Chapter 8: Dungeon Dive

Disappointment.

That’s what I felt as we finally reached the dungeon’s entrance. I wasn’t quite sure what I had expected but two plain-looking trees flanking an extra shadowy gap in the tree line was not what I had in mind. While, okay yes, I had no other example than this, it was still rather dull. Where was all the magical stuff? Wasn’t this a fantasy game?

“All right,” Fiona said in a cheerful voice, planting her hands on her hips in an oddly similar fashion to Fizzlewiz. “Let’s take a moment to rest up here, spend stat points, and upgrade our monsters if we can.”

I moved closer to Fiona and Glitters to watch as Fizzle waved her off, not bothering to do anything aside from flopping down to recover what mana and stamina he could before we entered the “dungeon.” I watched as Fiona opened various grey windows, and extracted the elemental species stone. She had won her pick of the two stones from the worm-like monster’s drop. She noticed me hovering above her, and after a moment she smiled up at me.

“Would you like to watch; see how it’s done?” She asked me.

“Yeah,” I agreed enthusiastically. “I never caught a slime, though I have a slime stone for one.”

“Okay so, when a monster is ready to take in a species stone you will get a notification, this happens at different levels depending on the monster. Glitters here still has some slime species. You need at least two species to rank up to a grade C like ‘Ruu.” She explained nodding at Baruu; I guessed that would become a thing before long. “Usually it’s as simple as exposing the creature to the stone. Like this.”

She placed the elemental species stone on the ground in front of Glitters, who appeared to sniff at it. Before picking it up in squidgy mandibles, or whatever you call a bug’s mouth, and consumed it with ease. Once inside, the lump of the stone, dark against the dancing lights, appeared to break down rabidly until it was completely gone. The lights inside of Glitters strobed in a frenzy, spinning faster and faster until they blurred into multi-coloured rings. I watched fascinated as the body began to change before my eyes. Glitters’ clear body flowed like water. The oval-shaped mega pillar began releasing threads of sparkling webbing around itself even as its body warped and became polyhedral. When it settled, Glitters’ nameplate had changed to Prismatic Chrysalithid briefly. Fiona smiled at her creature’s new form. A party notification alerted me that Fiona had successfully evolved her creature into a low tier grade C monster. Its new form was basically what the name suggested. It was a prismatic, polyhedral gemstone with the same series of dancing lights at its heart through now they were split into waves of light rather than the dancing orbs and it was encompassed by a gentle glow. It wasn’t entirely smooth I noted; while it was a three-dimensional shape it was ridged like the pupa I had studied at college. It hovered in the air then floated to be near Fiona, who ran a gentle hand down its crystalline sides. The entire process had me enthralled and I made a promise to myself to catch a slime in this dungeon if I could.

Fizzlewiz’ mana restored, we formed into a line and passed between the trees. It was odd, I felt, that we wandered seamlessly onto a well-trodden path between the rows of trees and looming shadows. As we progressed farther in, the surrounding vegetation began to press in on us until the trees and the abundant underbrush formed into living walls of branches, limbs, and thorns. The air, had taken on a subtle chill and there was no real sound to be heard except from the occasional chirp from some insectoid creature deep within. I pulled up my map and noted the change, the fog of war had returned to it showing only the surroundings of the crude track we followed. It was eerie and before long we met a fork in the path, the road lost to nature once more as though any who dared venture this far had been turned back here. I turned to my companions and our assembled zoo of creatures.

“Which way do we go?” I whispered, not daring to speak too loudly for some reason.

“It doesn’t really matter.” Fizzlewiz pointed out. “It’ll either merge back together at a point or we will have to backtrack to clear the other side. Personally, I think this is a waste of time now that we are here. We could be grinding in a field somewhere.”

“And that’s why you’re a PVP meathead.” Fiona told him flatly. “I’ll sneak ahead. Glitters passed on the umbra affinity, so I can do some cool stuff in the shadows now. Wait here, I’ll message you guys if I encounter anything.”

With that, Fiona stalked off down the left-hand break in the trees. Oddly enough Glitters remained floating nearby, the lights in its centre shifting lazily without a care in the world. It didn’t fill me with confidence about how useful a glassy cocoon was really going to be. We waited, well I waited; Fizzlewiz took the time to regale me with a tale from back when he was a new player. His stories were quite comical and despite myself, I found myself laughing along with him softly. A full ten minutes passed by before a single message appeared in the party chat.

Fiona: Contact, come.

