by Wolfe Locke
Paul started to protest, but he was interrupted by Seraph who replied, his tone heavy with irritation, “It's fine, Dad. It really is. I've been here the least amount of time. It's only fair that I can stay up a little longer so everyone can rest, even you. That healing you did earlier can take a lot out of you. I’m sure no one else has a problem with it. Try to rest, and I'll wake you if I need you.”
Erin and Alexander both nodded their heads in agreement. Neither had a problem with Seraph taking the first shift so they could rest. Seraph could only smile inside as he knew how relieved both of them were to not have to stay awake and be the one on guard. People were so easy to manipulate sometimes.
Seraph listened carefully, drawing in on himself to expand the ability of his hearing as his vision and sense of smell decreased, but of the earlier scurrying sounds, he heard nothing. Waiting, he heard nothing shift in the dark. Whatever was out there wandering the halls wasn’t currently moving. He released his hearing and took up a watchful posture, sliding dust off the chair of the receptionist's desk as the other members of the team slid down the wall, resting against it before nodding off to sleep.
Seraph didn’t expect any of the members of his team to sleep deeply, so it came as a surprise that within seconds of them laying down, all of them were sleeping, even his father who had started to snore loudly. He had to remind himself not to judge too harshly. This was, by all means, a major life event. An event they were tolerating better than most.
For a moment, Seraph grew irritated in frustration that the noise they were making would draw other monsters to them, but he quickly dismissed it. He was confident that this area was under the jurisdiction of the dungeon, and as such, it had rules that had to be obeyed. One of those rules being that within the dungeon, it was impossible for adventurers to fall asleep, unless in a safe zone. This impossibility didn’t extend to status effects, like passing out or being knocked unconscious. He didn’t actually need to stand on guard, but it left him with time to search.
This fact meant they were safe, truly safe—at least, for a moment—and Seraph was free to look for whatever secrets this place had hidden from him. He would start with the contents of the receptionists’ desks.
The center drawer was locked, so he moved on to the other drawers, finding in one a stack of paper reports showing current absences and class size. He put a few of the class reports in his pocket storage to show everyone else. As he rifled through the reports, he saw that there had been a drastic decrease in class size down to single digits by the year 2038. He looked, but he saw no further reports beyond that date. But then he hadn’t expected any. 2038 was the year the green mist had spread over most of the world.
Taking a look at the reports, they were likely a clue, warning future adventurers of a coming calamity. This is interesting, thought Seraph as he considered the possibilities. Within the original timeline, he had never heard of any such warning, and he wondered if this was a change that had occurred because he had traveled back in time, or if it was a secret that had been waiting but had either never been discovered or disclosed in the original timeline. The latter he found problematic and would need to rule out that someone hadn’t obscured the warning and kept it from him.
The picture of a woman and her daughter looked up at him from on the desk, and as he looked through the paperwork, he tried to ignore it. But something about the picture irritated him. He couldn’t stand the way the family seemed to be looking at him. He reached out to turn the picture over, and on the other side, he found a key attached to the back of the photo—a key he guessed would likely fit into the center drawer that had been locked.
As he put the key in the lock, he knew he had been right in his guess as the lock turned. As he pulled out the drawer, he wondered what he would find. Fantasies about dungeon drops, rare loot, and stat boosts played out in his mind. Instead, all he found were paper clips, pens, a half-empty bag of hard candy, and a dated copy of Time magazine. Actually, he thought. Maybe not useless after all. He grabbed the bag of candy and the magazine and went to read.
As soon as he saw the cover he panicked. His face, his actual face, was on the cover—not the childlike one he was currently wearing, but the face of his original body. The cover read in damning red ink. “Who's coming to save us? A look at the Crows and their enigmatic leader, Seraph, on page 11.”
His heart pounded, and he looked at the others and saw they were still sleeping. He needed to do something about this. He couldn’t just rip it out, though. The noise would definitely wake the others, and if the article contained even a fraction of his secrets, he would be forced to make sure the others never left here alive—even Paul. Some secrets needed to stay buried.
He quickly scanned the table of contents, seeing if there was something he might be able to use. Ah, that will work, he thought as he congratulated himself on his find. He moved the magazine, began to pull multiple pages out, and crumpled those remaining to throw back into the drawer.
The noise woke up Erin as the other two remained asleep.
“Hey, did you find something?” she asked in a groggy voice as she tried to rub the sleep from her eyes.
“Nothing spectacular so far,” he lied. “Just an article called 8 Ways to Best Delve. It’ll be good to share with everyone as a reference and training manual when we finish this tutorial. I found that along with some other documents that kind of hint about what's going on here. I’m just not ready to divulge those quite yet though until I can figure out what it all means. Go back to sleep, though. I still have to look around some more. I'll wake you up when it's time for my shift to be over. I promise.”
Erin nodded her head, her eyes already glossing over with drowsiness. Yawning, she said, “Alright, and thanks for doing this. I really appreciate it, and I bet your dad does too.” Before she had even finished the last word of her sentence, she was curled up and resting against the wall, her eyes shut and sleeping soundly.
