Duke emerged from the portal into a stone hallway. The walls were a smooth stone that was squared off, as if finely constructed. There were a pair of torches set in sconces at the entry on either side of Duke. He did not see any torches further down the passage so he figured light would be a problem. Thankfully, he now had a solution for that problem that didn’t cost him any Mana. He withdrew his Gem of Radiance and held it in his left hand, leaving his right ready for action.
“OK, let’s do this!” Duke confidently walked down the now lit hallway and blithely snapped a tripwire after walking no more than three meters. His only warning was the sound of the tripwire snapping. White hot pain shot through his lead leg as a stone spear launched from the wall and straight through. Duke groaned, partially in pain but more at himself for not even thinking about something so basic.
Duke pulled the spear out of his calf, wincing as it scraped against his bone. He started to toss it aside but stopped himself as he felt the weight of it. The spear was made of a very dense stone and weighed nearly 15 kilos. There was no way he could have wielded it previously, but at his current Strength level, it actually was not that bad in his grip. The two-and-a-half-meter length was short enough that he could probably wield it in these passages as they were about four meters wide. Duke took his new spear and IDENTIFIED it.
***You have found a dungeon stone spear. This spear is particularly heavy and sturdy. It is unclear what will happen to it should it be removed from the dungeon but there is only one way to find out, right? ***
“Thanks for the spear, Sam.” Duke quipped as he set forth down the passageway, his new spear held in front of himself and downward so that it would hit any tripwire before he did. At least that was his thought. The passage continued arrow-straight for about 50 meters before is came to a 4-way intersection. The entire time, Duke was fumbling with the spear and the Gem of Radiance. The spear was most comfortable in both hands, but the Gem was too big to really do that well. After juggling both all the way up to the intersection, Duke finally gave in and put the Gem away to began channeling his LIGHT magic into the spear. It glowed with a slight bluish tinge but provided ample light. With some experimenting, Duke found that he could increase or decrease the glow with the amount of Mana he channeled into the spear easily.
He stepped back from the intersection and experimented further. Through careful concentration and manipulation, he managed to channel his LIGHT through the inside of the spear and make just the tip glow. Finally, by adjusting the flow and shape, he could produce various effects from a laser-thin beam to a floodlight. Deciding that pouring in 20 Mana a second was the sweet spot, he felt ready to continue and stepped up to the intersection again.
Duke stepped into the intersection and looked both left and right, swinging the spear to shine light down the passages. Both the left and right passages seemed to end in some sort of door, while the forward passage seemed to continue on beyond his light source but might have a door on the left side ahead. The doors themselves seemed to be made out of stone similar to the hallways but banded with a dark metal. They seemed large enough to move heavy equipment through which Duke took as a bad sign of what he may soon be facing.
“Eenie meanie…ah, screw it. I’m going left. At least that’s what years of gaming have taught me.” Duke suited action to words and went down the left passageway. It had nothing to do with it being the shortest passageway. Nothing at all. He didn’t encounter any tripwires along the way which didn’t make him feel any better about the decision. “Correct path is usually the hardest path. This could be a problem.”
Duke carefully examined the door before moving to open it. It was indeed made out of the same grey stone as the rest of the hallway and the banding around it could have been iron. He shrugged and IDENTIFIED the door wondering if it would work.
***You have found a stone door. It is banded and reinforced with orichalcum which makes it incredibly durable. Um…it has a handle. Maybe try that. ***
Duke sighed at the snark and reached for the handle. As his fingers closed around it, electricity shot up his arm, through his body, and out his feet. If he were not so heavily attuned to the element, he would certainly have been in bad shape. Instead, he only took 317 damage from the shock. The door slamming open and smashing him into the wall and bouncing him down the hall, however, hurt a bit more, doing a full 423 points of damage. Somehow, he managed to hold onto his spear even as he tumbled to the floor in the darkness as his concentration on the LIGHT channeled through the spear had broken.
Duke scrambled to his feet in the dark and forced LIGHT through the spear yet again. He could feel his REGENRATION already healing the minor battering he had taken but his attention was firmly grasped by the armored figures charging through the door towards him.
The armored men were all short and extremely broad. They had massive beards covering most of their faces. All Duke could tell was that they wore helms, had big noses, and carried axes and large shields. The light of the glowing spear gave their skin a deep red hue. Duke didn’t have time to tell much more before the figures virtually filled the hallway, five abreast and two deep. Yep, calling them Red Dwarves for now.
Duke readied his spear and considered how to approach this challenge. He could use magic easily and probably blast them away with little effort, but he knew he needed a ton of work on his melee capabilities. He decided to start with the spear and see where it went from there. He readied himself for a full charge.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
What he got instead was a steady shield wall advancing step by measured step towards him in mechanical precision. Despite his strong Intuition, he was not able to see any openings in their defense. He readied his spear as their wordless advance finally reached him. He thrust the spear forward as hard as he could, hoping to pierce between shields or maybe even through one.
With a thundering crack, the spear slammed into the shield in front of him, striking with the force of a sledgehammer. The shield wall paused to absorb the blow and countered with axe swings which Duke scrambled backwards to keep out of reach. The shield Duke had hit showed nothing more than a dusty grey mark where the spear had struck. It was otherwise unaffected.