We followed the winding path with more ease than I suspect Fiona had as two of the three monsters in our party emitted faint light sources of their own. When we rounded a bend, Fiona was there, planting a hand over each of our mouths. She nodded back to behind her where the trees began to widen. Three creatures lurked in the moonlit clearing. A small, totally clear slime at Level three. The other two looked to be of the same species. They had bark-like skin, were only a couple of feet tall. Set into carved faces were eyes should be was just two sets of pale white flames, their hair was a riot of flowers and vines. Nameplates flickered into being. Lesser Forest spirit, Level five.

“All right, time for Fizzle to do the bizzle” He happily informed us as he rolled up his sleeves. “Those plant bastards won’t know what hit them.”

I stared down at the little Level four fire mage. While he was a veteran player, building towards a playstyle he had been planning for a while, he was still a lower level than those creatures. My fight with the worm had taught me a lesson: the more advanced a creature is, the stronger it was and while the slime would likely pop like a balloon, I didn’t know if a low-level fire spell and an enthusiastic ball of purple fire was going to be enough to cut it. I said as much flatly to Fizzlewiz, who just snorted and walked past me, flames appearing above his hands. I sighed and raised my own hands. My axe had broken in the previous encounter and instead of heading back to try and find a replacement, it had been agreed that this would be a good opportunity for me to train my earth magic. So, as Fizzlewiz and Violet opened with their fire magic, I aimed at one of the forest spirits and cast. I made a sound like rocks toppling and tectonic plates bumping and a small gemstone roughly three centimetres across appeared and shot towards the poor plant creature with the force of a bullet. It left a little hole in the creature’s torso, green goo leaking from the wound. Fiona had vanished, only to reappear behind the creature I had shot in a swirl of shadows, sinking her dagger into the back of the unfortunate beast. The dagger was so long it exited through its chest. The creature desperately clawed at the dagger blade, trying to pull itself free. On the other side, Fizzlewiz and Violet had set fire to much of the ground and the little plant-man writhed within the mix of purple and orange flames, clearly in agony and shrieking piteously. Fizzle just seemed to be watching, so I directed my next gem shot at the plant creature burning in the fire, ending it, and netting us some XP. Baruu was floating at the apex of the ceiling-like canopies above, tossing her head side to side and sending Wind Shear spells down into the remaining forest spirit. In the confusion I took the opportunity to retrieve my slime stone and chucked it at the clear slime slurping about the leaf and twig strewn ground.

Congratulations you have successfully caught a clear slime level 3. However, due to your low level you can only have one active monster at a time. Your clear slime will remain within its stone accumulating XP until it reaches its max level for its grade and stage.

The monsters dispatched, we gathered up the stone fragments and gold the creatures had started dropping and headed further into the woodsy dungeon where we encountered a few more of the forest spirits. Fizzle, who had reached Level five, had gained access to a new spell, one he called an AOE, or area-of-effect spell, so even the largest of groupings of the sickly little forest spirits quickly fell to the devastating hunger of Fizzle’s flames. It was an unsettling side of my friend I decided, watching as the dying creatures, which given their limited AI, attempted to walk through the flames to reach us.

We moved from clearing to clearing with relative ease, all the while Fizzle’s fire spells were slowly filling up our experience bars. As we had progressed the fights had gotten a little bit riskier but still, we tended to mow over any opposition. We were stronger than the diminutive creatures, both in stature and level; they averaged out at about Level three, the Level four specimens we encountered first were the strongest of them so far. Whilst Fizzle and I were growing more confident (and frankly more reckless) with the methods we used to kill our foes as only two old friends can, Fiona and Baruu became more subdued.

“We need to slow down,” Fiona informed us as we cleared yet another clearing.

“How’s that?” Fizzle asked sucking at his fifth water skin of the dungeon dive, drinking fluids recovered mana for some reason. “We’re against a bunch of nature-based monsters, between me and Violet we could farm this place dry before we even have to consider starting the exit scenario questline.”

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Don’t you forget meathead, I’m the PVE player here.” She challenged, I blinked; what was PVE, wasn’t this game just PVP?

“Uh, Fiona, isn’t this just a PVP game? You know like those first-person shooters?” I asked to which she sighed a brief response, taking more energy to scowl at Fizzle for his obvious neglect to my education regarding the game.

“Player versus environment,” she informed me. “It means that you complete quests and dungeons and storylines and stuff, yet all this meathead does is live out his murder hobo fantasy in PVP which stands for player versus player.”

I nodded and looked towards the next gap in the trees we would have to squeeze ourselves through. This pattern continued until we levelled up again; we paused to assign our stats then continued. In around the eighth or ninth clearing we noticed something new in our surroundings, a well-trodden path presented itself to us, disappearing into the midnight shadows of the woods. I wondered briefly if we had come full circle but a quick shake of her head from Fiona told me we hadn’t. We’d reached something important to the dungeon. We formed up again, myself and Glitters upfront as we advanced down the muddy path, and while I didn’t have an axe with me, I kept my shield raised and a magical gemstone slowly floating in my hands.

