"Okay, everyone into position, like we rehearsed," Salazar commanded. Once the portal arch winked out behind them, he immediately took command of the group. As the only veteran adventurer among them, they all agreed that he should be deferred to in matters of tactics and strategy.
Greg took his position at the front of the group. Despite not carrying a shield, he still had the most wide area spells as well as a solid resistance. This made him ideal to serve as the party's front line fighter. Chandra immediately dropped down to all fours, her nostrils flaring as she sniffed the air before disasppearing into the tall grass. Alex raised his wand and held it at the ready, bright red aether already gathering in the crystal. Salazar drew his dagger in one hand and held his other raised.
All four of them had their own dedicated role in the party. In terms that Alex liked to use: Greg was the tank, Chandra was the melee DPS and scout, he was the caster DPS, and Salazar floated between support and damage dealer as required. As a veteran of a much higher level, Salazar could technically clear the entire dungeon on his own.
But where was the fun in that?
Zack conjured a wisp in the air above them and directed them to continue forward. Alex only half paid attention to the box text as he scanned the environment. This was his first time in the meadow room since becoming a kobold, and he had to admit it was certainly different. He could barely see over the tall grass lining the room, and every time the blades rustled it made him jump.
Sensing his trouble, Greg sliced the air with his sword. A wave of crimson energy erupted from the sword, carrying with it all of the orc's strength and slicing power. The air was suddenly filled with grass, like a scene from a samurai movie as Greg cleared a path for the diminutive kobold.
"Thanks," Alex said, following closely in Greg's wake. "I never noticed how tall the grass is before. Granted, I wasn't three feet tall last time I was in here."
Greg grunted and nodded, charging another wave of energy to slice more grass. "It's not just you. The grass is a lot longer than it used to be."
"There's a good reason for that," Zack explained, flying his wisp over. "One of the bigger complaints we received about the meadow was that it was too easy. So… I've adjusted it."
"Adjusted it how?" Salazar demanded, spreading his feet into a combat stance.
"You'll see," Zack giggled, his wisp winking out of existence.
Alex shared a look with Salazar, the elf's eyes narrowing dangerously. "I'm sure he has the best intentions," the kobold said, trying to sound assured. Even he could tell that it was half-hearted.
A sudden rustle in the grass drew Alex's attention, and he whipped around with staff at the ready. His heart hammered in his chest, and he felt a sharp tang of fear on his tongue as something parted the grass. Fear turned into relief as Chandra reemerged, her lupine muzzle at eye level with the kobold. For the first time, Alex noticed just how long and sharp the werewolf's fangs really were. They looked as though they could bite right through his arm and just keep going.
"Big bunnies," she said quietly.
"How big?" Salazar asked.
"Thumper sized. All of them," Chandra explained. Her ears flicked and she motioned with her chin back the way she came. "Flowers are dangerous, too."
Alex had to stretch his neck to catch any sign of flowers, but a flash of bright red in the grass drew his attention. He pointed at it with his wand and loosed the fiery aether he'd been charging up. This was one of the techniques he learned while training with the Toronto Deinonychus adventurer's guild.
His manipulate aether spell simply allowed him to eject his magic from his body, while is fire affinity allowed him to translate that very same magic into an elemental state. When combined together, he was able to produce a flickering flame. The problem then became a matter of turning that same flame into a spell capable of harming a monster. Fireballs were too destructive and difficult to predict, while blasts were too unreliable. There was, however, a much easier way to fight.
Unlike most forms of matter, which came in the shape of particles, the two states magic came in the form of strings. Mana strings were tight and controlled, safe for living creatures to interact with, while aether strings were loose and volatile, making them dangerous. What was often described as one point of mana or aether was simply a single thread. Alex projected a thread of fiery aether, keeping a firm mental grip on it lest it lose potency before reaching its target.
Alex's spell held its tight shape until it hit the flower, before erupting in flames. The plant squealed in agony as its petals and leaves caught fire, and sharp roots suddenly leapt out of the earth to thrash about in agony.
At last spotting a foe, Salazar wheeled on the flower and snapped his fingers. Unlike Alex, Salazar's aether had a toxic green colour rather than rich fiery orange. This was due to his own elemental affinity being crystal. Alex watched as Salazar's expertly woven spell dug into the dirt and affected the molecular bonds, turning what was previous soft soil into immovable stone. The flower was attempting to advance on the party, only for its roots to be trapped in the earth. Two more flowers lifted their petals and screeched as they too became trapped.
"Targets immobilized," Salazar declared.
"Moving in," Greg nodded. He gribbed his sword tight with both hands and again parted the grass, clearing the way for Alex to have line of sight.
