Despite figurin’ out that the greasy-smellin’ vines were growin’ bigger and even messin’ with the tree that was are ticket out of here, there wasn’t much me or Miss Sasha could do about it. At least, not right at the moment. I still wasn’t in the best of shapes, and Miss Sasha wasn’t keen on wanderin’ too far from me.
That didn’t mean we did nothin’. And by we, I mean Miss Sasha. As much as it pains me to admit, I wasn’t any help at all. She started scountin’ more, lookin’ around for a solution. Dungeons couldn't be death traps, they had to have a solvable answer no matter what was happenin’. And this was a Survival Dungeon. Despite what we’d talked about when we first got here -that there might be some kind of beasty guardin’ the tree- Miss Sasha threw that idea out now.
It was glarin’ obvious that the vines were the real challenge of the Dungeon. At least, that was the new idea until Miss Sasha came back from another scoutin’ mission. This one lasted over a whole day, and the only reason I’d convinced her to do it was by lettin’ her cover me in branches I’d scrounged and makin’ me promise not to move an inch. That was an uncomfortable day, I’ll tell ya.
But what she learned was just as important. She’d found some magical critters farther out past where the vines were, but nothin’ crazy. Until today, that is. She’d found a second major challenge in the Dungeon, namely a giant twenty-foot-tall flamin’ bear with steely fur and some cubs to go along with it. She’d followed it for a bit and figured it musta woken up pretty recently, on account of how the whole forest wasn’t a giant inferno yet. But that’d be happenin’ mighty soon, since it’d started wanderin’ around scroungin’ for somethin’ to eat.
And that was when Miss Sasha laid it out.
“I think our initial assumptions weren’t that far off the mark. Or at least, not by much. I think this is a rather well-built Dungeon that someone put a lot more thought into than what I was expecting. For something on the First Floor.” She was more thinkin’ out loud than actually talkin’ to me, so I just let her be.
“You see, Dungeons can vary in almost every facet, and that even includes clear conditions. Some Dungeons only have one solution, and anything else means failure, like the puzzle dungeon we did. But others have several different ways to win. And still others can have the same ultimate goal, but different levels of success. I think this dungeon is the latter.”
“It all comes down to this being a Survival Dungeon. No matter what, the goal here is simply to live until the Radiant Redwood blooms. I was confused since it was obvious that the vines were attacking the Redwood and Spirit Root. If the vines were going to stop the Redwood from blooming, this Dungeon should have been an Extermination type, where the goal was to kill the vines. And if that were true, I’d expect there to be some obvious source for us to attack, as killing an entire forest of vines would be legitimately impossible for any Sinner on the First Floor. And the System doesn’t allow for impossible dungeons.”
“So that leads us to the bear. A Steelflame Grizzly, if I don’t miss my mark. Another hazard that made sense at first, until I noticed that it was very clearly scavenging in the direction of the Redwood. I think if left to its own devices, the Grizzly would consume part of the tree, as the Radiant aspect is close to its fire, and would nurture the Grizzly’s magic, possibly letting it Advance. So that makes two threats to the tree blooming.”
“Once I put that together, it was pretty obvious what we’re dealing with. I’ve seen examples of similar Dungeon types before, with two main threats aiming for the same goal. The vines and the grizzly will cancel each other out somehow when they compete for the Redwood. The base condition for clearing the Delve is to survive the two main threats of the Dungeon clashing. Then, if this is the design I think it is, there are extra Rewards for dealing with the vines and the bear ourselves, before they clash. In fact, the clues for how to deal with one can usually be found by observing the other.”
“This is great for us.” Miss Sasha wiggled happily. “It means we can just hunker down somewhere far away from those two and wait for them to deal with each other.”
“Hmm,” I rubbed my chin. Listenin’ to Miss Sasha got me thinkin’.
“Riiiick,”
Darn. She noticed.
“Now hear me out-”
“NO! You have a broken arm, Rick! That’s not a ‘hear me out’ kind of injury! We need to take the safest option here!” She insisted. Quite sternly, too. Good for her. Miss Sasha had gotten a heck of a lot more confident over the last week, and it was real nice to see.
“I get that, I truly do. But what if I said I think we can deal with the bear and vines without riskin’ anythin’?” I asked. It’d all come together in a flash once I heard her explanation. The vines that smelled like grease and bled acid. The flamin’ bear with steely fur. I mean, it was pretty obvious, right?
“...”
“It’s mighty impressive that I can almost hear your disapproval.” I joke, knowin’ Miss Sasha would at least listen to my idea before shootin’ me down.
