“A trap,” I muttered angrily, peering into the frames and barely refraining from swearing. The raid party was still alive. All of it. Of the 93 players who had entered the Dungeon, all 93 were still alive—the only problem was that a mere 32 had managed to escape the canyon. The rest were buried under the rubble—the first three hundred meters of the right passage no longer existed. The walls had collapsed like a house of cards, trapping without killing the majority of our players.
“We can’t cast a portal—there’s no space to cast it in,” the trapped players began to complain in the chat almost immediately. “Teleport us out with the Mages.”
“Clutzer,” I said to the only surviving raid leader—Magdey and Evolett had been caught with the others. “Pull them out.”
“Form a circle!” The Rogue didn’t have to be asked twice and instantly began to organize his men. There were four Mages among the thirty-two players who managed to escape, so we could build an adequate teleport circle. Generally, you only need three Mages for this spell anyway.
“We can’t cast a teleport in this Dungeon!” the only survivor of Evolett’s group reported.
“What’s he on about?” Clutzer glanced from me to his Mages and then smiled and added: “We shouldn’t have taken the right passage, eh?”
I nodded vaguely, took out an amulet and called Barsina:
“Barsa, I need your help. You need to find me three ‘adult’ Mages this instant. I need them to teleport a player to their location.”
“Whom are they going to teleport?”
“We’ll start with Mag…actually, never mind. Let’s start with Drangardir the Observant,” I named one of our scouts, who typically went by Drang for the sake of brevity. There weren’t any objective reasons to be worried—the Mages would haul the player out of the Dungeon, he’d teleport back to the entrance and rejoin us—however, I decided to play it safe. Something else was stirring deep within me and this time around I decided to heed it right away.
“Roger that. I need five minutes.”
Player Drangardir has left the raid party. To have the player rejoin the raid party, please assemble the party again.
“What the hell!” Drang cursed in the clan chat. “It’s not letting me back into the Dungeon!”
“Abort, Barsa, abort!” I instantly called the Druid. “If a player leaves the Dungeon, he leaves it for good. I need to think things over.”
“Twenty minutes before the crocolupes appear again,” injected Clutzer, peering into the collapsed right passage. “What are we going to do then?”
“We can summon Anastaria to our location,” I replied, already knowing what the Mages would say: Summoning was no doubt blocked in this Dungeon too.
“The summons isn’t working!” the players confirmed my premonition. Now things really were looking grim…
* * *
“…So that’s the situation as it stands,” I finished my quick briefing, putting down the amulet. I called Stacey, added the still-buried Evolett and Magdey to the call and had Clutzer sit in as well. This small meeting was now mulling how to proceed. I reviewed the state of affairs and fell silent, having nothing to add. To continue our conquest of this Dungeon, we would have to first rescue our people from under the rubble. We had to keep in mind, however, that leaving the Dungeon automatically excluded the player from the raid party and we’d have to restart from scratch to bring him in. Actually, this was utterly normal for a first attempt at a Dungeon, yet at the moment we had a limiting factor—the Paw of the Fleet Hound we had found. If I start rebuilding the raid party—this item would vanish and that was the last thing I wanted.
“And you can’t invite a new player into the party either?” Anastaria clarified.
“The summons doesn’t work,” replied Restan, one of our Mages. “When we try, we get a message that summoning is blocked because this is a first attempt and because we have the Paw…”
“And how many of you managed to escape again?”
“Thirty-two, most of them under Level 180.”
“You have no choice then, Mahan. You need to reassemble the raid party,” Anastaria offered. “I realize you want that Paw badly, but…Well, this is precisely why Phoenix has a rule that loot from mobs is examined only after the Dungeon’s been completed. Knowing that a valuable item is at stake has too much of a psychological impact otherwise.”
“I would risk it and try to go further,” Clutzer proposed. “We can restart the raid whenever we like. We’ve gotten this far and we may as well check out what lies in the other two passages.”
“That’s pointless,” Anastaria immediately interrupted the Rogue. “As soon as we reassemble the raid party, the Dungeon will regenerate anew and this same trap could end up in one of the other passages.”