As they drew close, though, something again made the grass rustle. Just before something leapt out at them, Greg dropped to a knee to cover Alex. A bunny the size of a kobold leapt out of the brush, a polished horn jutting from its head. It had a wild look in its eyes as it charged, horn primed to gore Greg in the side.
A pair of jaws suddenly shot out of the grass and clamped down on the rabbit's throat. Chandra snarled like a dog as she whipped her head back and forth, slamming the enormous bunny into the earth as she did. There was a sharp crack as the rabbit's neck snapped, and it started dissolving into threads of blue-green mana. Thankful for the boost, Alex reached out to drifting energy and felt his body surge with new power as he absorbed it.
This was the true benefit to training within Zack's dungeon, as opposed to fighting against real world monsters. While Zack took pride in keeping his dungeon a safe place for people without formal learning to train, there was also the fact that killing monsters restored a person's mana. Alex could unleash spell after spell, and once the battle was said and done he could recharge his magic off Zack's mobs. In exchange, Zack absorbed their spent aether and turned it back into mana. It was a symbiotic relationship where both parties benefited from the other.
"More coming in hot," Salazar warned. He touched the earth his empty palm and his eyes blazed with green light. Sure enough, before he even rose to his feet, two more rabbits were bursting through the grass.
The party got into position, ready for a fight. Without the element of surprise, Chandra would have a hard time snagging a bunny in her jaws. Alex had no such trouble. He raised his wand to the sky and started gathering power, charging one of his more potent spells. He felt the way his aether poured out of him, winding together into a tighter and tighter ball of blazing power.
Then, he unleashed it. "FIREBALL!" He squeaked, hurling the blazing orb at one of the nearest bunnies. The rabbit leapt to side step the blast, only to get clipped as it suddenly exploded. The raging spell burned away a massive patch of grass, and turned the bunny's dirty brown fur black with char. It let out a squeal of pain as it was blown to the side.
There was a blur of motion, and Chandra was in place to snag it. Instead of catching it in her jaws, though, she simply grabbed it out of the air and slammed it into the earth. Salazar, seeing what she was doing, sent a pulse of aether through the ground. It turned to mush beneath the bunny, before rapidly solidifying again. The rabbit let out a distressed noise as it was trapped, half-submerged in the earth.
"That's just cruel," Chandra accused, rising back to her feet. "Couldn't you just conjured a spike of earth to kill it?"
"My element is crystal, not earth," Salazar reminded her. "I control the molecular bonds in inorganic material, not the actual dirt itself."
Chandra frowned and shrugged. "Whatever."
While they were preoccupied with that rabbit, Alex had already turned his attention to the second. It was too close for him to risk charging another fireball, so instead he sent quick lances of flame its way. The bunny was fast, and dodged out of the way of each shot before lowering its horn for a charge. Seeing that Alex wouldn't be able to stop it in time, Greg stepped in the way with sword raised. As the bunny approached, Greg activated one of his spells. A thick roped of aether shot from his empty palm and snared the monster like a trap. The bunny abruptly slammed to the ground, tripping as its feet became tangled in magic. Greg finished it off by cleaving its neck from its shoulders.
"The bunnies still aren't that big a deal," Alex shrugged, cracking his neck. "Though that flower is new."
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Sure enough, the battle had revealed the flower trapped in the dirt. Unlike the carnage carnations, one of Zack's previously favoured flower monsters, this mob was clearly designed to look more like a rose. It had large petals on its head, and its body was covered in menacing looking thorns.
"Oh yeah, Zack asked me to bring him flowers the other day," Greg explained. "I had no idea this is what he planned to use them for."
Salazar crossed his arms as he studied the rose. "Greg, aren't roses notoriously hardy flowers?"
The orc shrugged. "No idea, why?"
"Because I'm fairly positive roses are famous for being able to grow in nearly any situation. As in, grow in concrete or clay," Salazar explained.
As soon as he said it, the sound of cracking stone echoed through the meadow.
"Oh," Greg grunted, raising his sword at the ready again.
The party formed up once more, bracing themselves as the rose started pulling itself out of the rocky ground. It lashed out with thorny vines, which Greg tanked by coating his armour in crimson aether. The flower made a horrible hissing noise, and suddenly the meadow was full of colour as more of its ilk rose from the grass.
"Zack, this looks a bit too difficult for the first room!" Alex called, as three carnations stood up in the grassy field behind the party. He backed up until he was standing in Greg's six, ready to defend the group's flank.
