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

by G. D. Penman

  [Skaife suffers 2 poison damage]

  He scrubbed at his eye with a fumbling, half-dead hand, but it was no use; all vision had been burned away on that side. He had to swivel around to take it all in, then he had to dive backwards as Carnifex’s great black hoof came slamming down where he’d stood just a moment before.

  [MISS]

  The eggs beneath that hoof popped, but a hundred or more of them still lay on the ground, quivering, just waiting for someone to be foolish enough to get close to them. He should have climbed the damned leg when he had a chance.

  Lindsay’s voice bursting out of the guild channel nearly made him jump out of his skin.

  “Raptor Strike right in the eye, coming up fast. Pop those cooldowns!”

  She had no idea what had happened beneath her. Martin dashed forward, popping Rite of Retribution as he went and willing Trinity Strike to light up his sword too. The back leg was still the closest, even if his feet were slipping in the foul ichor splattered across the floor all around it.

  His feet smoked as the vicious chemicals began eating through his boots. It didn’t matter. He had to help Lindsay.

  [Carnifex suffers 24 light damage]

  It was a clumsy blow, scraping across the hard surface of the hoof before finding purchase, but the magic of his special ability seemed to discharge all the same.

  None of them could see Lindsay up on the Archduke’s body, but when she hit, everyone knew it. The monster rocked on the spot.

  [CRITICAL HIT]

  [Carnifex suffers 56 piercing damage]

  Martin took his chance, casting another Rebuke at Carnifex’ rear leg in the vague hope that it might be toppled, but the nudge wasn’t enough. It stumbled, but it didn’t fall.

  The air writhed around Carnifex as it twisted and turned, trying to fling Lindsay free, but wherever she had lodged herself with that last attack was where she meant to stay.

  Light strobed from the front of the Archduke as Jericho’s assault began anew. Each flicker of light was another point of damage, and every odd one was doubled.

  [CRITICAL HIT]

  [Carnifex suffers 16 light damage]

  It still wasn’t going to be enough. Martin could see the great gaping opening in Carnifex’ gut starting to fold shut as it trudged toward Jericho and Julia’s position.

  The floor beneath it was impassible now, a minefield of lethal acids, hooks and poisons. They couldn’t even see the danger coming as the Archduke pressed on and on, sweeping that great bone blade every few steps to drive them helplessly back.

  The whole room would be flooded with noxious poisons, and eventually Lindsay would lose her grip or her footing and fall down to die with the rest of them. They just weren’t doing enough damage fast enough.

  Half blind and numb down his strong side, Martin ran for his friends. Healing Touch reversed the impact of the egg on his health pool, but it did nothing to ease the burning or to return sight to his eye. Poison must have had some separate cure that he hadn’t unlocked.

  The great bone cleaver swept by him, almost invisible in the dark even when he’d had both eyes. It was only luck that saved him.

  [MISS]

  As he passed underneath it, he stared up towards Carnifex’s skull, hoping to catch some glimpse of Lindsay inside. Instead, he saw twin pinpricks of green light within those hollow black voids, lights burning as bright as the dead and distant stars.

  “Come to me. Die for me. Live for me again.”

  He had to wrench himself away before it used this moment of hypnosis against him. Already the executioner’s blade was being lifted once more. It didn’t matter if it could get in his head. All it did was lie anyway. Martin spat out a bitter whisper. “You will fall at my executioner’s feet with joy in your heart.”

  There wasn’t a chance in hell that he would be happy when he died to this thing. Furious, maybe. Disappointed, almost certainly.

  He could already feel the bitterness rising up inside him. They had come so far just to fall to this thing, for no better reason than the numbers on their character sheets being too small?

  Jericho and Julia stood back to back, her reptilian tail coiled around one of Jericho’s tree-trunk legs to keep them together. She cast healing spell after healing spell, topping off his health every moment. It made no sense until Martin remembered the class name: martyr.

  Jericho was damaging himself with every attack, his stupid defensive powers turning against him as he tried to use them offensively.

  When Jericho saw him approaching, he waved haphazardly with his whip, then returned to the task at hand, launching another flurry of lights off into the Archduke’s chest, illuminating the patterns of patchy hair, rotten skin and the deep ritual lines of scarification.

  [Carnifex suffers 4 light damage]

  [Carnifex suffers 6 light damage]

  [Carnifex suffers 5 light damage]

  [Carnifex suffers 4 light damage]

  “We lose this, yes?” Jericho said it so softly Martin didn’t even register his words for a moment.

  Martin took one look from Julia’s fearful eyes to Jericho’s jaw, set rigid in determination, and he made a decision. “We don’t lose.”

  He pressed his eyes closed for a moment and was aghast. His health, usually a warm red color, had turned the same emerald green as the light that surrounded them and it had drained halfway in the time since he’d cast his Healing Touch. He was going to die. Nothing could prevent that now. All he could do was make it mean something.

  “Kill me.”

  Jericho and Julia both snapped their heads around, distracted from their work at the most inopportune moment. The great blade swung down at them all over again and Martin had to bodily tackle them out of the way.