Without moving a muscle, Seraph waited to ensure that she remained asleep and that no one else had woken up in the meantime. He wasn’t sure how long they would stay asleep, but he did not think it would be for long. They may not know it yet, but sleep during a delve in a designated safe area was always short.
Quickly, he searched the other desks but didn’t find anything that looked or seemed important. Before leaving the room, he gave it one last look to see if he had missed anything, but nothing caught his eye before moving out.
There were two rooms he still needed to search. Both were at the back of the office, on opposite sides of each other, and down a short hallway. The first had a sign in a bronze plaque that read “Principal”. He would visit that room last. The second door had a sign that read “Nurse’s Office”. Of the two, he had a suspicion that what he was looking for could be found in the principal's office, but a quick search of the nurse's office first would likely provide some loot.
As he flicked on the light, Seraph noted that it could hardly be called an office. More a small room with a clinical, industrial-looking bed. On the bed were two dusty boxes, and there was a small medical container on the wall that read “Emergency Kit.”
“This will come in handy,” he muttered as he grabbed the side of the container to take the emergency supplies. Inside the kit, he found a small bottle labeled “Pain Killers” and some gauze. Picking up both, he placed them in his spatial pocket.
Notification: You have acquired 2 pills. Each pill grants pain immunity for 5 minutes and restores health during combat to “Stable” status.
Notification: You have acquired “Set of Gauze”. Application of gauze cures “Bleed” status.
This was a good find. He would share one with Paul when he had the chance, but for now, he would keep both on him until a better time presented itself. The only thing left in the room was the two boxes on the medical bed, and the only thing left for him to do was open them.
Two identical boxes meant only one thing. One was real, and one was a fake, likely a mim
ic. The only way to know for sure was to either open the box and suffer massive damage or even loss of life, or to attack it up front and hope to kill the mimic first and not accidentally destroy the lot.
“Oh, well,” he said with a sigh as he pulled his mace from the loop on his belt and swung down on the first box. The box screamed—a short sort of death knell—as his weapon struck, striking on soft flesh rather than cardboard. Black blood oozed from teeth where the lid of the box had been. Seraph felt instant relief that he had been correct in his guess, and from the layout of the teeth, he would have likely lost a hand if he had attempted to open the box.
Rapidly, the mimic began to shrivel up and decompose. In its place dropped a handful of the tokens to leave Phase II and begin Phase III. He quickly counted, and they almost had enough for everyone to pass on. He would divvy them out when everyone woke up. Carefully, just in case, he opened the second box and breathed in relief when this box didn’t attack him. Within the box, he found a gold brooch that gave off a faint blue light. Seraph knew that the item was enchanted, but until he could get it identified, he would be unable to use it.
“Hey, what's that? We heard a noise and I volunteered to check it out so the others could go back to sleep. Something like a monster. Is everything OK?” came a voice from behind him. Seraph turned to see Alexander there. “I found a brooch and some tokens after killing a monster in a box,” Seraph replied as he showed off the brooch, trying to pass off the item as something casual to minimize the extent of his find.
Alexander looked at the brooch with a disgusted expression. “Why are you carrying around a brooch? That’s worthless. I’ll make you a deal. I’ll let you keep the brooch, and in return, you give me some of those tokens.”
Seraph looked at him and saw that Alexander had maneuvered himself to block the doorway. He had no intention of letting Seraph get away without handing over the tokens. This was not how Seraph wanted to spend his limited time. “Sure, I was going to give them out anyway,” he responded.
An idea came to him, and he counted out the full ten tokens and placed them in Alexander’s hand, but rather than let go, he held on as Alexander looked at him with a brief expression of surprise and noticeable fear. “Activate,” Seraph said to the tokens as he released Alexander’s hand.
Instantly, Alexander disappeared. He would be a problem for later, but for now, Seraph had other matters to attend to.
Chapter 13: Left Behind
* * *
Looking at the space where Alexander had been, Seraph internally reprimanded himself for being impulsive. This had been sloppier than he intended and would likely cause complications. Complications that he would need to deal with almost immediately, as well as complications in the far off future. He knew realistically that no explanation would fix this.
Even though Seraph had tried to remain quiet as he searched the safe area information and items, he had still been loud enough to wake up Alexander. He had made a mistake, and that mistake had likely been whatever noise had woken Alexander up, or that Seraph had been mistaken in his belief that Alexander had been peacefully sleeping when he went to search the back rooms.
Regardless, it was his mistake to own—and a reminder that his senses were not without flaws. He could be fooled; he could be caught unawares. It was an important reminder that he was not some primordial being, not some god incarnate, for now he was just a boy, or at least had the body and experience of one. With only a few things different, this would have been an exceptionally dangerous situation for him. He needed to get stronger much faster.
Thankfully, I was able to salvage the situation, he thought. By sending Alexander onward, instead of being forced to try to kill him.
