Masters of Strata (Deepest Dungeon #2) - A LitRPG series

by G. D. Penman

  At the scheduled time, he logged in ahead of the rest of the guild.

  There wasn't much to scout out. After every one of the Archdukes was the next settlement, and Martin had learned from the beginning that it was best to enter them in company. At first it was just the casual racism that the NPCs directed toward all of the “inferior” Murovans that he needed other people around to diffuse, but now that the Brotherhood in Exile were snapping at their heels it seemed almost inevitable that every time Martin stepped into civilization he was going to be set upon.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could take Dante or any one of his little minions in a fight, just that he didn’t think he could take Dante and all his little minions at once. If he were anyone else then the town’s guards would have intervened, but Martin had no idea how they’d react to seeing a Murovan getting his ass kicked all over town. Probably applause.

  To make matters worse, Dante seemed to have a particular enmity reserved for Martin compared to the rest of his former guildmates. It may have been because of how often Martin had campaigned to have him removed from their old raiding group due to his flagrant incompetence, or maybe he wasn’t the type to hold grudges and it was a purely strategic decision. There was no denying that Martin was the brain of Iron Riot – perhaps they hoped to remove him from the equation. Regardless, the “duel challenge” videos that Dante continued to post online in his attempts to taunt Martin into a foolish misstep were both telling about his mental state and amusing. If only because Dante had a face for radio.

  The rusted metal ruins of the Archduke's chambers held no more secrets now that their master was gone, and the corpse of the Archduke had faded away to nothing but a brown-red stain on the floor. More rust and blood – just what the place needed. Martin hovered over the stain for a while, as if proximity could provide him with some hidden knowledge. Like the ghost of the Archduke was going to pop up and tell him what his nightmares and the whispers he heard in the dark places were all about. The entrance was somewhere far above him, lost in the darkness and out of sight. No going back from here. Not a surprise, but still a disappointment. Martin had always enjoyed backtracking to more thoroughly explore areas they’d skipped – less for the experience and more for the scraps of information he could use to extrapolate what came next.

  Speckles had scampered off somewhere, as he was prone to do. The relative invisibility that he enjoyed thanks to the Whitefeather Cloak and the way that monsters tended to ignore each other made him the ideal scout, better even than Lindsay – although Martin would never admit that to her. The information that Speckles brought them was always helpful. His inability to communicate that information with any sort of clarity less so.

  Martin felt like he had been holding his breath for hours, and now he let it escape him. There was something fundamentally comforting about this place. It may have looked like a post-apocalyptic nightmare, but at least it was honest. In the real world, Martin had no peace. His mind whirred and spun as he tried to decipher the next angle that danger would approach from, and how to avoid or confront it in a way that wouldn't destroy him. When it came to relationships and work, his calculations failed more often than not. His last job was more than enough evidence of that. Yet here, everything was abundantly clear and simple. The enemy was in front of you. Your friends were at your side. Black and white. Here, Martin’s value could be understood by everyone, as clearly as any other stat line. Was it any surprise that he preferred it here, blood, rust, spikes and all?

  On the subject of stats, it was time to level up again.

  Skaife Murovan Exorcist

  Strength: 14 Agility: 10

  Endurance: 10 Willpower: 21

  LEVEL 13

  You have 6 points to assign.

  Two new levels – that was the sweet payoff that Martin was looking for after taking on all these over-leveled enemies.

  Strength: 18 Agility: 10

  Endurance: 12 Willpower: 21

  Health: 54 Stamina: 64

  You may select 2 new abilities.

  Affusion – Imbues an ally’s weapon with light. Transubstantiating 100% of physical damage to light damage for 15 seconds.

  [5-minute cooldown]

  Purify – Removes a curse effect from an ally. Touch range.

  [60-second cooldown]

  Cilice – Redirects all curses and blessings cast on allies in the next 30 seconds to the Exorcist.

  [5-minute cooldown]

  Introit – Deals 42 light damage to an undamaged target within 30ft range.

  [60-second cooldown]

  Rite of Consecration – Increases all healing effects within the 20ft area of effect by 50% for 30 seconds. Increases all light damage within the area of effect by 25% for 15 seconds.

  [60-minute cooldown]

  Rite of Jubilation – Increases all experience gain within the 20ft area of effect by 50% for 30 seconds.

  [60-minute cooldown]

  There were some tasty options right there, and if he had been strongly favoring one of the potential Exorcist builds then the decision would already have been made for him. As it was, the only obvious pick was Affusion. He’d been eying that last level too.

  Jubilation or Introit.

  Did he want to boost their gains after every boss, or did he want to be able to deal burst damage at the start of every fight, and maybe even multiple times during a fight if he could get the rest of the Riot to keep their area-of-effect damage under control? Both were sorely tempting. His gut feeling was that Jubilation would pay out more in the long run, yet Strata had proven his instincts wrong time and time again. Given the pace of things down here, maybe being able to open a fight that dramatically would pay off. Few fights with the rank-and-file monsters that travelled in groups had lasted much more than a minute, and with the boss fights that did stretch on longer they were up against a single tough target that they needed to chip away at.