  [MISS]

  Martin rolled off the lovebirds with a laugh.

  “Come on, big guy. You say you want to kill me about ten times a day. Now is your chance.”

  Julia already had a spell beginning to glow between her hands. “How would that help us?”

  “The player-versus-player mechanics would kick in. He’d switch class to the one that can use that whip worth a damn. His burst damage would go through the roof.”

  They all flattened themselves as the blade swung by again at waist height, but Martin was so distracted that it caught his tail, snipping it neatly in half and sending a fresh splatter of blood over all three of them.

  [Skaife suffers 19 slashing damage]

  Jericho crawled over and dragged Martin back to his feet. “This is crazy. Will this even work?”

  Martin didn’t know. He really didn’t. He couldn’t even calculate how much health a raid boss like this might have. He had none of the usual context from surrounding enemies. His own clever solutions had seen to that. But a fighting chance was all Iron Riot had ever needed.

  “You can turn the damage this thing churns out against it, just like Celaphox did to us. The two of you, working together. You can beat it.”

  Indecision was written all over Jericho’s face until he felt Julia’s scaly hand squeeze his forearm. “He is usually right, you know.”

  Up in the shrouded darkness, they heard Lindsay scream. They were too far away to see the notification of whatever damage she’d been dealt, but they weren’t too far out to hear the sickening crack of impact as her body hit the flagstones.

  Tesra has died.

  Whatever hope they’d had was waning by the moment, and Martin refused to let Lindsay’s suffering be for nothing. He dropped to his knees and Jericho hefted the whip in his hand.

  “How should I—”

  He closed his eyes. “Just do it.”

  Jericho let out a snort. Then he swung.

  [Skaife suffers 18 slashing damage]

  Skaife has died.

  In the darkness on the other side of death, the Master was waiting. Hanging smugly in the air.

  “It isn’t going to work, you know,” the Master hissed triumphantly. “Even with the whip, and the power of th
e heretic. It isn’t going to be enough. You died for nothing.”

  Martin didn’t rise to the bait. He just drifted around to watch the scene unfolding before him.

  Jericho had turned the whip on himself in a zealous frenzy. The golden glow that had surrounded him before now burned red, as though he were enveloped in flames. With each crack of the whip, they rose higher and burned brighter. And with Julia pouring healing into him non-stop, that fire would not consume him any more than the lashes. The wounds that he opened on his own back were closed before the next blow fell.

  There was nothing Martin could do now, only watch. Well… there was something. He turned to the Master.

  “There was another player, a Sythvan called Jezebel. I wonder if you could check on her in the real world. She seemed to be seriously ill. It would probably be bad press if your players started dropping dead.”

  The empty hood jerked towards him for a split second. “What?” The Master was clearly invested in the fight unfolding beyond the veil of shadows.

  “Jezebel. Snake lady. Lost her mind. You might want to check on her.”

  The Master flicked a sleeve at him. “Stop trying to distract me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Martin scoffed. “I thought a real person in the real world might be more important than—”

  “The real world. Hah.” He was cut off with another wave. “Cease your pitiful deceptions. Do you think that by playing on my sympathies you might earn preferential treatment?”

  “I mean, I wouldn’t mind if you stopped being a dick to me. But I am genuinely concerned that—”

  Another wave and this time Martin’s voice was literally cut off, like someone had turned off his microphone.

  “She shall be given all due consideration. Now be silent and watch as your sacrifice is proven worthless.”

  Carnifex was so much clearer now that Martin was dead. Its massive looming form was clearly painted in contrast and shadows. Ugly didn’t even begin to describe it. It was like a half-dozen nightmares all stitched together.

  Deep in the bare skull, one of the flickering pinpricks of green light still glowed. Lindsay had done her bloody work on the other, and done it well, even if it cost her life.

  Martin was careful not to meet that stare. He had a nasty suspicion that it would find him here just as readily as it had in the real world.

  Exposed muscles contracted beneath tattered skin that seemed more of a sheath than an attachment, and the great cleaver blade rose up. This time Jericho did not dodge, or flinch or block. He spread his great arms out wide and welcomed the blow like a long-lost lover.

  Being dead was infuriating, because Martin could only see what was in front of him, not all of the complex mathematics behind it.

  He saw the blow fall against the red aura around Jericho. He saw the massive Wulvan driven to his knees by the force of it despite all of his mystical protections. Then he saw a great shadow leap up the length of the bone blade to hammer into the Archduke’s chest and set it reeling.

  Martin’s vision was starting to dim, the shadows of death encroaching on his vision, but he was certain that Jericho rose again, bathed in the light of Julia’s healing. He was almost certain that he saw the heretic charge, each whipcrack sending out another blast of destructive power at the Archduke as it flinched away.

  Darkness fell over Martin entirely before the fight was over. All that was left in his whole world was the Master, hanging like the Grim Reaper beside him. That, and the hourglass warning him that he had 119 minutes until rebirth.

  When he tried to ask what was happening, no sound came out. He was still muted by whatever the Master had done before. So, he studied the hooded form of the Master in silence.

