by Trey Myr
CONTENTS
Phantasmal Party
Copyright
Chapter 2: The Drunken Pug
Chapter 3: Shopping
Chapter 4: Bears Bearing Gifts
Chapter 5: Moving Up
Chapter 6: A Night on the Town
Chapter 7: Ram-ifications
Chapter 8: The Swamp
Chapter 9: The Arctology
Chapter 10: Back to the Swamp
Chapter 11: The Drab
Interlude: The Legion
Chapter 12: Head in the Clouds
Chapter 13: The Luck of Sindbad
Chapter 14: Ed Ache
Chapter 15: The Cloud Kingdom
Chapter 16: Snakes and Leaders
Chapter 17: Fight or Flight
Chapter 18: Back to (Un)life
Epilogue
Appendix 1: Shards
Phantasmal Party
By Trey Myr
Copyright © 2019 Tamir Buchshtav
Cover design © 2019 Erez Regev
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means - except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews - without written permission from its publisher.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2019 Tamir Buchshtav
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Chapter 1:
Phantasmal Worker
Eduard Fergusson sat in his room, looking at a pointed shard of clear crystal held in his hand.
The shard had a pentagonal base with two centimeter long edges, and was twenty centimeters long, tapering to a sharp point at its tip.
Excitement battled with trepidation inside him as he looked at the all-important, and yet completely useless piece of crystal.
It was a case if imposed Catch-22. Shards originated in the Labyrinth, and couldn't be found anywhere else, and the guards belonging to the Five Families would bar you from entering the Labyrinth without at least one Sliced Shard. And, of course, you could only trade Shards in either the Bazaar or the Auction House, which were located inside the Labyrinth.
The only exceptions were a group of Shards commonly called "The Impediment". These Shards could be traded freely, and when Sliced would give a person one of five completely useless Skills. The deal was that you Sliced a useless Skillshard, and got access to the Labyrinth. And since most people could only maintain two direct Slices, and since the Impediment skills were nearly impossible to level, you'd be stuck with having only one useful Shard.
It was a lousy deal, and led to a lot of dead would-be Labyrinth delvers, but it was the only way to gain access without patronage from the Five.
Impatient at his own indecision, Ed placed his left hand palm down on the table in front of him, and held the pointed Shard in his right. "Here we go", he said to the empty room, and brought the point of the Shard down on the back of his hand. There was a moment of pain in his left hand as the Shard pierced his skin, and then it was gone and the Shard slid down smoothly into Ed's aura, vanishing from the material plane and leaving only its pentagonal base on the back of his hand.
As soon as the last millimeter of the shard was gone, a rectangle of blue light appeared in front of his eyes. The rectangle was transparent enough that Ed could still see the rest of his room through it, but still solid enough that he could clearly read the words printed on it.
New skill gained: Phantasmal Worker.
As soon as Ed read the message it disappeared, only to be replaced by a new one.
Phantasmal Worker
Tier 0
Level 1
0/100 essence
Creates a construct made of pure mana to serve the user. The construct can carry out simple tasks and will take up to ten points of damage before being dispelled.
The construct cannot attack or use any weapons.
Mana cost: 10
Duration: until dispelled
This was it. One of the five Impediment skills, Phantasmal Worker could be used to carry items for the caster, dig a hole, or even throw itself in front of an attacker to soak some damage. But with no offensive capabilities, the skill had no way to gain essence, and therefore would be impossible to level without using extremely expensive alchemically distilled free essence.
With his useless Skillshard Sliced into his aura, Ed picked up his quarterstaff and left his motel room. The man at the registration counter barely even looked up from his magazine when he came downstairs, and Ed was equally untalkative on his way out into the streets of New Minos.
