The minute he accepted the agreement the dungeon shook, as if a massive bomb had gone off outside. Dust fell from the ceiling as the Dungeon Fairy and her guests looked on in alarm.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Nyx said quietly at nearly the same time as Ray spoke.
“What the hell was that?” Ray asked, turning to the Fairy, “Are we under attack?”
The small, winged woman didn’t respond, having a faraway look on her face. Her face was, in fact, entirely vacant. Her eyes were dead. As if she had checked out entirely. Ray poked her with a finger as she hovered in the air, forcibly bringing her attention back to him.
“What? Oh. Yes. No? I don’t… I don’t know. Someone is in the core room with my dungeon, but I can't speak with him. Whoever it is put some kind of block up, I can't get anything through our link,” Nadia said, her face screwed up with fear and worry. “I don’t know how to fix this!”
Ray poked her again, bringing the Fairies' attention back to him. “Nadia! Calm down! Panicking won't do anything. If someone is threatening the dungeon and is in this… core room, then we need to be in that core room. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you have a whole combat team here. We can help,” he said quickly, reassuring the panicking Nadia.
“Right. Yeah. Yeah! You can… you can get to the core room. Yes. Ok, come with me!” she said, flying towards a wall. The group got up and rapidly followed behind her as the fairy approached what was seemingly a blank wall, only for it to open into a spiraling staircase that led down into the earth.
“This is the exit from the final boss on the fifth floor,” she explained heading into the passage with the others in tow. “it wouldn’t normally lead down, but we need to get to the core room as quickly as possible. I don’t even know how someone got past all the defenses and the teleport wards. It... that shouldn’t be possible.”
Ray just grunted. This was the first he was hearing about teleporting, and wards, and his first time ever in a dungeon. Not that any of these things surprised him anymore. You had to have a startling amount of open-mindedness when it came to the apocalypse apparently. Keeping an open mind allowed him to deal with emergencies are situations that popped up. Allowed him to think outside of the box.
“What can you tell us about whoever is down there?” he asked Nadia as the group filed into the narrow staircase. “How many of them are there?”
The Fairy shrugged as she floated in front of him. “One person. And it is a person. At least, I am pretty sure,” she said with uncertainty. “I got the impression it was a single humanoid, but that was all I got from Gary before our link was severed.”
“Got it. Hopefully whoever is down there isn’t crazy powerful,” Ray said. “We should be able to handle that. I hope… who the fuck is Gary?”
“My Lord, I believe she was referring to the dungeon core,” Verrick said, piping up from behind him. “I believe that is the dungeon's name. This only reinforces the fact that dungeons are living creatures. Something we have guessed at but now have confirmation of. Fascinating. A dungeon core named Gary.”
Ray got the distinct impression that Nadia rolled her eyes at the {RANGER}, but he wasn’t about to poke the bear… Fairy. He was about to ask another question when they arrived at a bottom landing in front of a steel door. “This is the boss’s room. The core room is on the other side of this chamber. I… don’t know if you will have to fight the boss or not. I can’t talk to Gary to have him call it off, so be ready.”
The group nodded as Nadia opened the door. The groups pilled through into a large, circular room that reminded Ray a lot of an arena. It was empty except for a large rock in the center. As they entered the rock quivered and then began to stand up, revealing a massive stone and iron golem.
“Holy shit. That thing is going to kill a lot of people,” Ray muttered.
The huge construct was at least fifteen feet tall and must have weighed thirty tons. It took a single, slow step forward, shaking the earth…. Then crumbled into dust.
Nyx stuck her head out from behind Ray, “That would have been a hard fight. I am more
“Yes! He is still with us and helping!” Nadia said with a fist pump. “Quickly now, get into the core room!”
The group sprinted across the chamber after the fairy as she shot over to the far wall and opened another door. Without waiting for them, she dove into the room beyond. Ray and his people had just gotten to the door when they heard a shriek of rage and pain, followed by a small explosion and a roar. He ran through the doorway just in time to see a dog-headed creature with jet black skin backhand Nadia, smashing her from the air into the floor.