She sighed, and I knew I’d got her. “Ok, fine, lets hear this plan of yours.”
“Alright! Now first we gotta dig a hole-”
“Oh, how surprising.” Miss Sasha said with more sarcasm than I felt was fair.
{}
Sasha had no idea how she managed to let Rick convince her that his insane plan was worth it. Then she’d remember the murderous Sinner waiting for them after they left the Dungeon. Realizing that they were very much going out of the frying pan and into the fire did a lot to change her priorities.
Ultimately, Rick wasn’t at any real risk. He had plenty of Revives to spare. Rather, they were risking one Revive for significantly better Rewards. As loathe as she was to put her charge at risk, Sasha couldn’t justify balancing that math. The Rewards were too necessary right now. At least, when compared to a single Revive that Rick would have to lose at some point anyway, if his arm was ever going to get fixed.
And that was why she was currently a dozen miles from Rick, having left him alone for the longest amount of time since he entered Hell, hanging vines over the mouth of a cave. Acknowledging the merits of Rick’s plan didn’t make it feel any less stupid.
He’d led with the digging a hole part, probably because it was the one he was the most interested in, but the actual first step of the plan had been a healthy dose of vine experimentation. Namely, whether or not Sasha could put the vines in her Stomach Storage. The answer was, unsurprisingly, yes, but it depended on multiple factors. Living, connected vines couldn’t go in her Storage, nor could vines that were significantly larger than herself. As with everything else, if she couldn’t fit her jaws around it, it couldn’t go to Storage.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Rick had put all that together, and found a rather interesting workaround that let her absorb frankly massive amounts of vines at a rapid pace. They found a portion of forest with vines that were just barely small enough for her to take in, and then Rick would sever them all in a line. Then they’d walk a mile or more along the length of the severed vines, and Rick would cut them again. Then, Sasha would fit that end into her mouth, and the whole mile-long length would get sucked into her Storage instantly. Like that, she took in over a hundred miles of vines in less than a day.
That was where they split up. Sasha had a long journey to make, and Rick started digging the aforementioned hole. He had to work slowly, and he wasn’t terribly efficient. But he could manage now that his bruising was gone, even shoveling one-handed. It was almost funny to watch how awkward he was, if not for the knowledge that he only looked so silly because his arm was broken.
As for why Sasha was draping vines over a cave? Well, this particular cave happened to be the home of the Steelflame Grizzly and its cubs. They were sleeping inside, heavily enough to not notice the miles of vines layered over the entrance at this point. It had taken longer than Sasha had hoped, with the way they’d sectioned the vines making it harder for her to lay them out. But she’d managed to finally get it covered to her satisfaction.
Now, all that was left was to wait. And hope that Rick had finished his hole already.
She didn’t have to wait long. It was only scant minutes after she’d covered the cave and retreated up the hillside it was dug into that she heard a resonate groan that rattled the ground beneath her. For a moment she panicked, thinking that the Grizzly had somehow realized what was going on and was about to blow up the entire hill with her on it, but that thought vanished as soon as she realized it was just the massive bear yawning.
Sasha didn’t actually see what happened when the first part of their plan kicked off. She’d retreated down the far side of the hill, hiding in an abandoned series of tunnels dug by something long ago. But she heard it. The Grizzly roared at the same moment a sharp, violent crackling filled the air. Sasha couldn’t see it, but she could imagine what was happening.
The Steelflame Grizzly was a massive creature, towering several dozen feet tall if it stood on its hind legs. Even on all fours, Rick would have been able to walk between its legs without his stetson brushing its belly. It was surrounded by a constant burning aura of intense heat and licking flames. Those flames, once they made contact with the black-green vines, lit them up like a line of firecrackers.
The vines, it turned out, were almost obscenely flammable. When they caught alight, they didn’t just burn, they exploded, flinging acidic juices everywhere. Worse, it seemed that the heat actually activated and intensified the properties of the vine’s lifeblood, turning a potent acid into something that could dissolve its way through the tree they’d tested it on in a few seconds.
Or even the magically metallic hair and bones of the Steelflame Grizzly.
The panicked and pained roars that shook the hill had Sasha diving deeper underground, as far as her temporary hiding spot could take her. She could still hear the Grizzly raging, no doubt trying its best to rid itself of the vine’s fluids, but they were just as sticky as the vine’s themselves. It was, no doubt, a horrifying way to die.
Sasha might have felt bad, but she saw how the Steelflame Grizzly hunted. It rarely killed with its massive claws or fangs, preferring to cripple its prey before letting its aura slow-roast them to death. So her well of sympathy for this particular magical beast was pretty dry.
