Escape From Litchfield

by Isra Bhuthimethee

  In addition to viewing the traps, she copied down the glyphs, preparing her own version, except potentially more powerful. The various triggers that she found were amazing. The triggers could react to proximity, magic intensity, magic type, delay, or even by intent. The last one sounded like a useful trigger.

  On the eighth level, they found a room that was filled with mechanical and magical traps. Arnaud explained that this room had taken years to figure out the traps. If you ran straight through, you would definitely get overwhelmed by the sheer number of traps. However, if you followed a certain pattern, you could get through if you had over a thousand health via shield and hp.

  [Bob89: That looks like the perfect room to perfect our Beat Dance Battle]

  [Tamara: Can we afford to train here?]

  [Bob89: It's a rare opportunity to gain skill.]

  "Guys," she said. "This spot would be perfect for some skill training. Mind if I practice for a bit?"

  Sol nodded. "I could use some meditation time, mana pools don't fill themselves up, you know?"

  Arnaud shrugged. "I could always take a nap."

  Tamara fully buffed and shielded herself before taking the floor. She began the Beat Dance Battle trying to keep her feet in motion according to the beat. Her steps were short and precise. She was starting to learn the various common patterns. From loop de loops, crossovers, arpeggio, and bridges all while dodging projectiles. The first pass through she lost her shield and all but 70 of her hp even with Sol and Arnaud chain healing her.

  By the tenth passthrough, she was able to get through with only a 76 point hp deficit.

  [Bob89: Good Job, Human! You're matching the patterns, but some of your footwork is sloppy. You need to imagine that anytime you take a step, you should be able to handle a hit without falling over.]

  [Tamara: But they missed!]

  [Bob89: My interest is practicing proper form while dodging projectiles, not dodging projectiles with bad form.]

  Tamara took several hits but her performance improved. Her footwork was solid, each step was quick and each foot was planted solidly against the ground. After several hours of practice, they continued to clear the level.

  Tamara gained 10 level in Beat Dance Battle and now it is 16

  They continued the routine of fighting, resting, and camping. Despite the efficient battles, resting before the next fight was incredibly important. Each fight took minutes, but it took thirty to recover for the next fight. Any longer and the room would respawn on top of them, so moving forward required them to have less than forty minute downtime between fights. This left this some wiggle room because no one wants to fight while sitting between two groups of enemies. The chance that something would go wrong was significantly higher in that case. Because the levels were heavily camped, they made it to level 10 in two days. They will need to slow down as they go deeper.

  Quest Completed!:SubClass Quest 8: Drummer

  You have chosen the subclass Drummer. Use your skill in combat or with a paying audience 800 times. This has a Level D difficulty.

  Reward:1600 experience.

  Failure:It is impossible to fail this quest.

  Tamara has earned 1600 raw experience! After bonuses are applied, 2560 was earned!

  Ding! Tamara has gained a level. Welcome to level 37!

  Quest Completed:SubClass Quest 9: Drummer

  You have chosen the subclass Drummer. Use your skill in combat or with a paying audience 900 times. This has a Level D difficulty.

  Reward:1800 experience.

  Failure:It is impossible to fail this quest.

  Tamara has earned 1800 raw experience! After bonuses are applied, 2880 was earned!

  Quest:SubClass Quest 10: Drummer

  You have chosen the subclass Drummer. Use your skill in combat or with a paying audience 900 times. This has a Level D difficulty.

  Reward:2000 experience.

  Failure:It is impossible to fail this quest.

  ***

  As she meditated, she coalesced gravity in the area around her, feeling her weight increased. The ancients were able to harness gravity and anti-gravity, its opposite, to create energy. She needed to figure out how to decrease her weight, and that should be anti-gravity. As she pondered, she tried creating gravity in different ways and had no success. Strangely, a feeling of mild smugness welled up in her. She had nothing to be smug about.

  [Bob89: You are not that creative. Maybe you should talk to a genius.]

  Tamara paused. Bob89 must know the answer to be breaking her concentration and giving unhelpful hints.