  Then again, bosses that could summon adds were a standard part of dungeon-crawl design, as were multi-target fights. Just because he hadn’t encountered a problem yet didn’t mean that the problem wasn’t there. Another thing to consider was player vs player combat. Being able to bang out that much damage in an instant might be enough to dissuade any of the Brotherhood in Exile from pushing their luck.

  Usually, Martin let the game’s design inform his choices. If the game kept offering him anti-curse abilities, it seemed likely that curses were going to be featuring in his near future, yet for ten deeps there hadn’t been one of them. Or if there had been, they’d skipped past it.

  Just as he was starting to compile a pros and cons list Martin realized that he was overthinking. Both abilities were useful, and he would acquire both of them in time. The one that was more useful in the short term should be chosen first, and that was Introit.

  With the selections made, he watched in amusement as his little ratty arms filled out a little more. The pin-prick scars from his time inside Ferrox lengthened instead of simply growing, so they looked like slash marks of skin beneath his fur rather than the even patterning that had been mostly hidden before. At least it wouldn’t give anything away now.

  He was starting to examine the perfect circular wounds that had been punched in the center of his palms and contemplating the meaning of all this mutilation when a much-needed distraction from melancholy popped up.

  Lindsay arrived right on cue. “Dude, answer my messages. Where have you been? How did the trip go? Did you take a flight? Did you learn anything good? What's up?”

  Despite everything that had been going on, and his natural reluctance to comment on his trip given his ongoing suspicion that the Masters were listening in, Martin found himself laughing at Lindsay’s tirade of questions. He counted his answers out on his claws. “Sorry. Travelling. Bad. Trains. No. Ready to play.”

  “Ugh, no luck? Boo.” She stretched and jogged around the chamber as they spoke, getting used to her body again.

  Martin shrugged. “Not every option
is going to pan out, but we still have to explore them all.”

  “But that is so boring.” She flopped down beside Martin on the corpse-rust. “Why can’t we just win all the time? I like winning. Winning is fun. Make it so we win all the time.”

  Martin smirked. “I'm working on it.”

  With a sound like a thunderclap, the other two appeared in pillars of light. Jericho’s frown was etched in place before the rest of his body appeared, and Julia didn’t look much happier.

  Jericho stomped over to Martin and snarled: “Hope you enjoyed your holiday. Now we get to work.”

  Four

  The Silence and the Light

  The town of Deephaven was just below the rusty chamber, separated only by a porthole and a set of ladders. The sheet metal looked healthy and shiny from beneath, as though Ferrox’s presence had been corrupting it. It gave the town an enclosed feeling, like it had been built in a submarine. Sheets of metal bent and hammered out of shape had been salvaged from the mass above to provide its structure. It made up the walls, the roofs and even the walkways, pinned down into the dull stone beneath. When all you had was a hammer, every problem looked like a nail. When all you had for building materials was sheet metal, you got a place like this.

  Despite the materials, the actual buildings were not in the shanty-town style. Time and craftsmanship had been sunk into the work, reforming it from plain sheets into spires, columns, buttresses and pointed arches. Like a fancy old church done in miniature. Where each of the previous settlements they’d come across had been dominated by one or another of the playable races, Deephaven showed an even mix of everyone. Even Murovans.

  More distinctive still than the metalwork of Deephaven were the candles. Those buildings without spires rising out of the top tended to be flat roofed, and topped off instead with a great dribbling heap of wax, acquired in vast quantities somewhere in the upcoming deeps. Every building bore a giant candle on its crown, and those that didn’t seemed intent on lighting the place up with a dozen crammed into every window. The place was less of a church and more of a candelabra from this close. The heat and light radiating from all around Iron Riot was a stark contrast to the rest of the dungeon. You could almost understand why some people might call this place home.

  Martin stayed close to the rest of the guild as they proceeded, trailing in Jericho’s long shadow. The Brotherhood had beaten Ferrox, and were liable to be loitering around this town gloating when Iron Riot finally came through. Except they wouldn’t. They would have moved on. Martin had to remind himself that they’d lost a day in the middle of all this. The Brotherhood were probably well on their way down through the next set of deeps by now, while he’d held everyone else back so that he could go on his wild goose chase. Actually, a wild goose chase would have been better. At least it wouldn't have resulted in so much of the blood from the game spilling over into the real world.

  Jericho leered at the few players that came close, sending them scampering off. Whether it was just his stats going up or his attitude, he seemed to be larger than before. The shadow he cast in the flickering candlelight appeared to be longer, and he seemed to be more than sure of himself, almost arrogant in the way he growled, driving the NPCs out of the thoroughfares they had built. Martin wondered if this confidence boost was a result of his burgeoning relationship with Julia, but on closer examination she seemed to be deeply unimpressed with her boyfriend’s behavior. Something else to note. Useful. Trouble in paradise. It wouldn’t be helpful for the team’s cohesion, but it was a wedge he could use the next time he was being outvoted.

