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

by G. D. Penman

  Martin glanced around. “Is that not what happened to everyone else?”

  Lindsay shrugged and Jericho wasn’t even listening. It was just another thing to add to the long list of things that made no sense about this game. “Maybe it’s just an immersion thing,” said Martin.

  “No. You don’t get it. This is VR. It might be fancy VR, but it is VR. Time still passes the same way in VR, because they’re just displaying things. Even if the NIH is projecting those things into our sense centers instead of showing them on a screen to give us a wider range of sensations, it still shouldn’t… I need to get out of here. I need to speak to some people. This isn’t right.” Julia’s voice was getting more and more high pitched as panic set in, By the end, Martin couldn’t hear her anymore.

  Lindsay swooped in. “Hey, it is okay. It is okay. Chill out. You’re probably just remembering it wrong because you were only out for a few seconds.”

  “I know what I saw.” Julia pushed herself up the wall. “I know what I felt!”

  “Julie, baby, it is alright! You’re completely right!” Lindsay held up her wings. “The game is super clever. This is probably just some sensory trick to make you feel like you got knocked out, yeah?”

  Julia had managed to climb all the way to her feet and looked like she was going to go right on climbing backward up the wall. Anything to escape from the reality she was living in that moment. “I… right. Yeah. That makes sense.”

  “Yeah. It’s just a game. Got to remember that. I know me and snack-size get a bit intense about it, but it is still just a game.”

  Julia let out a little snort of laughter, and the tension began to ease out of her.

  Jericho roared. “Can I get some healing over here!”

  All the relief was washed away from Julia’s face, replaced with grim acceptance of her lot in life. She pushed away from the wall that was still smeared with her blood and set out to do her duty. A golden nimbus of light surrounded her as she went to Jericho.

  Lindsay leaned in close to Martin. “Any chance we finish this game before their messy breakup completely destroys the guild and leaves us without a tank or healer?”

  Martin sighed. “The odds are not in our favor.”

  “Peachy.”

  The day went on and on in much the same way. Tunnel after tunnel. Dead end after dead end. The curses faded, and Martin made sure to give the statues that remained a wide berth as he mapped things out in his head, but before long he developed a headache. They emerged into another branching tangle of tunnels and Martin froze in place. “This isn’t right.”

  Jericho growled as he shouldered past him. “What are you whining about now?”

  Still, Martin didn’t move. “We’ve been here already.”

  “How could we have been here already? We have been heading in one direction, yes?” They had indeed been proceeding along tunnels heading to what Martin had mentally dubbed east for the last hour. “No back turning.”

  Martin crossed to the wall and tapped at the carvings. “This bird. We’ve passed this bird before.”

  “Martin, buddy. They all look kind of the same. Maybe the texture is just…”

  “No. No, I am not crazy, this bird is on the corner join, one of its wings protrudes from the wall.”

  “You know that when you say you’re not crazy it makes you sound, like, one hundred and ten times more crazy, right?” Lindsay rolled her eyes. “Yeah, there is a bird on this corner, just like the other corner you saw. Like it is a repeating texture.”

  “Yes, if it wasn’t for the fact that this one, out of all the corner birds with projecting wings that we’ve passed, has the tip of its wing snapped off.”

  The others gathered around the wall in question. Jericho conceded. “The tip is missing.”

  “That doesn’t mean we are going in circles.”

  When they turned back to Martin, he had dropped to all fours on the ground, making him look even more sane. “Look at this. Look! These are our footprints.”

  “Yeah, we just walked by there.”

  He gesticulated wildly. “There are two sets.”

  The rest of the guild lumbered over to peer down at them. There was only a little grit on the stone of the floor, barely enough to make out any footprints, let alone multiple sets. Lindsay cocked her head to one side. “I guess?”

  Julia added, “Maybe?”

  Jericho shrugged. “What am I looking at?”

