The transition from the party’s mansion to the dungeon entrance wasn’t a smooth one. Elijah had assumed it would be instant. It was not, to say the least. Swirling colors distorted his vision. The surrounding environment swirled and bled into itself until he was dumped out, disoriented, into the middle of a field. As he finally got his feet under him, he looked up and saw Nicholas fending off several skeletons as the others got oriented to the fight.
There were dozens of skeletons in front of him, being held back from swarming him by Nicholas’ imposing form and swinging sword. Other than the skeletons, the field seemed empty for hundreds of meters before turning into a forest. Just as the map had shown. He looked about at the rest of the party as he considered his options for how he could get into the fight.
Nicholas’ shield swung forward in a wide arc, taking out the femurs of two skeletons on his left, even as he fended off an attack from the right with his sword. Sasha recovered her bearings next, channeling her mana into a wash of pure white light. He caught the edge of the light and pulled up his menu.
[Spell]
Turn Undead
Level: 2
Description:
TURN_UNDEAD{
SPELL_ID: WHITEMAGE_TURN_UNDEAD
ENCHANTMENT: MAGIC_TURN_UNDEAD
SPECIAL: COST_REDUCT_MED, EMPOWER_LOW
COST: 20 (BASE 30 - SPECIAL)
}
‘That’s interesting…’ he thought to himself, reading over the text. He could almost feel his skill grasping at the metadata, could almost sense how to change it.
Sasha cast the spell three times in quick succession, white light flaring up amid the skeletons. With the sounds of cracking bones, they evaporated as the light touched them, wisping away into black smoke.
He ran over to her just as she finished her last cast. “How much mana do you have left? Enough to cast that again?”
She was breathing heavily. “Enough for one more, why?”
He stepped behind her and placed a hand between her shoulder blades. “I need to try something. Target the largest group you can.”
Her eyes searched quickly and found a group that was being held back by Benjamin’s spells. She reached a hand out and began channeling the last dregs of mana she had left. Elijah reacted quickly, grasping hold of the spell as it formed in her hand and altering the text so that EMPOWER_LOW was set instead as EMPOWER_HIGH.
White light flared out from a point in the middle of the group, significantly brighter this time than before. He felt Sasha flinch away as the light nearly blinded her. When the light faded and the spots cleared from his vision, he saw the devastation her spell had caused. Where before there had been dozens of skeletons, now stood only a handful. They were quickly dispatched by Nicholas’ sword, Bo’s knife, and Benjamin’s spells. The notifications came in as soon as the last skeleton fell.
[Level Up]
Class: Reality Warper has reached level 2!
~~~
[NOTICE]
You have 3 unallocated stat points. Find a safe zone to allocate stat points.
~~~
[Level Up]
Skill: Reality Warp has reached level 2!
He looked around and saw that both Nicholas and Benjamin had also levelled up. Sasha dropped away from his hand onto her knees, panting heavily. Elijah kneeled down to help her stand up, but was pulled away a split second later. Nicholas wrapped his large hand around Elijah’s throat. “What did you do?!” he yelled, anger and concern warring for dominance in his voice.
He struggled to breathe as the much larger man gripped his throat, his health bar ticking down. Meanwhile, a curious part of his brain realized that PvP must be enabled, otherwise the AI would probably stop what Nicholas was doing. He couldn’t answer; the large man’s grip was too strong..
[STATUS]
Damage Taken: 1
Remaining Health: 14 / 15
~~~
[STATUS]
Damage Taken: 1
Remaining Health: 13 / 15
~~~
[STATUS]
Damage Taken: 1
Remaining Health: 12 / 15
Sasha came to his rescue, grabbing Nicholas’ calf and speaking through heavy breaths. “It’s mana drain, Nic. He didn’t do anything but empower my spell.”
Nicholas took another moment to look down at Sasha before releasing Elijah. She stood up shakily and downed one of the little blue vials—a mana potion if Elijah had to guess—that he had seen Benjamin drink earlier. Her hand was soft against his forearm as she cast ‘Cure Wound’ on him. The warmth of her spell quelled the ache from where Nicholas had choked him. A warm balm to his damaged throat.
