CHAPTER 24
DELVE
The Priest and the Warrior, Umago and Marrak, led the charge through the entrance tunnel. The walls were covered in moss and jagged rocks, smelling of mildew. As the pair of party leaders crept around a corner, they found what they thought was as an empty chamber. As June and the rest of the quintet slinked around the bend, the full chamber came into view. A mass of green, mossy rocks sat in the middle of the rugged, carved room. Around them, glittering rocks broke through the darkness. They appeared to bioluminesce, adding a soft blue glow to the area.
A gentle whisper overtook June’s awareness as she entered, like a ghost trying to call to her in an unknowable voice. She shook off the interruption and continued forward.
“Great, more weird nonsense,“ she muttered.
June’s Mana Vision even came in clutch at first, helping her spot some strange mutated plants slowly sliding across the cave floor. These hidden plant mutants were trying to sneak up on them. The living ferns slithered along the walls, leaving trails of ooze behind them. What she didn’t see was that those bioluminescent rocks were also a special type of mob. When one of her companions got too close to one, they snapped open with a resounding popping sound. The sound of crunching bone followed next as Mutated Swamp Clams wrapped maws filled with rows of blunt teeth around a leg of one of her allies. The fern’s attack came next, snapping its roots and vines out like whips. Umago rushed in, swinging wildly at the fern, advancing on Marrak. Their strike sent the top parts of the fern sailing across the room. Another plant mutant paused for a moment, trying to flee. June didn’t let it get too far before cooking it with a fireball. A scent like burning paper wafted through the rough-hewn chamber.
Marrak was still trying to wiggle the living rock off of their leg bones, waggling back and forth as they danced around the other living rocks in the chamber. “Hold still!” she called after them, trying to line up a shot with a spell. Her first attempt flew wide as a Shadow Spear dissipated harmlessly against the rocky floor.
Focused, the Mage, Allaran, belted water spells into the other living rocks now rolling around the area. It must have looked like a joke, as a group of undead adventurers chased some rocks around a room. Kotor was even leaping around, trying to blast rocks to bits with fire spells. The dancing shadows cast by the cobalt light made the scene look more like an underwater ballet gone wrong.
Cold and calculating, the Priest used an Enthrall spell on the rolling rocks. They slowed and stopped their routine of rolling around like a mad dervish, awaiting some command. With them locked in place, they were much easier to beat into submission with blunt weapons and fire. As each rock monster fell, their light dimmed.
June took the reprieve to check around for any kind of loot, using her Mana Vision to scan the room. Shadows continued to dance on the walls in a slow waltz, passing from one jagged edge to the next. The other members of her party stood stone still, staring at something invisible to anyone but them.
Kotor amused himself by poking at the warrior as they stood still.
The scraping of stone interrupted her search. A small passage had opened opposite the entrance. In unison, five heads turned towards the new doorway. Nervousness flowed through the room like a heavy fog. June’s mind swam, wondering what the darkness beyond the fading blue light held.
Another whisper echoed from within the darkness, calling to June, rattling inside her head like a jingle you couldn’t quite forget.
Kotor crawled up towards the open passage, his softly burning form glowing in the growing shade. He slithered along the stones like a serpent, eager to strike.
“What do you see?” June asked through their psychic link.
A pause hung in the air, before the imp responded, “I don’t see a darn thing, boney,” communicated the fire imp.
But June had a bit of an ace up her sleeve, Mana Vision. By flaring her magical ability, June could trace mana in green and black wisps moving along both the floor and walls of the cavernous space. She traced its path, noting natural curves and concentrations in the energy formations.
As the party ventured deeper, the character of the tunnels changed. Rather than appearing to be being natural formations, they twisted in increasingly uniform ways. It looked like a large worm had chewed its way into the rock. As June walked, she noted more and more bite marks upon the walls, and small bits of broken stone lay across the floor, crunching beneath their feet. Each step cracked and snapped as thin pieces of stone broke under their combined weight. The scene was eerily silent, save from the crunching of footsteps, as the party moved. The quartet of undead wandered through the lower chambers of the dungeon, avoiding traps as June’s Mana Vision spotted them. A stone fall trap fell harmlessly before them. They easily skirted two different pit traps. After descending a long, narrow passage, the pathway opened into another wider chamber.