New Minos, the city built around the only known entrance to the Labyrinth, sprawled in front of Eduard in all its paradoxical glory. Men and women clad in leather, scale or even plate armor drove the newest model of cars. An alchemist was selling health and mana potions from a shabby booth next to a huge outlet for a chain of pharmacies. Cops in blue uniforms and armed with tasers patrolled in pairs with armored Five Family guardsmen carrying hand arbalests. Everywhere you looked the products of 21st century technology mixed with the fantastical loot taken from the Labyrinth.
Ed, however, was blind to the wonder around him as he single-mindedly walked towards the largest building in the city.
The entrance to the Labyrinth.
There were six guards standing at the entrance to the Labyrinth. One armsman from each of the Five Families, and one soldier from UNLOA, the United Nations Labyrinth Oversight Authority. Each one of the guards was wearing the uniform of their respective employer, but even without those uniforms, the allegiance of each was plain to see.
The UNLOA soldier, one of only two plain humans among the guards, was wearing her dress uniform, shoes and cap shined to the point where they could be used as mirrors. A Belgian Five-seveN, the standard issue sidearm for UNLOA was holstered at her belt, and she was aiming a Kirlian-Bjørnson scanner at anyone entering the Labyrinth.
The only other human guard was, naturally, the armsman from the House of Adam. He was at least 180 centimeters tall, and his wide shoulders seemed even wider covered by a severe white tabard over heavy plate armor. He was leaning on a huge shield with the symbol of his House, a stylized "HoA", a large mace hanging from his belt. Like the other Armsmen, he had no need of a K-B scanner. Instead, he had a Sliced Aura Vision Shard, and could see at least the number of Shards Sliced by anyone who approached the entrance, if not their type and tier.
The representative from Tŷ Bwystfilod was a large, imposing markhor-kin. Standing even taller than the House of Adam paladin, the huge screw shaped horns on her head would probably scrape the ceiling of most modern homes. She was wearing a plain leather jerkin in the brown and green of House Bwystfil, a huge warhammer that looked far too heavy for even an Olympic weightlifter to handle resting on the wall behind her.
Domus Tenebris, true to their name, sent what appeared to be nothing more than a shadow to guard the entrance. Ever shifting and fading into the background, "vaguely humanoid" was the only description that could be applied to whoever, or whatever, was there.
An old gnome clad in red robes was obviously a member of The Brotherhood of Hermes. The golden embroidery on his robes could have been the runic script of a majestic enchantment, or a recipe for blackberry pie in an ancient language nobody outside the Brotherhood could read. Dwarfed next to the other guards, the Hermetic was easy to underestimate. A mistake most people only get to do once.
Last but not least, the Bjørnson guard was a tall, handsome elf clad in an exoskeleton made of bronze. Copper gears w
hirred noisily whenever he moved, and he was looking at the world through the blue crystal lenses of his clunky looking helmet. He was holding a weapon that might have started its life as a crossbow, but it was impossible to know for sure beneath the gears, tubes and crystals covering it.
◆◆◆
Approaching the entrance for the first time, Eduard felt the weight of five pairs of eyes and one magitech scanner falling on him. A second later, and it was obvious that the guards could see that he was Sliced. Getting a sneer from the paladin and gnome, Ed entered floor zero of the Labyrinth, home to the great bazaar.
It was impossible to accurately gauge the size of the bazaar. The main hall (or cave, flying island, forest clearing, or one of dozens of other options, depending on the day of the week, alignment of stars, or just the whim of whatever unseen entity created the Labyrinth) of the bazaar was hundreds of meters wide, and an ever changing number of kilometers long. And that was not counting the offshoots. Thousands of stalls covered the floor of the bazaar. Some selling clothing, armor and weapons for any era. Others selling food made from exotic plants and monsters found in the Labyrinth (Try our famous chimera kebab! Best eaten with a side of behemoth tzaziki!), potions from the best (or worst) alchemists, and Shards of any type.
