by Dakota Krout
“That is an odd piece of gear to wear.” Tom commented. “Matter of fact, I have not seen any other miners wearing any armor, let alone full plate.” His curiosity was sated moments later when Evan gave a mighty swing of his pick and the wall in front of him shattered with a thunderous roar. Splintered rock bounced from the Dwork’s armor, sending him staggering back a few steps. Instead of moving forward again, he waited a few moments and the fallen rock in front of him started to vanish, leaving behind chunks of iron ore.
Evan collected the ore into a large bucket and smiled. “Best job I’ve ever had.” He swung his pick again with a mighty grunt.
Dale’s group had had enough of the noise, and so started walking into the dungeon’s depths. After the first turn, most of the natural light had vanished, leaving them in a blue-tinted gloom. The groups allowed in the dungeon were spaced a minimum of twenty minutes apart, which would allow for Mobs — dungeon monsters — to respawn and Essence to re-accumulate in the air.
Dale felt the Essence around him with his enhanced senses, thinking that it was a little lower than usual for the first floor. He asked Hans for his opinion, but was told that since they were usually the first to enter the dungeon each morning, the Essence had usually been able to build up. Also, the Mana barrier over the door had likely blocked Essence production, lowering Essence in the dungeon further. They moved quickly through the area, overtaking an F-ranked group that glared at Dale’s smiling group as they returned to the surface. These people were sweaty and dirty, obviously they had worked hard and decided to cut their losses and leave before dying.
In the second room, they found things greatly changed. Dale’s first impression was that they had stepped outside; there was lush greenery and the room was brightly lit. They had to squint as they looked around, unaccustomed to the brightness after walking through the tunnel. Feeling relatively secure, Dale looked up and saw that the ceiling had a thin layer of glass over it that held glowing fluid between it and the rock, accounting for the bright light. There was no path, the room completely overgrown in what could almost be called a beautiful arrangement of flowers and herbs.
“Wow. It is beautiful.” Rose breathed in deeply, smelling the combination of herbs and flowers.
“So, you are real then, Cal? Not a figment of my imagination brought on by stress and trauma?” Dale thought hopefully at the dungeon.
“None of these flowers compare to you, sweet Rose.” Hans poetically promised the uninterested female.
Rose glared, “You are old enough to be my grandpa.” There was no response from Hans but a pained look.
“Experiment? What do you mean?” Dale ignored the offer of death for some unknown reason.
I thought about how much I wanted to tell him,
“There is no other reason? You didn’t want an ally, a slave, or anything like that?” Dale thought heatedly.
Dale shook his head, “What the hell is going on?” He muttered. Then a Basher slammed into the side of his leg, and he had no more time for questions. “Ow!”
They tightened their formation, protecting their less well-armored members in the center. Tom stated the obvious, “I cannot see a thing through this underbrush. Where are they?”
Hans nodded at the question, “The Essence in the plants is too dense to see through, and so I can’t tell where they are based on their aura. Look out, I am going to open up some space. Otherwise, look for moving plants!” The knives in his hands took on a soft shine and he swung them in a slow arc. The plants in front and to the side of him fell over, clean cuts separating their stalks. Several Bashers were also torn in half, adding thick red blood to the runny sap dripping to the floor. With a clear kill zone, they made short work of the weak Bashers in the area.
“No loot dropped.” Adam noted, waiting for the telltale clink of coins.
Rose’s keen eyes spotted something, “What is that?” She pointed at a rocklike formation that was tinted green to blend with the plants.
Hans's eyes gleamed, “That, my dear, is a treasure chest!” He rushed over and caressed the surface, rubbed his face on it, and then lifted the lid. Inside lay several thick copper coins and a potion containing a syrupy light source. “Score! I can pour this on myself and pretend I’m a ghost tonight!”
“Is this typical in here?” Rose looked around for danger as she awaited an answer. She had only been in here once before, and that traumatic experience had her on edge.
“Nay, tis a new occurrence.” Tom informed her gravely. “Though I must say, I prefer collecting from a single area instead of scrambling along the floor on all fours chasing a rolling copper.”
They debated stopping to cultivate but decided that it would be better to get to an area where the Essence in the air was denser. They continued onward, now on the lookout for treasure chests as well as monsters and traps. Dale was directing his friends around what his enhanced vision saw as thin stone in the wall — when he heard a giggle in his mind. His eyes narrowed, and instead of bypassing the section he smashed the wall, revealing a bright silver chest.
