We experimented with a number of the different options presented by the glyphs around the puzzle room. We all wanted to try out our new skills, so we purposefully summoned some bad guys to fall from the ceiling.

They came down in groups of two or three, and we used them as target practice. My stomp attack was excellent at interrupting spellcasting as well staggering the marrowrangers while they drew their bows. The mages and the rangers could barely get an attack off without being interrupted. I did need to wait for my mana to regenerate, so I wouldn't be able to rely on this if we were completely overwhelmed.

Both Spook and I would probably need to stagger our interrupts. I did learn one thing that would be incredibly useful going forward. If I positioned myself correctly, I could hit multiple enemies with the shockwave and possibly interrupt multiple attacks at a time.

The first couple of times Spook used her new Mist Blink ability she ended up blinking into walls. We figured out that it was because she kept focusing in a direct line in front of her, rather than a specific area on the floor. The moment she exploded into mist her vision, hearing, taste, and smell were all gone. Every single one of her senses was immediately rendered null, so she couldn’t change course after triggering the ability. For some strange reason the ability targeted wherever your gaze fell, so if Spook looked at a wall she’d re-form right against it, while still moving with the same momentum. So we figured out that Spook needed to focus on a spot on the floor and activate the skill to ensure she wouldn’t daze herself when she re-formed from mist.

Not all of the enemies fell from the ceiling. Some of them crawled out of spaces in the ground where the stones parted. The moment Kaiser detected a rumbling vibration under his feet, he alerted us and sounded off in the chat. It made it very easy to know whether the enemies were coming from above or below, and the general direction that an enemy was about to come from.

When we were ready to move on, we changed the statue’s arms into the position where it pointed towards the two matching icons of a staircase. A section of roof in the corner of the room, which had conspicuously not dropped any enemies on us from above, began to descend. With a great and terrible grinding of stone the staircase arrived into the puzzle chamber.

It led directly back to the ground floor of the dungeon, which Spook and Kaiser had already cleared. They gave me a tour of this floor and said that there wasn't a lot more here to explore than what they'd already found.

“We've got two options. We can either stay in the dungeon and find the actual boss that we were supposed to kill before we leave, or we could leave right now and head to the bridge. Naginata and Big Mac are on their way there right now.,” I said.

“Upside of exploring here and killing the boss means that we might get more loot and more abilities,” Spook added.

Kaiser: Plus we get more points on the leaderboard. We're in first place right now but a bigger lead means more chances of us getting a bigger reward overnight.

“Do you have any idea where the entrance to the real boss would be?” I asked.

“Probably somewhere down on the bottom floor. I don't know how we’d get down there with the elevator being destroyed and blocking our exit the other way. Maybe by killing the secret boss, we've locked ourselves out of being able to kill the actual boss,” Spook suggested.

“I've got my stomp ability, and you've got your Get Away ability. Between the both of us we should be able to clear that debris, don't you think?”

Spook’s eyes went wide as though she hadn't even thought about that as an option.

“I guess we could try,” Spook said. “Normally dungeons in games have set triggers where you do things and other things happen, but our universe still runs on the laws of physics. We can still pick up each and every brick and move it out of our way if we need to. It's not like this is one of those games where there's a couple of barrels in the way of a character progressing down a side street.”

I knew exactly what games Spook was talking about, but the Resident Evil games were far before her time. I got the feeling that Spook didn’t just play video games – she lived them.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Then let's head back down and try,” I said.

We headed back down the staircase that we'd just trudged up and made short work of the debris blocking the lift well. My Leshy Stomp attack moved everything to the side of where I focused, almost like the old legend of Moses parting the Red Sea. The shockwave moved in a straight line and blew everything out of its way. I hadn’t quite worked out with my actual mana regeneration rate was yet, but it was quite some time after using both of my stomps that I had to wait to use another. I focused on moving the debris into one pile, which Spook could then cast Get Away on, which blew it all out into the next room.

After about ten minutes we'd cleared enough of the debris to be able to move through.