Anger flashed through Elijah as he looked up at the larger man. “Look! I know I’m new, but if this is going to be your reaction every time I use my magic, then I think we should part ways. Sasha, being who she is, caught me off guard. Once!” He shoved Nicholas hard, causing the man to step back. “That doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole!” He hadn’t meant to scream the last part or to shove him, but he had, and he awaited the inevitable repercussions.
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They didn’t come.
Instead, Nicholas simply nodded his head and put out his hand. “I’m sorry.” His voice was soft and sheepish. “I took things too far; that’s my mistake. Please don’t let my actions negatively influence your view on the party. The others don’t deserve to lose your help because of my arrogance. Can we start over?”
The man’s sheepish expression and voice caught Elijah off guard, and he felt his anger deflating. He reached out and gripped Nicholas’ hand, giving it a firm shake. “Apology accepted, Nicholas.”
Bo clapped Elijah on the back. “If you can boost up the power of her turn undead spell like that throughout the dungeon, we’ll be able to clear most of the enemies without trouble. The end boss is supposed to be a Lich King, so most of the mobs are also undead.”
“How often can you use your buff spell like that?” Sasha asked him with a curious look. “Does it drain a lot of mana?”
Elijah shrugged. “Actually, it doesn’t use mana at all. I only have one skill that uses mana, and it’s my summon familiar spell.”
“Some people have all the luck, a unique magic class and it doesn’t even consume mana.” Benjamin flicked him off, and everyone laughed.
Sasha smiled at them as they shook hands, then hugged them both. “Seriously though, that much power was insane. Most people never beat the skeleton wave before the gate to the fort opens.”
Elijah cocked an eyebrow, just now really having time to look around the area. They were in an empty field with nothing around for at least a quarter mile in any direction. “You guys are going to have to explain this one to me. Where is the fort?”
It was Bo who answered him. “People hate this dungeon because it’s not easy to get into it. There is a timer that starts when the first player enters the zone. Usually for players at our level it’s an endurance battle; you just have to survive until the timer runs out, then the entrance to the fort will rise out of the ground.” He pointed to a patch of grass that was discolored.
“It’s been what? Maybe three minutes since Nicholas jumped in? So we have another ten or twelve minutes to wait,” Benjamin said, his eyes unfocused as he looked through a menu.
Elijah stepped away from the group and towards the patch of grass the dungeon entrance would rise from. Kneeling down, he placed a hand against the dirt and activated ‘Reality Warp’.
[DEBUG VIEW: Gate to the Dragontooth King's Abandoned Fort]
Gate {
NAME: GATE_DRAGONTOOTH_DUNG_1
OPENTO: DRAGONTOOTH_ABAND_FORT
OPEN_COND: OPEN_TIMER
OPEN_TIMER: 900s
CURRENT_TIMER: 682s
}
It felt almost too easy to figure out how to open the gate early, and he noted it would be super simple to get it to open to any other place, if only he knew the location code. A cheater’s teleport spell.
He stood up, leaving the box open as he faced his party. “If it opened right now, would you four be ready to go through?”
The four of them glanced around for a few seconds before Nicholas spoke for the group. “Yes? But we still have plenty of time un—”
His words were cut off as Elijah modified the timer to read only 1 second. With a rumbling shake, the ground rose up behind Elijah. He didn’t turn to look at it, just gave them a grin. He always loved a little dramatic flair.
The entrance wasn’t so much a gate as a portal. The inner ring was a dark red stone the color of blood, and the outer ring appeared to be the bones of misshapen humans. In the center of the inner ring was a dark purple portal, almost so dark that it could be mistaken for black if it didn’t flare up from time to time with strands of lighter purple.
Bo approached it first. He was acting particularly skittish, even more so than when they had first talked about coming here. “Guys? I don’t remember the portal looking this unstable the last time we were here.”
Benjamin stepped up next and inspected the portal. “Huh, that’s strange. We should probably test it.”
“How do we test- Hey!” Bo shouted as Benjamin shoved him through with an evil grin on his face.