A blue-green wisp appeared in the air above them. "Oh yeah, that's another thing. I've added scalability to the dungeon now. Rooms will actually scale in difficulty to the party in question. I have Iris to thank for that, by the way! She helped me create these nodes that—"
"ZACK, THIS IS NOT THE TIME!" Chandra barked at him.
"Oh, right. They're all still level five so even though there are a lot of them, you should be able to clear the room without too much difficulty," Zack assured them. The wisp hovered silently in the air for a moment. "Maybe there are a few too many mobs in this room."
"You think?" Salazar chuckled. "Though at level five, I should be able to handle them on my own."
"Then do it," Chandra barked. "Please, by all means, show off."
Salazar rolled his eyes dramatically at her, then nodded. "Very well."
Reaching into his pocket, Salazar extracted three rocks. They didn't look like anything special, just ordinary stones one might find at the side of the road. He breathed on them, then tossed them underhand at the encroaching horde of flowers. As the rocks sailed through the air, a deep green glow started to emanate from within them. As they neared their targets, they suddenly burst like grenades, sending stone shrapnel shreding through the plants. Two flowers were too close and were blown apart by the blast, while one flower only lost a leaf and a few petals for its troubles.
Salazar scooped another tool out of his pouch, a ninja's kunai, and breathed onto it like he did the rocks. This he flung towards the flowers behind the party, aiming for the one farthest from Alex. Unlike the rocks, which burst, the throwing weapon veered towards his target with inhuman accuracy. As it punched through the flower's stem, it suddenly changed direction and veered towards another flower.
"I can't hit all of them," Salazar explained. "Alex, that's your cue."
"Oh, right," Alex said, snapping out of his awe. He shook his head and lifted his wand, firing a rapid series of fiery bolts at the nearest flower. Together, he and Salazar were able to make surprisingly quick work of the horticultural horde.
"And that's why we have so many," Zack explained, his wisp bobbing over Salazar's head. "We need to scale the challenge along with the people delving it. I've had too many encounters fall in one hit to someone too powerful for the room."
The entire party glowered at Zack's wisp.
"Fiiiine, maybe this was a bit too much for the average group. I'll scale it back for real parties, but if a group comes in and they're all over level ten, all bets are off," Zack whined. "I want my delvers to be challenged. That's the only way for them to advance."
Greg and Chandra looked like they might have more to say, but Salazar was already marching toward the other side of the meadow. "There's no point in arguing with him, you know how he gets," the elf chuckled. "Come on, let's see what Thumper has in store for us."
The others shared a look with one another, before ultimately deciding that Salazar was right. Zack would adjust the difficulty for parties as necessary, and it was clear he pulled out all the stops because they were by far some of the strongest people to ever run his dungeon.
The last boss of the meadow, Thumper, previously had his own room in the dungeon. Since changing his layout, Zack had opted for a different form of boss arena. Instead a cavern offset from the rest of the meadow, Thumper's boss arena was instead denoted by a circle of grassless dirt in the ground. He was even perched atop a slight hill, making him more elevated than the rest of the dungeon.
Thumper had a new colour to him, too. Instead of being white with blue stripes, he instead had rich brown fur and grassy green spots. His horn was also replaced by a pair of heavy deer antlers.
"That's new," Alex noted.
"Yup! That's Thumper two-point-oh! Thumper, Dire Jackalope!" Zack explained in delight. "The old version was just a bit too similar to Archie for comfort, and since I didn't want to update Archie without his consent, I felt it made a lot more sense to update the non-sapient rabbit."
"Since when do you care about Archie's consent?" Chandra asked, narrowing her eyes dangerously at the wisp.
"Ow. Harsh. Look, just fight the boss, okay? The new area is just beyond his hill, that wooded section over there," Zack bobbed toward the thick copse of trees in question.
Alex shrugged as Chandra shot him a sideways glance, then followed after Greg to step onto the dirt hill. The moment the four of them crossed over onto it, Thumper rose up on all fours and stared at them. His eyes started glowing with fierce yellow light, and the surface of the hill started to shift and change.
"You gave him the earth element?" Salazar asked, as his position on the hill abruptly dropped into the earth. He struggled to climb out of his hole, but it was as deep as his shoulders.
"Not as such. I have to simulate a lot of earth-based powers. The only affinity I can actually bestow is fire, but I am trying to learn a few more," Zack chuckled. "Ninety percent of dungeon design is really just theatrics and simulation."
As if to disprove his point, Thumper stomped with his hind feet, and a pillar of earth burst from the ground in front of Alex, blocking his line-of-sight just in time to interrupt a spell. Alex yipped in surprise as his aether dissipated, and stumbled backward a few steps.
