“Shit,” Caleb gasped, wiping more rain from his face, “our tents.”
Jeremy glanced toward the house and saw that the spot where they had been set up in the yard was now empty. But the garage door was once again open so that Henry could sit in one of the folding chairs and watch the rain. He waved at them from the warm glow of the garage, a huge grin on his face, and their tents piled into the empty space behind him.
They stumbled toward him to get out of the rain. Thankfully, the wind seemed to have died down, and there were no flashes of lightning or rumbles of thunder from the dark clouds in the sky. So, there was no chance of another dungeon forming right after they had just closed the last one.
“You guys made it out okay!” Henry exclaimed. “We were starting to get worried. What happened?”
He looked them over as they stood there, dripping water onto the garage's concrete pad, looking like they could barely stand on their feet.
“Well, we cleared it,” Jeremy said, glancing back at the now ordinary circle of asphalt. “And this dungeon disappeared, which is good. I assume that means it will not come back, but who knows?”
“Well, thank goodness. Let’s get you all dried off. Do you want to take showers?” Henry said, going toward the house's door, “Let me grab some towels real quick.”
He disappeared through the door. Zanie sat in one of the folding chairs and let her head fall back with a sigh.
“Do you think it will come back?” She asked.
“The dungeon?” Jeremy crossed his arms and thought about it. The first one remained stable even though the structures inside collapsed. Both that one and this one had a ring, so it could not be a matter of what level they had gotten to. He figured it must have something to do with how they were created or how they maintained themselves.
In order for them to continuously create the creatures, there had to be some kind of constant source of material for them to build from. Probably mana since that had been what created the dungeon in the first place. Aside from the differences in aesthetics between this and the first dungeon – the different interiors and creatures – there was one other significant structural difference. The first dungeon seemed to still be constructing the environment when they cleared it, while this one had not been.
So perhaps there was a constant source of mana feeding the growth of that first dungeon, allowing it to continue to slowly level up over time. Jeremy had no idea how it had been created, but this one had formed out of a single event of highly concentrated mana due to the storm. So perhaps it had limited materials to build its environment and could gather enough mana over time to regenerate monsters, but not enough to make new rooms – quickly at least – or maintain a stable portal once all of the creatures had been cleared.
“I don’t know,” he told Zanie. She sighed and closed her eyes.
Jeremy took the opportunity to finally check on the colors of their overlays, which had all shifted about the same amount to a dark orange color. Which seemed pretty decent, although he had expected it to go up much more since he had gained nearly an entire color from the last dungeon and had been further back and less involved in the killing of those creatures than he had this time around. That had also involved firing a gun rather than using magic. Perhaps leveling grew more difficult as you gained rings.
“Hey,” Henry poked his head out of the door, “Julie said to just come inside and take a shower, so long as you take your shoes off and don’t track mud through the house.”
Jeremy nodded to him, then asked the room at large, “Who wants to go first?”
“I cannot move,” Zanie informed him, so he turned to Caleb, who was rooting through Henry’s cooler for a beer.
“You go first,” Caleb waved a hand over his shoulder. Jeremy shrugged and went over to look in his tent. Henry and Julie had picked up the entire tents and dragged them into the garage, leaving all of their things zipped inside and untouched, for which he was grateful. He pawed around in the bag of clothes and found his little toiletry bag, then went inside.
Even though he took his shoes off, his socks left wet footprints on the floor, which he felt bad about. Julie was in the kitchen, reading a book. She looked up as he walked past and smiled, “Henry said you were back. Just throw your wet clothes in the dryer. Feel free to come in and make yourself a sandwich when you are finished taking a shower, too. We’re grateful to you for getting rid of that thing.”
“No problem,” Jeremy returned her smile politely, then locked himself in the bathroom. He stripped out of his clothes, grimacing as he pulled off his socks, which had been thoroughly soaked by standing ankle-deep in the dungeon. He dropped them onto the bathroom floor with a wet plop and turned the shower on.
While he waited for the water to heat up, he frowned at his face in the mirror and scratched the stubble that was slowly but surely becoming too scruffy for his tastes. He rooted around for his razor and found a can of shaving cream under the sink.
Even though it had been a warm rain, it still felt good to stand under the hot shower and let it rinse away the dampness in his hair and on his skin. It also had been a mild temperature in the dungeon, which he had not really thought about at the time. Were there dungeons out there that were very hot or freezing cold? So far, the three he had gone into had temperatures that were unnoticeable.
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Once he finished showering, he planted himself in front of the mirror and wiped off the little bit of condensation on it so he could shave. The whole time, he wondered about the fact that he could not see his overlay in the reflection, just like he could not see it in a video or picture. Whatever the mana was, it could not be detected through camera lenses or the reflected light of a mirror.
He cleaned up after himself, then took Julie up on her offer to use the kitchen to make a sandwich.
“So,” she said as he slathered mayonnaise onto the slices of bread, “Henry said you thought that thing would not come back. Are you pretty sure?”
“Pretty sure,” Jeremy assured her. “I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I think that it was just something that happened because of the storm the other day.”
“Well, I assume you are heading out soon. Would you give us your contact information in case it does come back?” she asked.