A trio of strange kobolds came charging into the tunnel at them before they reached its entrance. Instead of the green flesh and wild yellow eyes June knew from her previous encounter, these were much more freakish, clearly dead. They moved oddly, shuffling instead of running. The flesh and eyes were sunken and taut, colored the hue of grey stone. A simple glance with her Mana Vision told June they were various kinds of undead kobolds.
The warrior charged in first, bashing one aside with a shield charge. With a delayed crunch, its dusty bones scattered across the stones. A dual spell attack from June and the zombie mage roasted the second. Ash fell from the tiny undead in great heaps, ballooning into a spreading tide of grey fog.
Well, that’s what happened to those kobolds.
The third was smarter, it seemed, falling back further into the chamber.
Reckless and unthinking, June and the Warrior rushed through, with Kotor and the rest following behind a beat later. The quintet braced for more, but nothing came, although June noted and called out a huge concentration of green earth mana in the chamber beyond. The Summoner triggered Called Spirits for the first time, bringing about the image of one of the kobolds she’d just slain. A whispering echo of its form came together from her mana. Like building blocks, bits of mana twisted and solidified before dropping onto the stone floor and bubbling away. After several seconds, the image took shape, block by block. An incorporeal form of the mangled kobold came together, featuring much more sinister crimson eyes, rather than the uncharacteristic snow white of its undead inspiration.
June silently commanded it to move ahead into the chamber. The ghostly image floated towards the door and passed through without issue. That was, until an arrow slammed into it and passed through, breaking the illusion. The arrow clattered uselessly to the stones inside the chamber. A smattering of surprised shouts and shuffling feet echoed out towards the party. June casually, mercilessly fired a pair of fireballs into the chamber, eliciting a chorus of screeches and a wafting smell of burning flesh from within. What she hadn’t expected was the torrent of green skin and yellowed teeth to come charging out of the chamber, slamming into the party.
Kotor was the first to see them come charging out of the fire, blasting gouts of flame back into the advancing horde. June and Allaran both added bolts to the growing flurry of magic, flying back at the now panicking enemies.
Swinging crude stone weapons, most of their strikes did little but bounce off of the shield held by the warrior, who had advanced promptly into a blocking position. The Priest, Umago, also flanked them, casting buffing magic on the both of them. Several Kobolds fell in quick succession in the opening melee, being burned, frozen or hacked to pieces by the party. Green kobold skin and bones, as well as purple blood, flowed across the stone floor like a thick slurry.
Their yellow eyes were crazed, darting all around, seemingly searching for a way past the undead now slaughtering them. June triggered her Tongues perk with a jolt of mana, trying to understand their panicked screeching.
“Run!” was the only word she could parse amid the orgy of magic and breaking of tiny bones.
The tide of the battle turned even worse for the kobolds as their largest warrior attempted to bowl over the two undead blocking their path, only to be met with one of his own class abilities. Resolute Technique, an ability June knew well from her short stints in PvE, effortlessly bashed his oversized skull in. Bits of kobold brain slathered against the stonework as the top of his head rolled off with a stroke of Marrak’s sword. The fleshy bits left behind smoked, filling the chamber with yet another foul odor.
But, there were still more coming, and without area-of-effect magic to thin the herd of greenskins advancing on them, June had to make a snap decision. “Fall Back!” she screamed as the ordered the party backwards. Over several minutes, the party pulled back further up the chamber, using the slight incline to their advantage to slow the horde while they struck down at them.