  [Tamara: Not even a genius could easily solve this problem. If only we knew someone.]

  After another half an hour of unsuccessful attempts, she got another message.

  [Bob89: I'm a genius. Ask me! I'm so helpful!]

  [Tamara: Do you know how to solve the problem? Please tell me.]

  [Bob89: Yes. If you recall, you got a list of runes from Research1. Anti-gravity was one of the runes.]

  Tamra gasped out in surprise, "Of course!"

  [Tamara: Thanks!]

  [Bob89: Don't mention it!]

  For some reason, Tamara felt an extreme level of self-satisfaction and smugness course through her body. She knew herself enough to know that this wasn't natural. If it wasn't coming from her, then maybe from Bob89... And he was bleeding through to her. Perhaps that synchronization attribute on her character sheet meant more than she thought. Shaking her head, she decided to leave this issue for another time, she had an energy source to build, and a dungeon to escape! She knew that if she didn't strike the iron while it was hot, she was likely to lose it.

  First, she needed to try out the new rune. She pulled up the rune for anti-gravity in her mind. She drew the rune using her power. Rune magic gave her the tools to shape and specify the area of effect. She chose a spherical shape centering on her, extended out to a 3 foot diameter, so it completely engulfed her.

  Immediately, she lost her footing and flew up into the air. Fortunately, she lost her concentration, and the spell stopped before she could smash into the ceiling. Unfortunately, she fell 4 feet onto hard stone, smashing hard enough that she lost her breath.

  The test was a success, despite falling on her face!

  With her magic sensitive eyes, she interpreted normal gravity magic as a purple color. Anti-gravity gave off a blue color.

  She recalled the dynamo from storage. Last time she had worked with it, she had powered up a core using the hand crank. Useful, but she wasn't about to stop during battle to hand crank her gadget to shoot off a spell. She needed to power the gadget using runes that siphoned off the power to self power itself. This was the secret to gravity engines. Normally, there is no such thing as free energy, but scientists in the old world discovered an exotic material that created anti-gravity naturally. The material needed special containment procedures because it was highly volatile, however, it generated fields that naturally opposed gravity. Pulsing and shaping the field allowed the scientists to turn the advanced dynamos, generating energy without any outside fuel.

  Tamara could create anti-gravity fields without the use of exotic materials. Technological gravity engines siphoned off a portion of the energy to contain the exotic material, so theoretically, she could create gravity engines far more efficient than the ancients.

  Creating the dynamo required runes to manipulate gravity and anti-gravity to turn the generator. Ancients could only see the results of the manipulations, but Tamara had the advantage that she could literally see the fields and the effects they produced. The result was pretty amazing. The dynamo could now power cores. The experimental unit sparked a number of tests that needed to be done in the future when she was back in her workshop in Hopetown. As it was, she could engrave runes to alter the rotational speed of the crank to either increase or decrease the energy yield. This led to the thought, what if she could stack multiple cores together to harness the gravity effects more efficiently? What was the difference when varyi
ng the number of coil turns and rotational speeds of the dynamo? As these questions flitted through her mind, she shook her head and focused. Survival first. The experimental device was a success if a bit unwieldy. She needed to take what she learned and miniaturize the devices, then power up spell cores.

  [Bob89: I can read you like a book. And I approve, it's been a while since you've piqued my interest. I've calculated that we can miniaturize the dynamo to about the size of a coin. We can even make them smaller, if necessary. However, a coin sized energy generator would be small enough that you could place it anywhere.]

  [Tamara: Sounds good Bob89. Can we make 2 or 3 before we head out in the morning?]

  [Bob89: Sure. I've got some modifications in mind too.]

  [Tamara: I was thinking. Can we replace the energy generator in Plasma Rifles to be less dangerous?]

  [Bob89: Yes. A modified mana-engine should do the trick. If you use the coin-sized version, it may even improve the rate of recharge.]

