by Dakota Krout
“So has tonight been a productive night?” the moon Elf called with a smirk. Dale waited until he was close, then took a vicious swing at the pompous Elf. With easy grace the Elf avoided the blow and frowned. “Well, it didn’t make you smarter. Let’s try again! Bye-bye.” He grabbed Dale and threw him toward the edge of the cliff again.
This time Dale was prepared. With a flare of Essence, he sent strands of Chi into the air around him. He gripped the air, not trying to form a technique but to simply interact with it. The result was akin to what a snowshoe did on snow; it evened out the force of his weight and movement. He came to a stop in midair and slowly dropped to the ground.
“Well that’s new.” The Moon Elf’s eyes were glistening as Dale stood firmly. “You got back early enough for us to continue, and it looks like we can finally start your training.” He seemed to flicker, and Dale felt a fist smash into his stomach. It was going to be a long night, full of harsh, painful lessons.
~ Chapter Twenty ~
“For my people, it has always been surviving long enough to get any substantial amount of it done,” Bob answered calmly. “Now though, I would say the tedium of refining through meditation is what drives our people from taking advantage of it.”
“Just so.” He nodded, flinching as my Essence shattered a rock that was in the way. “Your power has grown substantially, Great Spirit. You must have bound yourself to a powerful law.”
I chuckled.
Bob just looked confused.
“Ah, to have such issues,” Bob wistfully joked.
Bob looked around, blood streaming from his ears. I quickly healed him, wincing mentally as I found his eardrums had been pulped. “What just happened?” he shouted, clapping his hands over his ears as sound came rushing back to him.
I felt my Core in astonishment.
Bob shuddered. “Well. I’m glad I was this far from your Core then. I think perhaps you misjudged your needs for ranking higher?”
I thought about his words.
My shaman nodded. “That is plausible, especially seeing now that you have already grown in strength. Maybe in the future though, you bounce ideas like that one off of adventurers? It may make a good trap. Killed by complaining.”
“Your will, my command.” Bob bowed as the pressure of my presence exited the room.
I sighed. Everything I was doing was feeling like busy-work. Like I was just marking time until I…
“Cal?” a voice called out.
My attention whipped toward the intrusive noise.
Her voice had preceded her into the dungeon via the portals, and when she stepped in a look of horror crossed her face as she grabbed at her chest and collapsed to her knees. It took a second for me to realize what was happening. Our bond was being updated via my Mana, replacing the Essence that had connected us. After a moment, she shuddered and stood.
“Celestial…” she muttered, holding her hand to her head. “That was unexpected. You moved into the Mage ranks? You are a B-ranked dungeon now? Congratulations! The church of Cal will grow wonderfully when this news is spread!”
“You must have bound to a powerful law to have that kind of effect on me just after reaching this rank! What did you bind to? Or can’t you tell me? Is it a jealous law? I know some can be overly secretive, so don’t worry if you can’t let me know, but what is it?” She finally stopped to take a breath.
I quickly cut her off and explained my ascension. She was a good audience and got really excited at all the right parts. When I explained about how the Silverwood tree had intervened, she actually squealed with delight.
“The question of Silverwood trees has bothered me my entire life! So that is how they help? They let you push into a higher tier you normally wouldn’t be able to? Amazing!” Minya gushed happily. “This is going directly into the dungeon manual I am writing!”
She nodded, reaching into her bag and pulling out an assortment of goods. “Don’t absorb these yet, let me explain them.” Good thing she told me, I was ready to take a bite. She started pointing at the items in sequence. “These are Runes that are forbidden in the cultivation world outside of actual wartime emergencies. If I were to have been found giving these to you, I would be hunted down for treason. As the lowest charge.”
“You have no idea! I got the good stuff,” she promised with a scary grin. “This is a Rune known as ‘taunt’. Anything that sees it while it is active is drawn to it like a moth to a flame. It ignites hatred and fury, causing those afflicted to attack it and the one using it. There are a few conditions to use it properly though. It has to be moving, at least a little. Like bait. For example, you can’t connect it to a wall and expect it to force people to pound on the stone.”
“Use helmets only if you want people to bash them in the head over and over, sure. I’d suggest shields.” Minya chuckled warmly. I would have blushed if I could; that was so obvious! “This one over here is known as a ‘catapult defense’ Rune. It has the ability to affect the weight of things that pass over it. The heavier the object, the more it affects it. In a siege, these are placed in strategic locations. When a rock or ballista bolt goes over them, they suddenly are much heavier for a second or two. This forces them to drop to the ground much faster than intended, which can be really beneficial.”
“What? You broke Mithril armor?” Minya was so surprised that she stopped explaining. “Is that a joke?”
“Uhm. Right. This is a wound-healing Rune. This was certainly, by far, the best find!” she told me excitedly.
I scoffed a bit.
“Oh, this is dangerous.” She nodded as if in deep thought. “Improperly used or used overmuch, it causes the target of the Rune to be in a state of extreme metabolism. Their body is trying to divert all resources to healing, but without a wound, it just stays in ‘high alert’ if you will. The stress damages the body, which is then healed, which causes more damage. They can’t sleep, they make mistakes, they fall apart. This draws heavily upon all the resources of the body.”
She looked at the Rune with a creepy grin. “Outside of actually healing, this Rune has a different name. It’s called a ‘starvation’ Rune.”
Minya shook herself out of her reverie. “Sadly, those are the only Runes I found that were unknown to you. I have a few traps though. This one is similar to what was used to capture… Dani. It creates a net of Mana that constricts around a target and holds them. If they aren’t Mages, they won’t be able to free themselves. Even if they are Mages, it’ll take a moment to break out of it. This version over here is similar, but instead of holding, it cuts. Think full-body bear trap. Next we have a sleep trap, a ‘slow’ trap, and a ‘speed’ trap.”