  What had he done to earn this stranger’s hatred? The grudge went well beyond him being insufficiently subservient when they’d first met.

  Something deeper was going on here. Something to do with whatever secret was so important that Klimpt, the game designers and everyone else had to be vanished from the internet.

  Martin was going to get to the bottom of it. Just as surely as he was going to get to the bottom of Strata.

  “No.”

  Martin attention snapped back on the Master again. Had they won?

  “Impossible.”

  He wished he could speak. Wished he could see. Wished he could do anything but just linger here. Leaving the game didn’t even cross his mind. Not when all around him, the most important battle of his life was being fought.

  [ANNOUNCEMENT: Iron Riot have defeated Carnifex, Tenth Archduke of Strata]

  The Master spun on him. There was a trace of a snarl in the voice that came out of the hollow hood.

  “How are you doing this?”

  “Did we win?” Martin asked. He was pleased to hear his own voice again.

  “Answer my questions and you will be allowed to leave with your new levels intact.”

  “So we won?”

  “The First Archduke of Strata has been defeated. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  Martin had no body to express his excitement with; no legs to jump around and no fist to pump. But some part of his delight must have radiated, because the Master’s tone turned even more vicious.

  “This means nothing. You have bested the weakest of ten Archdukes. You have traversed ten deeps. You have barely broken the surface. There are ninety more, each more dangerous and harrowing than the last. Nobody has defeated the fourth Archduke. Nobody has taken a step beyond the fiftieth deep.”

  “Then why are you freaking out? If this doesn’t matter then—”

  “Because you should not be winning,” the Master snapped. “You have not worked for it. You do not deserve it. Others have spent months pouring their efforts into this great crucible, their very lifeblood. And you? You just waltzed in!”

  “Gods below, are you that scared I’m going to beat your game?”

  An even deeper silence fell. The Master hung frozen again. When they finally spoke, all emotion had been sapped from their voice all over again.

  “You know nothing.”

  Martin growled through his teeth. “I know you’re so scared that you tried to throw me right off the side of the damned dungeon when I went through that portal. I know you are breaking all your own rules to try to slow me down.”

  “Take your little victory and get out.”

  “Not without an answer. Why are you hounding me?”

  The Master seemed to freeze. “Because you… you might be the one to kill us all.”

  With those words, the Master blinked out in a sudden flare of light, one so blinding that it persisted in Martin’s vision even after it was long over.

  He didn’t even know what to think of that random and ominous statement. How was he going to kill anyone by playing a game? Did the Master mean that they’d lose their jobs if the game was over?

  None of it made sense.

  Twenty-Six

  The Spoils

  He logged out, fearful of more ominous voices in the oppressive darkness, and opened his eyes to the last of the afternoon’s sunshine. That, and the ceaseless buzzing of his phone. All from Lindsay.

  “Did we win? Did we all die?”

  “If you died, why haven’t you sent me a message yet?”

  “Yo, corpse-boy! Tell me how you lost!”

  “That thing was huuuuuuge.”

  “Dude, don’t sit and sulk about it. We’ll get back in a couple hours.”

  “J+J just messaged me. We won! You died! Why aren’t you telling me things?”

  “All right, that is it, I’m booking a flight and getting my pens. Prepare for the face of a million dicks.”

  “Dude! TALK.”

  Martin fumbled for the thing.

  “We won. Had to die to beat it.”

  “Duderino, I already know all that. Jericho logged out to tell me. They’re looting now. Going to take a break and get back to it in 2 hours. Big J says: thanks for dying. You okay?”

  M
artin stopped for a moment to ask himself the same question. In all of the chaos, he hadn’t really had time to think about it at all.

  “Poison isn’t a lot of fun, but I’m all right now. We won, you know?”

  “Winning is good. Cool. Eyeball acid sucked too.”

  His fingers hovered over the screen for a little too long.

  “Sorry I keep sending you to your death.”

  “Dude, it is fine. We all got to go sometime.”

  He could almost see the shrug in the words.

  “Yeah, but we don’t have to go all the time.”

  She fell silent after that. But soon, Jericho was blowing up his phone. He was polite enough to rattle off a list of all the loot they had discovered.

  “Knight Battleaxe. Armor for you. Invoker robe. Cloak for me. Craft stuff. Silver.”

  Some decent armor would be helpful, so he wasn’t going to complain about that. He sent a brusque “Thanks,” back and then pulled the NIH off his head with a groan.

  When he got back in the game, there would probably be a heap of new levels waiting for them to apply. He’d have to dive right into another complex set of puzzles and statistics, help the others divide up all the equipment equitably, strategize their next move and lay out their immediate course. Normally, he relished every moment of all that, but after all the weird crap that had happened in the last few days it was starting to feel less like fun and more like a second job.

  He pressed his eyes shut, half expecting to see a health and stamina bar when he pressed the heels of his hands into them. He needed to stop. He needed to get out of his head. It was just a game. It was all just a game.

  More importantly, it was a game they were winning. Two raid bosses in two days. One of them a world-first victory, the other grossly out-leveling the guild.