It was the last which drew Ed's eyes the most. Danger and combat lurked in every corner of the Labyrinth, beyond the safety of the bazaar, and having a combat skill Sliced would make his survival a lot more likely. Unfortunately, the last of his money was spent on buying Phantasmal Worker. Even that useless Shard cost him the sum of five years of saving. With a last, regretful look at a proudly presented Greater Bulwark Shard, which would let a man armed with any melee weapon parry all attacks aimed at him for a period of ten seconds, Ed turned his gaze towards an Escheresque array of stairways, slides and corridors taking up the center of the cavern.
The entrance to the Labyrinth proper.
Nobody knows who or what designed the stairway to the Labyrinth, but it was clear that whoever it was did not feel constrained by human concepts such as "geometry". Doors floated in the air, oriented in directions that gravity shouldn't have allowed. Walkways and stairs connected seemingly random doors, leading from nothing to nowhere. And the people walking on those walkways oriented sideways or upside down, varied from obvious newcomers wearing jeans and t-shirts to grizzled veterans in exotic armors, most of whom have long since abandoned the plain human race in their search for the means to delve deeper.
As a newcomer himself, and without any combat applicable Shards, Ed turned towards the ground level stairway marked clearly "Floor 1". It was an unwritten rule among the delvers that no adventuring party would accept a member without at least one proven excursion into the Labyrinth. An untested party member could spell doom for the whole party if they froze at the wrong time, and so a newcomer had to prove themselves by entering the Labyrinth solo and surviving to tell the tale.
The stairway Ed was approaching seemed like it was going nowhere. Rising two meters into the air and then stopping without even connecting to anywhere. However, as soon as Ed set his first foot down on the first stair, a walkway leading to a previously unseen (or not existing) door sprang into existence and connected to the stairway. Standing in front of the door, Ed took a deep breath, and opened the door into the first floor of the Labyrinth.
◆◆◆
The true size of the Labyrinth is one of the mysteries of its existence. It is impossible to tell if the Labyrinth even has something as trivial as size. It is entirely possible that each of the different floors is unlimited in size. It is just as likely that the size is limited, but the Labyrinth changes constantly to create new zones and new challenges. It is even possible that the Labyrinth is limited in size, and as rigid as any human construction, but still large enough that even the first floor has yet to be charted in its entirety.
Whatever the truth was, it's an undeniable fact that each time a person or group entered the Labyrinth, they would find themselves in a random part of whatever floor they have entered, and it was impossible to know in advance what one would find when they passed through the doors. The terrain would vary from the ruins of cities ancient beyond human understanding, to caverns deep under unknown mountains, to every imaginable (and some unimaginable) location. The one constant was the door back to the stairway, and at least one door deeper into the Labyrinth.
It was, therefore, no surprise to Ed when he found himself on a grassy hill overlooking a dense forest. Twin suns, one a normal looking yellow and the other a bright pink burned bright in the sky, lending a strange hue to the green grass below and the darker green of the treetops. The happy sounds of singing birds could be heard from above, and the wind brought the sweet smell of flowers to his nose. There was precious little time to enjoy the beautiful view, however, since Ed's arrival did not at all fail to raise the attention of the grassland's denizens, and brown furry shapes, each about the size of a large dog, stopped grazing on the grass, and raised their horned heads to stare at the invader, and one of them, the closest to Ed's entrance, started loping towards him.
"It's about time I caught a lucky break" Ed muttered when he saw the horned rabbits, and quickly activated his one, mostly useless, skill. A strange feeling, as if something he never knew he had was being drained from him, spread through his body, as a small orb of blue light coalesced in front of him, taking a total of ten seconds to form into a vaguely humanoid shape, devoid of any distinguishing features. "Block the charge of any horned rabbit that attacks me", ordered Ed, as he took his quarterstaff from behind his back and prepared to fight the first of the horned rabbits.
Ranging in size from that of a large cat to a small horse, and characterized by the single unicorn-like horn on their heads, horned rabbits are largely considered among the least dangerous monsters in the Labyrinth. That is not to say that they weren't dangerous. A leaping rabbit could drive its horn through most types of unenchanted light and medium armor, and their uncanny aim was enough to bring down their share of would-be Labyrinth delvers.
