Descend- First Steps

by David Burke

  Amelia added, “No offense, but I saw how panicked you were when the lizat was hunting you. I don’t blame you but that won’t help us.”

  Jay couldn’t help but grin that she was using his term for the creature but was also sad for Meikiyo. He had seen how terrified she was during that attack. It had to be hard to be reminded of that, but she surprised him by simply holding out her hand with the palm facing up. A bright-orange flame burst into existence on her hand dancing just above the skin and leaving no marks upon her. Her response was both dramatic and simple. She capped it off with the short phrase, “I have fire.”

  “Daphne can enhance all of us,” Huong protested.

  “I have fire.”

  “Last time you froze up,” Amelia said.

  “I have fire.”

  So it went as Meikiyo burnt down every argument they raised with the same three words. Well that and by demonstrating a tremendous level of control over her skill. She made the flames dance up and down her arm and then extend out like a serpent swirling around her. All of them but Jay with his hardened body had to step back simply from how hot the air got around her.

  Jay finally broke in, “I’m going to vote for Meikiyo. She has demonstrated that she came a long way from the other night and I think her flame will be of great value to us. Only one question. Can you stop the flames if they start to spread in the jungle?”

  Rather than answer with words she blasted the grass around him with fire creating a ring that surrounded Jay. Then just as easily she absorbed the fire back up as though it had never been there leaving only the scorched mark on the ground as evidence. She simply looked back at him after that which gave Jay the perfect opportunity to check her out more. She had flawless light skin which provided a beautiful contrast to her long jet-black hair. She definitely was more flat chested than even Huong and might only be an A-cup but no one would have ever thought she wasn’t feminine, not with the way she was shaped. She had delicate features and her clearly very fit body made him wonder just what kind of trouble he could get into with her.

  Jay had to quash those thoughts as both the other girls got on board with his suggestion. Amelia and Huong almost seemed to be competing to see who could go along with him the fastest. Not for the first time he shook his head wondering if this was going to be more trouble than it was worth. Then he thought about last night and just grinned.

  “Daphne and Jessie, if we get access to taking more than four on a team then I would like to talk to you again or if we decide that we can form more than one party, but for right now it looks like Meikiyo is going to be our 4th. Okay?” he asked as though they had a choice, but he had never been very good at delivering bad news, certainly not to hot girls.

  Fortunately, while they didn’t seem happy, they did take it with grace and left. Amelia and Huong took to figuring out what equipment Meikiyo needed and eventually decided that she would mostly fight with her pyrokinesis but that she should have a dagger and leather armor as protection. Jay of course had to buy that for her along with any other personal comfort needs.

  Once they all had backpacks, canteens, and daily rations to spare they headed off for the dungeon. Jay was thrilled as they shared their status pages to find that Meikiyo had taken her prior fears seriously and worked non-stop to master her fiery skill. She was now at level 2 and had pyrokinesis up over level 6. Without a doubt between his level and the fact that the girls were all level 2 or 3, they were the best-prepared party.

  As Jay was walking into the dungeon he heard the girls talking behind him, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. When he looked back they all giggled. “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing, cutie, you just keep walking in front of us and we’ll all be happy,” Amelia said with a wicked grin.

  Jay wanted to reply, but if she was getting along with the other girls he didn’t want to ruin it, even if it was at his expense. Once he hit the entrance to the dungeon and started walking down the stairs a new screen popped up for all of them to read.

  M1789, you have crossed the first threshold. You have now surpassed the limits of the first floor and will get diminishing returns from your efforts here. You have 3 cycles to complete Quest 1.2 and clear this floor. Quest automatically accepted on your behalf. Once you enter the dungeon you may not leave without either failing the quest or completing it. Failure means that you are forever barred from moving on to the 2nd floor of the dungeon.

  Descend or Die. Timer: 3.0000

  Jay immediately stopped and looked up at the rest of the party. “You don’t have to come with me. I’m the only one in this situation but if you enter with me then you may end up locked into the same quest as me. I just don’t know exactly how it works.”

  All three beautiful faces, each unique in its own way, looked back at him with varying levels of anxiety obvious. Huong was the first to speak. “It’s okay that you don’t know everything about the system. That was what they told us in the beginning. I mean that we would have to figure it out as part of their experiment.”

  Meikiyo trembled as she added, “I get so angry when I think about all the people that have died so that they can conduct an experiment. Screw them. If you all think this is the best thing to do, then I will trust you. Jay saved my life once already.”

  “I just want to know who ‘they’ are. I would so love to slap them upside their faces. Assuming of course that they have faces. For all we know this is some weird alien or demon or something that liked burning ants with a magnifying glass and grew up to become whatever it is now.” Amelia’s anger came through clearly in her words.

  “You all don’t have to risk yourself for me. It’s okay,” Jay said.

  “See what I told you,” Amelia said as she looked at the other girls. “He can be such a bonehead. I honestly don’t know why I joined his team in the first place.”

  Then she looked at Jay. “Shut it. You are the one who carried me miles through the jungle to save my life even though it nearly cost you yours. I’m not giving up on you. I told you I would have your back and you have more than earned my trust.”