“I agree with Anastaria,” said Evolett. “Moving onward with thirty weak players doesn’t make sense. Mahan—I would like it very much if you invited me to the Paw quest, but you’ll have to sacrifice it in this case. Leaving the Dungeon is the same as leaving the raid party, and you…”
“Why’d you hang up on everyone?” Clutzer asked with surprise beside me.
“Because they were talking gibberish. I’m not going to restart the raid. We’re keeping that Paw.”
“Dan, what happened?” Stacey’s thought immediately appeared in my mind.
“I’m going to try and keep the Paw…I have this one idea; I just need to consider it some more.”
“This is exactly why I love you—you never give up! Good luck!”
After a little thought, I clenched my fists and sent a message to the raid party:
“Raiders, we can all see what’s happened. We have no choice but to either dig out those who are trapped beneath the rubble or burry them completely. Either we will rescue them or kill and revive them. I need a player who can resurrect others, as well as anyone who knows how to hold a pick. Everyone else can take a break—our raid will continue again tomorrow at nine in the morning. Those who are under the rubble have to remain in place; otherwise, our efforts will be in vain…”
“Dig them out?” Clutzer asked, watching me produce my long-forgotten pickaxe from my bag.
“Or bury them until they die,” I confirmed and stepped up to the rocks. “Let’s hope that these stones are destructible terrain.”
Swing, strike…Swing, strike…
Each stroke of the pickaxe sent such a shower of sparks cascading from the rocks that I couldn’t help but close my eyes. The sparks did 5% damage but thankfully, Kalmira—our only surviving healer—was on hand to heal me as I worked. Of course, there was also Fleita, but her Spirits hardly had an effect on me—how much healing can a Level 67 player wearing Level 12 clothes do? And that’s not mentioning that she had nothing but a Minor Healing Spirit available to her…
Swing, strike…Swing, strike…
Aside from me, only one other survivor had a pickaxe with him—as well as, thankfully, Mining as his character profession. This was none other than Clutzer, and as he explained, he had kept the tool as a memento of his past hardships. The other survivors could do nothing but spread their arms in futility—they had no way of helping. Experience showed that Mining was not a very popular profession among players who had dedicated themselves to raiding dungeons. I’d need to ask Anastaria to share her stats with our clan as a lesson—in addition to her many raids, Stacey had leveled up her Herbalism almost to Level 400. You’d think this was a useless specialty for a raider, but when you encounter some rare plant in the Dungeon that you can sell at auction for 10–20 thousand gold (as sometimes happens), you’ll learn a valuable lesson about how useful typically-neglected skills can be. You never know what may come in handy…
Swing, strike…Swing, strike…
My Mining was at Level 65, and the pickaxe I’d received from Rine back in the day granted me +1, which meant a total of Level 66…Man, I really liked that gnome. I should visit him or something. I think Pryke Mine has a visitors’ day coming up if I’m not m
istaken. No doubt the gnome doesn’t remember me anymore (why would an Imitator retain memories of convicts that had long since left the mine?) and yet I wouldn’t mind paying the place a visit. I could use the opportunity to show Fleita where I began my difficult path as a Shaman…
Swing, strike…Swing, strike…
And right after Pryke, I’ll go visit the wolves…Who cares if I have a ton of unfinished business—I want to complete that particular quest chain. The Gray Death and her wolf cubs were the first serious quest that I received in Barliona, so I couldn’t put it off further. What if some crazy player decided to kill the wolves again? I’d have to wait again…I don’t think so!
Swing, strike…Swing, strike…
And in general, I should just take that damn list and…
Player Kalmira wishes to resurrect you. Do you accept?
“Three have been dug up and another twelve have been buried,” Fleita announced the welcome news. “The buried are being revived and…Hey Teacher, why are you resting? What was it you told me? Do you remember? I don’t know why, but your phrase won’t leave my head: ‘On your mark, get set, go! You didn’t come here to enjoy the pleasant weather.’”
