Drake woke up in the softest bed she’d ever felt in her life. She had no clue how she’d gotten there, nor did she ever want to leave. Until she turned her head and saw a skeleton standing over her.
She screamed, jumping entirely upright in the bed thankful that her weaponized minions were all still attached to her body, both Zen and Havoc unfolding before she noticed a piece of paper laid atop the skeletons shoulder, and began to read aloud, surprised to see the completely unfamiliar text transform into English; a glimmering light rippling across the paper as the words became readable.
Wow, that was cool… I wonder how that works, thought Drake in wonder before she took in the message.
“I should have never let you trek that far into the forrest by yourself, and though you should be proud of what you managed alone in such and unforgiving place, I still owe you an apology regardless of how capable you may be. I am sorry, and am working to get over my own prejudices, as an apology, I have left you this skeleton to use for your continued growth, ps, if you have no need for the chest of this monster please give it to Vanish to use. Sincerely Lilith.”
Hmm, really want to be mad, but…
Drake looked at the skeleton, excitement filling her mind at the possibilities of what she may be able to make.
“Wait, what the fuck happened to its arm?”
Drake lifted the folded piece of paper to see more text written on the other side.
“Pss, i also took its right arm for my own experimentation, thank you for being an inspiration to help me on my path to godhood, Growth & Grace dear child, Lilith…”
That dirty bitch stole my idea…?
“Can’t be mad at her, I am pretty fucking awesome.”
“And you talk in your sleep and apparently talk to yourself as well, but I guess I already knew that,” said a voice from behind Drake. She jumped, trying to turn around, losing her balance as the considerably large blanket still at her feet managed to trip her.
She screamed as she fell, rolling over to find Aurora standing over her.
“Ow, you sneaky bastard,” said Drake, rubbing her back where she’d smashed into the ground hip first.
“Don’t know what you mean by that, my parents were married when they had me, maybe not my eldest brother, but we don’t talk about that,” said Aurora, smiling down at Drake.
“Its a compliment where I come from,” wheezed out Drake, still furiously rubbing her side as she rolled on the ground.
“Oh, I see, well get up you big baby, you didn’t even fall that far, and you survived a monster seven ranks higher than you trying to slap your soul out of my body, your fine…”
“Still hurt,” said Drake, letting Aurora pull her onto her feet.
“yeah right, sure it did, your pride maybe,” said Aurora mumbling the last bit of what she said.
Drake simply scowled at her, hearing every word of what she said with her now exceptional senses.
“You gonna let me know how I got here, or just leave me in the dark?”
“Lilith went and grabbed you, after she picked you up a present,” said Aurora, waving a hand toward the skeleton left at her bedside.
“Yay, an undead horror, if eel like its my birthday!”
“I can tell your being sarcastic but lets be honest here, you can’t wait to crack that thing open and make some sort of armor can you?”
Drake looked over her shoulder, before looking back at Aurora with a shrug.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited, don’t really know if its going to work, but I’m honestly wondering if I have time to work on it right now,” said Drake laughing.
“Unfortunately not, upgrade selections for you aren’t quick, and apparently we are about to go to some sort of practice instance that Reliquary uses to train new students, Lilith wants us up and moving there as soon as you are awake.”
Drakes moth fell open, and she felt her heart begin to race.
Am I about to enter a dungeon, well I’m already in a dungeon I guess, but this sounds like online role playing game levels of fuckery here…!
“Why didn’t you lead with that Aura, come on lets go,” said Drake as soon as her mind caught up to what had ben said in full, brushing by Aurora in a rush.
“Because you fell off the bed and was acting like a—“
“Let’s go!”
…
Cortez ran for his life through the practice instance. His team had been slain by the overwhelming numbers within the instance of goblins. They’d been told that the instance only held a few hundred of the creatures, but the actual numbers eclipsed a few thousand easily.
