We spent the rest of the meal in relative silence. There was some minor small talk, but nothing about the dungeon, or my decision. Sullivan volunteered to show me around for the rest of the morning, so Chelsea and Bea excused themselves and left right after eating.
“Me and my big mouth,” I said, after they’d left.
“It’s not your fault. That kid loves her mother, and unfortunately the entire family is heavily resistant to magic, so they either need a cure, or to fight it off naturally.” Sullivan picked up his head, and placed it within the crook of his arm. “How about I show you to one of the projection rooms? My team is probably practicing right now, you’re welcome to join.”
I considered a minute, then nodded. “I haven’t had a chance to practice for a few days, so that’d be nice. Are we supposed to meet Kass or Bella somewhere later?”
The big man shrugged, “They’re having floor meetings today, and will come find you when done.” He led me back to the atrium, then across the area to a set of doors near Lanivia’s lair. He opened the door, revealing a short hallway with a couple rooms on each side. Inside most there were rows of beds, with crystalline canopies, but in a couple there were some crystalline booths for non-humanoid creatures, like centaurs.
“This is the projection area for the training yard. Right now the revenants are sparring, would you like to watch?”
I inspected one of the devices, it was much cleaner, and sleeker than the ones I was used to. When adventuring you had to share the projectors with every other team, and you were lucky if they were cleaned once a day. These ones looked brand new.
“There’s cleaning and repair magic on them,” Sullivan said, as if reading my mind. “Lanivia likes to keep things in good working order. Not only does it make the dungeon work smoother, but keeps the workers happier.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Can I put George in any of those booths? I can’t exactly leave him unsupervised right now,” I asked.
Sullivan pointed to a booth near the end, “Use that one then, it’s linked to the nearest bed for beast trainers.”
George grumbled as I shooed him into the area, but once the top came down and started glowing, he went still.
“He’ll be waiting for you inside, do you know how to set up the bed yourself?” Sullivan asked.
I checked the controls, there didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary, “I think I’m good,” I replied.
The big knight lowered the lid, then gave me a thumbs up, “Then I’ll meet you inside.”
I pressed a few buttons on the side, then felt a familiar warm sensation, I felt like I was falling asleep, and then suddenly my consciousness was somewhere else.
As soon as I was aware, I glanced down to check how everything looked. Most projectors took several minutes to create a simulacrum, or artificial body, so you could fight safely in a dungeon. It only took a few more seconds for my limbs to fully manifest leaving me, for all intents and purposes, standing within the dungeon.
I’d landed somewhere at the rear of the manor. There was a high wall on my left, the back of the manor on my right, and what appeared to be a series of courtyards ahead. While I was looking around, George came up and headbutted me in the back of the knee to let me know he was there. As much as I complained, George was a good companion and protector. Since I didn’t see any sign of Sullivan, I figured he probably manifested further into the floor, so I gave George a signal and started walking forward. The big spider went quiet, no not just quiet, silent. Despite his massive size George was a predator and his ambushes have saved my life more than once.
Stolen novel; please report.
The two of us strolled up to the first courtyard, and checked inside. There was a massive sandy area, filled with training dummies and weapons. It would have been a pretty typical training area, if not for the sections of blood-soaked sand, and headless bodies chained up in the place of training dummies. They were just props, but still realistic enough to give me chills. We continued through several more arenas, some jousting areas, and even an archery range, before arriving at the end, a massive gothic-looking arena made of some sort of dark granite. The walls were full of battle damage, and bloodstains. Not real ones of course, since the dungeon would use magic to repair itself if damaged, these were all set-dressing to unnerve adventurers. The fog was thicker here, and nearly came up to my knees. In the centre was Sullivan, carrying a massive battle axe in one hand, and covered in heavy plate mail. He was surrounded by half a dozen skeletal fighters, wearing fine armor. Each one was carrying a different weapon, and as I approached I noticed they had translucent spectral flesh. These weren’t skeletons, they were revenants, extremely powerful undead.
Once Sullivan saw me approaching, he waved. “Sorry about that, I forgot to set up your spawn point, and I always appear in the boss area. I figured you’d make it here on your own.” He turned to his troops, “Listen up you lot, this is Talia, and she’s thinking of joining the dungeon. She wanted to loosen up her muscles, anyone willing to spar with her?”
The revenants paused, and turned as one. From what I knew revenants didn’t have a hive mind, but could sense exactly where other undead in the area were. That meant fighting them as a group was much harder than one on one.
A single skeletal hand raised. “Rembrant, good.” As the revenant slowly made its way to the dueling area, Sullivan pointed at one of the weapon racks. “I realize you don’t have your weapon here, feel free to grab anything from over there.”
“What about George?” I asked, while striding over to the rack. I could feel Rembrandt sizing up the spider, who had parked itself right at the edge of the arena, growling.
“Acceptable,” came the rasping reply. I smiled to myself as I heard the reply. I selected a random glaive, then quickly made my way towards the dueling area. I glanced at the weapon in Rembrandt’s hand, it was silver colored, and gave off a soft green light. Definitely a sword master, so a single bad exchange would mean my ‘death’.
As I stepped into the arena Sullivan and the others crowded around. “We fight to the death here, if that’s okay with you,” Sullivan said. I just nodded. “In that case, you may begin when this medallion hits the ground.” He pulled out a four inch diameter disk, and flipped it like a coin. The metal disk shot into the air, rotated several times, then fell to the sand.
The instant it hit the ground Rembrandt moved. The skeletal swordsman swung his blade perpendicular to the arena floor, and as he did a massive amount of sand filled the air, masking his approach. He was light footed, but not enough to hide his approach from me. I brought the glaive up parallel to my right side, all five limbs on that side bracing it, and still I barely managed to absorb the wicked sword blow. The strength of the blow sent me sliding a few feet to the side, but that delay gave the sand time to settle, and prevented a followup blow.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” I taunted, once again hefting the glaive in two hands. The revenant quickly swung his sword in my direction, sending out a blade of wind which I blocked. Rembrandt cocked his head to the side, sizing me up, then did it again, and again. Each slash came faster and faster, until there was a storm of wind blades heading my way. I blocked most, let a couple unimportant ones through, but never took my eyes off my opponent. After about thirty seconds of blades, Rembrandt made his move. I almost missed it, he was skilled enough to obfuscate his intentions, but not enough to completely conceal them. His front foot dug into the ground a little deeper, he dipped a little further than before, then in the middle of his blade storm he burst forward.
If I hadn’t seen it coming, I would never have been able to dodge the strike, what my opponent didn’t know was that I was waiting for an opening like this. As Rembrandt burst forward, I went low, throwing the shaft of my glaive horizontal and bracing it with my foot. The skeletal face didn’t show any emotion, but I swear the light in his eyes dimmed slightly when he realized what was happening. The slash barely missed my head, while the momentum from the dash sent Rembrandt’s legs into the shaft of my weapon, and sent him tumbling.
Normally a swordmaster would be able to recover long before I could but, unfortunately for him, I wasn’t alone. The revenant tumbled across the ground, and only managed to regain control long enough to see George rear up. His massive front legs crashed down with enough strength to pulverize stone. The revenant’s simulacrum instantly derezed, sending him back to the projection room.
There was a moment of quiet, then a quiet clapping as Sullivan and the other revenants clapped. I stood up, a little worse for the wear, but feeling good. It’d been awhile since I’d had a good workout.