"You see, I have spawners and despawners baked into the ground, and I'm using them to absorb or create earth as necessary," Zack explained, as a pillar of dirt nearly caught Greg in the unmentionables. "Thumper has command of them, too. Basically it's line of sight targets. Front paw thumps lower the earth beneath someone, while hind paw stomps raise it. Each change will only last for a few seconds, to avoid unfair alterations to the terrain."
"Zack, this is not the time!" Greg grunted, dodging another earthen pillar as the first lowered back into the ground. He lunged toward the jackalope, only for Thumper to dodge out of the way. As the rabbit's front paws touched down the ground dropped away from under the orc, leaving him waist-deep in a hole. "Dammit!"
Chandra was having the least trouble contending with these mechanics of the group. She was by far the most agile of their number, and no matter whether Thumper tried raising or lowering the ground, he just couldn't alter the terrain fast enough to affect her.
Distracted with the rapidly approaching werewolf, Thumper didn't notice that the earth it was using to keep Alex and Salazar out of the fight had reset. Line of sight restored, Alex started charging his spells again, while Salazar dug through his bag for a new tool to use.
Chandra reached the boss without even tripping, and leapt over a fresh hole in the ground to kick him in the face. Thumper lowered his head in an attempt to block Chandra's attack, but that only left him even more exposed. Chandra's paw collided instead with his shoulder, and she used her momentum to kick off him and dive to the side. Just in time, too. Salazar hurled a tangled ball of metal wire at the rabbit, which unfurled into a net with a flash of green aether.
Now trapped in place, the boss monster could only watch as a towering sphere of flames was hurled its way. Alex's spell obliterated it, and momentarily left the rest of the group blinded. By the time the light faded, Zack was already playing a victory fanfare.
"That… was actually really cool," Greg muttered, as the ground beneath him reset. He dusted dirt off his legs and looked around, then nodded in approval at the others.
"I agree, a much more interesting encounter than the original Thumper," Salazar concurred. He clapped Greg on the shoulder and offered Chandra a hand up. She hestiated for a moment before allowing him to pull her up.
"Thank you," Zack said, his wisp bobbing in place. "Like I said, I wanted to focus on challenges that can scale with the skill of the party. Thumper here is a prime example of that. His mechanics are such that I can tweak them on the fly to adjust how hard or easy his fight is. If, for example, a group of level twenties came in and wanted a challenge, then they'd find the boss arena to basically be a churning sea of rising and lowering pillars. By contrast, a group of level ones might have to contend with a pillar rising slowly out of the ground now and then to break up line of sight."
"I like that," Alex said. "It creates a scalable encounter wihtout actually increasing the danger posed by the boss. Makes for an interesting first boss fight regardless of level without being too hard or too easy."
"The real question is if you fixed the problem with your loot," Salazar noted.
Zack's wisp rolled in the air—his equivalent of rolling his eyes. A wooden treasure chest dropped from the ceiling onto the centre of the dirt hill. Salazar kicked it open to reveal the contents within: four wooden tokens—one for each party member—and a green gemstone.
Curiously, the elf plucked the gem out of the chest. "What's this?"
"Portal keystone," the wisp explained. "I'm still working out how I want them to look, haven't decided on if I want them to be gems or not. Basically if you have this stone, it'll let you skip past the meadow entirely the next time you enter the dungeon. It's a new feature I've been designing with Glitch so that groups who have proven their mettle don't have to go through the same rooms over and over again."
"Is there a time limit on these?" Salazar asked, tossing the stone up and down.
"Yeah. Each stone lasts thirty days from the moment it dropped," Zack explained. "Originally I considered making them only last a week, but most people don't come by more than once a month so I figured it would be unfair to them."
Salazar nodded his approval, then plucked the wooden tokens from the box next. Each of them was embossed with the Dungeon Inc logo on one side, and a symbol representing a piece of armour on the other. Among the tokens were two pieces depicting a helmet, one depicting a piece of chest armour, and one depicting a pair of greaves. The elf nodded his approval as he handed the tokens to Alex for storage.
"The armour token system is in place?" Alex asked.
"So it would seem," Salazar concurred. "It remains to be seen how Zack priced everything, though."
Zack's wisp let out a chuckle. "You can check out the prize counter after your run, for now there's two paths you can take: one leads you into the forest, and the other leads down into the burrow. Of course, the burrow is currently off-limits so in actuality it's just one path you can take, but box text and all that."
As if on cue, the thick wall of trees parted to reveal a dirt path. Unlike the meadow, which was bright and sunny, there was a distinctly lower level of light dividing the two spaces. It was clear that this was a whole new room in the dungeon.
The party formed up and prepared to see what awaited them deeper in Zack's depths.