“The size of that space was a lot smaller than the traps normally are, as well as being shaped differently.” The others nodded, cheerful at their good fortune. Those bars of silver would bring in a good chunk of money, roughly twenty silver coins per bar. They continued past some obvious traps into the third room.
This room was similar to how it had been in the past, with a few blatant differences. The very large open space had lots of Bashers, but they were mainly clustered in large groups with only a few wandering the areas between them. As they studied the room, the rational became obvious. The thicker clusters of Bashers were around small chests of varying colors. The rarer the coloration, the higher the population of the group of Mobs. At a few points they normally would not explore in the room — such as midway and far to the right — there were even advanced Bashers that they only normally saw in the Boss room and the lower floor.
Hans whistled when he saw why they were there. “Look! They are kind of hiding that chest, and it is glowing! Can we go open it? Pretty please?” He batted his eyelashes at Dale as if he were trying to be seductive. “I’m greedy and owe a flesh Mage a lot of money.”
Dale chuckled, he was glad that Hans had asked and didn’t try to undermine him as the leader of the team. “Really hard to report what we don’t kn
ow about, right?” That was the phrase they had always used to make Craig give in when they wanted to explore.
“Aww, yeah.” Hans maliciously unsheathed his daggers and the team got ready to fight. They moved forward and killed the Bashers in their way, taking no hits from the — fairly — predictable attacks. They learned to fight monsters in the order they came across them after Rose loosed an arrow at one a good distance away.
The arrow struck the Basher, who squealed and limped toward them. The group it was in — as well as every group they passed — joined in the charge, until a wave of bounding fur was sprinting toward them.
“Oops.” Rose muttered as the team glared at her. Tom stepped forward, swinging his hammer down to lightly graze the stone floor and then continue toward the Bashers. The weapon impacted the floor at an angle and sent shards of broken stone flying forward at high speeds. These shards shredded through the small bodies like crossbow bolts. Easily a half dozen were killed, while others were badly wounded, bleeding out in moments in a few cases. The rest continued onward, ignoring their fallen comrades.
Rose began releasing arrows while Dale stepped forward to attack. Since there was still some distance, he activated the enchantment on his weapon and started swinging. The spiked head of the weapon stayed in perfect alignment with the shaft, which meant that it moved far faster at a distance than the shaft of his weapon. Physics.
At its maximum range, he could swing the shaft of the weapon slowly and the ball would blur through the air, greatly increasing the amount of force applied to whatever it hit. Any of the Bashers that were struck had chunks fly off them and usually died, but they were small and nimble while the weapon was unwieldy at range. He missed — far more than he hit — when he was trying to mash the scurrying creatures at any greater range than he was used to.
Still, they were able to finish off the Bashers with little issue, though Hans groaned as a bit of blood landed on his otherwise immaculate clothes. They certainly planned on collecting the chest this group had been guarding, but first they attacked the advanced Bashers to get to the glowing chest. Hans stepped forward and suddenly appeared behind them, stabbing two Mobs through the brainstem before they could react. One heavily armored Smasher bounded toward the main group of humans, but Adam braced himself and thrust the pointed end of his staff toward it in a panic, skewering the Basher through the eye and into its brain with a lucky attack.
They stopped, breathing heavily due to their pumping adrenaline, and started chuckling. They were so excited! The group hadn’t taken any injuries, and it was obvious their practice of formations and teamwork were starting to pay dividends. They opened the chest, revealing two Runed holy symbols and an Inscribed dagger. Working exuberantly to clear the room and open all the chests, they moved on to attack the Boss room.
~Cal~
Dale's group seemed to be doing fine. Ugh. Too well, as per usual. Some of the other groups in here were doing less than perfect, and Dani and I decided to watch them for a bit. Specifically, we focused on a group that I had taken a personal dislike to. They called themselves ‘The Collective’ and had stolen a live Glitterflit a few weeks back. I have no idea how it was doing; after it was taken out of the dungeon I could no longer sense it. I assumed the poor bunny had either died or was dying, since most of the Mobs in here needed the Essence rich environment to survive for long periods of time. I thought for a moment; maybe the Shroomish would be fine in the wild… but who knows?
‘The Collective’ had just defeated Raile, and were opening the chest in the room. As per usual, they complained about the amount of money as well as the quality of items. To be fair, I had started intentionally creating weapons with flaws so they would break after enough uses. I had learned my lesson after giving out what basically amounted to an unbreakable Warhammer that Tom swung around all the time. Now, Runes were typically hard to break after Essence had gone through them at least once, hence I introduced intentional flaws. Plus — hee-hee — Dani told me that if a Rune broke while Essence was moving through it, ‘interesting’ things could happen.