  [Tamara: OK. I'd like to do it. Right now, we have rifles that are barely usable. Sure, we can use them, but at the risk that if we drop it or the enemy shoots it, we'd blow up. If we replace the energy cores, we can use that as a hand thrown artillery, while the rifle lets us soften up targets.]

  [Bob89: Consider it done. It would be simple to allow our mana-engines to hook up to plasma rifles. It's only slightly more work and materials.]

  [Tamara: Thanks Bob89! You're pretty handy to have around!]

  Completed Quest:Discover your power

  You have chosen the profession Master of Gravity. You are the first Awakened to learn this profession, and as the First, you have the honor of discovering how it works! Good luck, you will need it. This has a Level A difficulty.

  Reward:5000 experience.

  Learning is a reward in of itself.

  Failure:If you fail to discover your power within 48 hours, you will never discover it. Use it or lose it.

  Tamara has earned 5000 raw experience! After bonuses are applied, 8000 was earned!

  Ding! Tamara has gained a level. Welcome to level 39!

  ***

  As they continued to walk, Tamara was trying to learn how to view the future using her gravity magic and Remote View spell. Remote View allowed her to view any area within range, and she often used it to check for traps. In this case, she combined it with a gravity field. In theory, by placing the Remote View in a gravity field, she should either see the future or the past in the view. However, it seemed like she was seeing the same thing either way.

  [Bob89: I think I see your problem!]

  [Tamara: What do you mean? There's no change]

  [Bob89: That you can detect. But maybe you know someone with superior senses?]

  [Tamara: OK, I'll bite. Magnificently sensitive Bob89, what do you sense?]

  [Bob89: Well, since you asked... After great effort, I have been able to convert your Remote View spell to a digital picture. And I've been recording your attempts to view time. The results are fascinating.]

  [Tamara: Well, spill it, what's the result?]

  [Bob89: Your current output is producing a picture in the future, but it doesn't work the way you'd think. First, it's not far into the future, so you'll need to give it a ton more juice to see anything worthwhile. Second, I suspect that what is being shown isn't the future, but a possible future. Because the future isn't set, so you can change your actions to change the future. We'll have to obtain more juice before running experiments.]

  [Tamara: How do you know it's the future?]

  [Bob89: It's because you're using our location as the output of the Remote View. That means I can watch the Remote View and see the data from our senses simultaneously. Then compare them. Only an amazingly complex being such as myself could do this.]

  [Tamara: Thank you!]

  [Bob89: You're welcome. Extrapolating the data, I feel that you could get around a second or two of useful information from the future. However, it might be better to allow me to handle the future and give you pointers.]

  [Tamara: What do you mean?]

  [Bob89: Take, for instance, the game rock, paper, scissors. If you had one second of video to see the future, normal human reflexes wouldn't be able to adjust your hand fast enough to change your response. However, I can parse the future and tell you which one to pick.]

  [Tamara: So you'll be like a coach? Pick Rock, not scissors.]

  [Bob89: Yes. I will expand on the visual cues.]

  [Tamara: OK]

  Tamara has learned a new skill Augur!

  Tamara gained 1 level in Augur and now it is 1

  Augur:This ability gives the user the ability to sense when they will receive a killing blow. The warning will arrive at least .05 seconds before the blow lands where n = level of skill.

  [Tamara: Not a bad skill, but I don't think I'll be able to dodge in time.]

  [Bob89: Nonsense! You simply need to level the skill. At level 10 you'll have a full half second to dodge.]

  [Tamara: True. But how will we level the skill? I don't want to face death that many times to level up.]

  Level 10 was filled with level 40 monsters, which were all higher level than everyone in the party by a fair margin. The drops were, as expected, very poor. Most of the loot was alchemist parts, cores, and air. Occasionally, they'd get some credits, but not too many. It was a wonder that people could afford to live in the town with these abysmal drop rates.

  Arnaud said, "I've never completed this floor, but it's rumored that this is an undead floor. There's a floor boss on this level unless it's being camped."