Jeremy put the mayo and ham and cheese slices back into the fridge, then sat beside her at the kitchen table to eat. She pushed a notepad and pencil across the table toward him, and he wrote down his email as well as Caleb’s phone number. Now that he had the tablet, whenever he had internet, he would be able to check his emails.
“The phone number is probably better for emergencies, but I’ll try to check my email as often as I can,” he told her. “But you really should start practicing magic yourselves…or at least coming up with a plan for how to deal with the creatures and the dungeons. For all we know the circle out there is some kind of hot spot and every time you have a storm you’ll end up with a new dungeon.”
She clicked her tongue against the top of her mouth and pulled the notebook back over to her side of the table to look down at his scribbles. “Maybe.”
“The Guard is stretched thin, and there isn’t always going to be someone like us around.” Jeremy urged, “Even if you give us a call, we might not be able to get here quickly. Travel is difficult right now.”
She let out a big sigh and laid her hands flat against the table. “Henry will take some convincing, but I’m a pro at that. Tell me, how did you manage to clear it this time?”
So Jeremy sat there and explained to her what their strategy had been while he ate his sandwich. He went into depth about the fact that they each had a unique personality trait that allowed them to utilize certain types of magics that might not be available to others at such a low level, although he did fib a little bit and tell her that his trait was an affinity for mana-based magic. Although it probably wasn’t truly a lie because all magic was mana-based.
“So we obviously will not be able to use…” she pressed her lips together like she could not believe she was saying these words, “…lightning barriers and spells to cut things in half, but we might be able to figure something out with whatever the people in our neighborhood are able to do.”
“Yes,” Jeremy nodded. “I don’t really know how to tell you to figure that out. So far, two of the people I know figured it out in life or death situations and the third, Zanie, figured it out because of the types of spells she cast most naturally. So just have people experiment around with magic – nothing complicated! – just little elemental spells like conjuring water or heating up your tea, and you should be able to figure out what magic comes most naturally to you.”
“Okay.” Julie nodded.
“But keep in mind that the unique traits are not necessarily affinities for magic types,” Jeremy said. “They could be…oh, I don’t know…things like turning into a dragon or being fire-resistant or whatever.”
Julie nodded again, “I saw that on the news – somebody turning into a dragon. It did not look very pretty.”
“The traits aren’t always a blessing,” Jeremy agreed. “And also keep in mind that if a dungeon re-forms, it might not be exactly the same as this one. Again, I don’t know.”
“You mean there might be different monsters inside?”
“Maybe,” Jeremy shrugged, “I’m figuring this out as I go, honestly. But I’ll write down a bunch of the simple spells that we do know for you guys. Things like conjure and manipulate water or basic healing spells. Practice those. Then, anything more complicated than that, for now, you’ll just have to visualize it. I’d like to put together an entire guide of runes to help people, but I’m still figuring them out myself at this point.”
“Well, thank you for helping us.” Julie grabbed his plate full of crumbs and stood to put it in the sink. “You should go see if the other two want a shower or anything to eat.”
“Right.” Jeremy smiled at her, then went back out into the garage.
Zanie had not moved an inch, and Caleb had collapsed into the folding chair next to her, with Henry on his other side. Caleb and Henry were talking about the logistics of trying to maintain an economy based on long-distance shipping – everything from big ag to overseas production. How on Earth Caleb managed to have a stimulating intellectual conversation while swinging his beer about animatedly as though he wasn’t just stumbling out of the dungeon as exhausted as the rest of them half an hour ago was beyond Jeremy.
“You can use the shower now if you want,” Jeremy told him.
“Oh, thanks, man,” Caleb got to his feet and drained his beer, then went inside. Jeremy took his place in the middle folding chair, and Henry immediately tried to rope him into the conversation about the economy.
“We’re going to need to do something about it,” Henry said, “Maybe this will finally bring manufacturing back to this country. Local manufacturing, I mean. More jobs.”
In all of our running around, I had forgotten that most people were just sitting around at home, not sure what exactly to make of events or how to proceed living their lives when everything seemed to have shifted so completely over the past couple of weeks.
“Magic,” Jeremy said. “We’ll figure out a way to use magic to deal with the logistics of trying to keep the product safe while shipping it through the disaster zones and through the air.”
“They are going to have to figure something out for air travel soon,” Henry huffed.
“I think that they’ll bring back trains,” Jeremy mused, settling down in the chair and not giving much thought to what he was saying. Just spouting out the first thoughts to drift to mind. “They are easier to protect than a whole highway of cars. Logistics make more sense.”
Henry hummed.
Zanie proved that he had actually been listening, when she piped up with, “I agree with Henry that we have to bring our focus back to more localized production. Going from Big Ag to permaculture and backyard gardens.”
Jeremy had to agree. This neighborhood had already organized a produce exchange to make the most of the food grown in their backyards and his parents had already begun to coordinate with local farmers to figure out the food situation over the upcoming winter. When the shelves went empty and stayed empty in the stores, people had to turn to their own means of production. But he was really too tired to think about any of that right now. He really should call his parents – it had been a few days again since he had. But for now, he just closed his eyes and dozed off.