who had surrounded and were taking shots of opportunity at the final creature. Seeing their fight under control, he turned back and found that the creatures in their panic were only getting more tangled as they began to gain a red heat that suffused their limbs. When the first creature stood up and stepped out of the wall of fire, Rocky was waiting and slashed at it. The resistance from before was gone, and his blade cut through the creature, cutting it in half.
Smiling, he called, “Turn it off, Zippo I am going to step in and end this.” A moment later, the fight was over, the creatures lying on the ground dead and the group breathing heavily. “Well, hopefully, raising a few of those creatures will allow us to have them tank from now on.”
Smith frowned and pulled his lips back from his teeth in a recognizable gesture before saying, “I have already tried to raise them, but it doesn’t seem possible with these things. Maybe because they were just animated bones?”
Rocky felt a groan escape him.
This is going to suck!
Chapter Thirty-One
The Dungeon crawl was literally a crawl, and the group was forced to try multiple different tactics that often left them waiting for Rocky’s heals to repair damage done rather than potions. Sela felt that this crawl was going to lag terribly, so she quickly ‘suggested’, “Save the Alchemy Potions for emergencies. Rocky, you are going to have to play healer unless someone else is hiding a skill or talent?”
Everyone chuckled, but Smith looked at the group seriously before adding, “I have a first aid profession–” Sela cut him off with a wave of her hand and a chuckle. He’d offered the same last night, but it was clear that first aid wasn’t as effective as a healing skill.
Even with the tactic change and all the traps, there were only two reasons they were still alive. First, Sela found ways to use her vines to hinder the creatures. In the first fight, Rocky hadn’t even realized her attempts because the creatures scythed through the grasping foliage quickly. Now though, she would use a vine to trip a creature, and since these skeletal nightmares had no hands, getting back to their feet was proving difficult. Zippo, in addition, used his force shield to stop charging Reapers, and the remaining members took potshots of opportunity.
The second reason was that the groups of Reapers never numbered larger than four. At first, Rocky thought the Dungeon or Apothis would change tactics soon and felt like they only had a matter of time before a flood swept over them. However, they had turned a corner and found two of the packs of creatures fighting each other, and that’s how the mystery got solved as they picked off the survivors of the skirmish.
These packs couldn’t work together; it was most likely why Apothis and the Dungeon hadn’t used them in the previous attacks. While the Zombies were weaker than the Bone Reapers, t
hey were capable of amassing larger numbers and resurrecting them into Abominations. In this case, none of their slain enemies had been reanimated yet.
Zippo attempted to burn the first group of bones to ash, but the bones just grew red hot and never caught fire. The creature’s bones almost seemed to be an alloy, but closer to an alloy mixed with clay because they didn’t melt either. Regardless, Rocky had been looting each creature and then sweeping the bones into his bag of holding. Beside the onyx bones, the creatures on occasion dropped:
Bone Charm
Crafting material This charm is already enchanted with some sort of spell to innervate the undead. This may be useful in crafting or understanding the spell.
Rocky kept track, and only one in ten seemed to drop the item. Looking through the bones after a particular fight, he discovered all creatures had a charm, it was actually their sternum, but in many cases, killing the creatures destroyed the item. Still, they wiped out twenty of the packs, and he carried eight of the strange drops.
The group continued to follow Sela at a distance of five feet, Zippo still taking up the second position. With his force shields, he could literally stop a pack dead and give Sela a chance to retreat and fight from range as the group got into position. The tactic seemed to have become second nature as the next pack rushed towards Sela.
Zippo flung up a force shield, and the group bounced into it, creating fissure cracks all over what looked like regular air until they made an impact. Sela, by that time, was already behind Rocky and Amber, kneeling and casting a single thick vine that shot out of one wall and embedded in the other at knee height before slumping to the ground limply. She had tried keeping it tight immediately in an earlier fight, but the creatures, as stupid as they were, still noticed it and slashed it apart as they approached.
Zippo would cast and lob in a fresh Fireball, not willing to throw the light source, and simultaneously drop the force shield. The Fireball splashed against the creatures, and they would charge recklessly forward to extricate themselves from the splashing fire. Once the pack was a few inches from the limp vine and moving with speed, Sela tightened the tripwire, and the group sprawled out across the ground in a messy tangle.
Smith surprised the group early with his dual spears, throwing them through the creatures into the ground under two of them. The weapons would suddenly extend four curved metal hooks that surrounded the bones and dug into the earth, holding two of the creatures fast. Sela would use vines to wrap rib cages and legs as Amber and Rocky hacked and slashed the creatures until they went still; simultaneously Zippo would firewall a target if he was above fifty percent Ether, but that was rare as he usually unloaded first into packs of the skeletons.
When the battle ended, they looted and moved on, starting to feel like they were making pretty good progress. Sela ensured that they didn’t get cocky though with a few words, “The Dungeon is alive, and while it won’t collapse a roof on us, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have other tricks. Be alert!”
The words seemed prophetic a short, slow walk later as the floor collapsed into a pit, leaving a small walkway on both edges of the hall they walked. As he crossed over, he looked down into the pit and saw sharp rocks and upward facing stalagmites waiting at the bottom, which was thirty feet away. He blinked and thanked all the gods he could think of for Sela’s presence.
