by Simon Archer
“I wish I could find some of the water,” I murmured as I looked around at the clearly glistening walls, and while part of me wanted to lick the stone, I was sure I’d find water soon. Then I wouldn’t need to rely so heavily on my high Fortitude to keep from dehydrating.
A few moments later, I was still out of luck on the water front, but I’d found my way to the cave. Only as I looked at it, glowing script manifested in the air before me.
You have found a Dungeon Challenge. Completing a Dungeon Challenge will give you a special reward. Would you like to proceed?
15
As I stared at the Dungeon Challenge message, I couldn’t help but smile. In Terra Forma, Dungeon Challenges had given crazy good, game-changing rewards. Assuming, of course, you could find one, a task alone that was pretty hard, and actually complete it, which was also difficult. Even still, no matter how impossible this particular Dungeon Challenge was, I knew I had to try it.
How could I walk away now?
“Okay,” I said as I moved toward the glowing cave entrance. “I’ll do the challenge.”
“You have chosen to accept!” a strangely serpentine voice rippled out of the cave and ran over my skin, leaving a trail of gooseflesh in its wake. “You must be very brave.”
As those words reverberated throughout the cavern, I couldn’t help but shrug. I wasn’t doing it because I was brave. I was doing it for the sweet bonus I’d get once I crossed over this rainbow.
“Thanks,” I replied, and as the sound of my voice faded, amused laughter filled my ears.
“You are most welcome.” The glow from the opening before me faded away, leaving a simple stone about half my height in its place. “Now, move past the stone and enter my chambers. Do not use your ants.”
“Right,” I said with a nod as I moved toward the stone. It was brownish in color and about as wide as my waist. Taking a deep breath, I grabbed hold of either side of the stone and was immediately surprised to find that it was warm to the touch, not quite enough to be uncomfortable, but close. “Weird.”
The ants totally agreed as they stood there and twitched their antennae, which I appreciated.
Turning my attention back to the rock, I tried to move the damned thing, and even though I had done plenty of strongman training and knew how to lift, I couldn’t budge the thing more than a few inches. The muscles in my calves screamed in pain, and my quadriceps felt like they were going to rip in half. That said nothing about my forearms as I strained to maintain my grip on the stone, but even after ten seconds of solid exertion, I knew this wasn’t the right way to go about it.
I stopped and stared at the rock for a moment before reorienting myself along the side of it. This time, I put my back against the massive stone and settled myself into a stance with my feet just a bit farther than shoulder width and squatted down as low as I could manage given my current situation. Then I pushed off with everything my legs and back could muster, and as I did, I called upon Aura Infusion to increase my strength.
It helped, and the rocked moved a touch, but already I could see it wouldn’t be enough. My Aura was draining away too fast, my muscles were burning beyond all measure, and I’d barely gotten the damn thing to slide even a few inches.
I released my hold on the rock and then tried another tactic. This time I tried to see if it was top heavy and maybe I could unbalance it and push it over, but alas, that didn’t seem to work either.
I’ll be honest, I tried for the better part of an hour before I collapsed on the ground sweating like crazy and decided to let my Aura regenerate.
“There’s got to be a way to do this,” I mumbled as I turned my mind to the problem. Part of me wished I could use Aura Infusion to make myself smarter so that I could figure it out, but alas, that hadn’t worked either. Still, I wasn’t deterred, and with my ants silently cheering me on, I knew I couldn’t just give up. After all, what would they think?
As I played back the words I’d been told, my eyes widened in shock. I didn’t necessarily have to move the rock, just move past it. Could I just destroy part of it and squeeze by?
I wasn’t sure, but I resolved to try once my Aura was back to full.
A few minutes later, I hoisted myself to my feet and made my way around the rock to look for any obvious weak points. Not seeing any, I moved back to the front of it and stared intently at it, but even with my Sense ability in Overdrive, I didn’t find anything obvious.
So… I decided to hit it as hard as I could.
Because I was super smart like that.
I mean, I had broken boards and even concrete when I’d completed my black belt in Taekwondo, so I definitely knew how to do it. I just hadn’t ever done it in Terra Forma… but then again, I wasn’t in Terra Forma anymore.
So, I moved next to the rock and got into position in front of it. As I dropped into a modified horse stance, I took a deep breath to stabilize my breathing and cleared my mind. I took a deep breath through my nose and slowly exhaled out my mouth, and as I did, I used Aura Infusion to increase my strength and speed.
I didn’t attack right away, though. I allowed my body to get used to the Aura flowing through my veins, and I could have sworn I felt it moving from the tips of my toes up through my fingers. It was a bit strange, but I decided to go with it as I turned my focus to the stone in front of me. It was thick, so it was definitely possible I’d shatter my hand, but I had nothing else to try.
I took another deep breath and shut my eyes, continuing to focus on the Aura running through my body as I visualized what I wanted to do. I envisioned myself putting my hand right through the rock while I slowly inhaled and exhaled. I replayed it over and over in my mind as I slowly reached out and touched the center of the stone with the palm of my right hand.
Then I slowly withdrew my hand until it was about even with my chest. I moved, slowly moving my hand back toward the rock while my hips turned toward it. I shifted on the balls of my feet as I did so and lightly touched the stone with my palm.
