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

by G. D. Penman

  These were the sort of achievements he would have pinned to his heart like medals just a few days ago. He had to remember why he was doing all this.

  The Masters of Strata were against him. Well, that wasn’t technically news. They had set themselves against him the moment they turned their game into a challenge. The moment they decided to make Strata into a competition, they set themselves up as his enemy.

  It didn’t matter if they interfered with his progress. It didn’t matter if they clipped a level from him here and there, because in the end he would overcome them, the same way he’d overcome every other challenge they’d thrown at him. He was getting special treatment and attention because they recognized that he was a threat to them. Excellence always bred contempt.

  His belief that they would win Strata had not always been unshakeable. He was just as human as Lindsay and all the rest, even if he refused to show that weakness. But now more than ever, he felt certainty in the outcome.

  They would be the first to defeat the Heart of Strata, and they would be immortalized as a result.

  Fear and doubt dropped away from him in the light of that certainty. Nightmares and petty designers and the feeling of poison writhing under his skin all got washed off. He had two hours to spend, and he was going to make every moment count.

  Edwin Klimpt might have been invisible, but that didn’t mean his whole family was too. Martin worked his way methodically through every Klimpt in the registry, narrowing down options and taking meticulous notes of everything – he was not going to be caught out by some clever little filter a second time.

  By the end of his two hours, he had every one of them listed out and pinned to a map in his mind.

  People moved around, especially people in the tech industry, so there was no way of knowing which, if any, of these Klimpts were related to his one: Edwin.

  But this list was still someplace to start. As in Strata, he had a plan now. It wouldn’t be easy to track the creators down and it wouldn’t be easy to find out every secret that they were trying to hide away from the world, but the Masters had set themselves against him, and that meant total war.

  Though the last hours had given him more leads than answers, it had passed the time. Now the game was waiting for him.

  He logged back in and fell head over tail all the way down through the dark, to land with a crunch in the chasm. Trembling with anticipation, he waited for the numbness to spread over his back and his health points to deplete, but instead that same, awful burning filled in for it.

  It wasn’t pain, not yet, but the heat of it was so close to pain that he nearly logged right back out again. He blinked to pull up his menu. The poisoning had been cleared by death, but when he reached up, he found his eye socket was still a mass of scar tissue and his fur was pocked with long-healed burns.

  [LEVEL UP X 3]

  That was something nice to come back to, at least. There certainly wasn’t a welcome party. He limped his way along the basalt chasm, awkward in his body with these scars tugging at him with each step. He was so stiff that he fumbled his sword when a monster suddenly leapt out of the shadows at him.

  “You leave me behind!”

  Speckles. He had completely forgotten about Speckles.

  “You followed us?”

  “Me wait until cave empty. Jump through purple hole, fall here. You gone. You leave me behind!”

  “I am so sorry, Speckles. We had the Archduke to fight, and I didn’t know if I’d be able to protect you.”

  “Words less.”

  It took Martin a moment to filter everything he was trying to say into the Anurvan’s limited vocabulary. “We fight scary bad. Very sorry?”

  Speckles leaned in closer. “You beat scary bad?”

  Martin grinned. “Yep.”

  “Good. No leave Speckles again.”

  It was only when he stepped into the dim chamber and saw the rapidly putrefying corpse of the Archduke that Martin found some rhythm in his steps. Up ahead, looking down on their broken foe, was the unmistakable iceberg bulk of Jericho. Lindsay was standing beside him, looking strangely solemn for a woman who had just gotten one of the biggest wins of her life.

  Jericho’s red aura had faded away and a quick glance revealed that killing the Archduke had been sufficient to reset his Sin to normal, but his whole attitude and posture seemed to have changed. There was a predatory gleam in his eyes as he looked around at Martin, and his fingers kept tickling over the whip strapped to his hip. Apparently, the taste of power had agreed with him.

  They both stared at Martin with open disgust.

  “Dude, what the hell happened to your face?” Lindsay asked, unabashed.

  “Demon-egg acid. What’s your excuse?”

  She snorted half-heartedly, but it was enough to break the tension. Jericho rumbled. “Armor, here.”

  Solarium Mail

  [+24 armor. Celestial Strike damage increased by 13%]

  After so long with nothing resembling exorcist gear, Martin was stunned at how good that was. No wonder he’d been lagging behind the others with their specialized gear.

  As he equipped the armor, he grinned, scar tissue tugging at his cheek as he showed his teeth. “Nice.”

  The others were not smiling when he looked up. “What happened?”

  Lindsay and Jericho met each other’s eyes but wouldn’t meet his. Eventually, Jericho spoke. “Julia is not coming back.”

  Lindsay already had her hands up and fluttering.

  “It isn’t the end of the world. She’ll be back tomorrow. She got called in for some work emergency. Don’t get mad. Please don’t get mad.”

  Martin blew out a breath and started quietly recalculating his plans. “Do you think I’m some sort of ogre? Real life happens. Don’t worry about it.”

  They visibly relaxed. Jericho rolled his eyes at Lindsay.

  “I said this to you.”

  She squawked. “He doesn’t like it when plans change!”