The path wasn’t terribly wide, so at Fiona’s insistence I fell back and let her glowing cocoon float a few feet ahead of us, casting a pale light to illuminate our surroundings, while Fizzlewiz and Violet took up the rear casting their own pallid illumination. About twenty feet later, the path widened and cobbles began to appear in increasing frequency, stubbornly defying nature’s advancing frontiers. Before us was what looked like a gated mansion, it had an eerie gothic air that reminded me of an old 2D animated show that was still aired on Mars for children and families around Halloween. Towering at three stories, it was easily one of the largest structures we had seen, aside from some of the taller tenement-style buildings that made up a good portion of the Lantern District that I assumed housed the town’s workforce.

A tall, menacing set of rusting iron gates barred our way into the property and a small shack sat to one side of the road a few feet away. The shack itself was little better than a wooden shed, it had a rotten door barely hanging on to its rusted hinges. There was a grimy window next to it, so dusted and cobwebbed-over that even pressing my flat nose against the glass made me sneeze but didn’t reveal anything within the hut. Fiona stood amidst our monsters as Fizzle marched towards the gates to give them a good shake. While they creaked and rattled, they didn’t part and remained stubbornly closed.

“Hey big guy,” he called over to me; it was an affectionate term between us, he had always called me it though he towered over me. Never had it been more fitting now that I towered over him. “Did you invest in more strength points?”

“Yeah, I split the points from my last level-up between strength, dexterity and intellect” I told him, wandering over to join him. The bars of the spear-tipped gates were thick and not rounded as I had thought earlier. They were square and that made them difficult to get a firm grip of. When I finally settled on the sturdiest grip I could, I began to heave, throwing all my 14 strength points into it. The gate creaked, groaned, and then finally started to give way with a growing metallic shriek as its ancient hinges protested to their ill-treatment. As the sound rose there was the sound of smashing and then the breaking of wood accompanied by a loud rasping scream. I let go of the gates and turned. Fiona was backing up as Glitters released its field of glowing orbs then sat in the middle of them, pulsing in threatening colours.

Something was approaching us. I stared at the creature; it looked like the mangled remains of a human, very little flesh or skin remained. The hollowed eye sockets were lit the same white light all the monsters in this dungeon had. The human remains that made up the monster were too wasted to be able to move, but in a world with monsters and magic that didn’t matter. Plant matter that resembled vines and ivy infested the body replacing much of the wasted flesh giving the entire thing a creepy puppet vibe. Moving erratically, shambling forward it entered a shaft of moonlight and that was enough for the game to identify the monster and name it.

Gatekeeper Falstad, Level seven

A golden sword accompanied the name. I didn’t know what that meant but it caused Fizzle to stop casting and change to his AOE spell with a muted curse. Fiona had snuck off again and was no doubt readying a sneak attack on the unsuspecting sap. No pun intended. I moved to the side, Baruu floating silently above me, clearly understanding the situation. My heart swelled with pride over the little creature, I’d only had her for just over a day and a half in-game time and she was already shaping up into a stubborn little companion, I , on the other hand, was screwed. The shambling, plant infested body lurched towards Glitters, who floated defiantly amid it’s a minefield of spell orbs. The zombie, I was thinking of it as a zombie, shambled into the first of the orbs, which detonated with a small flash but nothing happened. Falstad moved on unmolested, swinging a tree-like limb into Glitters, shaving a surprisingly small amount of health from the tenacious creature. I decided now would be the best time to get involved and began casting Gem Shot as fast as my attack speed and cooldowns would let me. It frustrated me not being able to wade in with my Ki empowered techniques as I watched Fiona pop out of the shadows to slash at the hapless zombies’ legs, severing tendons so it crumpled. Fizzle hit with his long cast AOE spell right on top of the heap of plant matter and decaying flesh. The ground ignited, Violet and Baruu opened with their own spells. Violet rained down indigo hex flames, applying an effect that dealt hex damage periodically over a ten-second timer. Baruu cast a spell I had looked at but not paid much attention to, something I promised to rectify as a buff icon appeared, explaining that it increased my movement and attack speeds by a small amount for a short period of time. Information checked; I took aim firing different coloured glowing gemstones into the flesh and the vines of poor old Falstad. His health bar emptied only for it to refill rapidly. We watched in horror as the plant matter that comprised half of the body writhed violently, growing at an unnatural rate.