  Meikiyo repeated her statement about owing him her life already and Huong simply said that he had done so much for everyone here it would be wrong to leave him on his own.

  Jay shrugged with what he hoped was a nonchalant look on his face but inside he was moved to feel part of a true team. Meikiyo was new and so was Huong for that matter even if they had gotten rather intimate last night. That didn’t seem to detract from the bond that they all felt. They were as committed to him as he was to them and it was a feeling he hadn’t experienced since his mom passed. Really feeling like he belonged.

  With that feeling making him glow, Jay continued down the stairs till they were portaled to the doorway leading in. This time as they peeked in it appeared to be that they were back at the door in the cliff and at what Jay had taken to thinking of as the beginning of the dungeon.

  He pushed to the back of his mind the notification that they all got.

  Quest 1.2: Clear the Dungeon

  Success: Clear all hostile creatures from Dungeon level 1

  Rewards: 1000 credits (team), access to Shop Terminal 1.1

  Failure: Leave dungeon without completing quest or fail to complete within

  3 cycles.

  Penalty: Modified- may never descend below level 1 of the dungeon.

  Chapter 32 - Pulling for the Win

  “This is going to be much easier than I thought. I am going to go out into the jungle and try to pull hostile creatures to us. Huong, can you prepare the ground to slow them. Amelia, you hide the 3 of you until I get it here and Meikiyo just be prepared to blast the hell out of anything chasing me.”

  “Sure thing,” Huong said as she started sending tendrils of vines through the earth in preparation to entangle anything that came within range.

  Amelia simply nodded but Meikiyo gulped and said, “What does he mean pull?” Jay ignored the question and figured that Amelia could expla
in it.

  Jay had wondered if the population of the lizats and owlbears would be reduced because so many had been killed yesterday but it didn’t seem to be the case. Within seconds he got that tingly feeling of danger and realized that a lizat was sneaking up on him. Either there were far more of the creatures than he knew about or their respawn rate was tremendous. He hated to think of it in game terms like that. Maybe it was just that the daily reset that seemed to happen each morning also served to repopulate the dungeon.

  Speculating had to stop as the lizat leapt at him. Instinctively he slammed stamina points into his enhanced strength and speed as he thrust the spear at the oncoming predator. Jay was shocked as when he poured the power in he was able to do so a 4th time and his strength and speed both felt off the chart. Backed by the enhanced power of his denser body, the spear not only penetrated the chest of the creature but did so with so much force as to nearly split it in two. Instantly dead, it fell to the ground off of his spear which was shaking from the amount of force used through it.

  As he looked down at the ruined mess of the creature before him he didn’t know what to think. Apparently crossing a threshold meant that he could increase his powers more. Adding that to the higher base strength and speed he had now made his spear thrust more than twice as strong as and three times faster than before. The extra force must have been an exponential increase but the physics escaped Jay.

  He was just glad that the force had kept most of the spray away from him although he did get some green lizat blood on himself. Now though he had to try to find something to pull to the group. He didn’t want them to think that he was abandoning them. At least he had an improved outlook on clearing the first dungeon floor. If they were all this easy it would be just a matter of time. The only thing he didn’t know how to factor was just how large the dungeon floor was.

  Jay started moving faster through the jungle, sending out pulses of Life Sense. He had been too worked up this morning but now wanted to revel in the feeling that he got from just how fast he felt now. Each step felt light and he practically glided over the ground. Even moving at what was just a trot to him was more akin to sprinting in terms of his speed before being brought to this place.

  He whisked past a pair of lizats and gently threw a rock at them before running back towards the gate. He could hear them behind him but as long as he pushed his speed to its max he was easily able to outpace them. When he cleared the edge of the jungle into the open space, he couldn’t see the girls, but that was not surprising since Amelia must have them cloaked.

  “Two lizats incoming,” he yelled and continued running until he turned at about 10 feet in front of the door out. He adopted a defensive position and had his spear at the ready. Not that there was any need for it, for as soon as the creatures were clear of the tree line by a couple of bounding paces, vines ripped up out of the ground.

  Those vines rapidly entangled both creatures and trapped them off the ground where all they could do was squirm, furiously biting at the offending plants. Not that they had long to work with because moments later a spear of absolute blackness shot through and pierced one of the creatures through its soft throat, producing a fountain of green blood.

  An instant later and two whips of fire lashed out and encircled the other lizat, incinerating it to a charred husk in less than a dozen seconds. As fast as it was though, it was still long enough for the creature to scream in the agony only flame can bring. That made its thrashing movements all the more desperate and combined with the way the flames ate away at the vines holding it, the creature fell to the ground before it was completely consumed. In the end it only made it two stumbling steps before it fell over but the sight was fairly mournful even if it was an us-or-them situation.

  “That was sorta sad, but this is way easier than I expected. We’ve only been here 10 minutes and we already killed two of them,” Huong said. Jay felt she was strangely cheerful for just having watched an animal burn to death. Then again, they were all under a great deal of stress and an easy win was quite uplifting.