  Tamara nodded as she checked her logs. Scanning her logs, she noted that they defeated 28 monsters and improved skills. Not bad considering how the first ten levels are highly camped.

  Chapter 13

  Myst scouted the first room and found 4 Greater Skeletons guarding the room. These were warriors in the 40th level. Perfect to test Tamara's new strategy.

  [Tamara: I'll get into position and wait for you to start the fight.]

  [Sol: OK.]

  Tamara positioned herself nearly to the other side of the room, before stopping. She would have at least a few seconds to wait after Sol's attack. The skeletons were all bunched up next to the exit, so they needed to pick up speed and distance to pass her position.

  Tamara watched Sol launch a fireball and heard the explosion behind her. Hissing and the thud of running bone feet erupted as the skeletons rushed to get their revenge. As soon as the skeletons passed her, she backstabbed the straggler and simultaneously stole his gravity. The skeleton floated to the ceiling as Tamara rushed to attack the next threat. Fortunately for the half-elf, the rest of the enemy was distracted by the pair of Fireballs launched from Arnaud and Sol. And Tamara didn't flinch as she struck her next victim with her sword, stealing his gravity and sending him to the ceiling as well. The fireballs exploded into the remaining skeletons with a slight pushback. The ceiling skeletons were left hissing and crawling on the ceiling trying to reach their ground-based foes.

  Myst struck with a pair of backstabs, nearly killing the charred skeleton. Tamara swooped in with her sword, cutting the skeleton in half and killing it.

  The last ground skeleton smashed into Sol's Sphere Shield with his mace. Sol and Arnaud countered with fire darts. Myst clawed the skeleton and shifted into the shadows. Tamara slashed his back and unleashed all her stolen gravity into a basketball-sized Gravity Dart. The gravity dart smashed into the skeleton, warping the space it hit. The bone visibly bent and hairline cracks appeared in concentric circles focused at the region of dart impact. The next pair of fire darts from Arnaud and Sol set the skeleton in flames and shattered the previous wound. It fell down dead.

  The group turned to the two ceiling skeletons and lobbed Ball type spells at the helpless warriors. Each fell down to the ground when their hp reached zero.

  Arnaud enthusiastically said, "Tamara, good work! You cut the enemy's group by 50% using your new skill! That's a bit overpowered,
but I like it! That cat of yours is pretty OP too. Where did you say you got it at? I really need to get one too!"

  "Thanks! It saved my life in a do or die situation." Tamara smiled at the compliment, but her face noticeably became closed off at the question about Myst. "Sorry. Myst is a one-of-a-kind pet that I've never seen elsewhere."

  Arnaud nodded and said, "No problem, no problem! He's an amazing pet and had to ask."

  Tamara has defeated a level 40 being and has earned 57 raw experience! After bonuses applied, 92 experience was earned!

  ...

  Tamara has defeated a level 40 being and has earned 57 raw experience! After bonuses applied, 92 experience was earned!

  Sol has defeated a level 40 being and has earned 62 raw experience! After bonuses applied, 99 experience was earned!

  ...

  Sol has defeated a level 40 being and has earned 62 raw experience! After bonuses applied, 99 experience was earned!

  Ding! Sol has gained a level. Welcome to level 37!

  Tamara gained 1 level in Beat Dance Battle and now it is 17

  Tamara gained 1 level in Leadership and now it is 16

  Tamara gained 1 level in Gravity Theft and now it is 6

  Tamara gained 1 level in Sword and now it is 38

  The group was making great progress, but they slowed down dramatically when they entered uncamped territory. They continued the 40 minute window between fights, but because of their tight schedule, they usually camped at the safe room at the end of each level. At minimum, they rested three hours before attempting a new level. Sometimes they would do two levels before camping for the night, but it wasn't particularly safe to fight to exhaustion.

  Level 17 started with tunnels, but after a short distance, the tunnel widened and ended with a cavern of light. When they reached the end, they found a ledge overlooking a vast cavern filled with trees, bushes, and ponds. A vein of crystal ran through the ceiling bringing sunlight from the surface world.