by Ryan DeBruyn
I unconsciously head in the direction of a small sparse forest. There is a blue plaque hanging inside and I lean against small trees as I hurry toward it. I try to track my path, to avoid leaving a trail, but I’m feeling a bit dizzy.
Rodentia Dungeon
Rank: F-3
The small forest surrounds a larger conifer. At the bottom of the pine-needled branches there is a hole in the trunk just large enough for me to crawl through. The plaque hangs above it. The sounds of fighting continue behind the crumpled house, and I realize this might be my only option. I don’t like it. In fact, with five drops of liquid and my injuries, it’ll likely mean my death, but trying to limp through the ruins would definitely be my demise.
Glancing back at the sounds of dying monsters and fighting psychopaths, I crouch down and crawl into the hole. I am slightly lucky that the ground around the tree is mostly mud or grass because my bloody footprints aren’t immediately visible. In truth, the group may find them, but hopefully, by then, I will be healed up or deeper into this dungeon.
My injuries scream in protest with each crawling motion, but going into this dungeon is my only hope at this point. Still, I don’t like it. Inside, the tunnel descends at a forty-five-degree angle into the earth. Inside, there is a ruddy light emanating from an overhead root, which runs through the ceiling’s center and provides sufficient light for me to see a few inches around it.
After the floor levels back out, I turn a bend, and the tunnel moves back upward. I continue to crawl, still in pain and hoping that I can get a bit deeper before I start trying to heal. Unfortunately, my head starts swimming, and I realize my time is running out. So I begin circulating my five remaining drops as I pull a filet out of the subspace and stuff it into my mouth with muddy hands. I don’t even taste the food at this point and desperately try to break the meat into swallowable chunks, so I can swallow faster. The mud goes down too, but slowly some qi suffuses my body.
I don’t stop, and pull out another steak as I begin circulating the liquid to heal instead of just dull the pain and stop the bleeding. This time, I try my best to follow Crash’s instructions and use the arteries to move qi closer to the injured areas. This actually activates the Fire qi in the meat as it passes through my lungs. At first, I think nothing of it, but I look at it when I feel the wound in my leg burning.
The flesh isn’t knitting itself together but instead is cauterizing into a fused, reddened lump of flesh. I’m horrified for a moment as my ribs begin to burn as well, but I lock down on the stupid. If the wounds cauterize, I won’t be losing blood. This is good.
The burning doesn’t stop after the wounds close, and I realize that the cauterization is happening underneath the skin as well. This leads to a stiff lump forming in the torn muscles of my quad. I hastily pull back the qi and deposit all the Fire qi left, three drops, into my Dantian. Instead of eating the third steak filet I am holding, I pull out the Tupperware of mushroom sauce and begin drinking it greedily like water. Crash had hinted that Earth or Water qi are the best for healing injuries.
I only have three filets left in the subspace, and this is all five servings of the mushroom sauce. In the end, I only receive eight from the sauce, despite hoping for more. This time, as the qi suffuses my body, I send all eight drops after activation to my leg. The other injuries haven’t damaged much muscle, and while they will still cause pain, they aren’t likely to hinder my crawling escape. The eight drops cause an itch to form under the wounds, and I feel a bit of the cauterized muscle tissue clear away—but the qi is gone far faster than the fire version.
Still, there is a marginal improvement in my wounds. Before I can check further my brain screams at me—I have paused too long. The whole process probably only took fifteen minutes at most, but the group could have finished with the goblins and begun searching for me in that time. I continue crawling up the slope and find that the tunnel opens up into a circular room. My heart thuds loudly in my ear as I hold my breath.
There are chirping noises coming from the blue-tinged shadows.
Chapter 18
August 30th, 151 AR
Jeff Turle
The squeaks from up ahead don’t sound deep or guttural, but they also don’t sound friendly. I’m not sure what type of dungeon monster a Rodentia is, and so while the plaque outside is helpful for the F-3 rating, other than that—not really. The only information I have to go off is the size of this tunnel and the squeaks’ volume. The facts are these: I am forced to crawl, and they are tiny chirps. I am hopeful that Rodentia is a small monster. I pull the dagger without the sheath from my subspace.