This group of six finished up and looked downward, where they could see the Silverwood tree through the glass at their feet. After a brief argument, they found the stairs, one set leading up and connecting to the surface, and another leading down into unknown danger. The argument was based on whether or not to smash the glass and jump down. Eventually they made a decision and walked toward the stairs. This wasn’t because they wanted to do things in the proper order, ohhh no! The reason they deigned to find the stairs is because they tried to smash the floor. Heh. Good luck with that. I had reinforced it with Runes and powered it with earth corruption. To smash through they would need to supply at least an equal amount of wind Essence — and enough force to break the hardened glassy surface.
They walked down the stairs, and I started to get excited. Soon, I would get to test my new creatures in combat! The stairs continued at a forty-five-degree angle downward to the north, making them come down very far away from the center of the room — which they would need to find in order to fight the Boss. They paused in the small six foot by five foot room I had created at the bottom of the stairs, looking around critically. There were four doors in this room, excluding the stairs back out. Above each of the doors, I had carved small pictures. One was a drop of water, followed by a flame, a stone, and a whorl to represent wind.
They stared at these and determined that they were representative of the trials they would face down each hallway. Heh. They actually had no meaning! I put them there to confuse people and make them think there was a pattern to things. They stepped boldly through the ‘stone’ doorway and started walking down the narrow hall. Unlike the tunnels above, there was not even a soft glow to see by. Also unlike the floors above, these halls were straight and had many, many branching paths. After they were a few turns in, I sealed the door they had entered through by quietly lowering a slab of stone. Unless you had seen it happen, it would look like just one of the many dead ends.
The majority of this group were D-ranked, with the leader a bold C-rank. They walked along without light, using their Essence enhanced vision to see. This allowed them to see and navigate using the Essence in the air, but they did not count on how thick the Essence actually was in this room. Using the loose Essence to see by on this floor was like holding a bright lantern in fog. You could see directly around you, but not through it. The cost of their arrogance came due quickly — and with compounded interest.
As they passed an open connection in the tunnel, a Flesh Cat silently lashed out at the member in the rear. The highly armored man started squealing — unaccustomed to pain as he was — and the Cat retreated a few feet, readying itself to pounce. The other members of the group quickly formed a perimeter around the fallen man, and their healer tried to diagnose him.
“He… it is like a sword ignored his armor and laid open his gut! I need a potion, now!” The healer barked. The man guarding the doorway reached into his bag and started fishing for a potion. The Flesh Cat took advantage of his inattention, pouncing forward and furiously mauling him, swiping back and forth almost a dozen times.
The man’s screaming died off quickly and he fell to the ground, dead with no obvious marks on him, but blood flooding out of the joints in his armor. The leader of the group flashed forward, skewering the Cat and concurrently landing a blow that snapped its neck.
“What in the abyss is that? Pull a potion from his pack, I need to finish the healing! ...Ugh. Too late.” The healer shook blood off his fingers with a grimace.
The leader gave a grim smile, “It’s an unexpected windfall! The Guild pays very well for new Mob corpses to study.” He pulled out a small sack and started stuffing the corpse into it. Somehow, he fit the eighty-ish pound, four-foot-long Cat into it and put the small bag back in his pocket. Callously, they left the dead men on the floor and continued exploring after rummaging through the corpse's pockets and taking the expensive armor the two dead men
were wearing. The remaining men — bizarrely — seemed happy with the outcome, as they would have a larger cut of profits.
“Yeah… I can’t believe they just left their friends like that!” Dani commiserated with me.
“Oh. Sure, I’m fairly certain that is a dimensional bag. They are made from heavily enchanted and inscribed standard Beast Cores.”
“So, you know how I told you about the different ranks of cultivation?” Dani prodded. She continued after I mentioned that I did, “At the different cultivation levels, Cores gain different properties. There are flawed, weak, standard, strong, beastly, immaculate, luminous, and radiant Beast Cores. Essentially the Beasts diet, age, and strength of cultivation affect the quality of their stone. Immaculate Cores are usually only found in B-ranked or above Beasts, and are extremely receptive to enchantments.”
“I am fairly certain that you started out as a ‘beastly’ Core. Your configuration is categorically different though, so now it is hard to tell where you fall in the rankings. Remember, you were altered with — what I can only assume — was Spiritual energy, and it shifted around what makes you a cohesive whole.”