  “Come on.” Martin leapt to his feet. “This is just like in the swamp maze, when the Masters kept moving things around so we couldn’t proceed.”

  “Martin, buddy…” Lindsay trailed off. “Nobody else saw that. You told us it had happened, but we never saw anything moving.”

  “What about the pit? You all saw the pit.”

  It was Julia’s turn to look uncomfortable. “We all saw the pit, that’s true, but it was just a pit. We didn’t see any Masters sneaking around changing anything.”

  “Wow.” Martin slumped back to sit on the ground. “You all think I’m actually crazy.”

  Lindsay flopped down beside him and patted his shoulder. “Hey man, nobody is saying crazy. We’re just saying… you know… you spend a lot of time in the game, and maybe it is getting a bit confusing for you.”

  “I am not confused.” He said in a stony tone.

  “Buddy, if you think that the game is moving around on its own to screw you over…” Lindsay tried to pat Martin on the shoulder, but he pulled away. “That sounds confused to me.”

  “I am not confused!” Martin’s voice squeaked when he got angry. “And I don’t think anything is moving on its own. It is being moved.”

  “Yeah, you are, uh, totally right. An evil conspiracy of video-game designers is trying to ruin things for you, and only you specifically.”

  “Okay. When you put it that way, it definitely sounds confused…” He trailed off. Then, with a sigh and the return of calm, he went on. “But it’s true. Things are being moved around. I’ve been mapping as we go. We should have found something by now.”

  Julia crouched down to face him. “Could you have made a mistake?”

  “I don’t make mistakes.”

  Jericho laughed at that, but the glaring girls cut him off before he could say anything.

  Martin closed his eye and took a deep breath. “If we don’t find anything in the next hour I’m going to file a complaint. I’ve been trying to deal with this Master myself, trying to prove that I can beat them at their own game, but I can’t. This is their game. They make all the rules, they can do anything they want. I need… I need to tell the company that an employee is screwing us over.”

  Julia and Lindsay had crowded in around him. He was uncomfortable, but he didn’t know what to say to make them move that wouldn’t also make him sound crazier. Julia eventually said, “If that is what you want to do, we’ll support you. If someone really is using their position of power to bully you, you need to report it to their boss.”

  Lindsay nodded. “Right.”

  “And if someone isn’t really doing it, this would make me stop talking about it in case you all ended up thinking I was confused. So it is win-win either way for you, right?”

  Julia tried again. “Martin, we’re worried about you.”

  It was exactly the wrong thing to say. He shut down immediately. Springing back to his feet. “Nothing to worry about. I’m doing fine. Good, even. One more hour of searching, then we can call it a night. Right?”

  Julia looked taken aback by the sudden change of pace, but Lindsay bounded to her feet. “Yeah! Let’s go find those gates!”

  Jericho shrugged his shoulders and trudged on as if the interlude hadn’t even happened. The only one who still seemed to be holding onto it was Julia. For a few seconds, Martin had wavered. He was almost going to open up to her, but now the walls of cold efficiency had slammed back into place.

  The same methodical searching as the previous hours brought them past the broken winged bird three more tim
es, and each time Martin studiously ignored it. Even as the others began to doubt their own memories and minds, he went marching on by as if it wasn’t there. He scuffed his feet through their crisscrossing tracks as he passed through them with a grim little smile on his face.

  His deadline was ticking ever closer. One hour. He had declared that he was going to report the Master in one hour if they didn’t make progress. If the Master was shuffling around the tunnels, then they were being observed. If they were being observed, then his conversation had been overheard.

  They were playing chicken, with the Master’s job on the line. All that Martin had to lose was progress in a video game. Strata Online might have been the most important thing in his life, but to anyone else it would seem like a small sacrifice to make when compared to a career. The Master didn’t know him that well, but Martin had the measure of them. They were stubborn and determined, but they would not give up their position of power in the long term for a brief victory that could be undone. For all their other faults, they weren’t stupid.

