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

by G. D. Penman

  [Skaife has suffered 16 bludgeoning damage]

  Lindsay had vaulted the same blow with ease, but even she could see the danger of staying down at this end. The hands that had been kept clear of the ground and stayed hidden beneath the Archduke’s skirts were reaching out now and finding purchase. Trailing the towering termite mound of meat along behind them as they clawed toward them. “Oh, hell no.” Lindsay caught Martin’s ruined tail as she passed at a run and dragged him along with her.

  The black smog outpaced the bulk of Phalanx with ease, as was to be expected, but it was hot on Lindsay’s and Martin’s heels. Rushing out across the floor in pea-soup consistency. “Julia, I hope you’ve got those curses up.”

  “We’re covered!”

  This was the moment of truth.

  Martin pulled free of Lindsay and stepped back into the smog.

  It rushed up to envelop him. Swallowing him up from head to toe. Pressing in at every orifice. Burning at his eye. Whispering in his ears. All for nothing. The curse could not take hold.

  He called out in delight. “It works!”

  Lindsay pushed past him with her blades dripping gore and venom. “Of course it works. It was your plan.”

  She hit the toppled pillar of flesh head on, both blades spinning and blazing in the dim light. Martin rushed over to join her, giving the flailing squid-mess of limbs at the lower end of their enemy a wide berth.

  There was blissful silence in the chamber now that the masks had been broken. No more echoes of their voices bounced back and forth. No giggles or moans or lies built out of fragments of the truth could be brought to bear against them. The only sound was blood spilling, and Lindsay’s grunts of effort as she did her damnedest to cut all the way through to the center of the pillar.

  Martin went right by the gory mess that Lindsay was carving and headed to the top. The black smog was still pouring out through the gaping holes arrayed around the thing’s crown, but Martin knew a weak spot when he saw one. His sword blazed black with Void Strike and he charged right in.

  Yes. Come to me. Die for me. Live within me. Live in my dark.

  He skidded to a halt and his head jerked around. If Lindsay had heard anything, she was giving no sign. Was this another echo? Was this the Heart, reaching out to whisper sweet nothings to him again?

  Do it. Do it. Do it.

  He looked from the blackened blade in his hand to the gaping black hole in the side of the Archduke. It was like they were made for each other. Like darkness called out to darkness. He took a step closer and readied his strike, only to see a glimmer within the deep shadows. A spark of green light. Closer. Closer and he could see that it was the glow of an eye. Hidden deep inside this hole there was another face, the monster’s true face. He peered in closer, and saw Skaife staring back at him.

  Everything was the same. The missing eye. The scars. The buckteeth. He was looking into his own face. Like there was a mirror secreted just inside the mass of the monster. Its mouth moved.

  Become me.

  He thrust the Creedblade inside.

  [Phalanx has suffered 10 piercing damage]

  [Phalanx has suffered 10 dark damage]

  The voice from his nightmares cut off. His sword was buried deep in the mockery that this thing had made of his face. He twisted it free with disgust, but it was clear that this hell wasn’t over. As he watched, the split face lurched forward out of the smog. The walls of the meaty chute it was contained in undulated. Forcing it out. Birthing this abomination into the world.

  Martin rained blows on the Archduke. Frantic and panicked. He couldn’t let that thing come out. He couldn’t let them see what was inside.

  [Phalanx has suffered 29 slashing damage]

  [Phalanx has suffered 30 slashing damage]

  [Phalanx has suffered 28 slashing damage]

  Become me, Martin. Come to me. Become what you are meant to be.

  He hacked at the mouth of the opening, desperately trying to collapse it, even as the first hint of his split snout edged its way out into the light. Desperate, Martin screamed. “Jericho, hit it with everything.”

  The bombardment exploded out from the gaping wound in Jericho’s torso. Darkness trailing blood through the air.

  Martin. Martin.