Running a dungeon by myself was never a part of my plan, but it isn’t like there aren’t tales of heroes doing it. The keyword there is heroes. Solo running dungeons is almost folklore if the individual is in the same rank as the monsters. Look at my previous ‘party’—all of the fighters were E-rank and unwilling to enter an E dungeon for fear of death. Part of the reason is that, for E-rank cultivators, an F-rank dungeon poses little threat, but also because dungeons take time to be discovered and marked.
The longer a dungeon is open, the more powerful the monsters inside become. In fact, many dungeons are only discovered because the monsters begin to prowl around outside. Again, not always true, but the vast majority of dungeon finds follow this trend.
For me, this isn’t the case. While the dungeon I am in right now may seem obvious due to the tree’s hole for an entrance, I only entered the small grove of trees because of the blue plaque. And only circled the tree to find the door because I knew it had to be there. This dungeon will likely be found in the future by wandering Adventurer’s Guild scouts. After it’s found, though, the scouts will still need to identify what its level is.
So, they see the hole in the tree, suspect a dungeon, and call out a specialist who can analyze the dungeon level based on the energy it exudes. I have never seen one of these specialists myself, but Alrick said there aren’t many of them. They travel in an entourage to stay well protected and only manage to identify about three suspected dungeon areas a day.
All that to say, me finding an unmarked dungeon at an F-3 rating brings me hope. These monsters are supposedly at the same rating as I am. I can only hope that means something. I shove two more of my three filets down my throat as fast as I can—I swear I can hear an ominous clock clicking away in the silence left behind after each mastication.
With my Dantian full again, I enter the room and stand to my full height. This space is at least seven feet from its loose-earth floor to its twisted-root ceiling and, at a quick glance, encompasses a space twenty feet in diameter.
The glowing root makes a spiral pattern on the ceiling but isn’t the only light source. Right in the middle of the room, blue light emanates from a portal that swirls a foot above the ground. It stretches to a foot below the ceiling. I can tell that three furry creatures are clinging to walls or ceiling roots in the room from the combined sources of light.
Each of the beasts is blackish-brown in color with beady, reflective eyes; sharp front teeth protruding past bottom jaws; and bottlebrush tails. They notice my entrance into the room, and two of them shift on their perches to face me. The closest of the three disengages and begins charging in my direction in a hopping sprint. Each bound has as much upward motion as forward.
The problem? It was only about five feet away. I push my qi to my legs and arms, attempting to fire them at a speed faster than the monster charging at me. In combat, just like during my escape, I fall back on old habits, not using the proper channels and not having the practice needed to do so.
There is some good news. I manage to jump up and out of the way of the jaws. They sail by my arm, but of course, the roof is seven feet high. My head hits, first sending pressure down my neck and forcing my chin to fold into my chest. Next, my shoulders collide and send a jolt through my body while simultaneously torquing my hips backward as if my shoulders are the center of a wheel. Every vertebra on my back clicks it
self onto the ceiling’s tangled roots as my upward momentum dissipates.
With a splitting headache and numerous bruises down my spine, I feel the upward momentum die and there is a moment where I begin to feel weightlessness take over. That moment allows me to assess my situation and what I see makes me worry. The Rodentia is scrabbling on the loose Earth and drawing to a stop. By the way it’s bunching its muscles and positioning its body, it is going to leap, and I can’t dodge in midair. The Rodentia lunges at the place my neck will be in a single heartbeat.
On instinct, I grip my dagger in both hands and bring the point down into the Rodentia’s skull. The blade meets a split second of resistance before my weight and arm strength drive it home to the hilt. My qi-infused attack drops the Rodentia a foot, and holds me aloft a moment longer. The creature’s forward momentum carries its body underneath me, and I land right on top of it, its furry corpse cushioning my landing enough that I don’t take further damage.