  They’d break. Martin was sure of it. All he had to do was keep on moving.

  Down the same corridors, past the same broken winged bird, down another turn, then another. Past the broken winged bird. Up and down slopes. Around curves into dead ends and darkness so deep a dozen monsters could have been standing in wait, but weren’t. That was the most infuriating part. Martin could hear the whispers of the Ravager, just too far away for him to hear properly, like a tickle at the back of his mind. If he told the others about this there would be no question about whether or not he was confused. No question of whether they could trust in his judgment.

  He was right to keep these things to himself. He was the only one that he could really rely on anyway. The others had just proven that.

  As the minutes to the deadline ticked down, the corridor abruptly opened out as they rounded the corner. Jericho clapped his hands. “This is more like it.”

  The engraved slabs of the walls gave way to rough stone up above, uncarved and unhewn, like a natural cave that had been partly supplanted by some craftsman’s masterful masonry. None of which could hold a candle to the carving at the center of the room. From the waist up it was a human woman. Beautiful in a cold sort of way, with long flowing hair and a copper bra to protect players’ sensibilities from the apparently dire threat of a nipple.

  Bodily dismemberment and half-rotten demons were fine, but gods below protect them from exposed nipples on a statue.

  From the waist down she was a serpent. A great snake’s tail coiled around the plinth she was raised on. The perfectly round plinth was the same size as every other Deep Gate they had encountered in their dungeon delving.

  Lindsay was bouncing on the balls of her feet. “This is the boss, right? I get to fight the giant snake-lady?”

  Jericho was nodding vigorously. “This is most assuredly the boss statue.”

  Martin had stopped dead again. “What the hell?”

  They all turned to him in confusion, Julia asked, “What?”

  “She’s human from the waist up.”

  Jericho scoffed. “Yes? And?… Wait, I understand. You have never seen lady without top before. You see, when a man and a woman love each other very much, or sometimes not so much, the lady…”

  Martin cut him off. “There are no humans in this setting. The other hybrid statues made a kind of sense – there are nothing but animal-headed humanoids in Strata. But this thing doesn’t add up.”

  “So what are you saying?” Julia crept cautiously into the room. “You’re telling us that there are humans in Strata?”

  “I’m saying that either there are humans somewhere in the setting, or the Masters have really screwed up the design somewhere along the road.”

  Lindsay scoffed. “I’m betting on a screw up. You know, not everybody is as anally retentive about all this world-building stuff as you. Some of us just want to come in and fight some giant monsters.”

  The eyes of the statue blazed to life. Lindsay pointed up at it with undisguised glee. “See? Giant monsters!”

  Nine

  The Serpent of Stone

  Long hair flowed as the statue turned to look at them. Not like that of a statue, but like it was truly made up of millions of strands. Martin caught a glimpse of points of light within it, but he had no time to make the connection. “Jericho and Lindsay, flank her. I’ll take point. Julia, keep me up. Let’s try out the old tank and spank.”

  Jericho let out a little bark of dismay. “I am tank.”

  “You’re a heretic, good damage dealing, bad damage reduction. Lean into that for now.”

  “You do not know first thing about being tank.” Even as he growled, Jericho was moving into the position Martin had directed him to. Even now, he knew that his best chance of winning was to follow Martin’s plans.

  It didn’t gratify Martin to see it, but it did remind him of his place in their little arrangement, and the duties that it bestowed on him. Jericho’s faith had been shaken, his morale needed reinforcing. A compliment. “Of course I do. I’ve been watching a pro doing it for years.”

  Martin didn’t have time to see if it worked or not. The serpent moved too fast for that, uncoiling and rearing up with its stone claws raised and ready to slam down into the fleeing form of Lindsay.

  It was time to get its undivided attention. Martin used Introit.