They doled heals out as fast as the Mage could unfurl and burn the scrolls June had given them. Even June had to join in the frontline to allow for the Priest and Mage to recharge a bit of mana as they fled, pushed backward even further. The complicated dance of positioning looked like a waltz of death, set to the music of screams and bloodshed. Her Vampiric Edge dagger helped her remain upright, as Kotor rode her shoulder. He would blast kobolds in the face when they got too close, allowing June the chance at a quick stab to leech health and mana.
They had already slaughtered more than a dozen of these creatures, but more were still charging up the hall. A quickly loosed fireball roasted a couple of smaller kobolds as they came hopping up the tunnel toward the slaughter. This created enough separation between the party and the green mass that they simply turned tail and started running. Kotor kept their foes at bay, firing bolts of flame backwards toward the advancing kobolds. June couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret at slaughtering a foe that was simply running at them in a panic, but her survival came first.
As the party rounded the bend, back in the rock chamber, they filed out back into the wider area, prepping for the coming attack. Fire danced in their eyes as the group steeled their resolve.
Seconds ticked by as the chittering and screeching group of kobolds arrived at the entrance to the chamber. Charging in two at a time, spells ripped through the air, tearing into their flesh, shredding skin and bone in chunks. Eager frontline fighters cleaved the next pair of greenskins down, splattering another pile of gore across the stones. Their gurgling death rattles didn’t last long, as their corpses fell away to ash, eaten away. The rest of the party didn’t seem to notice, purely focused on the slaughter they were unleashing.
A whisper broke through the din of battle, amid the screams, June’s sense was pulled in a new direction. A resounding boom echoed through the chamber, but as June glanced around, no one else seemed to hear it. The abjectly familiar pressure inside her head and a blinding migraine returned in that instant. It felt like her skull wanted to rip itself off of her body and flee. An incoherent scream escaped her mouth, prompting Kotor to rush to her side.
“What’s up, boney?” he said, a genuine look of worry stretching across his flaming features.
June tried to focus through her blurred vision, as the image of the concerned imp swirled in her vision, like she was looking at him through a foggy window.
“I’m fine...” came the grunted reply.
As the hellish slaughter spread out like a black tide across the room, June felt frozen in place. Everything looked like it was moving in slow motion. Each strike against bone or flesh, and the screams that followed, crawled around. June stumbled towards the far side of the room, slumping against the carved walls.
A booming voice reached inside her mind, tearing further at her focus. “Consume,” came a sinister call in a tone holding both threat and promise.
By the time June regained her full awareness, the battle was done. The other adventurers and Kotor had fought their way through the last few kobolds, hacking and blasting them to bloody bits. Purple stained the walls and dripped onto the floor. Kotor came hopping over to June’s wobbling form.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“It’s nothing, I’m fine, let’s just get this over with...” she hurriedly said, near shouting, the look of genuine concern on Kotor’s face stood in stark contrast to the blank, far-off stares of the other undead.
Once again, a new portal opened in the rock, with the tantalizing and dangerous mix of the unknown darkness calling to the party—and on they went. June charged past the concerned Kotor, irritation plain in her tone as she spoke.
----------------------------------------
The group silently moved through these new tunnels, with June noting a more ordered composition to the walls and floors. Gone were the chewed tunnels. These areas looked almost refined by comparison. Someone had carved the stone in a considered and planned way, making this area look more regal. There were no fancy engravings, but the dull grey stone still had a certain character to it. June’s senses were on edge as they scanned the path ahead, noting no major flows or concentrations of mana in the hall. It wasn’t until several minutes further down a straight passage that this changed.
Ahead, June witnessed a thick haze of earth and death mana swirling.
Deeper into the path, a wider chamber revealed itself. The room was cavernous and adorned with small braziers around a crude stone platform. The stone glinted in the firelight, with softly glowing runes intricately carved into its entire surface. On top of the raised platform sat an enormous emerald, uncut and filled with blemishes.
An intense desire boiled in the back of her mind. She had to have it. Just one little touch. Despite her screaming sense of danger in the back of her mind, her feet carried her forward toward the gem, without input from the rest of her body.
