Dungeons of Strata (Deepest Dungeon #1) - A LitRPG series

by G. D. Penman

  “We no want you drain home,” Speckled explained. “We no want come back down here. Bad down here.”

  Lindsay coughed up a lungful of water onto Jericho’s chest, eliciting another grumble from him.

  “Ugh.”

  She scrambled to her feet, still hacking and coughing. Meanwhile, Julia seemed quite content to just lie still, nestled under Jericho’s arm. Martin filed that little detail away for later contemplation.

  From his current step, it might be feasible to jump back up and grab the silver rim of the gate. Now that the waterfall had formed properly, it left the gate more or less clear as it drew the remaining water down from a source above them.

  There was no sign of a keyhole on this side of the gate, but Martin seemed to remember someone saying they were a one-way deal. You could go up all you wanted; going down was the tricky bit.

  Grabbing Speckles by the back of his string vest of bones, Martin leapt down onto the next platform just as Lindsay’s staggering brought her to the edge of the stone shelf.

  “Wow. The next step is a big one.”

  Julia and Jericho chuckled, one high-pitched, the other so deep Martin could feel it vibrating up through the soles of his feet. Without even thinking about it, he reached out and pulled Lindsay back from the precipice.

  The air around them seemed to thicken, and Martin felt like he was moving in slow motion as he turned towards a grinding sound from behind them.

  Looming just behind Speckles, the hooded figure of a Master stretched up like a shadow. Its empty sleeves were upstretched and a dance of what looked like code flickered between them in a shimmer of light.

  It could have been any one of the Masters in those empty robes, but when the hollowed cowl turned towards him, there was a distinct impression of amused malevolence that told Martin it was the one he had already met.

  With a twist of its arms, the step that led back to the last deep slid seamlessly into the waterfall and out of sight.

  “You didn’t need to backtrack, did you? Someone special like you won’t need extra supplies. I’m sure you can make it to the next settlement on Deep Eleven without needing any rest at the speed you are flying through my dungeon.”

  Martin had only just opened his mouth to answer when, just as suddenly as they had appeared, the Master was gone.

  For a long moment Martin couldn’t believe the pettiness of it. There was a whole game filled with thousands of players for this Master to persecute, and here they were harassing him because he wouldn’t talk about mushrooms.

  How many times had this happened? How many times were they on the right track, when parts of the game were shuffled around to spite them? Was this why they kept encountering monsters from the lower deeps?

  He opened his mouth to complain about the unfairness of it all but then he stopped himself. The Master could still be here, invisible, untouchable and watching.

  Martin had no intention of letting anyone know that they were getting to him. Not now, not ever. Particularly when nobody else seemed to have noticed that anything was happening, or that anything had changed. There were layers to Strata that they couldn’t see or touch. The Masters could manipulate everything down here, even time and perception. They were like gods, and he had one of the gods angry at him. Great.

  With some effort, he unclenched his jaw and spoke.

  “It looks like it’s a staircase all the way down. As long as we take it slow and steady, we should be fine.”

  Lindsay rolled her eyes. “All right, bossy. Boring and boring. We’ve got it. You two snuggle-bugs ready to move or are you staying there all night?”

  Martin would not have expected snake people to be capable of blushing, but Julia managed a good approximation by rustling the scales on her cheeks. “Ready when you are.”

  Martin turned to Speckles.

  “I think you should come with us. There’s no way you can get back up to the Second Deep right now, and you’ll be a sitting duck for any monster that comes along if you stay here.”

  A thought occurred to him.

  “Plus, more of your people probably fell through too. You should come with us to meet up with them. We’ll keep you all safe until you can get home.”

  Speckles blinked at him. “Words less.”

  Martin tried to pare it back to as simple as he could manage while still trying to be convincing. “We keep you safe. Come with us. Find other Anurvan.”

  Speckles tilted his head from side to side, pondering the proposition, but sadly he wasn’t the only one with opinions.

  “That pond scum tried to kill us. I don’t trust him,” Jericho growled.

  Martin didn’t let his welcoming smile slip, so his reply was through near-gritted teeth.

  “The Anurvan came up through every Deep Gate in the whole of Strata to get here. They know the way that we need to be going. Or would you rather spend half our time wandering back and forth through an endless maze of tunnels?”

  Lucky for him, Lindsay made the decision for them. She stepped up and patted Speckles on the back, then surreptitiously wiped the frog-slime off her hand onto her trousers. “Welcome to the team. You can be our sidekick. Our minion? Mascot. You can be the Iron Riot mascot.”

  “Me no want go down.” Speckles still seemed to be thinking. “But me can not go up.”

  “You hurt us. Nearly killed us. If you help, we’ll all forgive you.” Martin leaned in closer and cast a meaningful look across at Jericho. “If you don’t help us… he might not.”

  Speckles may not have understood every word, but he certainly caught Martin’s meaning. His gaze darted from Jericho to Martin, his expression from fear to betrayal. “Me come with you. Me show you the way.”

  Martin almost hugged the stupid little frog-man. There was no way that the situation was going to go well if Speckles had answered any other way.