I stand up, scanning the space with wild eyes. There are still two more creatures, but they are just staring in my direction—despite the slaughter of one of their own. Right. Alrick mentioned that low-level creatures follow something called an aggro zone rule. I must be just on the outside of that.
“Kid, are you in there?” a voice says from right behind me. The sound echoes its way around the room. I jump forward, trying to escape hands I swear are trying to close down on my mouth. No one is there, and I realize too late that the tunnel’s echoing effect enhanced the sound, making it seem closer. In all likelihood, they’re at the entrance.
Claws scrabbling on the dirt behind me give a split-second warning, allowing me to pull my arms and head into my chest—entering a fetal position with my upper body, just before sharp teeth pierce my back. Claws begin to shred the skin there. I send another two drops of qi to my arms and fire my elbow back into the creature that is latched there. A thud like I am beating a drum echoes around the cave, and the scrabbling claws abate for a second.
The teeth are still lodged high in my back, and I use them to home in on the monster’s head. I spin and drive the dagger forward a second time. The sharp blade skitters on the hard skull before finding the ear. I adjust the angle and punch the point back down, driving it through the ear socket into the creature’s brain. It’s dead as I finish the turn. The group of murderers outside may have heard the sounds of my second fight, so I quickly pull both of the dead Rodentia into my subspace before I sprint forward and leap through the portal.
If I am lucky, and they enter here, they won’t find any evidence of my fighting. Unlikely, but I can hope. It’s my only option right now. Perhaps they will continue to follow their earlier rules. “We don’t enter boss portals. . .” I recall Tin explaining as I phase through the deadly thing myself.
I feel my hands hit soft dirt, and I roll out of my forward dive as if I haven’t passed through anything. For a few racing heartbeats, I wonder if that’s true. The dirt feels the same, and a quick glance up tells me that I am in a room with tangled roots for a roof. Two things are different, though. The light from the roots is brighter, and there isn’t any blue tinge from a portal. Am I trapped in here now?
I send some of my Fire qi to close my wounds from the second Rodentia and feel a burning sensation on my back. I clamp my teeth together to avoid screaming and instead hiss air through my nose. Nothing else disturbs the silence, and I slowly breathe to dismiss the lingering tension from the pain.
From where I crouch, I can tell that there are dual levels to this room. An upper level, which I am currently on, and a lower level, or pit, in front of me. The floor simply drops away, and as I stand up, I see more of a wall on the far side of the room, but still no base. I stand on a balcony or precipice ten feet wide and ten feet deep with an eight-foot ceiling. Cautiously, I approach the edge and continue to look down below me. There is a pile of large acorns at the bottom of a fifteen-foot drop. An enormously fat Rodentia rests atop it.
I use [Identify].
Chunkalunk
Rank: F-5
Boss Rodentia
How in the heck am I supposed to defeat an F-5 boss by myself? Actually, now that I look closer, the creature is sleeping. Do I have to engage the beast?
Looking around the balcony more closely, I find the back wall has many dangling roots and hiding places, but still no exit. I rush around the balcony and manage to squeeze myself into the space behind a false wall of roots I find. I can’t see a quick way out of here, so I figure I will stay hidden. I need to be sure the group of murderers isn’t coming in or, if they come in, that they defeat the boss Rodentia for me.
I wait and wait. After counting to three hundred several times, I am convinced that they aren’t coming in. I begin squeezing myself back out onto the balcony but pull up short as multiple heavy feet thud onto the dirt nearby.
“You sure the pointy-eared freak is in here?” Jamie asks.
“No,” Esmerelda growls. “We all heard something from the entrance. But my argument for coming in was that the single squirrel outside was weak.”
“Shut it. I think I heard summin’,” Markus calls.
My heart is thudding so hard that I am pretty sure he hears it. Still, noise is beginning to echo from down in the pit, and I am relatively sure that Chunkalunk, the boss, is waking up. A crash sounds, and Tin’s voice can be heard loudest amongst the startled mutters.