Darkness danced around the rough plinth, flying around on wings of pale green light. Like dragons dancing in the night, the shadows dashed and dived, as if hunting unseen prey. As June crept closer, the gigantic mass glinted, pulling her closer, like a pile of ancient treasure calling to a greedy beast.
A shadow with a sword swirled into position behind her, the darkness roiling off its form. Like a tree, it stood tall and gaunt, its dark form swallowing light, bending it into submission.
Shit, too slow...
A scream broke through the haze as June turned to face the threat, but it wasn’t her own. Kotor leapt at the threat, a shrill scream burning out of his throat. Fire bathed the shade from his infernal claws as he screamed his war cry. Orange-tipped crimson claws sunk into the nightly figure, ripping at it with abandon. June scanned the boss, finding out its pretty terrifying stats.
Enemy Name: Possessed Earthen Spirit (Boss Spawn) Level: Total: 18 Stats: Strength - 30
Endurance - 28
Agility - 20
Willpower - 19
Intelligence - 14
A second shrill scream ripped from within the void, joining the chorus of chaos. June could see glints of blue ice form on its face: eyes, a mouth. All three slits looked like the surface of a lake at midnight, swirling blue and dark together in a terrifying dance.
With reckless abandon, June’s adrenaline snapped her into motion. She tossed out firebolts with both hands, aimed right into the shadow creature’s maw. The blasts detonated like grenades of light inside its face, spewing ash and cinders across the chamber. Swirls of shadow, bone and claw ripped through the darkness of the chamber, jockeying for position, hunting.
The dance progressed as the clack of more bones and rotted flesh impacted on stone. The rest of the party came charging into the darkening chamber, sensing the threat at last.
Allaran was the first to act, firing a spear of ice towards the creature, but unlike Kotor’s claws, the spell passed straight through its form, smashing into a blue cloud against the nearby stone.
Marrak ran in, swinging their iron sword wildly at the new foe. The strike found its mark as his cleaving attack carved out a mote of shadow from this new enemy. Where the shadow ripped open, a small, glittering hole filled with dark blue light revealed itself.
June and Allaran continued to blast their enemy with magic as they advanced into the chamber.
Like a rolling fog, the shadow ethereal being rolled across the chamber, dodging spells and blows as they came. They filled the room with spells that went wide or through the dark form, causing no obvious damage. But as much as the boss tried to dodge, it couldn’t keep away from every attack. As more blows rained down on the shadowy foe, shimmering chunks of darkness flittered through the low light of the chamber.
“This is going to be easy,” thought June, as she fired another fireball ahead of the fleeing enemy. The shadow snapped and turned to dodge the spell, coming face-to-face with the visage of Umago, who took advantage. With a vicious strike downward of their mace, they tore into the mass of shadow.
Once again, a glimmer of blue amid a sea of black was revealed as the impact landed. Shadows exploded out from the fresh wound, writhing and boiling. A screech of pain and horror bounded off the walls amid the storm of shadow. Snaps and pops filled the room as multiple tentacles of shadow shot out of the growing mass. Each tentacle glittered with blue stars of magical energy across its surface. As the new form of this boss spread like an angry hive, it caught its undead opponents on the back foot.
Of course, it has a second phase.
June scurried to her feet, shouting commands for the party to follow. Kotor and Allaran began blasting the mass of writhing horrors with all manner of spells, but they seemed to have little impact. The mass just kept growing and growing. But it wasn’t just their menacing size. Along the ends of these new black arms, venomous-looking daggers glinted, sprouting as if they’d ripped themselves out of the beast itself. It moved much slower, but its vast size allowed it to strike quickly across much of the chamber.
June fired off an enormous chunk of her mana in an attack, hoping to give her allies some time to get into position. A Fireball blasted in, slamming into the center of the mass, which howled as black blood splattered against the stones—the blood smoking where it landed.
