“He’s gonna feel that one in the morning!” Ryia sniped, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Knowing that nobody died in the dungeon turned life and death struggles into great entertainment.
The Adventurer staggered to his feet, and I had to admire the dedication that took. Actually, no, no I did not.
“Stay down and die you insane treasure hunting son of an unknown father,” I jeered. Knowing nobody truly died in my dungeon was strangely freeing
Four runes ignited along the KingCat’s throat, enhancement, heat, cooling, and Histrionic. Enhancement and heat performed as advertised, while the cooling rune was to protect the cat from its own attack. The fourth rune was a favorite of jaded actors and aspiring con artists the world over. A Histrionic rune turned a normal item or situation into something far more…interesting. The mana cost scaled exponentially with the change, but the effects were all too apparent. Instead of a plume of hot air, a torrent of flame emerged from the KingCat’s maw, only blocked at the last moment by a crumpled shield. To my surprise, instead of retreating, the man charged forward, his free arm morphing into a stone hammer.
Yes, that’s as weird and gross as it sounds.
My KingCat pounced forward to meet him, and snide commentary was halted as we watched the resulting battle.
The man took the first blow on his shield, ducked under the follow up, then sprang upwards, swinging at the cat’s jaw. A triplicate of enchantments, strengthening lightening and flexibility, lit up, doubling the cat’s speed. It dodged the blow, spinning to deliver a lightning-fast tail strike. A stone spike blocked, the rock fracturing under the strain. The Adventurer flung his useless shield at the cat, following up with a charge. The cat ignited something like a dozen sharpening enchantments turning it’s puffed out fur into a deadly field of points.
For a moment I thought the fight was over, but the man’s skin turned hard as stone, allowing him to ignore the spike and slam his hammer into the KingCat. The instant his blow landed the Adventurer was blown away by a force projection rune. The cat followed up with a series of strikes, each blow staggering the man further.
The Adventurer was saved by an arrow slamming into the cat’s shoulder, two more already in the air as the rest of the Adventurers entered the fray. One launched a fireball as another streaked towards the KingCat target, straight sword out.
The cat, lighting up with a dozen enchantments, lunged into the fight with a roaring hiss.
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Several minutes later, Alessandro lay on the ground, struggling to breathe as his regeneration worked overtime. The rest of his team didn't look much better. The KingCat had nearly taken Janus’s arm off with a particularly vicious attack, and all of them had their regeneration pushed to the limit trying to recover from their wounds.
But they’d done it, killed the final mob of the floor.
“You almost got yourself killed,” Jeannette’s words were a glare given voice.
“Some things are worth more than life.” The words lifted a burden from Alessandro’s shoulders he hadn’t known was there. It wasn’t enough to fill the void Reinmund’s death had brought, but it was a start.
“Is that what Reinmund would have said?” Janus’s words matched their mage’s for intensity. Apparently, his sentiment was not shared.
Alessandro opened his mouth to respond but was interrupted as a silver chest whooshed from a hole in the floor, slamming into the ceiling before landing in front of them with a dull clang, the lid now sporting a heavy dent.
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Making a chest slowly and dramatically rise on a pedestal was surprisingly difficult.
You’d think a low powered force projection rune would do it, but fine tuning the runes was surprisingly difficult. Too little and nothing would happen, too much and… yeah. I figured ENAD’s would rather get a dented box than nothing.
As the Adventurers approached the chest, I worked on the loot. Alessandro got a strength enchanted shield, Janus, who’d nearly lost an arm, got a shoulder pauldron.
Don’t judge me.
Jeannette… actually, what should I give her? She seemed to be doing just fine, no armor required. With a mental shrug, I threw in a bag of gold for her and the other guy. Really, you’d think people fighting for their life would stand out more.
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Alessandro hefted his new shield, frowning at its lightness. Traditionally, shields that relied too heavily on enchantments were usually inferior to simple, sturdy work. But it was better than nothing, and a second later it was strapped to his arm. A sound caught his attention, and suddenly that weight came rushing back, with interest. Two doors ground open. One revealed a long corridor sloping up, obviously leading to the surface, the other a descending staircase.
The dungeon went on.
His team silently looked at him, waiting for orders. Despite any personal feelings they might have, he was party leader, and they would obey his decision. That was how they’d been trained, how things must be to keep order.
In a few seconds the Throne Room was empty save for the mangled body of the dead KingCat.
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The first thing Alessandro noticed on the second floor was the sound. It was a screeching cacophony of roars, hisses, and the banshee scream of high-level force projection runes. The sheer volume of sound would reduce any attempts at speaking to vague murmurs.