  “Thank you.”

  Lindsay clapped her hands, startling them all. “All right then, you all ready to make like big wheels of cheese and get rolling?”

  Martin started to agree then had to pause and ask, “Why cheese, though?”

  Jericho sniffed the air. “I think I know why cheese.”

  There was certainly an aroma hanging around them after being dragged through the swamp water, but Martin would have placed it closer to the nasty juice that collected at the bottom of garbage bags rather than cheese. Speckles was oblivious; Martin didn’t even know if the Anurvan had noses.

  Their progress down the steps began after Julia had done the rounds, topping off their health and making sure that their near-brush with drowning hadn’t done any permanent harm, but it took only a few moments before arguments started to break out.

  [ANNOUNCEMENT: Wyld Stallynz have defeated Carnifex, Tenth Archduke of Strata]

  “Will you hurry it up? Some of us have places to be,” Lindsay crowed back over her shoulder.

  Jericho was trailing behind the others, his lower agility score and sheer mass slowing him down. Each time he jumped to the next platform he had to take a moment to recover, and after two or three of those jumps Julia insisted on using some feeble flickering spell to top up the health he had lost from fall damage.

  Lindsay was already leaping ahead of them. With her hollow bones, she could dance down the layers with barely any effort at all. Martin realized he had to intervene.

  “We need to stay together. We don’t know what’s down here.”

  “Stay together? Look who’s talking, Mister ‘explore the whole deep without you,’” Lindsay snapped back.

  “I was scouting ahead, and I died for my trouble. We’re all in a hurry to get to the bottom. We all want to win this thing, but if you are reckless and get killed then we are going to be waiting around for you to respawn. Slow and steady…”

  Lindsay wasn’t having it.

  “Slow and steady is boring! No wonder you’re single. You probably think a hot date involves a library card. Come on, man! Live a little. Take some chances. Jump down some steps.
It isn’t going to kill you!”

  Something burst from the waterfall, colossal pincers clamping around Lindsay and lifting her into the air.

  There hadn’t even been a shadow. One moment there was a solid wall of water, the next a giant crab had scuttled through.

  [Tesra suffers 21 bludgeoning damage]

  Martin was already leaping down before he had the time to think. He could hear the soft litany of, “No, no, no,” but it took him a moment to realize that it was his voice.

  The monster withdrew into the waterfall, with Lindsay bellowing insults from within its grasp. The crab, which the tooltip helpfully named Armored Brachyura, had secured its meal.

  The wall of water was solid again by the time Martin got to it, but he had no time to come up with a clever solution. He flung himself forward.

  There was no experience in his real life that he could compare to feeling the full weight of the waterfall hammering down on him. It crushed him down to his knees before he’d even moved, bowing his head with the constant torrent of water. Another damage notification popped up for Lindsay, then another, but he couldn’t look up to see them.

  He had to crawl to move forward, and every inch he gained felt like a mile. Once his forequarters were through the waterfall, he had to drag his tail-end through, claws scrabbling over the slick rock. He only hoped that Jericho had the good sense to shelter Julia and Speckles if they followed.

  Solid stone lay on either side of Martin; the waterfall was running directly down the side of this cavern, and only this eroded cave gave the Brachyura someplace to stage its ambushes. There was nowhere for it to hide, no cunningly constructed tunnels for it to scamper off into, just this little chip out of the cliff-face.

  It loomed in front of Martin, so big that it filled his vision. He could hardly make sense of it until he realized it was facing away. He swung at its backside, less concerned with damage and more interested in turning it around so that he could check on Lindsay.

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 1 slashing damage]

  With shell that thick, it certainly lived up to its name. The blow made a hollow noise like a hammer on stone. Still, it must have been enough to garner its attention.

  The Brachyura swiveled on the spot to face him. Half of Lindsay’s body lay in one of its blood-slicked claws, and the other half dangled out of its chattering wood-chipper of a mouth.

  There hadn’t been a notification. If she had died, why hadn’t the game told him?

  That was when he realized the awful truth. Lindsay reached out to him, blood pouring out of her beak as she tried to speak. She still had health left. The game wouldn’t let her die.

  Martin shuddered. Whatever words of comfort he might have mustered died in his throat as he saw a tangle of her intestines roll out of the clean snip and splatter onto the floor. Bile bit at the back of his throat. He let out a hoarse roar, summoned a Celestial Strike, and charged.

  There was no question of missing, not with a target so massive trapped in so confined a space, and Martin didn’t hesitate to pick a specific target.

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 8 light damage]

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 8 slashing damage]

  His glowing sword slipped through the chitinous hide as if it wasn’t there at all, and it came out trailing thick yellow ichor, like the whole thing was an infected wound.

  The Brachyura swung for him with its empty claw, but he was ready and ducked.

  [MISS]

  Lindsay still hadn’t died.