I interrupted her,
“The ‘slow’ trap is used to hinder movements. If you have a really fast animal you are after, and it goes through this, it will move like it is stuck in honey. Very slowly,” Minya explained impatiently. “The speed trap is just the opposite. Say you have a large, powerful creature chasing you. If it goes through the trap, its momentum is increased drastically in whatever direction it is moving. Suddenly, the creature sprints headlong into a wall or off a cliff. Useful for that kind of thing.”
“One more thing!” Her teeth were showing in a wide grin. “I found a collector…”
“Well, there is a group out there that studies animals, Beasts, and all manner of plants and minerals. A subset of them likes to prove their studies, or encounters, by taking samples. This started a group that collects samples of perfectly preserved blood. I bought his whole collection.”
She opened a case filled with dozens of vials. Each vial was marked with a tag, and each tag had a small entry in a journal. All of these entries had a seal on them, guaranteeing authenticity. Reading over a few of the entries, I got as excited as Minya.
“Just let me know how your research goes. Maybe let me bring some of it into polite society and present it as my own work?” she requested with a grin.
Minya shook her head. “The way you use Essence and corruption is revolutionary. That alone would be more than enough to make a compendium that would be studied the world over. What is getting you down?”
She had a look on her face like I slapped her. “Those aren’t the best? What makes you say that?”
“Huh. Well, if you think that… why not just pass some Essence or corruption over a bunch of things at the same time?” Minya casually offered with a shrug.
I felt stricken.
“I’m unsure. Also, Cal…”
“You seem… better. More awake.” Minya squirmed as she talked, clearly uncomfortable.
She spoke in a conciliatory manner, “I know that something changed for you recently and getting to the B-ranks seems to have further slowed the degradation of your mind, but who knows how long that will last? To that end, I am going to start hiring entire mercenary companies to begin searching. I’m going to need a lot of gold. Platinum would be preferable, actually. I need to take care of you, and that would help a lot.”
“I figured.” She flipped a coin into the air which I snapped up like a dog being tossed a treat. “Take this, and let’s get to work.”
“You got it, Boss.” Minya left with a happy smile and a treasure trove of platinum coins.
~ Chapter Twenty-One ~
“So we are going straight to the fourth floor today?” Tom boomed, flexing his muscles to generate heat in the sub-zero wind.
Dale nodded. “If that is alright with you all. I had a really rough night, and I’m not feeling up to a full dungeon dive. I’d like to cultivate for a while, clear the floor, make a bit of money, and then sleep for six hours.”
“I’ll let you do all of that except the sleep.” Hans poked fun at the team leader. “You’ve been lazing around too much recently.”
His joke fell flat. Dale was coated in bruises, had deep bags under his eyes, and was still painfully thin despite the large portions of food he forced himself to eat at each meal.
Dale tried to play along, but his voice came out a bit too close to sounding dead to be funny. “Well, you know me; a useless, lazy guy that can’t get anything done. If I were in a story book, I’d be a side character.”
Tyler found them just then, braving the snow and wind. “Hello! I have a new toy, er, weapon for you all to try! Also a request, if you don’t mind.”
“Good morning. We are only going to the fourth floor today, will that be a problem?” Adam spoke for the group in his melodic voice.
“No, on the contrary! It is perfect!” Tyler rubbed his hands together. “You see, we think that we have found a way to make that floor’s Boss’s fur into more than just a stylish cloak. Sadly, the process is… well, not perfected?”
“You need several because it gets ruined a lot?” Adam supplied a translation.
Tyler nodded, unabashedly rubbing his hands together. “Precisely!”
“He used to be so timid and quiet…” Hans teared up, sighing like he had lost a longtime friend.
“We will do it if we can, but Snowball is getting a lot smarter these days. Fewer and fewer people are able to end him before he runs away,” Adam told the merchant.
“Not a problem! Do your best! Also, this new dagger. Hans, you use blades like this, yes?” Tyler gingerly held out a blade.
Hans took it, testing its balance and bending it a bit to see how flexible it was. It had an oddly curved, serrated edge. “This is…”
“Yes?”
“Garbage.” Hans shook his head and tried to give it back. “It is balanced like a lead Warhammer and as flexible as a brick.
I can’t throw it, and I can’t use it in a fight.”
Tyler frantically backed away just as Hans tried to push the knife back to him. “Careful with that!” he yelped and tumbled to the frozen ground. “There is a reason it is so awkward. This is a blade made from the claws of a Flesh Cat. When it is swung with any force, it seems to project… something. About six inches from the blade. That something tears apart bodies. It ignores anything in the way. Try it out on something heavily armored? Ah… also, after it is swung hard, it tends to shatter.”
Hans stared at him with dead eyes. “So it is a single use garbage dagger? No thank you.”
“Oh, just try it!” Tyler huffed as he wiped snow off his butt. “We want to start marketing it soon as a way to kill Raile without blunt weapons. Also, it is called a ‘Rune Tooth’. So, when you want to buy more, now you know what to call it.”
Hans looked at the dagger. “At least you seem confident in it. I don’t see any Runes on it though...”
“Oh it works well.” Tyler nodded at Hans’ perception. “No Runes, you are correct. Actually, the original creator got to name it because he nearly bled to death trying it out.”
“Hmm. Seems misleading.” Hans tucked away the dagger and walked away without another word.
“I guess he is trying it?” Tyler muttered into the empty area. “Maybe?”
The group stepped through the portal into the fourth floor, quietly discussing their plans. Dale stepped out and dropped to the floor forthwith.
“Dale?” Rose prodded him with her bow. “Dale is unconscious. Guys?”
“What happened?” Adam tried to heal him.
“A new foe!” Tom looked about excitedly.