The rabbit now charging towards Ed was typical of the breed. Brown furred and droopy eared, it could easily be mistaken for a Cashmere Lop, if it wasn't for its sharp horn and the fact that it was easily the size of a St. Bernard. As instructed, Ed's Phantasmal Worker moved to place itself between the charging rabbit and Ed, and took the brunt of its momentum, stopping the rabbit in mid-leap before dissolving into nothingness due to the damage taken from the piercing horn.
The rabbit, expecting to fell its target and drop on it, was confused by the Worker's disappearance, and stood motionless of a couple of seconds after dropping back to the ground. Ed, on the other hand, was expecting precisely this, and didn't waste any time before smashing his quarterstaff on the rabbit's head, stunning it for long enough to take out a long dagger, and quickly drive it into the back of the rabbit's neck, killing it instantly.
"Guess those years of training with Master Pierre were worth it", panted Ed, more from the adrenaline than from any actual exertion. "It looks like the other rabbits scattered when I killed this one. Good thing too, since I don't think I can summon the Worker again right now."
Removing his knife from the dead rabbit, Ed proceeded to slice of the horn and place it in his bag. Horned rabbits were fairly common, and the horn wouldn't be worth a lot, but it could be used as an ingredient in several low level potions, and the alchemists in the bazaar would pay enough for it to be worth taking. It was a pity Ed had neither the skills nor the Skills to butcher the rabbit properly. Horned rabbit meat was one of the staples of New Minos inns, and would bring in a little more coin that could be saved towards getting a decent Skillshard.
"Come to think of it, how long would it take for my mana to regenerate enough to resummons the Phantasmal Worker?" Ed asked himself after he was finished with the horn. "Status!"
Any Shard, no matter what it primary purpose was, gave the person who Sliced it the ability to view their status, a compilation of th
eir physical and mental abilities, along with the Shards they have Sliced, and at Ed's command, a blue window appeared in front of him.
Eduard Fergusson
Race
Human
Class
None
Shards
1/2
Strength
6
Dexterity
7
Wisdom
4
Constitution
7
Agility
8
Intelligence
6
HP
20/20
Mana
7/16
HP regen
0.7/hour
Mana regen
6/hour
Shard
Level
Essence
Phantasmal Worker
0
0/100
"Half an hour before I can resummons the Phantasmal Worker, and then an hour and a half for the next. I'll be here all week if I wait for mana after each battle."
Having spent the past several years training and preparing to enter the Labyrinth, Ed was familiar with the common tactics suited to fight most of the low leveled monsters, including the horned rabbits. It would be more difficult to fight them without a decoy to take their initial leap attack, but barring a truly stupid mistake or bout of bad luck, he should be able to defeat them.
After sheathing his dagger and picking up his quarterstaff, Ed chose a direction, and went in search of more monsters, and the way to the next level of the Labyrinth.
It didn't take long to find another horned rabbit, but the same could not be said about the fight itself. The open grasslands let Ed see the rabbit long before it was close enough to leap, and he set himself to wait, watching for the telltale bunching of the rabbit's back that always came before the leap. Moving swiftly to the left while bringing his quarterstaff up to divert the rabbit, Ed avoided the attack, but found that the rabbit was too quick to be caught in his follow up attack. The second leap was just as easy to avoid, and this time Ed managed a glancing blow to the rabbit's back leg, a blow which didn't seem to bother the rabbit even a little. The dance of leap, avoid and retaliate continued for long minutes, until eventually the rabbit started to slow down, though it was impossible to tell if it was because of the few hits Ed managed to land, or just plain exhaustion. Whatever the reason, the rabbit was slowing, and a couple of leaps later Ed finally managed to solidly hit it on its head, stunning him, and he managed to end the fight in much the same way he ended the first one.