  Martin couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you for being… sensitive. But it’s really all right. We need to stop and make some plans anyway.”

  Where the Archduke’s acid had spread over the runed flagstones, it had pitted and reshaped their meaning, but one circle of the stones in particular had been eaten away to nothing. The Deep Gate. The iris opened at Lindsay’s touch.

  Beneath the opening there was a tangle of green roots, wound together into something like the Anurvan village walkways; a basket to catch them when they fell. Jericho hopped down with fresh confidence guiding his footing, then caught Lindsay and Martin in his huge arms when they dropped. Martin grinned. “My hero.”

  Speckles landed beside them with a splat.

  They crept along the tops of the woven surface, winding through low arches before finally the cavern opened out ahead of them and they realized that they were actually right up beside the ceiling.

  “Wow,” Martin breathed.

  There was greenery, the same living wood that had comprised the monsters in the deeps above, hacked apart and woven back together into a tangle of walkways and wicker-looking buildings.

  The lower half of this cavern was given over to pitch darkness so deep that even Martin’s Night Vision couldn’t penetrate it, and the whole town hung suspended from the massive stalactites that covered the roof.

  They had considered Beachhead to be populous compared to the desolation of the rest of the dungeon, but this place wasn’t just bustling with life; it was bursting with it.

  The local population seemed to be predominantly Corvan, and they leapt from one walkway to the next with utter abandon. There were painted signs dangling out over the abyss, hinting at wares and services that Martin couldn’t even believe were being offered in a dungeon, and hanging over all of them were the banners of trading companies from far and wide.

  With that last bit of information in mind, he looked back down onto the city and realized that the whole thing was a marketplace. Every Corvan hawking wares was roost
ed over a stall of their own. Every building had goods bristling out through the gaps in its weaving. Capitalism was alive and well in Strata.

  He turned to tell Speckles that he’d need to hide and found the Anurvan already gone. With puzzlement, he looked askance to Lindsay. “Invisibility cloak,” she explained. “Not like I need it in town.”

  As Iron Riot walked into the bustling market, a silence descended over the crowds. All eyes were on them. Two raid bosses in as many days, one impossible to beat and one way ahead of their level curve. No wonder people were staring. In real life this kind of attention would have made Martin shrink, but here he felt as tall as Jericho. He smiled, and some, if not all, of the people in the crowd smiled right back at him.

  It had never been like this in Dracolich. They had been known and respected, but they had never received this reverence. Because Dracolich was only a game. The crowds parted before them and Martin wondered if this was what it was like way back in history in the real world, when heroes walked the earth.

  One knot of bodies in the central square did not move aside at Iron Riot’s approach. Among them were the familiar faces of Dmitri Blackpaw and Snekboi, but it was neither of them that spoke. It was a Sythvan martyr named Virgil that pushed back his shoulders and sneered, “What took you so long?”

  That voice was all too familiar. Lindsay yelped. “Dante?”

  Dante, their old, slightly useless shaman, scoffed. “You didn’t think that the four of you could sneak off and abandon your whole guild with no consequences? You didn’t think you were the only ones who’d made the jump over to Strata?”

  Lindsay grinned. “It’s awesome to see you! If I’d known you were here I would have invited you the minute I arrived.”

  “I’ve got my own guild. Thanks. The Brotherhood in Exile. Maybe you’ve heard of us?”

  They’d cleared Carnifex while Iron Riot had still been dawdling in the upper levels. How long had they been playing?

  “Oh, cool. Cool.” Lindsay blustered on. “So, what’s up? Do you guys want to work together?”

  Snekboi spat on the ground, and Dante grinned. “Nah, we don’t want to work together. We want to kick you back to Dracolich. This is our game. Go home.”

  Whatever the fight with Carnifex had awoken in Jericho was straining beneath the surface. He surged forward with a roar, and while the other four members of the Brotherhood in Exile didn’t run for their lives the way Snekboi had, they all flinched.

  Martin took a deep breath. “I’m pretty sure there is plenty dungeon to go around. No need for any unpleasantness. I’m sure our paths won’t even cross again.”

  Dante’s sneer was looking a little strained in the face of Jericho’s snarling maw, and he seemed pretty eager to latch onto any excuse to leave. “Yeah. Right. Because you’ll be left behind. In our dust.”

  Jericho barked, and the Brotherhood scampered off with their tails between their legs, literally and figuratively. The rest of the town went on staring at Iron Riot for a moment, then decided that the street theater was over and went back to their business.

  There was no shortage of inns in the town known as Reachroot, but the one they settled on in the end was as close to the basket-elevator down to the cavern floor as it was possible to get. They got themselves drinks, settled into a corner and laid out all of their intentions.

  “There are ninety more deeps and nine more Archdukes to get through,” Martin said, thinking aloud. “I think we can keep going as we have been, using the first three deeps after each Archduke to grind up the levels that we’re lagging, then using my Rite to pop the skip-gate and head straight on into the next big boss. It means we’ll be running blind a lot of the time, but we’ll also close the distance on the front-runners in nine days, provided we can keep up the same pace.”

  Jericho nodded along, but his mind was clearly still on the Brotherhood in Exile. Lindsay was so intent on everything Martin was saying that she was nearly leaning over the table.