“What’s with you and shoving people through portals?” Elijah looked at the mage, who just chuckled.
A few moments later, Bo’s head popped back out. “Sasha, get in here. Benjamin pushed me into a tripwire.” Then, his head receded back through the portal.
Bo really had not been kidding when he said that this dungeon was full of traps. Spike pits, falling rocks, and even the occasional tripwire that sent poisoned darts flying through the passage. They couldn’t go more than a dozen feet before Bo had to halt them to disarm another trap. He missed about one in every fifteen traps, and paid for the consequences in blood.
“Sure would be nice if you could boost my trap sense skill.” Bo grumbled at Elijah as Sasha healed him from yet another tripwire. This one had shot arrows into his ankles, causing him to fall forward and just barely dodge setting off a fireball rune.
Elijah had tried to boost it once already, but something about the nature of passive skills like ‘Trap Sense’ caused his changes to be overwritten almost immediately.
“Sorry, Bo, there’s nothing I can do for it at the moment. Maybe when I get a few more levels under my belt.”
Bo gave a heavy sigh as he stood into a crouching position and ushered them to follow him. “Everyone else gets cool powers. But me? Me, I get to be the meat shield. Just make sure you’re ready to heal me, Sasha. That last one took a big chunk out.”
They continued the slow pace deeper into the dungeon, and Elijah wondered about the lack of mobs. “Hey Nicholas. You guys have done this before, is it normal to not have any enemies to fight yet?”
“We haven’t gotten very far yet. There’s a mini-boss about halfway through that’s tough to tank. He can hit multiple targets at once, and more often than not Sasha gets knocked out of that fight early.” His hand gripped ?his shield a little tighter, annoyance on his face at being unable to protect her as effectively as he’d like. “As for your other question, no, it isn’t normal. We should have been dealing with various undead by now. I’m not sure if it has something to do with us clearing the skeleton horde outside, or your little trick with the gate. Something isn’t right though.”
Elijah gulped. He knew he was playing a dangerous game messing with the debug menu, but the AI had granted it to him. Surely, it must be capable of fixing any issues that occurred.
Elijah’s eyes glanced up at the notification in his menu. At yet another quest that only he had received.
“You got a quest? Lucky,” Bo had grouched at him when he had told them.
[New Quest]
The Dragontooth King
Description: The Dragontooth King's Abandoned Fort has sat derelict for ages. The undead inhabit its halls now, restless and angry. But is that a recent development, or something far older? Find out what secrets this once-great fort now holds.
“About that,” Elijah questioned. “Alastor said something during my interview about it being lucky that I got my first quest; now you’re saying I’m lucky for getting a second. What’s the deal?”
“The quest system in this game is bare bones at best. The devs tried to implement a more advanced version, but the AI is super stingy with giving them out. It’s been a headache for them for years.”
It felt to Elijah like a fairly run-of-the-mill quest, but he wasn’t sure why the AI would have given it to him and not the rest of the party.
They travelled for another half hour, stopping regularly to top Bo’s health up, all the while Nicholas grew more tense. Elijah could hear him regularly mumbling about how wrong this was.
“The mini-boss is just up ahead. Or at least it should be. This is so weird,” Nicholas said, his voice strained with tension.
They arrived at a rocky overlook above the mini-boss’ chamber. Staring down, Benjamin chuckled softly. “Well, at least this guy is still here. I was starting to worry it had been cleared, and the map was wrong.”
Elijah looked down on the room. It appeared to be a library, if whoever had designed it had no idea what a library was except for the insane ramblings of a madman. The bookshelves all skewed off in different directions, with the books thrown haphazardly on the shelves and on the floor. Multiple tables sat stacked against the far wall, creating a strange pyramid structure. Within each alcove, between the lower tabletops and the undersides, sat various scrolls of some description. Strange bat-like creatures flew through the room, grabbing random books and tossing them haphazardly onto different shelves. And in the center of the room stood a single figure draped in tattered and decaying robes. Its red eyes looked up at them, inviting them to face it.
[TARGET INFO]
Acolyte of the Undying Library (Level 5)
HP: 120 / 120
