The party was scattered around the titanic beetle. Marla lunged, swinging as she activated her chainsaw. At the moment she would have made contact, so close she could have shaved hair off of its carapace, the monster rapidly pivoted on one leg, turning a hundred and eighty degrees imperceptibly fast and butting its shell against Marla, flinging her across the room at a speed that was nauseating to see. A few moments after colliding with the wall, a soft choke verified she hadn’t died on impact. Halwark stabbed at the beetle in retribution, but his sword only slid off of its supernaturally hard chitinous shell. The beetle shoved back at Halwark but found his footing to be as immovable as its shell was impregnable, so they were locked at an impasse. All made their attempts to take advantage of the lock was creature was in, but none could get purchase in its armor. Bones’ whip slid along it, Sonnet’s tendrils couldn’t conjure the strength to restrain it, and Deacon’s crystalline bolts shattered into a glittering display.
Marla heaved herself back to her feet, showing her freckled bronze skin to now be a blue and red collage of bruising. Not wasting any time, she charged at the beetle once again. Time slowed as Deacon saw the beetle preparing to hit Marla with the same move as before. Its front right leg extended for a fraction of a second, to shift its weight onto its front left leg to pivot once more. Without thinking, Deacon’s instinct drove him, and in that tiny window, he fired out a clay ball at its right leg, locking it down and interrupting its attack. Marla took advantage of its momentary struggle, feigning a swing at its shell and then following through on her movement by chopping off its left leg.
The beetle was panicked, pulling back with its back four legs to stretch the clay-like taffy and attempt to break free. That’s when Deacon surprised himself. There was a feeling to his spells. Every time he’d launched his clay balls before, there was an instant while it materialized that he could feel it as part of him, and that feeling ended when they flew away from him. Now, however, that familiar sensation remained. The clay was still connected to him, and he felt one proverbial muscle he could flex to exert control over it. He did so, exerting a will over the clay, instantly hardening it to stone and severing his connection to it. The beetle was trapped. Its next attempt to turn the situation around was the raise its body up as high as it could, presumably so it could hammer down onto Marla, but Halwark intercepted it, getting onto one knee and gripping the bottom of its shell with his bare hands. With the soft underbelly exposed, Marla got under it and used her chainsaw like she was scooping the meat out and oyster shell. It was done for, then and there. Letting Marla pulverize it from the inside was a much-needed indulgence the party hadn’t the heart to get in the way of.
Marla emerged, draped in filth, and following her, a red gem rattled out. It was no larger than a marble, with a faint glow swimming and swirling within in. Deacon’s eyes slightly widened. He was more relieved than surprised at the sight of a mana gem. They formed inside of magical beings as a sort of battery for the mana that couldn’t be fully absorbed, acting to mana as fat does to caloric energy. Even a low-magic one such as this was worth at least its weight in silver, as they were the power source for all manner of magical devices. The fact that the pig rats weren’t powerful enough to form and drop them was a disappointment, but it seemed the party had finally gotten close enough to the dungeon seed for them to form. Bones didn’t hesitate on seeing the small reward, exclaiming “yoink,” as they snatched it up and tossed it into their mouth like candy, only for it to drop back down, clacking against their ribs like a pachinko machine and getting caught again in Bones’ hand.
Marla was scooping globs of slime off of herself, cursing, as if she hadn’t intentionally thrown herself into a big bowl of beetle juice. Bones made a ‘tisk’ sound, somehow, before shrugging and fishing a few items out of their bag. First, they pulled a brass cylindrical device and opened a compartment on the side. Then, they inserted the mana gem, which prompted a look of mild anger from the party, who weren’t consulted before their first loot was used, then a slightly larger crystal, this one Deacon recognized as a water core, then they used a glass dropped to add a dash of liquid from a bottle.
Deacon became hopeful, prodding, “is that—?”
“Purifier concentrate,” Bones confirmed. This was the best news Deacon could have heard. Purifier concentrate wasn’t something he’d ever been able to afford, but the one time he’d tried it, he became fixated on it. To describe it as similar to soap is a disservice. A small amount added to water made a solution that perfectly cleaned anything, with just a light rinse, and no residue was left behind.
Bones shut the device, then pointed it at Marla and activated it. A water core of that size could hold dozens of gallons of water in something akin to a pocket of subspace, so in essence, the cylinder was a wireless hose. Within seconds of being sprayed down, Marla was clean, but Bones hosed her down just a bit longer for their amusement. Now soaked, Marla shock herself off like a wet dog, bizarrely finding more success than one would expect due to her supernatural speed.