The Fairy landed hard, hitting the floor with enough force to stun the small woman. The Dog creature lifted a foot to crush her, but Ray arrived in time to prevent that by tackling the creature forcefully. The pair tumbled to the ground where he learned that the creature not only had the head of a dog but also the teeth of a dog. He yelled in pain as the creature opened wide and sunk its fangs into his shoulder.
Not one to let a monster like this get the better of him, Ray punched and kicked violently even as it bit him harder. Eventually, his hands found the thing's face and, with no hesitation, he sunk a finger into one nostril and pulled. With a yelp, the dog creature let go of his shoulder and brought both feet under his chest, pushing hard enough to knock the air from his lungs as he skidded away from the creature and its impromptu kick. It sprang to its feet and drew an odd, half-mood curved blade from its lower back. Ray got to his feet slower than the creature did, drawing his blade as well.
During the exchange between the two Ray’s group wasn’t idle. The {RANGER}s had taken up positions in a semi-circle around the core, facing outwards. This allowed them full coverage of the Fairy, who had retreated to sit on top of the core itself, and support Ray if possible. The moment their Lord had disengaged with the demon-looking creature it began to sprout arrows like a hedgehog.
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It only stood still long enough for a few of the embedded arrows to strike it before bouncing around the room like a pinball.. Ray was startled to see that it didn’t explode or immediately die. In fact, the arrows themselves didn’t seem to penetrate deeply even with the amount of Power that the {RANGER}s were pouring into their attacks. If anything it only got faster.
And angrier.
With speed and grace that he wouldn’t have expected from such a creature, it sped by one of the {RANGER}s on the edge of the formation and struck out. The hit sent the Aelvin spinning off into a corner of the room, where he struck the base of the wall and collapsed unmoving. Verrick began giving orders and the {RANGER}'s spread out, trying to box the creature in and limit its mobility. Nyx dashed around at the edges of the room following the creature. She couldn’t used her Power attack in such close confines so ended up just supporting however she could.
As his {RANGER}s fought, Ray went a different route. Seeing that the arrows hadn’t done much damage he was sure that an imbued attack from his enchanted blade would. Drawing his weapon he spent the two Power to activate it, hoping that whatever improvements he made hadn’t worn off after not using it for so long.
Everyone in the room paused and stared at him as his blade burst into flame, the red and white fire burning soundlessly and without giving off any smoke. The temperature in the room rose noticeably, however, getting the attention of even the dog demon creature. Its head spun and locked onto him. Using the distraction that Ray had caused, it leaped over the Aelvin and ran directly at him.
Which made the entire process of seeing how well his weapon worked far easier than it would have been.
With such a mindless attack, Ray didn’t need to strategize. He simply drew his weapon back, gripped it with both hands and swung as hard as he could. The creature's eyes went wide as it realized its fatal mistake. It tried to scramble to a halt or turn its momentum aside, but it was too late. Ray struck it center mass, carving a huge chunk of meat out of its chest and side. The burning blade cut through the skin, cauterizing the wound as it was made. It did nothing to protect the internal organs, however, sealing the veins and arteries shut as it passed through its body. This effectively shut down the creature's body entirely and caused it to collapse in a boneless heap on the floor next to him.
“Well, that was… anti-climactic?” Ray said, slowly as he extinguished his burning blade and returned it to its scabbard.
Nadia stared at him. “What in the fuck was that? I have never seen a sword do that. Ever. Greg scanned you as you did it and even he isn’t sure how it works.”
“Remember your promise about our weapons, My Lord,” Verrick said, as he returned his weapons to their storage places and began moving to check on his downed companion.
Ray rolled his eyes. “I remember Verrick. Trust me. I saw the ineffective empowered attacks. I am fairly certain that elementally imbued weapons are going to be completely necessary for survival. This entire encounter only proved that,” he said calmly.
“Hello in there! Can you explain that to us please?” snapped Nadia impatiently. “What the hell was that?”
Ray turned to her, his eyes dancing with amusement. “Oh? Just a little trick. Nothing really to it. Just a bit of this and that.”