  [Tesra suffers 3 bleeding damage]

  [Tesra suffers 2 bleeding damage]

  [Tesra suffers 3 bleeding damage]

  There was so much blood he could hardly believe a little bird-woman could hold it all. Could Julia even heal a wound like this? Was a level four hierophant’s magic up to the task, or would it be kinder to put Lindsay out of her misery?

  He wished he had more time to make these decisions. Wished that the others had shared the information that he needed to choose.

  Seconds ticked by, with the Brachyura warily trying to circle around him, its awful little black bug eyes fixed on his sword. It understood pain. That was good. He could use that. If it went on cowering for long enough, his Celestial Strike would be off cooldown and he could actually attack again. The obsidian sang as he dragged it over his bracers, and the Brachyura shuddered at the sound. More fear. He needed more fear.

  Jericho roared as he burst through the water and took in the horrific scene before him. That was when the Brachyura lashed out. Nothing so huge had any right to move so quickly. It snapped its empty claw a hair’s breadth from Jericho, driving him back into the hammering waterfall. Then with a flick of the other claw, it launched the upper half of Lindsay at Martin, bowling him off his feet.

  [Skaife suffers 22 bludgeoning damage]

  [Tesra suffers 22 bludgeoning damage]

  [Tesra has died]

  He cradled her broken corpse in his arms for only a moment before he rose to his feet. Martin had always been angry, for as long as he could remember. Everything in the world had made him feel that way, but he had never felt the deep blind fury that now guided his movements.

  As it turned to strike at him again, he dove forward under the sweep of the Brachyura’s claws.

  [MISS]

  Suddenly his whole perspective shifted. He was sheltered beneath the armored hulk of the Brachyura, but it couldn’t reach him. It spun on the spot above him, the sound of its legs a deafening chatter all around, but no matter how it tried to crush him, he moved with it. Murovan were so short that even when it tried to slam its body down on him, all he had to do was crouch to avoid the impact. He took the brief moment of peace to restore some health with a Healing Touch.

  [Skaife recovered 15 health]

  Jericho returned to the fight with another deafening roar, hammering at the massive crab’s turned back with a dazzling strobe of lights.

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 6 light damage]

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 5 light damage]

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 6 light damage]

  Martin touched his guild crest and bellowed to be heard over the roar of water and the grinding and chattering of the beast.

  “Get it outside!”

  Jericho’s assault paused for only a moment, but that was all the time that the monster needed to rush him. Martin had to run along underneath it to avoid losing his position. Jericho took one look at the oncoming crab and dove back out through the water.

  As they passed under the waterfall, the crab served as an umbrella for Martin, holding the weight of the water off his back. Jericho was sprawled on the ground in the crab’s path, but the mist of the waterfall was thick enough that it missed him. Martin grabbed him by the wrist and tried to jerk him to his feet, only to remember that he was a tiny rat-man and Jericho was gigantic.

  The three of them took up all of the space on the slate outcropping, with barely a foot between the rear end of the Brachyura and the torrential downpour. It was all Martin needed.

  Celestial Strike reignited his sword and this time he swung it with very clear purpose. He severed one of the crab’s rear legs at the weak knee joint level with his head.

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 9 light damage]

  [Armored Brachyura suffers 9 slashing damage]

  The massive beast spun on the spot once more, jerking its wounded hindquarters away from the source of this new pain. The chitinous nub of its leg toppled to the ground in a rush of yellow ichor.

  Mustering his courage, Martin stepped out from underneath the Brachyura, right beneath its grinding mouth. The black eyes of the beast were on stalks, and they both swiveled to fix their gaze on him.

  It let out a chittering roar and reared up, ready to smash him to paste with those ridiculously oversized claws. With a matching roar of his own, Martin cast Rebuke.

  The Armored Brachyura’s front lifted into the air, not just driven away from Martin by the spell, but by the strength of its rea
ring legs and the upheld claws.

  Even that wouldn’t have been enough to topple the crab, if it had its full complement of legs. As it was, its remaining rear legs scrabbled for balance.

  For one awful moment it hung in equilibrium, ready to crash back down and kill Martin and Jericho both, but then gravity took over. Its rear legs, scrabbling back, found only the open air of the cavern behind it. It let out a squeal like escaping steam as it fell out of sight.

  Martin counted aloud.

  “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen—”

  Julia and Speckles peered over the next step up, staring down in blatant confusion. Jericho lay on his back, staring up at the distant roof of the cave and breathing hard.

  But Martin had no time to rest. He stared out over the edge, down into the darkness. Hoping to catch any glimpse of the crab as it tumbled to its well-deserved death.

  “—Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four—”

  Armored Brachyura has died.

  Skaife gains 1020 experience.

  [LEVEL UP]

  He did the math in his head. Forty-four seconds until it hit the ground, falling at an average of about 30ft per second. One thousand, three hundred and twenty feet. A quarter of a mile.

  “The bottom of the cave is a quarter of a mile down.”

  There were probably some more complex calculations that he could do involving the angle and width of the steps that they were taking, but he couldn’t quite muster the energy. Not while he was still slick with Lindsay’s blood. He padded over to the waterfall and rinsed the worst of it off before turning back to the group.