  Speckles was already lurking over by the hefty metal town gates that stood shut at the far end of the cavern, draped in the Whitefeather Cloak that served to hide him so perfectly from the sight of the other NPCs. If a player ever caught sight of the telltale shiver they were liable to be in for a fight, but, in the meantime, the purpose was served. Speckles could travel with them as though he was a part of the crusade down into Strata that had slaughtered so many of his kin.

  Martin wondered sometimes how Speckles felt about this whole situation. He had essentially been pressganged into the service of Iron Riot, and even if he did now seem to revel in it, Martin was uncomfortable with his role in the Anurvan’s capture. He would have to find some time to talk to Speckles and set the record straight, but doing it in front of the rest of the guild was embarrassing. Like he was talking to an imaginary friend.

  With the sight of that glimmer by the gate a little tension fell away from Martin’s shoulders, and he began to truly look around the town. The wax and metalwork were all very impressive and oppressive, of course, but it was the people that fascinated Martin the most. The first town had been nothing but religious fundamentalists out to indoctrinate newcomers into the crusade against the Heart of Strata. The next a trading post full of Corvan out to make as much cash as possible from the exploration of the dungeon. Martin wanted to see what sort of NPCs had gathered in this one. But the game was being uniquely unhelpful. Usually, everyone wore their alignment on their sleeve, but here the people just looked like people.

  Despite all the wax and steel, most of the buildings were simply homes, with the odd shop dotted here or there. This wasn’t any sort of base of operations, it was a town, a home. The people living here just happened to live here. Martin supposed that there were normal people everywhere you looked. Not heroes or villains or even neutral NPCs trying to get what they wanted out of a bad situation. Just people trying to live out their lives surrounded by darkness.

  Regardless of their aspirations, the townies would serve Martin’s purposes just fine. With no small reluctance, Martin loosened the guild’s purse strings and handed over all the silver they’d managed to scrape together to Lindsay, who, despite her rather spend-happy nature, nonetheless managed to haggle better than the rest of them combined. It wasn’t that Martin particularly cared about the money as the guild was earning a decent amount through selling in-game items – for both silver and real-world cash – but it was the principle of the thing. He didn’t like to see resources squandered, or Lindsay too distracted by some new toy to concentrate on the task at hand.

  The anti-Murovan sentiments of the Crusaders seemed to be missing down here, but that didn’t mean that Martin was free and clear of scrutiny. Every other player moved through the world pristine and unmarked. Martin was a mess of scars, one eye gone, and thin strips of fur now missing everywhere that his armor exposed. Even his tail had a notch out of it.

  If their stares had been judgment or even disgust, Martin could have tolerated it. He had never been the most handsome man in real life, and his ambivalence to women had definitely been influenced by the sense of rejection he’d suffered as a teenager. He’d never actually asked anyone out. He had an awareness that he was considered unattractive, and enough of an aversion to public shaming that he had skipped right past the whole problem.

  The problem was the awe that he saw in the face of every NPC he passed. Down here, away from the immediate influence of the Crusade, Martin was finding that many of the NPCs had differing opinions about Strata. The Heart of the Dungeon resurrected them each time they died, so the majority of the people who had come down this far hadn’t done so unscathed. It was hard for that not to change your opinion on things.

  Martin’s blindness and scars marked him as different from everyone else that Strata faithfully recreated without injury. According to the NPCs that he’d managed to get talking, they marked him as belonging to Strata somehow, changed by his time in the dungeon in a way that others weren’t. He just wished he’d been changed into less of a mess.

  Lindsay had a shopping list, and Julia and Jericho had some little purchases of their own that they wanted to make, so Martin had to sidle off to the far end of town alone, pretending that nobody was looking at him. He leaned against a wall beside the telltale shimmer and let out a sigh. “Hey, Speckles.”

  “Friend.”

  The single croaky word was like a kni
fe twisting in Martin’s guts. No time like the present for that heart-to-heart talk.

  “Are you happy with us, Speckles? Are you happy travelling with us? Helping us?”

  There was a long silence, terminating in Speckles mumbling, “Less words, please?”

  Martin smiled despite himself and tried again. “Are you happy?”

  “What happy, friend?”

  “I... am really the wrong person to ask about that.” This was a level of philosophical debate that Martin had not been expecting from an oversized frog. “How about this – would you prefer to be somewhere else? Doing something else?”

  There was another long pause, but Martin felt pretty sure that the Anurvan had understood him just fine and was pondering his answer. “Where else Speckles be safe?”

  That actually gave Martin pause for a moment. “Do you feel safe with us?”

  “Safe with friend.” Speckles had shuffled closer, and was speaking softer. “You stop bad. You stop bad hurting us. You hurt bad first. You smart.”

  Martin tried not to feel a little flush of pride. Frog compliments should not have been making him bashful. “Wouldn't you be safer living your own life, with your own people?”

  “You want Speckles to go?” He sounded distraught.

  “No! No, definitely not. You’re absolutely invaluable to us, to me.” Martin fumbled. “But if you wanted to go, I want you to know, I wouldn’t let the others stop you.”

  “Me know. You stop bad hurting us. Me safe with friend.”