I repeated it a few more times before drawing back my hand for my attempt. My eyes snapped open, and as they did, I felt the Aura running through me, giving me power. I focused on that Aura, imagining it coalescing in my body as I moved in for my strike. I felt my Aura move up through my feet as I shifted my stance to drive my whole body into the blow. More Aura built up through me with each movement so that by the time I was done, I felt like it was all in the heel of my hand as I struck out at the rock.
“Kiya!” I cried as my palm slammed into the stone in front of me. There was an ear-splitting crack as the Aura infused into my attack ripped out of me in an explosion of force that not only shattered the rock into pieces but sent bits of debris flying in every direction.
My chest heaved as I stood there, staring. I’d done it, and as I turned to look at my hand, I was amazed to see sparks of Aura dancing along my fingertips. That’s pretty much when I saw the message.
You have learned the Subskill: Auric Smash.
Confused by the sudden appearance of the new subskill, I opened the help menu and quickly found that it was a way to use Aura Infusion to direct Aura into a specific attack, thereby drastically increasing its destructive power. What’s more, now that I had actually learned it, the subskill seemed to have a kind of charging effect where I could power up an attack and unleash it to devastating force.
“Well, it seems that this quest is already paying dividends,” I said to my three ants who twitched knowingly. Then because I was worried that taking them inside might ruin the Challenge, I told them to wait there.
They seemed more than happy to oblige, and not just because the cavern ahead of me loomed like an open maw of death. Just beyond the entrance where the stone had been, blood-colored stalactites and stalagmites jutted from the floor and ceiling like the teeth of some creature, and as I took a step forward, the air hit me like a warm breath.
“Please don’t be a giant dragon or something,” I whispered even though the possibility kind
of excited me. If it was a dragon, maybe I could kill it and get its pattern?
“Welcome, adventurer,” the serpentine voice boomed once I’d made my way inside, and as I opened my mouth to reply, the sound of grinding stone filled my ears.
I whirled on my feet just in time to see the mouth of the cavern closing behind me as the stalactites and stalagmites meshed perfectly together to form an impenetrable wall of stone teeth. I stared at it for a moment and watched as the light cast by the luminescent moss clinging to the stone threw dancing shadows into the air.
It was strange because as the cold, damp, emptiness of the cavern swept over me, I found myself getting excited. After all, I was in the middle of a Dungeon Challenge, and typically, the harder they were, the greater the reward would be.
So, feeling a bit better than I had only a moment ago, I began to make my way forward down the long cavern. It didn’t take long for the ground beneath my feet to become slick with mud, but even as I glanced around, I couldn’t seem to find the source of the water. Still, staring at the mud made my dry mouth wish I had brought along some kind of cheesecloth to squeeze out the water. Sure, I could use my shirt in a pinch, and I would if it became necessary, but the last thing I wanted to do was go Bear Grylls on this mud and then find water around the next bend.
It goes without saying that around the next bend, I did not find any water. Instead, I found myself staring at a large amphitheater in the shape of a ten-pointed star. The floor looked like several massive slabs of slate that had been roughly hewn into tiles, and even from here, I could tell they were wet. The walls and ceiling were decorated with symbols I couldn’t read. Some were geometric, and others appeared more like petroglyphs and pictographs. They seemed to spiral out from the center in a loose design that fitted in the center of the ten-pointed star.
The room was fairly empty save for a stone altar with a set of unique and strangely chaotic symbols decorating it. The thing was massive even from where I stood more than a hundred feet away, and as I stepped into the room containing the altar, a bad feeling crept over my spine. My flesh prickled up into gooseflesh as the sound of my steps on the slate echoed in my ears.
It was obvious that no one had been here in a long time because, despite the slick nature of the ground beneath my feet, I left behind muddy footprints in my wake. Though I had no doubt they would eventually wash away, I was also guessing that would take weeks, maybe even months given that the water wasn’t really flowing.
As I moved farther into the room, I realized that beneath the symbols decorating them, the walls were set in striations of stone, and as I reached out and touched the closest ones, my eyebrows raised in shock because it felt like layers of quartz and iron rock. If I’d had more light, I probably would have known for sure, but alas, this room wasn’t as well lit as the cavern leading to it had been as the only source of the bioluminescent algae was on the altar.
When I turned back toward said altar and took a step toward it, that feeling of apprehension in my gut twisted sharply. Something about the room was wrong, and nearly everything in me told me to run away. Not that there was anywhere to go. The only entrance into the room seemed to be the one I’d come through, and that just led back to a dead end.
“Guess it’s time to figure out just what the fuck is happening here,” I said, and as I made my way toward the altar, the symbols adorning it began to glow with eerie scarlet light that sent bloody shadows dancing across the floor in front of me.
With every step I took, they glowed brighter and brighter until, finally, they blazed like a star in the center of the room, and I had to shield my eyes to keep moving toward it. All the while, the sense of dread building in my gut was reaching a crescendo.
“Almost there,” I murmured, my eyes practically hidden in the crook of my elbow as I made my way forward.
