The next room was empty too. And so was the next. And the next, until they had opened every room in the indoor courtyard. Some had furnishings that looked like the kind of plainly generic chairs and tables that Natsuko swore she had seen all over Po-Lin. A few even had chests, but the chests were empty as though waiting for loot to be placed inside. By the last empty room, Natsuko and Sofiane were starting to panic again.
Natsuko groaned. “We’re gonna die down here!”
Sofiane moaned. “Worse, we’re going to fade into obscurity!”
Once again, Shuixing had to play the role of a grown adult. This time she chose to investigate the courtyard of dead, gnarled trees. At the center, hidden from the inner corridor, was a low well. Sending a glowing orb of water down the shaft, she could see a larger chamber of jagged rock at the bottom.
Here, too, the dungeon differed from every other dungeon Shuixing had explored. The paths in other dungeons tended to be linear, straight through to loot and monsters in succession. That, or they were big open areas where many parties could farm mobs all at the same time. This one was neither. Aside from being empty of hostile monsters and loot, the path forward was not intuitive. Why was this dungeon so abnormal? Shuixing might have pondered this for hours if Charles’ yipping didn’t break her concentration.
“No boy! Not for you! Don’t touch!” Natsuko said, hiding her oversized wine bottle behind her back as Charles tried to lick it.
“Erm… I-I believe I’ve found something,” Shuxing said.
Sofiane burst into tears. “Praise be to fair madame Shuixing! Your poise and grace fills a man’s heart with the courage to walk through hell itself!”
“Erm, thank you. There’s a cavern at the bottom of this well.” Shuixing said.
Gathering around the lip of the well, Shuixing cast another orb of light and sent it down to illuminate their landing site. Natsuko looked up at Sofiane and grinned. “Lead on.”
With a grunt, he jumped into the hole and a moment later came an echoing crack and a purple glow as Sofiane turned into a ball of lightning. At the last second, he turned back into a human and landed on the rock below.
Shuixing frowned at Natsuko. “Are you going to be alright? W-We could find some material or— or something if you’d—”
Natsuko waved her hand. “It’s fine. Worst comes to worst, that doesn’t look like a 100-0 drop. I can eat shit and walk away if I screw up again."
“I’ll go first then, just in case we need some medico-magic,” Shuixing said.
“Take Charles with you?”
Shuixing grimaced, not exactly happy with the responsibility of parachuting the strange wolf-like creature down with her. But she never refused Natsuko’s wishes. Except when it came to lending money, and that had been a hard line to draw. Wrapping her arms around the furry being, Shuixing plunged into the dark after Sofiane. A moment later her glider deployed. It was her own invention, but gliders had spread to so many other Heroes who didn’t have alternatives to avoid fall damage that its inventor had been long forgotten. Everyone assumed gliders had always been around.
Shuixing easily glided to a halt along with an excitedly panting Charles. Natsuko readied herself. She had her own method for stopping fall damage. Specifically, using her Fire Gale ability to shoot a blast of fire from her feet that would slow her momentum. But she was also terrible at timing it. And as an ability, it was unreliable.
Sofiane called up. “Oh, do be careful there are—”
Smack. Natsuko hit the ground right as fire erupted from the soles of her feet.
“—stalagmites… are you alright?”
“Yup. Glad I could confirm I still can’t time that,” Natsuko said as Charles hustled over to nuzzle her.
A couple feet away, a bundle of dark stalagmites pointed upwards towards the shaft. Yet another oddity, Shuixing thought. Most dungeons, when they required drops, left a clear line of sight for Heroes to plan their drops. And usually there were convenient means for climbing back up. She'd never seen a deliberate hazard laid out for a hasty Hero. As she thought this, Shuixing went to Natsuko’s side and rang her rod’s bell, creating a powdery spray of water centered on her friend that healed her wounds.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“For the bottom of a well, this cavern seems rather dry,” Sofiane said.
As best Shuixing could surmise by the porous texture of the stone, this was some kind of volcanic rock, yet the region of Vermögenburgh wasn’t volcanically active, nor had it ever been in the records the Yishang had released about pre-summoning times.