After many more successfully avoided traps and fights, the tunnel they followed, which led straight for what seemed like kilometers but was difficult to tell in the confines of the earth, finally came to an end that split in two directions. Sela knelt at the crossroads with her hand on the earth and concentrated. After several long minutes of silence, she explained, “This way,” she pointed left, “is another long hallway that only connects to the other tunnels for the entrances that we could have come from. This one,” this time, she pointed right, “is the same but has a branch tunnel that leads to a room which seems to have no other exits.”
She looked at the group seriously. “It could be a trap or a boss room we have to beat to move on.” Her face grew solemn. “If this is a delving Dungeon like LFD, that is a relatively common occurrence.” She put up a finger. “Unfortunately, this could also be a puzzle Dungeon due to the number of traps, and in that case, there is something we are missing. The key.”
“What is the likelihood of each, Sela?” Rocky queried, trying to discover something logical he could grasp.
“Well, puzzle Dungeons have no boss level monsters, which we can agree Zombies and these Bone Reapers are not. They often have something that leads you to know it is a puzzle Dungeon as well. In this case, the traps are a possibility.” Sela shrugged. “We may have to trigger every trap in all tunnels to find the key or to open the path past that room.”
She licked her lips and tilted her hand back and forth in a comsi-comsa gesture. “Boss level monsters also rarely leave the room they are created in because if they die outside of a room, then they are unable to be resurrected as they were.” She put a finger up and smiled. “Also, if a boss monster leaves its chambers, the rewards increase drastically, and the Dungeon is theorized to have to create a new boss from scratch instead of resurrecting the old boss.” She finished with a shrug, telling Rocky that she really didn’t know if the last part was true or not.
“How far to the room?” Rocky asked, and Sela informed the group it was very close, maybe five minutes away. So Rocky made the decision, “I say let’s try to get a look into the room first then. If it has a boss monster, we can attack. Sela, if we enter the room without the key or the exit open, will it trap us in?”
Nodding, Sela grimaced in what looked like an apology. “Unfortunately, the answer there isn’t clear. First, a boss monster sometimes spawns when you enter a room. If it is a puzzle Dungeon though, then it is a very good possibility it will lock us in as punishment, yes.” Rocky growled, seeing the problem they now faced.
He was forced to change his mind. “Let’s stop by and look in if we can, but I think we have to clear all the tunnels and traps to play this safe.” His voice wavered with the frustration he felt at the possible delay.
His frustration grew as the group was looking into the boss room. Sela pointed at a point on the floor and stopped the group cold. “There is a door right there that is triggered once you enter the room.” Only a narrow area of the room could be seen from this distance, and even though they had Zippo lob Fireballs in, no monsters came out.
In the end, they’d been forced to backtrack and fight their way through all twenty of the tunnels, disarming every trap and killing hundreds of packs of the Bone Reapers. It was slow going, especially because as the only healer, Rocky had to take extended Ether breaks, which probably helped Zippo as well. In fact, it was probably one of the slowest and most frustrating days Rocky experienced in this new world. They cleared twenty one-kilometer-long tunnels of packs and traps.
At the last tunnel, he had exited and gotten a final update from Azoth in the dark of night. Azoth had exuberantly told him, “Bathilda and I race. We see who faster to circle Territory, then black sooty land. She won, but she say Azoth is strong flyer!”
It was great to hear that they hadn’t seen any sign of movement above ground throughout the day or twilight. They’d set up the circle perimeter specifically for early detection of an invasion when the strongest in the Territory were away trying to clear the Dungeon. Unfortunately, this was the last communiqué they would have, and if Apothis was smart, he would bide his time. That being said, the Golem Knights and Bathilda would hopefully be more than a match for him.
There were a few upsides, though. Rocky’s bag of holding was definitely starting to weigh him down with all the bones he stored after the second tunnel, and after a quick discussion, he’d run outside and dropped all the bones in a massive pile. He requested an update from Azoth, who happily flew down, “No hides or eyes of anything, Rocky! You all done now?” Rocky felt his brow furrow at the creature’s mixing of common idioms.
�
�The saying is ‘not a hide nor hair’, Azoth, and unfortunately not, buddy. We are going to be down there for a few days, but I will come out and say hi every few hours now, okay?” he responded while reaching up and petting the creature’s chest. “Do you think you and Bathilda can bring these bones back to the Grotto?”
“Azoth thinks Rocky wrong. Hides have hairs… Scratch higher and bring Azoth treat?” The birdbrain offered his thoughts in such a way to make it an ultimatum for carrying the bones. Rocky laughed and agreed wholeheartedly. After he scratched the creature thoroughly, he’d re-entered the Dungeon and gotten back to work, stopping every two tunnel clears to get updates, unload bones, and pet Azoth.
By the end of that day, the group was exhausted and standing back out in front of the room with all traps now sprung. In the room, no exit opened according to Sela, no key magically made itself known, and the group now stood deliberating in confusion. “If we enter and it traps us, can we tunnel out?” Smith asked.
Sela nodded, but her face scrunched into a grimace, “Yes, but it will take quite a while. Longer than a week, definitely.” Everyone groaned and looked confused, knowing she could move earth as a Druid. She saw their confusion and elaborated, “Dungeon’s don’t like their interiors redesigned. I would be fighting against something to dig through, and this door takes up the entire hallway we just walked down.”
Rocky looked back at the five hundred meters of the branch hallway, seeing the problem and trying to get the conversation back on track, “Should we maybe take turns sleeping, then?” Sela started to shake her head, and he cut her off desperately, “We could use the elixirs and sleep in pairs? If it is a boss room, I don’t know if we should go in this tired” He looked around at the exhausted faces of the group as he spoke.