His friends and he had been sent there to collect one hundred goblin weapons as proof of their combat sufficiency. This simple test was the final for his teams Combat 101 course, and he’d thought the rumors that the test was a trap to thin the herd of new students sent to Reliquary from all the edges of the realms was a lie, but as he hid in one of the instanced catacombs many abandoned tunnels he began to understand that he may never leave.
From where he had stood moments prior, he’d seen almost three hundred goblins in a mosh pit of raging green bodies once again. This was the second feast of students he’d witnessed and he decided to leave the area before being forced to watch the savagery of Cultivators being eaten nearly alive by a ferocious horde of monsters.
His friends had also been skewered on poles in a pit full of flames that washed over their bodies as they were cooked. They had been captured alive, and set ablaze; their horrified screams at their fate now an echoing nightmare forever inscribed into the folds of Cortez’s mind.
As his team’s stealth ranger, he’d been invisible when his team had been ambushed. He’d plan to try and save them, only to follow them directly to their end. The near fifty goblins that had rushed the tunnels they’d skulked through had overrun their meager seven bodies with ease, and he knew that he had no chance at taking on the group that outnumbered him fifty to one.
Cortez looked down at his bow made from solidified nature mana, and cursed. He’d been surviving in the tunnels for days by assassinating goblins one by one, whenever he could find the rare monster alone. His once tanned tunic was now a darkened bloody brown. The sharpened knife he’d entered with, broken, and his rations of food would soon run dry.
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His bag was full of fifty goblin daggers, and was only half of what he would need to return to Reliquary.
“Either I finish this assignment, or I’ll die trying…”
Unlike many of the other Godling’s sent to Reliquary, his parents were dead, and he had no home to return to if he didn’t manage to continue his attendance at the academy.
“I will survive this Sophia,” said Cortez glancing at the open locket that hung from his neck with a picture of his younger sister. Her long blonde curls and deep green eyes a match to his own, smiled back at him in the portrait, filling him with a deep desire to return to the school that had only just admitted his sister. A sister that would one day soon be subjected to the very same trap he now faced. His knowledge the only warning she would have to save her from her own failure and potential death.
“I refuse to die here, I’m coming Sophia, don’t worry your big brother loves you.”
Cortez put his finger to his bow string, feeling an arrow grow into existence from the nature mana that filled his core. The wood of the newly born arrow filling him with a comfort that had pushed him to survive since the moment his dying father put the weapon into his hand, giving him only one task.
“I promise father, nothing will happen to Sophia even if I have to kill every goblin in this dungeon myself…”
He looked around, preparing himself to move once more, knowing that if he stayed in one place for too long the strange magics being used by the goblins would send countless numbers in his direction, Taking a deep breath, he lowered his center of gravity, and once more began his hunt.
“Fifty down, fifty to go.”
…
“What are the rules,” asked Lilith, standing in front of the portal that would send them to the entrance of the practice instance.
“Don’t split up for any reasons, ever,” yelled Drake, Aurora and Vanish.
“And!”
“Don’t trust anyone!”
“And!”
“Leave nothing alive!”
“Why!”
“Because dead foes can’t rise again to stab you in the back!”
Lilith nodded. She’d drilled the three all morning. She knew that the potential for them to run into students of Reliquary Academy was high, and didn’t want anything to hinder their progress. She looked between her three new… acolytes? She hadn’t quite decided what the children were to her yet, but she felt a budding responsibility to protect them.
She didn’t tell them that they were walking into a monster horde of savage trickster demons, as the blood contract she was under as an alumni of Reliquary stopped her from doing so, but still prepared them the best she could.
The countless Rabid goblins that could be inside were an absolute tremendous hurdle for any thirteen season cycle old child, godling or not, but as she looked between the three children in front of her, her worries melted away.
You once survived this Lilith, and so can they.
Vanish sat in a chair that hovered three or so feet off the ground, backed by his minions. Lilith had constructed the chair with his mobility in mind after Drake described something to her called a wheelchair.
