Zoe looked around at the sudden new environment she was in, taking in all of the sights and the sounds. The swarms of people huddling in groups as they planned their days or talked about their failures and successes. The people hanging out of windows shouting their different services — dungeon tours, healing, paid mercenaries. Anything Zoe could think of being helpful in the dungeon, people were shouting to get her to buy from them.
The smell was the next thing to hit her. A somewhat rotten, salty smell, like a beach a few days after a nasty storm. Hints of roasting meats and sweet notes bled through the stench from the nearby restaurants and food left on nearby tables and the ground.
Behind Zoe was a large white building with gold embossed lettering denoting it as the Dungeoneering guild, with an opened, golden gate in the middle of it showing the lake Zoe saw on the map through the bars. Two guards stood on either side of the gate, with a short line of people outside it. Almost everybody was over level two fifty, with many even being over three hundred. Almost a dozen people showed as light red to Zoe’s identify, which made her feel so tiny for the first time in a while.
Here, she wasn’t a powerhouse. She wasn’t some special chosen being who could do whatever she wanted without anybody being able to stop her. She was barely even meeting the average level in the area, from what she could see. At least from the people she assumed intended to challenge the dungeon.
Many of the workers were lower level, in the mid to high hundreds. Some of the guards were even under level two hundred — a peculiar sight, considering the dungeon they were set to guard. Did the capital not quantify people’s strength by their level or were they just here to learn and grow? If somebody really tried, there were definitely a number of options Zoe could think of for somebody to outdo her even at a much lower level.
In particular if somebody had some means of negating her magic and dealing high physical damage — or if they were just very, very fast she supposed. Nothing would be coming out of the dungeon, as far as Zoe knew. Any time she spoke with any denizen of a dungeon, leaving the dungeon was one of, if not the most offensive idea she could posit it seemed.
Which meant the guards were here to stop her, not the monsters within the dungeon. To stop unruly folk from terrorizing the city, the citizens, from breaking rules or perhaps the odd wandering monster from stepping into their jurisdiction.
Maybe the lower level guards had very powerful classes that made them more capable than their level allowed, and maybe the royals recognized that. It would make sense with all of the royal guards being loopers. Their levels would always be changing, and their power growing forevermore, so there would need to be some means of measuring their ability to perform. Some way of knowing which jobs they could handle and which ones they couldn’t.
It would be interesting to sit in on that one day, see how they decided that. What metrics they used to quantify their guards’ strengths and weaknesses. Though Zoe imagined that wouldn’t be happening anytime soon, security measures were often some of the most well kept secrets people had. Obscurity wasn’t a great security measure on its own, but it would be silly to not at least try and take advantage of it.
A small group appeared next to Zoe on the white platform, unfolding like a crumpled piece of paper being stretched out again. Three men and two women, all above level two hundred sixty and geared in various armours. Leather straps held up sheathes and bags with potions and knives. They looked at Zoe then nodded to each other and ran off towards the line formed outside the dungeoneering guild.
Zoe smiled and followed behind them, waiting in the line as it moved forward every few minutes until she was at the front, face to face with one of the guards.
“Present your dungeoneering license and fee, please.” The guard said with a soft, somewhat annoyed sounding voice.
Zoe summoned her license and handed it to the guard, along with a handful of gold coins totalling the thirty gold fee.
The guard took her license and pulled out a small crystal sphere, holding it towards Zoe. “Please insert your mana into this sphere.”
Zoe placed her hand on top of the sphere and pushed mana into it, filling it with a somewhat opaque blue colour. The guard pushed Zoe’s license into the sphere, and Zoe watched as a tiny bit of the mana inside her license flooded into the sphere.
“You’re good. Best of luck, Zoe.” The guard said, handing the license back to Zoe.
“Thanks.” Zoe said as she passed through the golden gates onto the beach at the edge of the lake.
A curious thing Zoe had noticed in her time in the capital was how many people knew her name. She’d signed her name a number of times of course, but unless she’d forgotten something, she was pretty sure she’d only ever told the first guard she met outside the capital her name. And yet, others knew her name too.
Kendrick did, which Zoe wrote off as him reading the name she signed on the papers. But this guard? How did she know Zoe’s name? Zoe tried to Identify her license, but it showed nothing. Had they marked her somehow without her noticing? Were they tracking her, aware of everything she was doing within the capital?
Or did the guard just happen to recognize Zoe from somewhere? For a moment, Zoe thought about turning around and asking, but when she looked, the guard was already busy helping somebody else. It didn’t really matter, she supposed. If people knew her name, then that would be helpful, maybe. Fewer introductions to do.
Zoe looked around the lake. What was the dungeon, anyway? She should have taken a page from Andrew’s book and done some research before she showed up at the dungeon. As far as she could see, there was no dungeon here. The mana seemed completely normal, there were no creatures floating on the surface of the lake, no strange entrances to wander into. As far as Zoe could tell, this was just a lake. A normal, still, lake.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
A very still lake, she realized. There were no ripples, no fish swimming beneath the surface, no small waves crashing into the beach. It was picturesque in its stillness, a perfect representation of what it once was, but certainly not what it was now.
The person behind Zoe in the line walked through the gates and continued forward to the lake, vanishing as they passed a few steps ahead of Zoe. An illusion of some sort? Zoe found herself beginning to wonder if there was even a lake here at all.
She squinted at the image of the lake in front of her. Besides its eerie stillness, there was nothing unusual about it. No unusual mana swarming at the barrier, no shimmer as Zoe paced back and forth. It looked like a lake — complete with the normal ambient mana drifting across the surface.