“These abilities are going to be really good for getting through doors that we're not meant to open,” I said.

“As long as they're not enchanted to cast any kind of defensive spells when they break, that should be okay, but sometimes getting through locked doors requires the right kind of keys.”

“Once we meet up with Naginata again we should be okay on that front. Her blessing lets her see anima in the world around her, which is pretty much the same thing that the empire calls mana. If something is imbued with anima, Naginata will be able to see it.”

“Everyone's got their own name for it,” Spook said.

“Every single culture in the world's history talks about some kind of essence or power that imparts extranatural or supernatural abilities, and they tell stories about those who have used that power to do super-human things.”

“How do you know that?” Spook asked.

“Back in the real world I'm a professional bullshit artist.”

Spook scrunched her face up, like she didn't understand.

“I write books, screenplays, sometimes even video games,” I said. “One of the most enjoyable parts of my job is researching weird fucked up shit from the histories of the cultures that shaped our planet. George R.R. Martin used real world history as inspiration for his Game of Thrones series, and whenever I'm trying to figure out a new monster to terrify my readers I'll do the same. I look at all the crazy monsters that parents told their children about to keep them scared hundreds and thousands of years ago. So I know a little bit about a lot of things.”

“That's a weird way to spend your life,” Spook said.

I laughed. “I guess it is, but it pays the bills and keeps a roof over my kids’ heads.”

Well, it did keep a roof over my kids’ heads. Now that I'd been gone for ten months, there was every chance that I had been declared missing or dead, and every little scrap of money that I earned over the years would be sitting in a trust account for my kids.

I swore when I realized something.

The money might not be sitting in a trust account for my kids. It might be sitting in a trust account in the name of my supposed ex-wife. When things started getting serious with Hikaru in the real world, and it was clear that there was no chance to reconcile between Emily and myself, I'd made sure that we started the proper divorce paperwork. That paperwork was likely still sitting in the top drawer of my office back at my house in Redcliffe.

I didn't have any reason for not filing it before I left for Japan to spend time with Hikaru, it's just one of those things that slipped my mind.

If I'd been declared dead, then that would end the marriage anyway, right?

“Hey Hatchet, are you still here? You look like you just went miles away,” Spook said.

Kaiser reached up and nuzzled my hand. It really was true what they said about dogs being able to sense how people were feeling. Kaiser hadn't been able to give much in the way of explanation as to how it worked, just that when I felt something, he could tell that I was feeling a certain way. Some emotions elicited stronger reactions. I'd asked him whether it was something like an aura where different colours around my body changed, but he'd been pretty quick to point out that dogs are colourblind and I was an idiot.

We continued on to where we thought the entrance to the boss fight would be. Soon enough we found another one of those doorways blocked by liquid mist. We each confirmed that we were ready for battle, and then we stepped inside.

Last time we hadn’t even realised we were stepping into a boss fight, because the dungeon sprung it on us in secret. But this one had been signposted. Maybe that's how things were structured here. Each dungeon might have one or more designated boss fights that were required to progress, but if you delved too deeply into areas and went looking for secrets, maybe those rules didn’t apply. Maybe the empire had laid those kinds of traps just to get us when we least expected it.

Playing some of the early editions of Dungeons & Dragons had been very much like that. Modern versions of the game were more about role playing and having fun while spending time with your friends, but the earlier versions had been absolutely ruthless. Every time you had to roll for combat, there was a good chance that someone from your party could end up dead. The monsters were no joke, the traps were devious and designed to kill, and there was no mercy if you set a foot wrong or the dice gods demanded blood.

When the mist cleared from my eyes I drew in a sharp intake of breath when I saw the battleground that lay in front of us. A set of stairs led down from the door towards a flat area surrounded by stone coffins or sarcophagi arranged in a circle. Another set of stairs led up from that flat area at the bottom of the crypt towards a dais that held another sarcophagus made of stone.

“So that’s why this place is called the Mistbegotten Crypt,” I said. The moment my words echoed through the chamber the heavy stone lids of the sarcophagi cracked and started to open.