The object she depicted was primitive in design from what Lilith could understand of it, but had captured enough of what was being broken down to her that Lilith was easily able to construct a chair with runes and mana to make the floating cathedra that now supported Vanish.
the chair was a work of art that was completely controlled by Vanish’s thoughts, and as Lilith looked over the floating marble throne with stylized runes etched with obsidian dust, she wondered if she’d gone too far.
Don’t worry Lilith, he thanked you for the bloody thing, just stop thinking about it.
The young man’s gaze was serious as he stared back at Lilith with his entire body lit by a fearsome black light. He gave a single nod, that Lilith returned promptly.
Lilith’s gaze moved to Aurora. The former princess’s radiant smile making Lilith chuckle, her excitement visible in her faces every feature.
She wore a tome belt that supported three books. One that showed the construction process for countless tools and images of their pieces and designs. Another book on basic runes, and another book with the descriptions of thousands of mana types and example skills that could be used for each one.
Lilith didn’t know if Aurora was more excited by the instance that they were on the way to enter, r her construction of the tome belt she wore. It had taken some creative rune work to make the belt attach to her spiritual body, but the girl had managed a simple formation with Lilith’s aid that had in the end worked perfectly.
It only took her the few days that Drake slept to complete it, which is exceptional for her first crafted item.
The three tomes sat secured at her waist, one at either side of her body and the final tome at her lower back. The black leather of the belt a beautiful contrast to her pure white tunic.
Finally Drake stood smirking at Lilith in a way that made the woman roll her eyes. Lilith looked over her and her minions, taking in the now bloody red tunic that had been died such by the wounds Drake had accumulated over her time within the realm.
The once white cloth had stitched itself back together after Lilith had used mana to attach a rune to the interior of one of the cloth’s shoulders as she slept. It was still missing the sleeves, but Drake didn’t seem to mind from what Lilith could tell.
Drake winked at Lilith, and the woman shook her head slowly before gesturing at the open portal.
Cocky brat, let’s see how you feel after a few days in here…, thought Lilith as she smiled at them all before speaking one final time.
“Don’t die.”
…
Drake stepped through the portal to the instance and found herself in a cave with another portal, and three decently sized halls leading in different directions from the chamber she’d entered.
The ceiling above was a gentle blue that glowed with the same inner light that Drake had seen the mana stones with in Lilith’s home pulse with. While the floor below had lines of the same feint glow emanating out from cracks that ran down the center of each path. The cracks looking like runes to Drake in some areas.
That must be the portal to outside that the students use to enter, thought Drake as Aurora and Vanish stepped through the portal to flank her. Drake’s eyes combed the interior of the chamber, Aurora cursed, and Drake was understanding to why as she finally noticed the scattering of bodies, previously allured by the magical ambiance of the new environment.
“Be on your guard guys, this doesn’t look right.”
“What do you mean,” asked Vanish.
“I mean isn’t this supposed to be the easiest dungeon used by the school we are supposed to go to, why are their so many dead bodies in the entryway,” asked Drake. Neither Vanish nor Aurora answered as the truth of the situations origin didn’t come easily to them either.
“Don’t think about it too much guys, we need to figure out just how bad things are going to get in here, and there is no better way to know than to dip a toe in the water and check the temperature.”
She received nods in response, and the three chose the left most path as a suggestion from Drake whom wanted to test the labyrinth mapping theory.
“So we are just going to keep going left,” asked Vanish. Drake raised a hand, causing their group to pause at the end of a fork in the path they traveled down. She peeked around the corner to the left and then looked right, seeing nothing in either direction, nor ahead of them, answering only after she knew the area was clear of enemies.
“Yeah, eventually that should result in us traveling through every section of this place, as long as we don’t travel in circular or square patterns that is, as well as avoid changing altitudes and going to higher or lower floors,” explained Drake.
“This should work, but if I’m being honest I’m going to use a rune to help this along,” said Aurora, stepping around Drake to enter the left path.