But even as it writhed in pain, the mass of living eldritch energy still advanced on the party. Its appendages whipped to and fro, slashing out into the chamber, searching for something to skewer. And in an instant, three of them lashed out towards June. And despite her improved speed, there was no way she could dodge in time.
In a moment of respite, someone pulled her out of the way. Allaran grabbed June, pulling her out of the way of the strike, but the dripping blades found a new target.
Cutting through the soft glow of the chamber like a glint of moonlight, the dagger-like appendage crashed against the rotted body of the mage, digging into the flesh, and causing a pained howl to tear its way out of their haggard throat. It whipped the mage across the room, slamming hard into the floor as their flesh gave way, coming off their bones in huge chunks.
Umago tried to charge in and fire a spell, but they weren’t so lucky, finding himself in his own peril. Batted aside like he barely weighed anything at all, a dismissive strike from the monster sent them crashing off of the dais. Turning into the strike, and forming a hurricane of dark energy, it also sent the remaining undead flying off of the platform with a wickedly fast attack. Each one had nasty gashes in their armor, showing missing chunks in their flesh and singed bones.
Not letting up its attack, the swarm of shadows slammed down towards the various prone undead. It ignored Kotor, even as the imp blasted fire into its massive ebony hide. With a thunderous crunch, Allaran and Umago both slammed into the stone, splintering the floor beneath them. June saw through her Mana Vision their spirals diminish to the point of almost nothingness.
June and Marrak both leapt to their feet, charging into the fray once more.
She wasn’t able to dodge all the blows, as several sharp stabs connected with her body. But shockingly, June’s body carried her through the blow, as a shell of night-black energy exploded around her. A status window told June that her new armor enchantments had paid off.
Eldritch Battery Activated
Damage Absorbed
Mana Regen Activated
The momentary distraction allowed Marrak to slip in, slashing a flurry of blows against multiple tentacles, hacking them to nothingness. Screams of terror and pain echoed across the platform.
Behind June, her Mana Vision alerted her to a massive explosion of death mana. a second later, Umago triggered a buff for both June and Marrak, improving their regeneration with casts of Blessing and Minor Empower. Allaran was also busy burning the last of their scrolls to heal themselves.
June fired off as many Fireballs as she could manage, dodging another strike from the wounded boss. It appeared as if his attacks were slowing. Smoke and ash filled the room as fire blasted away chunks from stone and flesh alike.
A sickening crunch broke her concentration as another stab from the boss sent June flying. Her armor’s runes flared, pulling on stored mana to blunt the damage. Despite that, she was still hurting from the blow. She twisted in the air, trying to catch herself on the landing, but only landed on her back—sliding across the stones. Crawling to her feet, June fired Hex spells into the beast as she returned to the brawl. In that same moment, another series of tentacles slammed into Umago, who had stood still too long, casting buffs. Smoke bellowed from their eye sockets as the soft white light winked out. Swirls of latent mana fell from the body like the last drips of a dried river. The boss tossed the carcass away like yesterday’s trash. The Priest landed in a heap of cracked bones.
June called out to the rest of the party, getting Marrak and Kotor to pull back. The best way to finish was a ranged approach. June, Kotor, and Allaran blasted low-tier spells into the hide of the slithering beast while running around it in a circle.
Marrak turned to face the boss, placing themselves between the boss and the party. Marrak and June worked to stab at and blast tentacles, while Kotor and Allaran fired off spells. June occasionally joined in with a Shadow Spear to ease the pressure. Moving in this testudo-like formation, the remainder of the party could stay mobile and fend off incoming attacks. This proved to be the key to victory, as the boss was too slow to track the ever-running party.
June also used the opportunity to cast another Called Spirit in the kobold's form. Using this as a temporary distraction, it eased the pressure on Marrak to redirect incoming blows.
As the trio of spellcasters blasted chunks off of the creature, its pursuit slowed. Every singed bit of flesh and jagged wound looked to be having an effect.