Which, of course, was when I heard the staccato crack of stone coming apart at the seams… behind me.
I whirled around, and because of the way the light was glowing on the altar, I found myself staring at a massive shape shrouded in shadow. Bits of crimson light played across what little I could see of its body, and that was enough for me to realize what it was.
“Stone golem,” I murmured, and as the words spilled from my mouth, it took a massive step toward me. The slate tiles cracked under its immense weight as it shifted its bulk for another step.
Now, stone golems weren’t the fastest creature in the world. Hell, I’d seen slugs move faster, but that didn’t mean they weren’t difficult to defeat since they were made of rock. Let’s just say that both hitting and being hit by a sentient piece of rock was all kinds of not fun.
I took a step back from the creature and summoned forth my mandibles from my inventory. Unfortunately, as I squeezed them in my hands, I was pretty sure they wouldn’t even be able to scratch the creature even if I used Aura Infusion… and hey, wait a second...
The big golem took another step toward me, and this time, it was close enough that I felt the shockwave from the impact of its foot on the ground in my stomach. Then, as the feeling started to fade, it began to rear back for what looked like a vicious haymaker.
I took a deep breath and put away my mandibles as it continued to wind up. Then I centered myself and pulled hard on the Aura accumulated in my body. I met the creature’s non-eyes, and as I did, I decided to just go for it.
Three seconds later, the creature’s huge fist lashed out at me. It was slow but not as slow as I’d have thought given its walking speed. Not that it mattered since I was a trained martial artist. It was easy enough to sidestep the lumbering giant’s attack, and as it whooshed by me with enough force to turn my frail human body into a bucket of squishy bits, I twisted my hips and let out an Aura-infused palm strike.
“Auric Smash!” I cried because yelling it out let me unleash the beast within.
As my hand struck the thing just above the right knee, it was, well, ginormous and that’s all I could reach, there was an explosion of force that quite literally knocked the creature’s block off. Time seemed to slow down as what had once been its leg blew out backward in a spray of dust and debris. As the sound of rock scattering across the slate floor filled my ears, the golem turned its head toward me, and though it had no facial features, I could tell it was as surprised as I was by the power of the attack. I mean, I’d put almost a third of my Aura into the blow, but even still, I hadn’t expected to do more than crack its leg.
That’s when time seemed to speed back up.
The golem tottered off balanced for a split second before crashing sideways to the ground with so much force that much of its body was shattered by the impact of its own bulk on the slate floor. As it lay there stunned, head back, I knew this was my chance. I began charging my Aura once more as I leapt up onto its body and moved forward until I stood looking at its head.
Then I did the only thing I could possibly do. I put my Aura powered fist through its skull. Okay, well, it was actually another palm strike, but that sounded way less cool. Either way, the blow turned its head into powder. The creature seemed to spasm for a moment and then went still.
All around me, the symbols seemed to flare brighter, and while I wasn’t sure what was coming next, I knew I’d need Aura to face it. Only, as I raised my hand to use Auric Extraction on the beast, I got a curious response.
Target contains no Aura to extract. Spell failed.
I would have stood there staring at the thing’s corpse for a bit longer, but it dissolved into sand right before my eyes, so that only a few moments later, the only trace that it had been there at all was a fist sized-clump of black stone. I took a curious step forward and picked it up, and as I did, I realized what it was.
Heart of Stone Golem.
“Um… okay,” I said as I hefted the object. It was heavy and didn’t seem immediately useful, so I just stuck it in my inventory. I mean, it was better than a stick in the eye, but at the same time, I was more than a little annoyed I hadn’t gotten
the creature’s pattern because it would have been pretty fucking sweet to use against the ants. Still, there was no use crying over spilled milk.
I turned back around, and this time, and as I did, I realized the altar wasn’t going nuclear anymore. Instead, it was now shining with silver light. Crazier still, the center of it had split open and revealed a fountain. Crystalline water flowed down its sides, filling the inside of the altar like a bathtub, and I licked my lips in anticipation.
Yes. I was going to drink that water. Purification be damned.
Smiling, I made my way forward, and as I got to the altar, I realized two things. First, it wasn’t an altar at all, but rather the entrance to a huge underground, water-filled tunnel, and second, it was so murky and disgusting that I knew if I drank it as is, I’d be sick as a dog.
“Awesome,” I said as I stared down into the dirty water and sighed because there was only one way out of the room, and it wasn’t the way I’d come.
No… it was through the creepy underwater tunnel in the middle of the strange room full of enchanted symbols.
That wasn’t risky at all.
No siree.
16
After using my Sense ability to ensure there weren’t any obvious traps filling the entrance to the underwater doom cavern, I stripped off my sweatshirt, shirt, shoes, socks, and workout pants and shoved them all into my inventory. Then I stood there, looking at my performance boxer briefs. They were sweat wicking and comfortable, and I knew they would be fine in the water, but at the same time, well, I’d eventually have to get out of the water, and the option would be to put dry pants on over wet clothes or go commando.
Honestly, I’d never been a fan of either of those things because, well, chafing. So, with a sigh, I pulled off my underwear, prayed the next room wasn’t full of paparazzi, and stowed it in my inventory.