“The boss is up. According to other groups, if we don’t get down there, it will keep tossing those stupid enlarging acorns at us. Let’s go!” Boyle says, his voice enthusiastic.
A war cry sounds from Jamie, and I swear I can hear him maintain it as he falls from the ledge to engage the boss, the noise fading into the distance as he drops. A few more grumbles come from others in the group, but I can’t tell who it is and if they have left the ledge without being able to see them.
The sounds of shouts, bangs, and scattered commands travel up to me, but once again, I can’t make out anything. Still, I can tell when the fight finishes. The stillness that hangs in the air lasts only a heartbeat before the group breaks out into a hearty cheer. I stay as silent as possible, trying to make out any conversation below.
“Did anyone see any signs of the kid?” Markus’s voice calls out, far closer and louder than I expected. The volume tells me that he’s climbed back up to the balcony. I hold my breath and press my back into the dirt, trying to be out of sight from the small gap I crawled through. When I’m finished, I can’t see the opening and hope that means that if Markus looks inside, he won’t see me either.
“No, Markus. You really think the freak was dumb enough to come into a boss portal alone?!” Tin’s voice retorts loudly from below.
“Kid’s got my dagger! I knew it was nearby earlier. He likely put it in his subspace after. . .” Markus grumbles.
“The piddly thing you gave him was your backup’s backup. Just leave it. We’ll find him outside. Now get down here and use them knives to butcher the corpse,” Jamie calls angrily. “I don’t want to be getting older for no reason!”
Markus growls menacingly somewhere nearby, and my lungs scream at me from holding my breath. I don’t dare let out the air. I hear some shifting soil and then someone grunt from farther down below. Was that Markus jumping back down? My lungs continue to protest their abuse, and after a moment, I can’t take it anymore. I focus on recovering oxygen in a slow, quiet way but the loudness of my inhales and exhales brings tears to my eyes. They are going to hear it. . .
Several more moments go by, my breathing volume fades, and still they haven’t come and dragged me out. I sigh in relief as noises from down below begin filtering up to me again. I can only make out mumbles, and approaching the edge would be suicide. I was already lucky that they dismissed Markus’s suspicions. No need to push it. . .
I peel myself off the wall, and as soon as the crack I crawled through comes into view, I notice a blue tinge has entered the room. Did the exit portal open? Now I just pray they will leave
after they butcher the corpse. That’s the only way I can get out of here.
That’s the only good news so far. In hindsight, I feel like a bit of an idiot. Crash told me not to go out with a group in the E-rank—
Oh no! Is there a time limit on the portal before it closes? Where does the exit portal take me? And even more concerning, will I run into the psychopathic murderers on the other side? All are questions I have no way of knowing the answers to; and, sadly, all are things I could’ve and should’ve asked Crash.
My thoughts aren’t pleasant as I listen to the mumbled conversation below. I can only hold tight to the hope that I can survive this. . .
When silence reigns in the room for what feels like hours, I finally peel myself back out of the crack in the roots. The balcony is empty, and swirls of blue light still mix with the golden hue of the roots. The exit hasn’t closed yet!
The silence I hear bodes well for me. The murdering thieves have probably left. Now I just need to leave as well and find my way back to the Training Room.
I approach the edge of the balcony and gaze down onto a butcher’s yard. Chunkalunk is just a bloody hunk of flesh; its pelt has been skinned, and the meat that clung to its bones has been hacked away. The innards of the Rodentia are spilled out, and the boss’s monster core has been taken. The blood of the creature liberally coats the acorns and roots of its former den.
Ride or Die is gone, and I am alone. Using the wall’s roots, I slowly climb down to the main chamber floor, fifteen feet below. Once there, I immediately approach the portal but pull up short when movement on the other side catches my eyes. Through the portal, I can see trees from the small grove there swaying in the breeze. Something else about the view pulls me up short, but I can’t tell what is causing my stomach to turn.