“Little bore,” I muttered, getting up from the ground and heading back to the rocks. My last blow from the pickaxe had caused a cave-in, which finished off the players below and also gave me a nice knock on the head, forcing me to take a rest. I looked around and saw that all the players were already gathering inside the collapsed passage, since the crocolupes we had killed had respawned by now. “And how am I supposed to continue being your teacher after this? Kornik would have me whipped and expelled for speaking to him like that.”
“That’s why I chose you,” the girl smiled. “Besides, you’re not a goblin…”
Frankly, I had taken a great risk in deciding to bury the players. Despite the fact that we were in the same raid party and therefore I couldn’t technically do damage to them, the collapsing rubble could count as doing damage to other players and send me back to the mines for a more permanent ‘rest.’ We got lucky though—the game decided that Clutzer and I were acting within the permitted boundaries. And yet if it weren’t for that Paw, I’d never decide on such a risky step—in the end, my own skin is more valuable to me…
Adjusting my grip on the pickaxe, I approached the rocks again—there was still a lot of work to do and we had plenty of people left to rescue.
The excavations continued for about twelve hours, so we were forced to delay the resumption of the raid for sixteen hours all together. Clutzer and I were falling asleep on our feet. No, I don’t think I want to go back to the mines one bit—the sheer monotony of this will kill me.
“What about now? Shall we go down the middle maybe?” Clutzer cast me a caustic glance. “Or do you have some other ideas?”
“Actually, I do,” I replied. “We’ll continue with the right passage…”
“What do you mean?” All three Raid Leaders looked at me puzzled.
“The right passage is almost completely destroyed. We could even say there no longer is a right passage. And there’s good reason to suspect that whatever of it remains is also a trap. Therefore, here’s what we’ll do—we send in another squad of victims, have them trigger the collapse and then dig them out and see where this passage leads. It’s not like we have any guarantees that the other two passages are full of roses and chocolate. Let’s finish with this one…”
As I predicted, the remaining part of the right passage turned out to contain the exact same trap. What was more was that the trap only activated after more than half of the raid party had entered its area of effect, while the range of the collapse equaled the maximum distance that the leading player had traveled—as we discovered after the first test. Since during the first test, we had been at the very border of the rock jungle, only several dozen meters of the passage had collapsed.
“Now we know what we need to do.” Right after the first test which failed to bury a single player, I gathered my Raid Leaders and explained my hunch. “Which one of us is the fastest?”
“Drang was, but he’s out…Ustar is the second fastest, but he’s quite a bit slower.”
“Doesn’t matter. The main thing is that he makes it to the end of the passage but doesn’t actually leave it.”
“What if that blocks the trap?” Clutzer instantly asked.
“Or triggers another one,” I parried. “We’ll do as we did before. First we trigger the collapse and then see what comes out. Tell Ustar to make the dash…”
Our second attempt at passing through the stone labyrinth really did turn out to be more effective—the only catch was that everyone had to enter. The walls simply refused to collapse. I flirted with the idea of shuttling everyone one at a time across the remaining 700 meters (as Ustar reported), but then immediately rejected it—who knew what other traps those developers had laid in store for us. If we break the walls, then we might simply destroy everything they had prepared. Sometimes destroying everything just works better.
“Dig us out.” As soon as the dust settled, the raid chat came alive with messages that grew steadily happier and happier—before the walls had collapsed, the players had noticed that the right passage had been utterly destroyed. We were now free to move forward, but first Clutzer and I would have to put in some work again, while the raid as a whole was delayed for another day…
+5 Strength, +21 Mining, +3, Dexterity and +3 Stamina—such were the returns from waving my pickaxe for two days. Several times my Energy decreased to zero and I had to take a break to drink an elixir, and several times, my healers had to revive me when a strike from the pickaxe caused a cave-in onto my head. One time, we were visited by a pack of seven Level 300 crocolupes that Ustar had aggroed. The Rogue had decided to see what was in the neighboring passages, but overestimated his stealth stat. Instead of dying peacefully and waiting for us to revive him, this, uh, nearsighted player led the crocolupes straight back to the raid party. It was only because I had decided to unearth Evolett’s healers and warriors first, that we managed to lose half of our party including myself. But it worked out in the end, although Magdey pledged to strip Ustar of any loot not only from the current raid but from several forthcoming ones as well. All in all, it was a difficult two days. The only nice thing was that my Altameda timer had stopped in the Dungeon—the game had graciously decided to allow me to enjoy the current quest…
“As I understand it, we need to reach that island?” Clutzer asked, making himself comfortable on the boulder beside me. We had just freed the last player from his stony prison and scheduled a new time for when we would resume our conquest of the Dungeon—tomorrow at nine in the morning. “And is that work of beauty there our final objective?”