“What do you have in mind,” asked Drake. Aurora just smiled, pulling out one of the three tomes at her waist, and began to draw on the wall with an extended finger. Drake couldn’t see anything happening until Aurora lifted her finger and the wall slightly lit up; a dazzling symbol flashing quickly before a pulse rippled down the left hall.
Drake was momentarily reminded of what a sonar’s monitor looked like as the wave disappeared in the distance; the path curving out of view.
“umm, okay, now that looked cool, what is it going to do, better yet can the monster’s in this place see that wave?”
“It’s going to make a mental map of the area it travels through for me, and no, you can only see it because of our bond I assume.”
Now that’s useful, Drake thought to herself. They waited a moment in silence before Aurora shook her head.
“There is nothing down this way but a collection of randomly scattered dead bodies and what seems like a room full of discarded weaponry and armor,” said Aurora.
“Okay, are you good to check the other paths, while me and Vanish cover you?”
Aurora gave them a thumbs up, and moved to the next path, copying the rune from her tome. The book of runes upheld as she worked.
“Woah, we have incoming, they are pretty far back, but there are a lot of them.”
“Okay, check this way too,” said Drake pointing toward the path on her right. Aurora moved and worked quickly; the rune she copied becoming more familiar with each rendition she completed.
“Yeah, there are more coming this way too,” said Aurora before a thought struck Drake.
Do they somehow know that we are in here?
“Aura, check back this way too,” said Drake, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder.
“But we just came from that way.”
“Please, things might get bad and quickly, I just need to make sure that we aren’t walking into a trap if we go back the way we came.”
Aurora nodded and once more moved to copy the rune, stepping passed Vanish and his minions to do so. It wasn’t a moment later that Aurora sighed.
“Their coming from this way too.”
“You got a number of how many in total?”
“Five maybe six hundred or more, its hard to tell, their bunched up and running.”
Drake slowly spun toward the path with the dead end and sighed.
“We can’t die in our very first fucking dungeon guys, any suggestions?”
“Is there anyway that we can use the dead bodies and the weapons Aurora saw in that room down that way,” asked Vanish, and Drake thought a moment.
She racked her mind on ways that she knew worked to fight superior numbers. Nothing came to mind at first, and then an idea struck her, both filling her with hope, and shame for what she planned to try.
“You look like you have an idea,” said Aurora looking at Drake.
“Yeah but it might be stupid and we’ll have to work fast,,” said Drake beginning to jog down the hall that lead toward the room with the weaponry she would need to make her plan work.
Her and the others moved rapidly; forced to step over many dead bodies, Drake mentally marked which of the deceased would fit her needs.
The bodies weren’t fully decomposed, and many had chunks missing from their flesh as if they’d begun to have been eaten by something, which strangely enough twisted Drake’s stomach. She hadn’t been effected by the skeletons she’d been forced to fight thus far in Imperial, but seeing the bodies of the dead left to rot effected her differently. This encounter was vastly more impactful and drastic a circumstance than the sight that the monsters she’d faced up to that point had originally been to experience by her.
She’d wanted to become a doctor to help people escape the clutches of death. Seeing the dead left unburied and staring at nothing but the walls around them, or the nearby carcasses of their potentially also slain friends, made her think of Aurora and Vanish. Worries of her being enough to keep her new friends alive filled her mind, and Drake felt rage building in her chest.
Not long after the’y’d rushed away from the incoming goblins, their group entered an opening to see a room filled with rusted swords, broken spears,, an assortment of armors and even a ridiculous amount of shields of various shapes and sizes.
“No bloody way,” said Drake. Her plan solidified, and a smirk crossed her face.
“Vanish, I need you to go and have your minions get,” Drake trailed off, taking a few steps backward to gain a grasp on how wide the hall way was.
Four or five wide at best, might as well go for six or seven just incase something goes wrong…
“Bring back seven of the largest bodies you can find, Aurora go with him and make sure that he doesn’t stray to close to the incoming mobs, hurry up, we don’t have much time and I need to make sure I can even pull this off!”