  “Actually 3,” he replied.

  “What? Did you get attacked in the jungle before you got back?” Amelia asked. Jay was surprised by her level of concern. Her normal disdain for everything seemed to be showing some cracks.

  He replied, “It was actually shockingly easy. My new levels make them not much of a challenge.”

  “Still, I hope you are careful. I saw you and Amelia yesterday after the dungeon. You were both torn up. You don’t want to let an accident happen,” Meikiyo said as Amelia nodded.

  At the same time, Huong came over and started trying to check him out. She ran her hands over his and asked if he was injured. When he assured her that he was fine she didn’t seem to take his word for it but continued to look for even the slightest scratch. Amelia snickered. “She is just happy for an excuse to touch you cause she’s a skank.” And there it was again, the Amelia that they all expected.

  Jay tuned them out as the girls argued back and forth. He simply said to Meikiyo, “When they get done let them know that I have gone out to pull more targets.”

  He then went running back into the jungle. This time it took him longer to find some of the lizats but he eventually found a pair or they found him. His life sense picked them up but by then they were already moving towards him. He didn’t know if they had some exceptional sense or just really sharp hearing or olfactory sense. Either way it was a good reminder that while one on one they were not a big challenge now, he still knew very little about them.

  Once he was sure they truly were following him he headed back to the clearing and sent a telepathic message ahead. He knew that Amelia didn’t want him in her head but he needed to practice and he felt the most connection with her. He was pleased that it seemed to work even from half a mile away but couldn’t know for sure since she couldn’t send back a message.

  When he arrived back at the camp he found the girls already engaged with a pair of owlbears. Jay cursed himself for a fool. The blood from the lizat that Amelia had killed was still spread all over the ground and would likely attract every predator within quite a distance. Old shows on Animal Planet from when he was a kid came to his mind as he remembered another bit of odd trivia about grizzly bears being able to smell blood from more than a mile away.

  That random thought passed through his blood just as quickly as it came. He did a rapid assessment of the situation. Both owlbears were entangled in vines but one of them was quickly breaking free. Meikiyo was blasting the one who was escaping with bolts of fire and while it was scorched all over it was definitely holding up better than the lizat had, either because of its thicker hide or perhaps due to a layer of fat. Either way it was going to take some time to bring it down this way. The two girls that he could see were clearly nervous. Amelia was nowhere to be seen but undoubtedly she was hiding and looking for an opening to strike.

  Jay wanted to help them but he decided that he needed to deal with the two lizats following him. His life sense indicated that they were only about 300 feet behind him and would be entering the clearing in a couple of seconds. Trying to balance the twin needs he pulled out a rock and hurled it at the wounded bear, pushing energy into both the strength of his arm to fling the rock faster and then into accelerating it 4 times.

  The upgraded skills combined to produce a dramatically more powerful outcome. There was a small pop as the rock accelerated past the sound barrier and then still he was able to double it again with the 4th burst. Because of where he was Jay could only hit the back side of the bear but he hoped that the rock to its hip might cripple the creature's movement and help the girls out in that way.

  As it was he barely had time to register just how fast the 3 oz rock was going but wasn’t able to pay attention to what damage it caused to the owlbear. Instead he had to turn and direct his spear at the closer of the two lizats. His aim was off slightly this time and the spear only took the creature in its shoulder. Still his enhanced strength tore
the joint wide open and left the creature screeching on the ground.

  Unfortunately the force of the beast’s momentum ripped the spear from Jay’s hands. This left him with only open arms to greet the second beast. Its charge bowled him over. As he pushed his speed to its max he was able to move faster than the creature but it latched onto him and was trying to rip him open. He hardened his body as much as possible and focused on trying to get to its side or back preferably.

  He was able to hold its smaller body at bay with his legs but his arms were kept busy trying to keep its razor-sharp fangs from biting down on him even while its front claws were trying to dig deeper into his skin. The only reason that he hadn’t been ripped wide open was his new denser body. Even with that though he was still bleeding from multiple shallow wounds.

  Jay realized he needed to switch strategies and just hoped that Amelia wasn’t sneaking up in an attempt to save him. He shouted out, “Kinetic Bolt!” and waited 1 second before releasing the strongest wave of energy he could manage in a two-foot-wide burst that flung the creature from him and ripped another gash in his chest from a claw which had sunk in partially.

  As soon as he was free of the creature Jay kipped up to the ground. This new strength and speed definitely rocked but he had to finish it. He spared the briefest of seconds to check that the girls were still safe only to see Amelia delivering a finishing blow to the second bear.

  Secure in his belief that they would be okay, Jay tackled the second lizat before it could get up from where his force blast had sent it. This time he was able to get on its back and begin driving his dagger into its side. Three quick thrusts eventually found its heart and the scaly body shuddered.

  Jay stood up and used a series of kinetic finger gun bullets to finish off the gravely wounded lizat with his spear stuck in its shoulder. Somehow no matter how silly he knew he must look it still was easier for him to make the bullets when he used the gun-shaped gesture.