Aiden was sitting against a wall breathing heavily. They had been running for the past 10 minutes trying to stay ahead of the hoard of ant’s. They finally found another door leading back into the main tunnel on the other side of the previous cave in.
They were safe for the moment and took a minute to catch their breath. Victoria cast a heal on them both topping them both off to full health again, bringing out an appreciative hum from Aiden as the magic passed through him and his wounds closed up.
Aiden stood back up, joining Victoria in leaning against the wall. “You alright?” She nodded with a tight smile and a thumbs up, eliciting a chuckle from him. He figured Victoria had changed the most out of the two of them. If this had happened even a week ago she would have probably been panicking, but now? Well.. she was keeping it together fairly well even in these pretty messed up circumstances. Hell her presence kept him together as well.
He took out a pack of cigarettes from his inventory that he managed to scrounge in the ruin of his hime town and lit one up holding the smoke in for a moment before exhaling. He figured that with the system things like cancer and other diseases were a thing of the past so he could smoke all he wanted. And right now he really needed one.
Aiden was glad he found Vicky on that first day. It had made the last two week much more enjoyable then they would have otherwise been. She had a calming effect on him, cutting through the horror of most days and adding a lightness to them. And now? Now he had something to fight for, someone to fight for. He wanted to keep her safe, even tho she didn’t really need a protector anymore. Still, he wanted to create a safe place for both of them to live and thrive in.
That was really the whole idea behind the Order of the Guardians. To protect the newly built town and to eventually be strong enough to combat any threats coming their way. He knew he was making a gamble not knowing how the others would take him trying to start an organization and be their leader.
He honestly didn't want to put himself in a leadership situation but he was the only one in the position to do so. He noticed that most of the people there seemed to be depending and looking at him to lead them, so why not make use of that to build something like the guardians, that would bind the others to a common goal, a purpose they all could strive for.
A goal like that would keep people mostly united and focused, keeping their fears in check. It was also why he didn’t go on this trip alone. He wanted both of them to be strong. Strong enough to lead the Guardians and strong enough to survive anything that came along in the future. He wouldn’t even dream of leaving Victoria behind at this point.
She was almost as effective as him in a fight now and the stronger she got the less he would worry about her in the future. Tho even if he tried she probably would have demanded to go with him anyway, Aiden figured with a wry internal smile.
They rested another minute then continued on their way through the tunnel. It was in pretty bad shape in places but the path forward wasn't completely blocked off and they were able to continue on for another few minutes until they ran into an impenetrable blockade. A downed train had ran off the track and crashed in the tunnel causing a cave in and creating what was probably a much larger blockade then the previous one, depending on the length of the train.
“Well shit” he said and Victoria nodded to the assessment of their current predicament. Aiden though for a bit then sighed and turned towards Victoria. “I can only think of two things we can do right now, well... three but I doubt you want to spend a few days in here hoping they go away, which is unlikely.” He got a shake of the head as an answer and laughed a little. He tossed the now finished cigarette away and continued.
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"Thought not. Well.. the way I see it we can open up the door we used to get in here and make a stand, fight them here where there’s a lot more room. Which is a horrible idea by the way and not the option I’d recommend since most average sized ant colonies contain between one hundred and five hundred thousand worker ant’s that we would probably need to kill. Not to mention the winged one’s or the queens. In other words that would be impossible, it would take us weeks of non stop fighting to kill that many and we would be dead long before we even put a small dent in their numbers.”
Victoria agreed that sounded impossible and waited for the other option, tho she figured she knew what it was already, and it was equally as bad but at least gave them a chance to maybe get out of here if they were lucky.
“The other option would be to go back into the maintenance tunnel, fight our way through any ants that most likely already made their way this far and continue heading in the same direction we did before, hopefully finding another door passed this next cave in. If we don’t well... I guess we could try and fight our way out the way we came but I find our chances of doing so successfully, highly unlikely.”
They decided to take their chance with the maintenance tunnel. There was no other choice really, even if this one depended mostly on luck. They took another batch of night vision potions and when they opened the door back into the maintenance tunnel there were indeed already a lot of ant’s there that immediately attacked them.
They fought a running battle as they headed further down the tunnel with ant’s coming from both sides this time, making it much harder then before forcing Aiden to take a few health potions while they ran as Victoria focused on healing herself.
Eventually the enemies in front of them thinned out somewhat until the way forward was mostly clear. They kept going at a steady pace keeping an eye on their steadily dwindling stamina. Aiden was starting to get worried, Victoria was down to less then 60 stamina and if they didn’t find a way out soon Aiden would have to carry her, even though his stamina wasn’t looking great ether.
“There!” Aiden pointed forward. They had found another door! They quickly went up to it and noticed the door was open inward, they cautiously went through and quickly closed the door behind them. The door however had a broken lock and wouldn’t latch, after a quick look around it also turned out not to be an entrance into the main tunnel but another storage/work room.
And to exacerbate the situation even further, in the corner of the room was another hole in the wall. At first Aiden thought it was another entrance to the ant’s hive but when he cautiously stepped closer it was something else entirely. Aiden could only stare blankly at the message he recieved.
“Your party has discovered a Dungeon!”
“Floor based dungeon: Rank (F) / (Total floors - 4) ‘The Descent’ / Floor 1: Recommended Class lvl 20-25 / Recommended Party size 3-4”
Aiden couldn’t help it, he laughed. He laughed so hard he had trouble keeping his feet. ‘This is ridiculous. We either turn back and continue on trying to find another way out which is a gamble in and of itself with how tired we both are or we go into a dungeon meant for a full party at double our levels. We never should have come into this damn tunnel.’ Aiden lamented. He couldn’t choose, didn’t want to choose. Both were bad options. What finally made up his mind and really took the choice out if his hands was the sound of the Ant’s fast approaching.
‘Fuck it, If were careful we might be able to survive and clear the first floor at least, getting stronger in the process, perhaps making it possible to break out of this god forsaken tunnel later.’ He was hoping they could manage it based on the difficulty of the last Dungeon but wasn’t sure.
‘The problem will be the dungeon boss. That and the fact that I’m not sure if we could leave the dungeon unless we clear all the floors.’ The name of the dungeon didn’t give away anything about what kind of monsters were inside either, but he was hoping they would be better off in there for now then out here.
He looked towards Victoria and could see she was nervous and tired but still keeping it together. He took strength from her presence and finally made the choice he really didn’t want to.
“We're going in. It's our only choice at the moment, we're almost out of stamina and we can't hold the doors to this room for long. Hopefully monsters can't enter dungeons.” Victoria looked back towards the door where a few ant’s were already coming in. She looked back towards Aiden and with a nod they both sprinted into the hole in the wall and into the swirling vortex further inside it. Once they went in the Vortex dissipated, leaving frenzied and confused ant’s behind.