While Shuixing overthought things again, Natsuko did a lap of the small chamber with Charles in tow, sniffing along the floor. She eventually came across stones that were discolored in contrast to the rest of the cave.
“Guys, discolored wall here,” Natsuko said.
Both being experienced adventurers, Shuixing and Sofiane knew what that meant.
“Are you not going to hit it?” Sofiane asked.
“I can’t hit the wall and make the wall go through the wall, idiot,” Natsuko replied, holding up her bottle.
“Why don’t you carry a real weapon? Or, you’re a Jack, aren’t you? Haven’t you learned a weapon-summoning ability from another class?”
“I didn’t prepare that ability for the day because I can get rid of anything I don’t like with the bottle," she replied.
Sofiane folded his arms. “Except for stone walls.”
“Works great on smarmy little brats though. Wanna find out?”
Sofiane sighed. By now he’d picked up that Natsuko was all bark and no bite. She had the temperament of a Hero in her prime with none of the Use-Numbers to back it up. She made him sad whenever she opened her mouth.
“Very well then. Having come prepared, I will be happy to clear the path,” Sofiane said, brandishing his rapier as though facing down a fencing opponent.
With one solid strike in the center, the discolored wall came crashing down around them. Sofiane tucked his rapier back into his belt after a brief wipe off. Not that it needed it. There were no negative repercussions to the blade or its edge from stabbing it directly into bare stone. Then, they all waited for the rocks to dissolve into the ground as they usually did. Except they didn’t. They stayed in their collapsed pile.
“Gods, this place is so weird,” Natsuko said, kicking a rock from the collapsed wall. “Collapsed rocks are supposed to dissolve!”
Shuixing was having a similar but slightly different thought. Until moments ago, she had never once thought it was strange that rocks destroyed by Heroes melted into the ground so that they didn’t become a permanent obstacle. The dissolution was utterly mundane. Yet, now that she had seen it not happen, it seemed far more consistent with her knowledge of physics that rocks ought not to dissolve. What other forms of logical inconsistency was she blind to? This bizarre dungeon was sending her into an epistemological crisis and—
“Oh hey! Treasures! Finders keepers!” Natsuko said.
She elbowed Sofiane out of the way so she could get to it first. The treasures in this case were a pair of brass candelabras burning in small alcoves in the cave corridor. Natsuko started chucking the candles out.
Sofiane slapped his head. “No, you idiot, we could use that for light!”
“Yeah, sure, after I take them out of the candelabra,” Natsuko replied.
“A brass candelabra? That’s what you’re concerned about looting?”
“Damn right I am,” Natsuko said, grinning demonically in the candle light. “There’s gold in them there general store!”
Sofiane laughed to himself. “Incredible. For drinking money?”
Natsuko didn’t deign to respond. Her personal finances were just that, personal. But it was for drinking money.
Once the candelabras were safely shoved into Natsuko’s backpack, they each took a candle and made their way onward Soon they came to an intersection, then another, then another, until it became obvious they were in some sort of labyrinth. A few rooms broke up the monotony here and there, but none had any more than the same few bare furnishings as the rooms above.
At some point, Natsuko started whistling.
“Would you take this seriously, please?” Sofiane said.
“I am! Whistling keeps me calm. What’s not serious about whistling?”
“You’re distracting us from focusing!”
Sofiane was already starting to get sick of not just Natsuko’s childish impulsivity, but Shuixing’s propensity to go silent as she became absorbed in her own thoughts. Both were useless in their own ways. If they were in his adventuring party, he would have bailed years ago. No wonder they had become obsolete.
“Focusing on what?”
“On— on— on that!” Sofinae said, pointing excitedly at a set of large wooden double-doors, the first major signpost they'd encountered in hours. Throwing the doors open, he was met with a wave of relief upon seeing what was on the other side. “Oh thank the gods!”
Staring them down was a giant, multi-horned demon chained to an altar, belching sulfurous smoke from its nostrils and roaring at the trespassers.
“Finally some experience points!”