The roaring and rampaging slowly died off, until there was only silence. Sasha waited a while, but finally crept out to see the results of Rick’s ridiculous plan. Little remained of the Grizzly, just some steel bones. Sasha shuddered, realizing that even with all the vines she’d laid out, the sheer mass of the Grizzly was so great that there just wasn’t enough acid in them to erase the bear entirely.
Well, that was her part done. Now it was Rick’s turn.
Just as she thought that, a rolling, bassy thrum rippled out from the forest toward the Purgation Redwood. A continuous, rolling explosion swept across the distance, leveling the forest and tossing massive trees into the air. Trees that were actively melting.
It seemed Rick had done his part. Hopefully he managed to live through it.
{}
Darkness was all around me without a speck of light to see by. It was stuffy and damp, and everythin’ was shakin’ somethin’ fierce. Me? I was whistlin’ a tune. What can I say? Indiscriminate use of explosives always puts me in a good mood.
Not that these vines really counted as proper explosives normally. They only pulled that off once you got them dense enough. Which the forest above had more than enough for. I was feelin’ real glad at the moment that Miss Sasha made me dig this hole near twice as deep as I was gonna make it. Was a right pain, what with my arm and all. But considerin’ just how much shakin’ and rumblin’ was goin’ on overhead…
Yeah, probably woulda gotten myself real dead.
Now, as for why I was underground, that was down to me figurin’ it was the safest option. At first, Miss Sasha just wanted me to start the fire currently rippin’ the forest apart at the edge of the vines and then run for it. That was before we found out they pretty much explode, flingin’ acid every which way. Then she came around to the hole idea right quick.
I hadn’t actually buried myself, not properly at least. After I heard the bear Miss Sasha was dealin’ with start yappin’ -and wasn’t that just about the loudest sound I’d ever heard from a livin’ thing- I lit a crap fuse I’d cobbled together with some stuff Miss Sasha was carryin’ around hopped into my hole. It was a good twenty feet deep, but it went sideways a fair bit too. 3 days of nothin’ but diggin’ gave me plenty of space. Then I’d collapsed a chunk of the sideways tunnel and waited.
With ten feet of dirt on any given side of me, I wasn’t worried about that acid none. Maybe if I’d been deeper in the forest where there were more vines, but we’d picked the dig site to be near the edge of the vines. Already, the rumblin’ was driftin’ farther away, all the fuel near me burned up. I didn’t move yet, though. Miss Sasha made me swear to not start even tryin’ to dig myself out until I couldn’t hear a single thing, and I’m a man of my word.
As the rumblin’ kept fadin’, so did my whistlin’. I sighed. It was gonna be a right pain to dig myself out.
{}
It took Rick nearly two hours to dig himself out, by which time Sasha had managed to slither back to his hole. The forest around it was gone, cleared of everything but smoldering earth. Every scrap of plantlife had been scoured away by the vines burning and exploding. Anything spared by the flames was melted by the acid.
Despite the hours having passed, the forest burning was still going strong. The Dungeon was vast, and the distance between the edges of the forest where they were and the heart by the Redwood and Spirit root likely measured dozens of miles. It was only now, after Rick and Sasha had reconnected, that the flames finally reached the vines at the base of the two colossal megaflora.
The fire had been reaching farther faster at an exponential rate as it spread and the density of the vines increased. With the number of vines being highest at the Redwood’s base, the flare-up was bright enough to leave spots in Sasha’s eyes. It only lasted a moment before dropping off, the flames burning themselves out.
At least, that’s what she thought would happen. Instead, both the Radiant Purgation Redwood and Synergist Spirit Root caught alight.
“Uh,”
Before she could even process that information, thousands of flowers opened, going from bud to flower in less than a second. The Redwood bloomed gold, while the Spirit Root was a mix of white and grey. Waves of pollen thick enough to cloud out the branches of the trees followed.
“Well, I guess that’s good?” Sasha asked tentatively.
As if in response, a shrieking cry potent enough to make the air shudder echoed from the highest boughs of the Redwood before a bird-like shadow flared into existence before streaming across the sky in a blur, seemingly fleeing from the tree as fast as it could. Which was, to reiterate, blindingly fast. It passed overhead, crossing dozens of miles, in the time it took Sasha to blink.
Already feeling overwhelmed, Sasha didn’t even react when some of the soot in the air coalesced into a series of words.
Dungeon Delve completed!
Collating Results…