“Damn you Ray, tell me!” the tiny Fairy snarled in a very un-Fairy-like manner.
“Fine. Fine. Don’t get all upset for crying out loud,” he muttered as she turned and yelled at the dungeon core before returning her attention raptly to the human in front of her. “Look, I have an ability to… let's say modify things,” he said, keeping the nature of his abilities vague.
“Modify? That’s more than modification. That’s more than some standard enchantment,” accused Nadia. “Each use of Power within the dungeon is detected by Gary. The use of chanted items is not. You used Power to activate that weapon, something that is not done. It's impossible! Power can only be used internally to activate abilities. It’s the abilities that affect the world around the being who activates them, that’s how the System works!”
Ray shrugged, “Well, you learn something new every day.”
“No. I don't think you understand,” started the Fairy, but she was interrupted.
“No. He doesn’t,” said the dog demon corpse. It had stood up during the heated exchange at some point, unnoticed by everyone in the room, Even Gary. It had been watching and listening for several minutes with amusement at the back and forth between Ray and Nadia.
The entire group drew weapons and spun, ready to fight, but the corpse only held up a single hand. “Stay your weapons mortals. I have no interest in fighting you here and now,” it said in a raspy voice.
“Funny way of showing that, you know?” Nyx snapped off with a growl.
The corpse dry laughed, its throat certainly not designed for speaking much less laughing. “It is what it is. But I digress. Ray was it? You have both angered me and captured my curiosity human. My anger comes from the fact you killed my Priest sent to capture this dungeon. My curiosity on how you accomplished that. My Blessings provide enough power to protect my people from quite a bit.”
Between what was said and the somewhat archaic way it was said, clued Ray in immediately as to who was animating the body.
“You’re that God that just came to the world aren’t you? The dead one?” Ray said, not recalling the precise details of the quest other than that he had to defeat the damn thing.
A dry chuffing laugh from the creature's throat escaped, giving the feeling that it was truly amused at Ray’s dismissive antics. “Indeed. Although I thought that would be apparent, at least from my perspective it would have been. However, I digress. I want to know how you killed my priest so easily above all else. Such things must be prevented you know. One cannot have one's followers killed easily or regularly. There are investments to protect there.”
“You definitely want to know a lot, don’t you? What makes you think I will just tell you?” Ray asked, curious. “You don’t get anything for free you know.”
The undead dog demon creature chuffed another laugh. “Very well. Death is, if anything, fair. Speak to me your terms and I will consider them.”
Ray didn’t hesitate. “I want to know where my people are and how to reach them.”
The corpse stared at him for a few very long minutes. “Interesting. Not material wealth, not NEX, nor even items. Ut the location of your people… how amusing,” it rasped. “Very well. Relax, this won't hurt a bit.”
Power slammed into Ray's mind, overwhelming him instantly. It was as if he were a dandelion in the face of a tornado, tsunami, and volcano all at the same time. His defenses were swept away as if they didn’t even exist, revealing a terrifying existential power that he couldn’t hope to contend with. Ever.
Memories surfaced in his mind as he thought about Josephine, Gale, Grok, Jalla, and the Thymias. He even had memories of the spider woman, Tepi, and her pet giant tarantula ripped from his mind. Then it was over, and the presence withdrew from his mind. Ray dropped to his knees, gasping for air as the others tightened up around him in a defensive formation. Yells were directed at the corpse, but Ray cut them off by raising his hand.
“I’m ok,” he gasped. “I’m… ok.”
“Hmm. Yes. Yes, I see. Very well then,” the corpse said in its dry monotone. “You, little mortal, are extremely entertaining. Your memories are so very, very interesting. And what’s more, there is an entire set of memories not even I can access. That makes you even more interesting.”
The corpse set its eyes on Ray, meeting his gaze with its own. “I will return once I have locations for each of the people from your memories. When I do, be prepared to answer my questions.” With that the creature dissolved in front of their eyes, turning into nothing but a pile of dust and ash on the dungeon floor.
Everyone there was silent for some time before the Dungeon Fairy finally spoke up, “Now will you tell me what the hell you did to that sword?”