Just beyond the rock trap, which we so ruthlessly destroyed, lay a huge lake—you could even say, a sea. Blue, wavering…Along with the sands that formed a beach, this would make an ideal vacation spot. About five hundred meters from the shore was a small island with a tower occupying the majority of it. Though, perhaps the word ‘tower’ doesn’t do it justice—this epic work of construction rose five hundred meters into the sky. If it were to fall suddenly, it could easily form a bridge between the island and the shore we were on. The crown of this majestic tower was obscured by a constantly swirling blot of strange matter, very reminiscent of Geranika’s shadows. Or a dark storm cloud, depending on how you wanted to see it.
“Yup,” I confirmed Clutzer’s guess.
“The sky is full of birds. The water is full of some kind of flickering shades…Maybe the aqueous relatives of our dear crocolupes? What do you think—how many of us will make the swim? For the record, I don’t have a Diver skill.”
“Mine lasts only about 18 minutes…Let’s see what our options are tomorrow after everyone returns.”
“Okay, until tomorrow then,” said Clutzer. He gazed out at the lake with me for a little while, then sighed, grew transparent and dissolved right before my eyes.
<
br /> All I could do was gasp for breath and struggle with the sudden flood of panic that washed over me—a prisoner had just signed out to reality. He had signed out like any ordinary player, who had had his fill of Barliona and decided to rest a little at home…
What the hell had just happened?!
Chapter Four. Return to Farstead
Mahan, I have a request: Please don’t say a word to anyone about what you just saw—no one, not Eric, not Leite, not Plinto, nor even Anastaria. I’m risking a lot as it is by logging out in front of you. When I return, please don’t even hint that you know I’ve been released. Everyone else has to believe that I’m still incarcerated, the same as you. Sorry, but I can’t tell you anything else. I’ve got so many non-disclosure agreements hanging over my head that I’m ready to lose my mind. Signing out in front of you and this letter “about nothing” is the only loophole I found to tell you about “the situation back home.” Think…think very carefully about why I did this…One slip of the tongue, one wrong move that suggests you know about me and I’ll be done for…
CLUTZER’S LETTER arrived exactly a minute after he signed out into reality. I re-read it several times, looking for the slightest clue but failed to make any sense of what was going on. This was simply not possible. I must be dreaming. I’m about to wake up, tell the Rogue about my crazy dream and we’ll share a nice laugh about it. I had no other way of describing what just happened. Prisoners aren’t allowed to sign out into reality—it’s as simple as that, and what I’d seen had to be nonsense.
Frantically, I tried to recall everything I knew about the Rogue. He was a thief who had been sent to prison for stealing the ‘Mona Lisa,’ as he put it. The amount he had to pay to go free was twenty-two million gold…Even if he were the most brilliant Raid Leader in Barliona, he couldn’t have earned this amount in the three months since I’d left Beatwick. But even if he did manage to amass such a fortune—how’d he get out of the rehabilitation center? According to Nurris’s letter, after serving the lengthy sentence in Barliona, there’s still the rehabilitation phase! When had Clutzer found the time to complete it? He was right here with me the entire time! I really was at a loss. We had met a little over three months ago and I had paid for all three to have the headbands removed. At that point in time, Clutzer was definitely a prisoner—otherwise the Herald would have accused me of a making an improper summons. And now, suddenly, here was Clutzer telling me that he’s a free man and that he doesn’t have to live with the burden of a debt of twenty-two million…
The Karmadont Chess Set (The Way of the Shaman: Book #5) LitRPG series Page 10