  A cavalcade of explosions rocked the beached-whale carcass of the Archduke as Jericho’s barrage hit. The side split open as the papery skin gave out and a tide of half-formed shapes slopped onto the stone masks of the floor. They cried as they fell. Whimpers and sobs. Like a baby might make.

  These things were not babies. No world could tolerate such creatures to exist. Martin stamped down on the closest one and it burst like an overripe watermelon. He needn’t have bothered. Outside of the great cocoon where they’d been gestating, none of them could survive. Within a moment, they gasped, they flailed, they expired.

  [ANNOUNCEMENT: Iron Riot have defeated Phalanx, Eighth Archduke of Strata]

  Skaife gains 8,000 experience.

  LEVEL UP!

  The Creedblade tumbled from his hands and Martin slumped down to the floor amidst the stillborn. It was over. They’d won.

  When he looked down, his paws were shaking. “We won.”

  [Your Sin has been purged and you have returned to Aten’s grace.]

  Julia sprinted by the bulk of the beast, heading for Jericho. As she passed, she cheered, “We won!”

  Lindsay didn’t seem as pleased. She spat a mouthful of the monster’s blood onto the ground. “Go team.”

  Nineteen

  Victory Despoiled

  It took no small amount of determination for Martin to walk over to the corpse of the Archduke and lay his hand upon it’s festering hide so that he could loot it. But the rewards were instantaneous.

  Aside from the trade goods that he filed away for sale, there was a full suit of Shadow Studded Armor for Lindsay, a Shroud of Sainthood for Julia, a pair of Treads of the Penitent boots for Jericho and a Purifier’s Oath for him.

  The Oath was a little book that hung from his belt on a chain and let him convert his light damage into fire damage for a minute of every hour. For a party so devoid of elemental damage, that was a big win for the team. He swiped everything into the relevant player’s inventory then turned his eye back to the listing. There was a battle-axe and a spellbook too, to make sure all the classes got something, but Martin dumped them into his inventory without a second look. He had more important things to be getting on with.

  A glance at his abilities told him that Dulia had switched to a new ability called Oblation.

  Oblation – Restore any amount of health to an ally at the cost of your own. [60-second cooldown]

  Even if he’d been in his Exorcist form, that was the ability he would have chosen. It opened up practically infinite opportunities in the chaos of combat. It would be vital to keep Jericho up through heavy attacks now that he’d lost his self-healing and mitigation abilities. It essentially transformed his Healing Touch into a ranged heal like the Hierophants enjoyed.

  Skaife Murovan Exorcist

  Strength: 14 Agility: 13

  Endurance: 10 Willpower: 24

  Health: 54 Stamina: 64

  LEVEL 16

  You have 3 points to assign.

  With his new Oath in mind, giving him the potential to deal some elemental damage at last, Martin knew just where he was putting his points.

  Skaife Murovan Exorcist

  Strength: 14 Agility: 13

  Endurance: 10 Willpower: 27

  Health: 54 Stamina: 64

  LEVEL 16

  You may select 1 new ability.

  Purify – Removes a curse effect from an ally. Touch range. [60-second cooldown]

  Requiescat – Restores 60% of a target’s health if they are below 10% health. [30-minute cooldown]

  Triduum – Increases all allies’ critical hit chance to 100% for the next attack they make. [30-second casting time. 60-minute cooldown]

  Now that they were past the curse
-based Archduke, Martin doubted the mechanic would feature heavily enough to require Purify in the coming deeps, so he put it aside. The two new abilities were considerably more interesting. With Oblation, Martin would be able to manipulate his own health levels, allowing him to benefit from the massive heal of Requiescat whenever he wanted. Yet still his attention was being dragged over to Triduum. A guaranteed critical hit from each of them to open up a combat could feasibly down most non-boss monsters. Even deep bosses would struggle to survive if they all opened up with their highest damage abilities. Hypothetically, he could use it during combat too, for specific phases when they needed burst damage, but from the looks of it he would be leaving himself useless in the phase prior to that. They didn’t have enough guild members in action to make that worthwhile.