  “If we’re ever down to the next gate before my ability unlocks, I propose we spend our time developing craft skills. You’ve seen how expensive gear is. Nobody is making anything because they’re in too much of a rush, and it is messing with the equipment curve.”

  Lindsay groaned. “Sounds boring, but fine. Whatever.”

  “For today, I think we level up, split up, explore the town a little and get whatever supplies we think we will need for the next few deeps. I think there’s going to be more water, but that’s about as far as my predictions go.”

  All it took was another shrug from Jericho and another nod from Lindsay and Martin evenly split the silver they’d collected and sent them off to do some shopping. He had more pressing matters to attend to.

  Skaife Murovan Exorcist

  Strength: 12 Agility: 8

  Endurance: 9 Willpower: 10

  LEVEL 9

  You have 9 points to assign.

  Nine points was enough to completely reshape his character. Enough to make any given stat his new area of expertise. He didn’t have to think twice.

  Strength: 12 Agility: 8

  Endurance: 9 Willpower: 19

  Health: 45 Stamina: 58

  You may select 3 new abilities.

  Celestial Chorus – All nearby allies’ next physical attacks deal 50% physical and 50% light damage. These attacks count as activators for Trinity Strike. [60-second cooldown]

  Javelin of Faith – Deals 19 light damage to a target within 30ft range. [20-second cooldown]

  Purify – Removes a curse effect from an ally. Touch range. [60-second cooldown]

  Lay on Hands – Restores 100% of an ally’s health. Reduces your stamina and stamina regeneration by 5% for 4 minutes.

  [60-minute cooldown]

  Rite of Consecration – Increases all healing effects within the 20ft area of effect by 50% for 30 seconds. Increases all light damage within the area of effect by 25% for 15 seconds.

  [60-minute cooldown]

  Rite of Revival – Restores one deceased ally back to 1% health. Reduces your stamina and stamina regeneration by 15% for 60 minutes. [24-hour cooldown]

  Curses hadn’t featured too heavily into their journey so far, so Martin discounted Purify out of hand, at least for the moment.

  Javelin of Faith had too much utility to gloss over. He selected that one the moment he’d finished browsing the list. In the confines of the usual tunnels there wasn’t much use for ranged attacks, but in fights with monsters so huge you couldn’t even see all of them, being able to hit a weak point from a distance seemed mandatory.

  He’d have to ask Lindsay to look into some ranged weapons too, if she didn’t want to keep on mashing directly into raid bosses’ faces.

  Consecration and Lay on Hands were both still nice, and he could see a lot of situations where they’d come in useful, but with Julia present, his healing abilities had been used almost entirely on himself up until this point, and the very specific “ally’s health” in the description made him suspect it wouldn’t serve that purpose.

  Likewise, Consecration would probably have been more helpful in a group with more players to benefit from it. Just the four of them made it seem slightly underpowered compared to the other offerings.

  The other new abilities had his attention and his heart almost immediately. Revival was a must. He had been wondering if resurrection by the players was ever going to show up in this game, and there was no way he was going to let that opportunity slip him by.

  Celestial Chorus was another must. If he timed it properly, he would be able to churn out Trinity Strikes so often that they never lost the buff to critical hit chance. At 33%, that was too good to ignore.

  With that done, there was really only one more item of business for Martin.

  All of the contempt that he had met up in Beachhead had transformed down here, under pressure, where the coal of humanity was crushed into diamonds. The few folk that recognized his name or his guild gave a respectful nod before turning to whispe
r to their friends. Even the native NPCs seemed to recognize him as a person of value now. They didn’t exactly defer to him, but some switch must have been flipped by his defeat of Carnifex to provide him with the same respect as other players got treated. It didn’t take long before he found the town’s healer, a self-proclaimed alchemist affectionately known as Greenfeather.

  She didn’t look up from the big wooden bowl where she was grinding some herbs that looked suspiciously like they’d come out of a Swamproot. Another of the settlement’s predominant Corvan, she lived up to her name thanks to the various smears that covered her gray feathers.

  “Be with you in a moment, my lover. Don’t want this stuff going to brown just because I’m lost clapping my beak.”

  Martin explored the store slowly but methodically, taking in all of the different labels, noting which ones were behind iron gratings and which were free to be manhandled and shoplifted.

  There were only a few ingredients locked away due to their value and he was careful to remember them all. The appraise skill was all well and good, but there was no reason he couldn’t use his brain to find the valuable loot too.

  “What seems to be the bother?” Greenfeather finally asked. “Aren’t many folk seek out a doctor when there’s Aten’s magical glow-stuff on the go.”

  She finally looked up from her work and let out a little gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir. Most terribly sorry.”

  “I died fighting against the Archduke, but when I came back my injuries were still here.” Martin paused, then looked away from her mournful stare. “I mean, the wounds were closed, but they… they scarred.”

  Greenfeather carefully set down the vial of odious goop she had been harvesting from the bowl and sighed.

  “I am truly sorry, sir, but I cannot help you. Strata itself remakes you when you die, and if it chooses to remake you with some small adjustments, there isn’t much we can do about it.”