“Phase two!” Fiona called from a pool of shadows somewhere. I began running, trying to gain some distance between me and the explosion of growth that was rapidly turning into a freakish, lopsided, humanoid plant monster. It roared and sent piercing tentacle of vines directly at me, I brought the shield up in time deflecting the blow away from me. Though I’d avoided most of the damage, the blow sent me bounding across the roots of trees and patches of cobblestones. My HP dipped a little, as did my stamina. My mana was half full and I had a handful of casts of Gem Shot left, but the larger creatures were proving to be problematic. After deflecting the attack Glitters had released hundreds of fine, sparking threads, those threads moved with purpose though, as they threaded together into several small needles, most of which pierced the bark and bones of the amalgamation of corpse and plant. It jerked away violently with a bellowing roar then slammed a limb, that looked like a giant heavily knotted tree, into the ground. Shockwaves rippled out from the point of impact, knocking Fizzle and I to our knees. Fizzle retaliated, not bothering to get back up, he dual cast firebolt after firebolt at our foe, Violet doing her best to reignite the misshapen behemoth with her damage over time spell.

The fight went sideways at one point, nearly resulting in my death, I was super fortunate when a barrage of spells detonated against the fleshy side of the creature that even now was reaching for me, mouth agape. Its health bar was emptying rapidly, no doubt Fizzle and Violet bringing the real damage with their obvious magical advantage. The creature, aside from its painful shockwave ability, had nothing else of note. Sure, each of its normal attacks would send me or Glitters flying as we traded off the blows to conserve each other’s HP. When I wasn’t bellowing challenges at the creature and burning through Ki, I was casting Gem Shot as often as possible. Baruu, under my direction, was continuously casting tailwind on Fiona, whose backstabs and rapid shanking with her twin knives was dealing huge chunks of damage when she wasn’t waiting for one of her umbra domain spells to come off cooldown. Yet every time she appeared to reap great chunks of plant matter, her HP and mana bars were getting closer and closer to empty.

Eventually, we were spent, only the monsters and their seemingly endless mana pools continued casting. Fiona and I took turns darting to assault the lumbering mound, she would dart in to slash at some exposed part of it and when it turned to face her, I would advance and smash at it with my shield. For my efforts I unlocked a new Ki ability but in doing so I spent the last of my Ki. Fizzle, tapped of mana and lacking any weapon, resorted to hurling sticks and other random things he found either lying around or in Falstad’s shed. Eventually, much like with the worm, Falstad eventually succumbed to accumulated wounds, burns, bleed effects, and mangled body parts curtesy of my shield. As it slumped, the plant matter of the creature broke apart into the usual elegant display of ascending lights leaving behind it a couple of stones, a bag of gold, piles of fragments, a bronze key, and from within the hut, there was a flash of golden light. Fizzle, who was closest to the shack at the end of the fight went inside to investigate, while I gathered up the stones and fragments and Fiona divided the gold and inspected the key. A window appeared in front of each of the items we had to roll for from within a chest that Fizzle had no doubt found and opened.

There were three items, one of which caught my eye.

Kindler’s Axe.

Item quality: Good

1h axe

Str or Dex: 14

6-12 slashing damage +3 fire damage.

Chance on hit to inflict the target with a burn for a further 16 points of fire damage over 8 seconds.

The other two items were a pair of gloves and a wand. The items read as follows:

Simple Wand

Item quality: simple

Prerequisite: any school of magic

3-9 arcane damage.

And

Cut Purse’s gloves.

+1 to Dex

+ 1 level pickpocketing.

I hit need on the axe and passed on the other loot. The drops were too perfect, I thought, perhaps the games AI was rewarding us for stumbling across the dungeon and defeating monsters with a clear level advantage over the three of us. In the end, neither of the two rolled on the axe, but there was a lengthy discussion between Fiona and fizzle over who would get what and in the end it was agreed that Fiona’s emerging playstyle would benefit more from the gloves and Fizzle received the wand as a backup for when his mana ran dry.

I equipped the axe, it looked like your standard hand axe, one used for splitting wood rather than skulls. It felt good to have an axe back in my hands; whilst I had raised my earth magic a few levels, I missed the thrill of getting up close. This new weapon, coupled with Baruu’s preference to buffing us with tailwind, would make the combat even more exciting, though I doubted I could deal the same sort of damage as Fizzle or Fiona, but that didn’t matter. Poor Glitters was beaten up after the contest with the deceased, but still moving remains Falstad, so we rested for a few hours. As the pre-dawn chill set in, we started onwards through the torn mansion gates, bidding us welcome to the grounds and the manor house beyond.