The second was the mobs. A kilometer long room stretched to the distance, stuffed every mob he’d encountered and many he hadn’t. Alessandro was pulled away from the scene as a trio of PantherCats lunged at him, fangs coming within inches of his face before force projection runes blew them back.
He glanced at the others, making sure they were ready, before stepping forward, the force projection runes hurling him further into the PantherCat’s box. In an instant he was fending off a barrage of blows with his new shield, laying into the mobs with his recovered ax. It took less than a minute to slay those mobs but looking ahead Alessandro saw fourteen other groups of mobs, each more powerful than the last. As they prepared to advance, ignoring the occasional loot box scattered several boxes away, Alessandro frowned at what would come next.
This was going to be a long floor.
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Hours later, Alessandro panted over the corpse of a chariot sized monkey, grimacing as his broken left arm reset itself.
The floor had been just as annoying as he’d feared. As they grew weaker from mental exhaustion and mana expenditure, the beasts grew stronger. It was a potent combination that would work on most parties, forcing them to turn back. But Alessandro’s earth body cultivation showed one of its strengths, allowing him to continue on when others faltered.
Looking ahead, he saw there were two boxes left. The first held a KingCat undoubtedly more powerful than the one on the first floor, while the second was…different. The box took up the space of four normal squares, but rather than some massive creature a small, furry thing sat eerily still in the exact center of the square.
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Alessandro focused, as he and the replacement guy stepped into the KingCat’s domain. With practiced ease, Alessandro and the replacement guy used the rune blast to catapult themselves towards the mob. The pouncing beast unsheathed its claws, and the melee began.
There was a certain monotony to fighting in a dungeon, one that had killed many an inexperienced Adventurer. While a cultivator's endurance allowed them to without pause, and the occasional B ranked mind might keep mental fatigue away, there was a limit. While Alessandro was no legend, he was good enough to push through that exhaustion, to notice the shifting of the cat’s feet, the brief flicker of a rune. With the millisecond of warning that gave him he dived, shouting out a warning.
The cat moved, faster than even a C ranker could follow; a set of claws extended by mana flicked overhead with a deadly “hiss”. The replacement guy only managed to partially block, the sheer strength behind the blow sending him flying. Alessandro barely noticed as he surged upwards, whipping his battleax toward the cat. Caught between incoming projectiles and Alessandro’s blow, the KingCat took the lesser of two evils: a fireball to the face.
Smart mob.
Alessandro moved to capitalize, but sharpening runes forced him to desperately defend as the cat rushed at him, every inch of it a field of lethal points. He rolled to the side, taking a dozen tiny cuts as the fur brushed him, blocked a paw strike with his shield, summoned a spike under the cat, ducked as the mob leapt over him, whirled around and reset as arrows and flame landed around him.
It was a desperate, swirling melee, neither side having an overwhelming advantage. While Alessandro was backed up by the two ranged members of his party, the cat seemed to always have a rune to get itself out of trouble. Alessandro tried to force the mob into a corner, but it was just too fast, easily outmaneuvering him. It was times like these his body cultivation showed it’s weakness, his lack of mana abilities leaving him with little diversity.
Finally, a decisive moment came. An arrow slammed into one of the cat’s hindlegs and exploded, pain freezing the cat as it let out an ear shattering howl. Before the KingCat could recover Alessandro was there, the cat’s lack of mobility giving it a distinct disadvantage. A trio of stone spikes and a sweeping blow and it was over, the cat’s throat torn out.
Hooray for earth body cultivation
Alessandro ignored his exhaustion as he turned to the others, checking for wounds. They were staring past him, towards where the replacement Adventurer had crashed. The man lay crumpled in a pool of his own blood. Alessandro flashed to his side, but he knew what he’d find. There was a stillness that only came in death.
The man’s heart had been neatly bisected by one of the claws, killing him instantly.
Another life snuffed out under his watch. Another soul taken by this infernal dungeon. He closed his eyes, a hollow feeling taking him. Another Adventurer he’d failed, another person killed on his watch. All because of his weakness.
The world shuddered.
“I envy the prestige of your death. I sorrow at the loss of your life. I pray for the ascension of your soul.”
The words came automatically, drilled into him since the first day of training. The Adventurers Salute. After all, what greater honor could there be than dying in the pursuit of immortality?
Alessandro stood, laughing bitterly as he shook his head. Then he turned and stared into the final box, where the unnaturally still form of the boss waited.
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She sat, meditating on the Great One as she always had and always would until the Great One willed otherwise.