June’s spells came faster, as did the others. The prospect of victory was like a sweet treat on a hungry tongue, tantalizing. With fury and recklessness ruling their hearts, the party blasted away large chunks of the beast without regard for strategy or tactics. The very air itself was drowning in mana, charged with desperation and powerful magics. Each spell impact brought forth another pained screech from its undulating form. Every spell detonated against its form, turning more and more areas of the beast into broken piles of ash.
And with a final, mournful cry, it stilled. The ebony skin boiled and cracked, splitting from the bluish flesh underneath. The flesh too began to seethe and break down, turning to ash just as soon as they exposed it to the stale air of the chamber.
Lost Crypt of the Swamp Lord Completed
Level 15 - Wild Dungeon
Reward: Earth Dungeon Rudimentary Core Shard
Bonus: First Trial Completion - Mana Infusion Awarded
With a resounding crash, a large wooden chest slammed onto the floor behind the beast, as if dropped from a great height. Kotor and June rushed over to the dais, as the two remaining undead party members went still.
But June wasn’t obsessed with the loot. Her eyes were only on the giant emerald, her will being drawn into its embrace. “There’s nothing to worry about,” a soft whisper inside her mind told her. As June reached the platform, she reached out to touch the tantalizing gemstone. A familiar pulling sensation blasted into her awareness.
----------------------------------------
The darkness that followed didn’t last for long. A face, half rot and half ash, hung in the shade. It drew back its hood and howled a scream that sounded more forced than anything else. Within the mouth of the mysterious face, were rows of rotted black teeth. “Consume,” came a single word in a broken, haggard voice, shrill and high.
The voice sounded like the echo of a thousand breaking mirrors, stretching through time and space. Its call wound around June’s mind like a serpent, squeezing it and her thoughts alike, forcing her to pay attention to its noisy influence. Distracted, June didn’t notice at first that she was falling, falling into the blackness. As she took notice and fought back, the void pulled harder. Tendrils latched onto her ethereal body, infecting her thoughts with feelings of envy and wroth, pain and pleasure.
Her paralyzed form descended toward an orbular black mass, not the familiar sight of her own Core, but something more terrible, evil. The form undulated, a writhing mass of rotten flesh. Twisted arms reached up to her by the dozen. Desperate, June lashed out with her mind, willing the orb away from her presence. She pumped every bit of her mental fortitude into the perverted reflection of undeath and nature before her.
Stunningly, it seemed to work. Snapping sounds filled the space as the seeming illusion shattered into a thousand shards of black glass. Behind the mess of falling tendrils, rot, and magic, a new image met June’s sight.
A being of pure nature floated peacefully beneath her. Instead of the orb of fire she’d become used to, this orb was like that of a treetop. Leaves of glass spread out across the face of the orb, looking more like a pile of cracked emeralds than a sphere of fiery magic. Mist fell from the orb in heavy sheets, enveloping the space in a green glow.
The familiar pulling sensation rushed out to greet June as she surveyed the surface of the orb. Losing herself, she was met with a new vision.
She saw the world laid out below her, and June flew out from the swamps, into the setting sun. The swamps around the tombs flew past at an eye-watering speed. She blitzed over mountains and plains, with the sea on the horizon. As she flew, the glittering green walls of a city came into view, and her speed slowed. When she got a closer look, she recognized it right away, as the splendor of the Emerald City laid out below her. The capital of the Viller Republic, just like in the game.
Sat at the terminus of a rolling river, a gargantuan city dominated by a glittering green tower. The tower had to be hundreds of feet high, as June passed just barely over its top as she fly overhead. Her close glimpse of the tower revealed it to be smooth, uncut green stone. The stones bore no decoration or markings to suggest their age. Even the walls surrounding this great city appeared to be the same stone. As the sun’s rays touched the stone, they glittered like a verdant field of tiny jewels. Looking down at the immense collection of glittering stone, beaten into form, June knew that if it fell, the continent beneath might crack.
“Come. Freedom,” came the echoing voice once again, filling her ears with an alluring whisper that tickled her senses, and everything went black again.