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Switching tracks, Halwark pried open the concrete slab that the beetle had emerged from and pushed it aside. He dropped down into the rocky den and inspected it, finding a hole in the wall and calling the group down to see it. It was a makeshift tomb, holding the dried-out husk of a man’s corpse, still dressed in formal clothing. Bones patted the body down for valuables, obviously comfortable with corpses. They pulled out a leather-bound journal, a sack of coins, and a pair of shaded glasses, and the group climbed back out to look the items over. Halwark read aloud the first page while Deacon fiddled with the glasses.
“Property of Wallace Bean,” Halwark read, then added, “it’s all sketches.”
Deacon, paying little attention, tried on the circular sunglasses, and found that it didn’t seem to make the room any darker, but did dim the light from the lumen orbs Halwark had attached to his armor. “Whoa,” Deacon said. “Halwark can you try that sunlight flare thing again?”
Halwark shrugged and conjured a bright flare of light into the air. Deacon looked straight at it, and back around the room, and found an even, comfortable lighting in all directions. Deacon shook his limbs with excitement as he explained what the sunglasses did, and the group agreed to let him keep the loot, as they found it to be a fairly mild enchantment that Deacon seemed disproportionately giddy about. They didn’t understand just how much the flare had disabled him the night before, or that he dreaded Halwark using it again or even thinking about having to confront him about it.
There were three more beetles on that floor, though these were half the size of the first one, and were dealt with swiftly. The next floor was home to corrosive slime creatures, as well as blocky stone constructs that assembled their blocks into different shapes on the fly. Bones doused the slimes in a salty concoction that calcified them, which made them easy prey, and the stone constructs were crushed block by block by Marla and Halwark, with Deacon and Sonnet restraining them with clay and tendrils respectively. The next floor, which was the last they cleared out, was an icy hellscape, populated by reptiles with frost-breath spells. They were relatively straightforward, so every party member was able to take down groups on their own, but they were tough, and numerous, and their attacks hurt like hell. By the time the floor was cleared, everybody was exhausted and sore, with depleted mana reserves. Despite not reaching tier three, everybody was ready to resurface and put the dungeon behind them for now.
Before leaving, Deacon wanted to make sure the goblins were better off. He made raised garden beds, using his clay balls as bricks, and filled them with his dirt, which Bones looked over and found to have a green-thumb enchantment, to Deacon’s surprise. He planted potatoes in the garden beds, and between Bones and Halwark there were enough lumen orbs to spare for the garden to get by on artificial light. Deacon also talked the party into leaving the goblins with half of the coins they found, justifying the loss by pointing out that they found more than enough mana gems to recoup the coins. The goblins tried turning down the coins, claiming that they don’t plan on returning to the surface any time soon, but Deacon insisted, pointing out that copper and silver are inherently useful on their own, drawing attention to the pot still and water pipes they’d already crafted from copper, which they didn’t refute.
The party emerged in the late afternoon, shaking off a weariness they’d accumulated underground. As they prepared to begin their trek to Montar, though mostly by chatting and procrastinating, Deacon wandered the graveyard. Only paying half attention, he called out one of the headstones he’d read “oh hey, this one’s for Wallace Bean.” Immediately, the party gathered around him as he looked down. “Must be where that guy from the dungeon is buried.”
He looked up, seeing Sonnet’s eyes narrowing at him, while Halwark wordlessly pulled out his shovels.
Deacon stood there, waiting for someone to explain what he was missing, before finally exclaiming, “oh!”
Sonnet nodded slowly and patted Deacon’s shoulder in consolation. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
After their second mock exhumation in twenty-four hours, they opened up a coffin lid, which contained a satchel of ornate needles, and tubes of inky liquid. Bones explained that they were supplies for magic tattoos and emphasized that it was the best loot they’d gotten, making a point of how important it was that they sought out an artisan who could use the tools when they got to the city. The party took their word for it, and with that in mind, hit the road to Montar.
It was a long journey on foot, made shorter by everybody’s enhanced speed, but would still be two days or so. A few hours in, as the sun was setting and they were debating whether to set up camp yet, a shriek came from ahead as a woman and her child tending their farm were threatened by lesser wyverns. The wild, dragon-like beasts were menaces in these parts, but this lesser variety was reportedly no real challenge for even low-tier adventurers.
“What luck,” Halwark declared, “it seems we will be reaching tier three today after all!”