There was no greater joy, no higher calling than to reflect on the One who had given her everything. The roars of the beasts, stupid in their unenlightenment, the scream of the runes, all of it was nothing more than a passing breeze, here today and gone tomorrow, but the Great One would outlast them all. She snapped her eyes open as, for the first time, the Great One called to her, a simple command.
Kill.
Standing, she unsheathed her claws. The Great One had spoken. It would be done.
Such was the way of the world.
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“Uh…Ryia?”
“Why is it that whenever you say those words something has gone terribly awfully horribly wrong?”
“Uh… ”
“What is it?” she sighed.
I pointed out the final mob of the second floor. It was supposed to be a joke, a play on my interactions with the Assessment team. A small kitten dressed in pure white robes with the words “Inside Joke” plastered across her fur. Funny, right? Right. Up until I noticed she had been meditating in a cross-legged position, only to stand on two legs when the Adventures approached, her claws extending.
Pretty sure kittens aren’t supposed to do that.
“Hugh.” She watched as the kitten strode towards the barrier, its cute little eyes glittering with calm, deadly intent.
“Just… hugh,” It seemed to be the only appropriate word choice.
“Was it always sitting like that?” she asked. I thought back, my perfect memory providing the answer.
“Yup. I didn’t notice because it wasn’t doing anything.”
The Adventurers passed through the rune barrier, weapons flicking towards the little ball of fur. But just like that it was gone, the kitten vanishing like it had never been there. The cultivators stumbled at their missed strikes, looking around in confusion. A glimmer and the mage staggered to her knees, hands to her throat as blood poured through her fingers. The archer fired, but it was like trying to hit the wind itself, not even the man’s C ranked reflexes enough to score a hit.
“Oh.” Ryia said the word with the sort of horror one reserved for “Somebody is going to die, and it might not be an ENAD” sort of situations. Then she was spewing words, the panic in her voice snapping my attention to her.
“When you manifested your mob, what were you thinking?”
“What? You saw me do-”
“No! What was your Intent?”
Starting to become concerned at the frantic tone to her words, I thought back. When I’d made the mob, the painting created for the Assessment team had been on my mind. I’d sort of just… intended for the kitten to be like that. A creature wronged, now residing as the guardian of the second floor; its purity and intelligence defending it from the outside world. Ok, maybe I’d gone a little overboard, but Intent wasn’t supposed to matter when manifesting, which I explained to Ryia.
“Oh this is bad. REALLY bad. When manifesting a mob, your Intent doesn't come into play in the lower stages. But the denser a manifestation’s mana, the more your Intent matters. The thing was what, peak C rank when it manifested? Given a few days of concentrated effort it could have broken through. Unlikely, since it would have to have complete dedication to it’s mana type, but possible. I was wondering why that KingCat was so powerful!”
“Wait, I thought the mobs were more deadly because investing more mana just makes… things… better?” I trailed off under the incredulous look she was giving me.
“Mana usually makes things better,” I grumbled.
“This is serious! If that-that THING learned how to cultivate on top of its high starting point, you could have thrown a batch of C ranked adventures into a B ranked situation.”
“Oh.”
One of the stipulations of the Adventurer Society Contract was that I clearly mark out areas C rankers couldn’t survive. If I broke the contract, the World Core would squash me like a two-timing little bug. If that analogy doesn’t work for you, let me put it this way: I DIE. I racked my brain for a possible solution, but no matter how I looked at it I had broken the contract. Inadvertently, sure, but I had a feeling that wasn’t going to matter much.
Welp, we’d had a nice run.
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Alessandro desperately whirled, trying to lay eyes on their opponent, but all he saw was spraying blood and terrified faces as his party was dismantled around him. There was no enchantment, no rune that could boost a C ranked beast to such a degree. This was an early, maybe even mid-tier B ranker who wasn’t even bothering to use mana abilities, toying with them like a housecat with a mouse.
He never felt the strike against his breastplate, only the impact as he hit the rune wall, slamming to a bone jarring halt. He looked up, dazed, only to see his teammates dead on the ground, the beast, a kitten, standing over them, robes unblemished. It turned to him, and in that moment, Alessandro faced death itself. There was no defense, no maneuver that could stop what was coming.
He closed his eyes, tears rolling down his cheeks at his failure, welcoming the end.
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She paused, cocking her head as the will of the Great One changed. She received an order that would have made lesser beasts quail, those imbeciles who’d not yet realized the magnificence and power of the Great One. Her services, her existence, was no longer needed. It only took a thought to disperse herself, the mana that composed her body receiving one last burst of intent. Her last thought as she dissipated into the ambient mana was the same as the first thought of her first day.
Glory to the Great One.