  [Ophidian Sentinel has suffered 42 light damage]

  With a chamber this big, the word of power reverberated out and back in at them again, echoes of it filling the air. The serpent was rocked back by the impact. Cracks spreading across the smooth gray surface of her body. Her head snapped around, all of her focus on Martin.

  “Well, that worked.”

  She lunged for him, body flowing along behind her, hair streaming back from her face as if she were real. Again, Martin caught that glimpse of something shining within the hair. The same pale glow as her eyes.

  Martin wasn’t foolish enough to think that he could actually take a hit from that monstrosity without falling into a heap of fur and limbs, but that didn’t mean that he was going to let it look elsewhere. The world darkened for a moment as the serpent’s eyes flared.

  [CURSED: Curse of Droning]

  There was no time to unpack that right now, he had to keep running. There was really no question that the serpent was going to catch him eventually, but, if he could keep ahead of it for long enough, the others might do enough damage for the fight to become winnable.

  So began Martin’s frantic circuit of the room. The serpent’s tail lashed out behind her as she chased him, knocking Jericho off his feet, but it wasn’t an act of deliberate malice, just the after-effects of something that massive on the move.

  [Jericho has suffered 18 bludgeoning damage.]

  The stone fingers trailing just behind Martin’s tail were ragged compared to the sculpt of the rest of the statue, like broken nails instead of the tapered claws they were meant to be. He was turning into his second circuit of the room when he saw the great brass spear at the center. It was embedded in the plinth above the Deep Gate, point down. The coils of the serpent had hidden it before, but now it shone. Too large for any of them to use, but perfectly sized for a giant snake-woman. He really needed to keep her away from that.

  Lindsay bounced off the back of the serpent’s tail, slicing as she went.

  [Ophidian Sentinel has suffered 4 slashing damage]

  [Ophidian Sentinel has suffered 6 slashing damage]

  If the serpent noticed her, she gave no sign. As she rounded the next curve, Jericho lashed out with his whip. All the vengeance for the damage of the day stored up inside him, finally finding its outlet.

  [Ophidian Sentinel has suffered 33 dark damage]

  That caught her notice. The wild wheeling chase came to an abrupt halt. Martin needed her to focus on him again. Now.

  He shouted at her: “Hey, lady. You, uh… You look like a snake.”

  “Oh my god.�
� Even across the room, Martin could hear Lindsay groaning.

  “I didn’t have time to think of a… screw it.” He launched the Javelin of Faith into the statue’s eye. The kind of one-in-a-million shots that Lindsay made daily without even noticing.

  [CRITICAL HIT]

  [Ophidian Sentinel has suffered 42 light damage]

  The light in that eye flickered out and he really had got the serpent’s attention. Without a backward glance at Jericho, she rushed off after Martin once more.

  He went for another circuit, bringing the snaking tail of the statue past Lindsay where she lay in wait, ready to spring again. She leapt in a beautiful arc. Blades poised to slam home. Then, with one brutally casual flick of her tail, the statue slapped Lindsay out of the air.

  [Tesra has suffered 18 bludgeoning damage]

  She sailed in an equally beautiful arc to hit the wall. “Ow!”

  Martin had no time to stop and worry. The serpent was still right on his tail. Literally on his tail – her grasping fingers were trying to close on the dangling pink appendage trailing behind him as he ran.

  Julia’s voice hissed over the guild crests. “This is not working.”

  Martin’s voice came out in ragged gasps. “What isn’t working? I kite it around, they hit it.”

  “I can’t heal you when you run out of range.”

  “I don’t need healed as long as I stay ahead of the…”

  The claws closed on his tail. His feet skidded out from under him. His snout hit the flagstones.

  [Skaife has suffered 6 environmental damage]

  With a yank that made it feel like his whole tail was being torn from his body, the statue launched Martin straight up into the air. For a moment he got a bird’s-eye view of the whole room. Jericho and Lindsay scrambling back to their positions. Julia cowering against a wall between them. The big spear that the serpent statue was making a beeline for.