  Even with that limitation, the burst damage was too good to pass up. He chose Triduum.

  By the time he’d opened his eye again the party was back together. Even Speckles had been hauled in and patched up. Yet, for some reason, nobody was smiling.

  “What happened now?”

  Jericho sighed and whacked himself with the nine tails whip. A shimmering cloud of crackling darkness rose up off his newly healed flesh.

  “You didn’t switch back,” said Martin.

  “Too much Sin for one Archduke.”

  He let out a sigh, but it was tempered. They’d made it. The worst was over, at least for today. “Don’t worry about it. So we have to sneak you around one more settlement, no big deal.”

  Julia looked from Lindsay to Jericho and back with a roll of her eyes. “That isn’t the reason we’re unhappy, Martin.”

  “What’s the trouble?”

  “The things that the Archduke was saying. The things it was… repeating. I think we need to talk about it.”

  Lindsay and Jericho both clamored to be heard, shouting over each other to say more or less the same thing.

  Lindsay bellowed, “I am good never talking about it ever.”

  While Jericho roared. “No talking! All fine.”

  Martin looked from one to the other then back to Julia. “Is this one of those complicated emotional problems that I’m not really comfortable with?”

  “I just think that we need to clear the air and talk to one another about…”

  Lindsay drowned her out with a loud squawking sound. “Nope. Air is fine. Let’s go!”

  Speckles was watching all of this mystified until Martin came over and gave him a pat on the head. “Good to have you back.”

  Speckles bounced with the pat, delighted at the attention. “Happy be back!”

  Even Jericho couldn’t keep his usual frown fixed in place in the face of such obvious delight. He reached down and hoisted the little frog-man up onto his shoulders. “You come with me, little friend. We sneak around new town.”

  It took longer than Martin had anticipated to find the exit from the grand chamber of many faces. As it turned out, there were several masks on the ground with empty space beneath them, presumably intended as some sort of pitfall trap to be triggered by the beams or flailing of the Archduke, but now inert. They tried prying a few of them up, but to no avail. Finally, and with no small amount of disgust, they worked together to push the corpse of Phalanx, and all the legions he’d contained within him, off to the side, revealing one black mask in the sea of white. The eyes were hollow, and it was simple enough to hook fingers inside and lift it.

  With a shudder, the faces all around them began dropping away, and for one awful moment Martin thought they’d activated some sort of trap, before he realized that they weren’t falling all that far. Each one was sliding down to form a spiral staircase into the deep below.

  They let out a collective sigh of relief and headed down.

  Light shone at the bottom of the spiral, like a beacon to guide them home. Martin found the others quickening their pace at the sight of it. Even Jericho, who wouldn’t be allowed into whatever little slice of civilization they found. The stairs opened out to a slope, carved from the same pale stone but devoid of the doll-like faces that would be haunting Martin’s nightmares for the rest of his life. The cavern opened out wider and wider until there, glittering on the horizon, they saw it.

  Rising up from the plain of stone, someone had built a city. It was half-scale, an uncomfortable fit for the others but ideal for Martin, built to purpose with a kind of brutalist design from slabs of stone harvested from the walls beyond.

  Manning the ramparts in the distance were Murovans. Dozens of them peering out into the darkness for any sign of the new arrivals from the world above. Most of the time, only the tops of their ears were visible over the wall, but here and there Martin caught a glimpse of eyeshine when they peeked over, and the burning moat they had dug around their little keep flared up at the same time.

  He bumped knuckles with Jericho as they parted ways, safe in the knowledge that the guild crest would guide them to each other when Iron Riot’s business in the settlement was done.

  The closer they got, the more the city looked… human. There were rectangular windows cut into the walls despite there being no glass. There were words carved into the stone above the gates. “Free Rat City.”