Duke took a few more steps back as the shield wall began its advance again. Shit, this is not working! And what the hell is that noise behind me? Duke spun around in a full circle as he reached the intersection, shining his light all around. What he was more of these Red Dwarves coming from each of the other halls, all marching in lockstep and closing in on him. Oh, fuck it. Magic it is!
Duke glanced back to the original groups to gauge their distance, spun around to face the group coming from behind him, and TELEPORTED behind the first group. Without missing a beat, he slammed his spear into the knee joint of one of the dwarves. It struck solidly and caused the knee to temporarily buckle. The Dwarves spun around in synchrony, once again presenting him with an interlocked shield wall which caused Duke to leap backwards once again.
Having a moment of inspiration, Duke ran further along the hallway, grabbed the inside handle of the door and slammed it shut behind himself as he ran into the room beyond. He found a bar next to the door and slammed it home. “Ha! Fuck you. I’m on the other side of the door now, assholes!“ Duke froze as he realized just how much he just tempted fate. He slowly turned around, fearing what he would see.
The room was empty, and Duke let out a sigh of relief. The room itself was quite large, some sixty by thirty-six meters in dimension. The far wall had a series of alcoves along it that were large enough for a person to stand in comfortably as well as another closed door leading out. Upon further inspection, the alcoves resembled giant charging stations. Robots? Are the frickin’ dwarves robots?
Duke’s eyes shot back to the original door as it began to shudder under the impact of what he guessed was the dwarves’ axes. “OK, timeline changing somewhat. A few choices. Door number one where I know there’s dozens of these dwarves trying to kill me or door number two that could have something even more dangerous. Or not. Door number two it is. And screw this hand to hand bullshit. I’m blasting the fuck out of whatever is on the other side of the door.”
Duke waited another few seconds for his REGENERATION to top off his Health and then pushed the far door open. This time, he wasn’t bothering to use the spear as a light. He had dropped it into his INVENTORY and was holding the Gem of Radiance instead. The door opened smoothly into the hall and Duke wondered at the engineering of it all.
Beyond the door there was another hallway leading to yet another door. Duke shrugged and moved up to the other door. He grasped the door in his right hand and pulled it open, stepping back to see inside the room.
Stepping back had been the right choice as an axe came swinging out of the door, right where he had been standing. It was more Red Dwarves! Duke reacted nearly instinctively this time, reaching out with his TELEPORTATON and tearing the axe away from the dwarf. The facial expression of the dwarf didn’t change, still fixed in a rictus of rage. Duke swung the axe down at it with all the strength he could muster in his right arm. The dwarf raised its shield to accept the blow with an awful clang.
Duke danced backwards to avoid the follow-up shield bash from the dwarf. He continued to back away grabbing axes and shields with his TELEPORTATION Ability. Quickly, his INVENTORY was filling with the dwarven weapons of war, and the dwarves still filtered into the hallway, forming their two ranks with their arms held as if they still had their axes and shields. Duke chuckled as he hefted the one axe he held onto his shoulder and dropped the Gem of Radiance. He gave them a come-on gesture and blasted an OVERCHANNELED FORCE DART into the center dwarf.
The dwarf stumbled backwards as its chest caved in but was quickly set back into line by the black line. Inexorably, they marched forward. Duke found himself at the threshold of the previous room as he backed away from the advancing dwarves. He could hear the pounding on the door behind him having added sounds of stone splintering and cracking as well. A quick glance backwards showed the door spiderwebbed with cracks. It would not hold much longer.
Duke quickly assessed his situation. His Health was at full, and he still had about 3,400 Mana left. That was enough for some heavy channeling. He quickly made a plan. If it worked, he would be fine. If not, he was going to have some serious problems. He planted his feet at concentrated his Mana into an enormous LIGHTNING strike. “Suck on this, assholes!”
Duke poured an extra 1,000 points of Mana into the LIGHTNING knowing that it would arc all over the place with that much extra power. He was counting on it. While the dwarves were a mere four meters away from him, he unleashed! The bolt launched across the distance, igniting the air between in a cerulean blue that belied the power behind the strike. In an instant, the bolt struck the dwarves.
The dwarves’ stone bodies flashed to unimaginable temperatures and exploded into shrapnel that filled the hallway. The wave of destruction washed over Duke before he could raise an arm to shield his eyes from the blast. He was slammed across the room and into the far wall leaving him bleeding and stunned.
Duke shook his head to shake the cobwebs out and get moving again. His head was ringing but he knew he had to move because the last thing he saw as he was tumbling through the air and before he hit the wall was the remains of the other door disintegrating in the blast of shrapnel. Duke levered himself back to his feet and promptly sank back to his knees as his Stunned status had been replaced with Concussed status. His head still swam, and his blurry vision picked up some sort of movement in the room, but it was nearly impossible to see with all the dust of pulverized rock floating in the air. Something in the back of his mind was screaming at him to move but the dust was just so fascinating to watch. Such pretty swirls with those even bigger dark things moving within. It was just so fascinating, so pretty.
The next blow that hit him was not an explosion, but instead there was an explosion of pain in his head. Duke’s consciousness fled as he collapsed to the floor.