How, though? If she couldn’t see through the lake’s illusion, how could she see the mana behind the illusion? And if she really was seeing the mana behind the illusion, why did it not seem like a dungeon’s mana?
Zoe took a few steps forward herself, passing through the barrier and letting her see the reality behind. Decimation. Mayhem. The lake was dried, and the ground covered in ash. Flames raged in the forests far in the distance, with billowing smoke blanketing the lands as far as she could see in a thick, dark cloud.
Powerful gusts of wind raged, ripping up the dust and ash that settled on the ground and throwing it into the air as it ripped into Zoe’s dress, tearing the fabric apart. Dark clouds filled the skies with flashes of lightning that smashed into the ground, sending even more dust and ash into the powerful twisters that surrounded Zoe. Rocks and pebbles flew from the impacts, smashing into Zoe’s side with sharp twangs of pain.
Aside from a small rift behind her, showing a glimpse into the normal world, everything as far as Zoe could see was filled with the wrath of nature. A quake beneath Zoe’s feet threw her off balance, and she pushed mana into her Earth skill, covering herself in a suit as she lifted off the ground into the air.
Zoe floated above the ground, looking at the destruction wrought around her. A crash grabbed her attention, somewhere off to her right. She floated a bit higher, trying to peer over the canopy and when she did, she saw a large disc shaped creature with a dozen tentacle-like legs smashing into the burnt husks of trees below it.
Bursts of magic rushed up, slamming into the tentacled creature and staggering it as its tentacles stretched behind it for stability. An armoured warrior leapt into the air, swinging a comically large hammer into the creature’s body. The legs crumpled under the weight of the hammer, and the creature fell backwards, tumbling through several of the trees behind it. A moment later, a quake raced across the ground, sending dust up into the air to join the already tumultuous twisters of debris swirling around Zoe.
Zoe blinked a few times, unsure of how she felt about the dungeon. She’d already paid the fee, so she may as well explore a bit. But this dungeon felt so different. The mana was chaotic, filling everything around her and sending it into disarray. The world was destroyed, and there was an almost palpable sadness that filled the air, even without Zoe’s Vampyric Empathy.
She floated back down to the ground and covered herself in her Elemental Arsenal. The elements surrounded her in a powerful shell of cinders and frost, with a shield in her left hand and spear in her right with a dark ashen bow strung across her back. Aside from her first venture up Moaning Point, armour had felt rather pointless. She’d never been truly challenged, never been truly pushed to her own limit.
In a worst case, she’d be able to teleport away. Cosmic Step to the air, to the distance. Leave the bounds of the dungeon. But here, the bounds of the dungeon seemed to be a small rift. If she couldn’t make it back to this specific spot, would she be able to leave? Did the dungeon end, at some other point? If she kept running into the distance, would she eventually step back into reality?
Even if she assumed it would end at some point, that she would step back to reality eventually if she kept running, she couldn’t be sure of that now. And that made her nervous. Her one fall back that had always been there through thick and thin, was stripped away. She couldn’t guarantee safety by running away.
And so, she embraced . She gripped her shield with a sweaty palm, and clung to her spear like it was her last thread of hope. In a perfect world, she wouldn’t have to get up close and personal. But in a perfect world, she wouldn’t have thrown herself into the highest level dungeon she could.
Zoe looked back at the rift, to the golden gate that seemed so far away now, somehow. It wasn’t too late. She could leave, and come back when she felt more confident. When she’d done some more research and knew what to expect. Maybe she could join a group.
She shook her head. It would be okay, she told herself. Maybe she couldn’t handle it, but she’d at least try and see what the dungeon would throw at her before she decided that. No matter what she did, she wouldn’t be getting her thirty gold back.
Zoe walked towards the forest, her anxiety rising as her heart began to race. In a few minutes, she found another of the large disc shaped creatures. It seemed even larger up close. Each tentacle-like leg seemed as thick as a tree’s trunk, and the body that rested atop all of the legs far above Zoe’s head seemed large enough to build a small house in, even though it seemed so thin and diminutive compared to the legs from a distance.
Identify showed it as a dark blue level three hundred seventeen Tenzo, whatever a Tenzo was. That was almost thirty levels over Zoe, with an additional class. Not to mention the sheer size advantage. Could she handle it? And even if she could, could she handle the boss fight, if she eventually found that?
An impact slammed into Zoe’s left side, throwing her through the forest as her armoured body smashed through the burnt husks. She pushed healing through her body as she grimaced through the pain and looked back to see what had hit her.
A small bear like creature stood on two legs where she had been moments earlier, staring at Zoe. She hadn’t even noticed it, even with her sphere of perception around her. The creature vanished, and Zoe felt an impact smash into her right side as she was sent tumbling through the forest again. Healing raced through her body and she glanced at her health display.
Health: 78242/90000
“Dammit.” Zoe cursed. Mana rushed from her form, surrounding her in an earthen suit as she Cosmic Stepped up into the air. A moment later, the creature appeared below her, sending a shockwave forward that ripped up the ground and shook the nearby trees. Its head tilted, then it turned up to stare at Zoe.
Zoe paused to watch it for a moment, but it did nothing. A minute later, the creature vanished again, and the large disc shaped beast began crawling its way over to her on its strange limbs. She took a moment to look around and found the lake bed, Cosmic Stepping towards it and stepping back through the rift to reality.
The Ruins of Abyllan were too dangerous for her right now, but she would be back one day, and she would conquer it.