  The others had to duck to pass through those gates, and almost immediately they were greeted by cheers from the gathered crowds. There were some players here and there who treated Iron Riot to respectful nods, but for the most part it was Murovans from wall to wall. The rat-men cheered, the women batted eyelashes at Martin, and little children even scurried between their feet.

  Children. Martin grinned as he saw them. They made no sense in the fantastical framework that Klimpt had presented him. Unless the story had skipped out on a really unethical up part of the Masters’ testing process, how could children be here? He caught one as it tried to reach into his money pouch and hoisted it up, dangling it by one arm. “You there. Where did all you children come from?”

  The little runt tried to bite his hand until a solid shake dissuaded her, and then she boggled her eyes at him. “When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, or a mommy and somebody with a silver piece decide that they want to do business…”

  Martin dropped her before she could conclude her biology and economics lesson, doing his best to ignore the way that Lindsay was cracking up at his expense.

  “Welcome, bold crusaders, to Free Rat City,” announced one Murovan, gussied up in something like a conquistador’s armor. “The last true bastion of civilization in the hell pit!”

  “Thanks, little man, where are the shops and inn?”

  The little knight frowned but pointed in the appropriate direction, trailing after them as they walked on. “It is good to see that there are still righteous folk in the world. Doing the good work and bringing the battle to the darkness.”

  Julia tried to be polite. “Thank you so much for the kind welcome.”

  “Yes, yes, you are most welcome if you mean to purge the evil below.” He shifted and leaned in close to Julia. “Though I suspect that it might be more than a match for you.”

  “Yep. Evil below. Bad things. Monsters.” Lindsay put an arm around Julia and forcibly dragged her out of that conversation. “Spooky. Got it. Thanks, buddy. Run along.”

  When he still tried to pursue them Martin stepped in his path, and the way the little rat recoiled from him you would have thought he was one of the Archdukes himself. “You. You’re a marked one.”

  Channeling Jericho as much as he could, Martin tried to growl. “I’ll put a mark across your face too if you don’t leave us be.”

  It was enough, somehow. The Murovan scampered off and Martin caught up to Lindsay rattling off her shopping list. “And we’ll need a new rope to replace the one from the Skip Gate. Maybe look into one of those sharpening stones for the critical hit buff, since Martin lost his bracers…”

  “We need to talk.”

  It brought the trio to an abrupt halt. Lindsay smirked. “Yeah? You finally going to spill the beans?”
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  He blinked. Or possibly winked. “Beans?”

  “The thing. The thing that has been bothering you. The thing that has been bothering you, that you’ve been all upset about. You want to talk about it?”

  It seemed easier to just go with the flow. He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Cool, let’s find the inn so we can get a rested bonus while you jibber jabber.”

  Julia fell into step beside him as they moved through the crowds in search of the inn, mumbling to herself, “now he wants to talk about his feelings…”

  Everyone else had to duck and squeeze to get into the Cheese Dream Tavern, but Martin was able to stroll right in and toss himself into a booth at the back where he felt quietly certain they wouldn’t be overheard.

  The girls looked at him for a long time as he tried to put his thoughts into order, until finally he let out an exasperated little groan and said, “This is going to sound crazy however I tell it.”

  Lindsay leaned back as one of the ratty bar wenches brought over what looked suspiciously like a pint of molten cheddar. “So spit it out, dude.”

  “Okay. Okay… okay.” Martin took a deep breath. “I’ve been investigating the Masters. The people that made the game. Right from the beginning and there was just nothing there. The whole internet was stripped bare. Either they don’t exist, or they’re deliberately blocking any access to information about them.”

  “So far, so paranoid. Keep it up, dude.”

  “The only lead I could find was the scientist who designed the Neural Interface Headset. I got his name, his address. I went to see him.”

  Julia glanced at Lindsay with a sullen look suddenly on her face. “That was the fieldtrip?”