The mechanic had not been difficult. All it had required was the active intent to use the tokens and the verbal command. A common technique he was familiar with from his other life. It was just a matter of will. Will and intent. Without a minor infusion of mana, the spoken command, and a will to activate the tokens, it would never work. This was a fail-safe to protect the new and uninitiated, but as Seraph had just done, there were still a few ways to abuse it.
Looking again at the empty spot, Seraph’s thoughts turned back to Alexander. He knew little of the man. Their paths had not crossed in his first life. Seraph was sure Alexander had been an early casualty. The man’s purpose was unclear, and though the man might not have been a genius or an expert fighter, he did show promise. Seraph preferred not having been forced to take the man’s life. He was no necromancer; the dead didn’t yet serve him.
That said, if Alexander had woken up or only pretended to be sleeping, it was possible that Erin or his father had heard the noise he made from slamming the boxes and would come to investigate or notice Alexander’s absence. He was prepared. He had already thought of a story, ready and prepared if needed. Alexander was, after all, an oddity.
He moved silently to the doorway, careful to not make another sound, and he peered out. He couldn’t see them sleeping from where he stood, but he could hear them. The sounds of soft sleep came from Erin, and from Paul, he heard loud snoring. They were asleep, though not where he remembered them falling asleep. They too must have woken and moved around. If that was the case, he still had time to keep searching before they woke.
Quickly—but not so quickly as to not be careful, or make more noise—he picked up the remaining tokens from inside the room. He had the ones still left in the box, and then the excess left behind from when Alexander’s ten tokens were activated. Lastly, he reached for the brooch he had found and pinned it to his jumpsuit. As he was walking out he stopped himself as he realized he had missed something. He lowered himself to the floor and pulled a small metal washer from one of the corners of the medical bed. If one didn’t look at it too closely, it resembled one of the phase advancement tokens. He quickly stashed it in his pocket, stood up, shook the dust off, grabbed the helmet, and left the room.
One never knew if some quick sleight of hand might be necessary. There were still no guarantees they would find enough tokens for those remaining to move on.
Looking around one last time to make sure he had grabbed everything, Seraph smiled to himself. This was his element, and while he wouldn’t quite call it thriving, he was living, and soon he hoped he would find a way to unseal his power that lay in the Emblem of the Black Seraph.
They currently had enough tokens for two people to move on to the next stage at any time, and if he knew anything about his father, it was his father that would refuse to move on if anyone was left behind. But more so, he knew that if everyone could move on, most would choose to do so, and Seraph knew on an instinctive level that they needed to stay and explore further.
He thought of the small washer in his pocket that looked so much like a token. An insurance policy, if one was needed.
With only one more room to check—the Principal’s Office—Seraph crept a few feet down the hall as quietly as he could. From Erin and Paul, he heard no sound or movement, and so he assumed they must still be sleeping. On some level, Seraph knew he was in conflict with his stated purpose of guarding them in their sleep, and he knew if they found out he wasn’t doing that, it would not be well-received. But it couldn’t be helped. He had no reservations about what he was doing. This was an opportunity to explore this place uninterrupted, without having to explain or think of more palatable explanations for why he knew things. He wanted to avoid questions he wasn’t prepared to lie about or had no interest in answering.
Gently, he turned the bronzed doorknob and softly pushed the door forward, careful and slow to try to keep it from creaking and making too much noise, possibly waking one of them up.
What he saw stunned him. Unlike the general office space were Erin and Paul lay sleeping, the principal's office was meticulously clean and immaculate, as if someone, or something, had been here recently. There was no other explanation. It had the faint look, feel, and smell of having had recent exposure to the outside world. It was not sta
le and musty as the other rooms had been. But except for the footsteps of his group, there was no evidence that anyone else had even been here. The dust outside the office was further evidence that no one had been inside for years, if not decades.
Yeah, something isn’t right here, Seraph thought as he gave the room a quick glance. The cleanliness was definite proof that this was the room he needed to dig through to find whatever secret this place was hiding. He pushed the papers on the desk aside and took off the brooch he was wearing and laid it on the desk. He wouldn’t be able to benefit from it anyways until he got it identified, and for now, it was just getting in the way. But as he laid it down, he realized it was no longer giving off its previous blue hue of dim light, which meant it had been identified.
Seraph grabbed hold of the item and took a closer look at it.
Notification: Brooch of the Hometown Hero – So long as you possess greater strength and agility than the other members of your party, you will be viewed as the leader of the group by non-members in the immediate vicinity.
He grimaced. It was a mostly useless bonus for him. It may have benefits, but he would likely trade it at the first opportunity rather than keep it. He had other ways to make people acknowledge him as a leader. He had hoped for buffs to his fighting ability, rather than charismatic bluffs. His had never been the way of the illusionist or the bard. What he did not gain through loyalty, he took through force. He would pawn it at first opportunity or toss it if it proved too inconvenient.
But this was not a revelation without merit. It was interesting that it had been identified, and the only way it could have been identified was if somebody on his team had done so, and he had already seen Paul’s special ability, and he had seen Erin’s ability, leaving the logical conclusion that Alexander had been the person to identify the item. If that was the case, Seraph found it interesting that Alexander had not tried to steal the item too.
