The first few steps through the beginning of the dungeon were surprisingly calm. The gentle light of the lichen illuminated almost every part of the wooden corridor, leaving very little shadow in which enemies could hide. Naturally, they didn’t take this for granted.
With Katie in the lead, they carefully walked forward, with the group's senses dialed up to eleven. Thanks to the dimensional nature of the dungeon, or fracture as the game called it, he could only sense the corridor in front of him, and nothing past its walls.
This didn’t really worry Sam, as he knew that most dungeons were like that, thanks to his inherited memories. You could only sense what was there. Everything else didn’t matter for the purposes of dungeon delving.
Even if he had the memories of a person who spent a not inconsiderable part of their lives in dungeons, Sam was still mighty excited. Dungeon delving in a VRMMO! How exciting!
‘Now I only need to make sure we survive… easy-peasy…’ he mused as his eyes spotted an increase in the illumination ahead of them.
“Be careful!” he murmured to the others, who all nodded in unison, signaling they also saw the same thing he did.
As one, the team strode forward through the corridor, only to arrive in a cavern covered with the same material, and on the ceiling was a giant tangle of roots, acting as a chandelier covered with intensely glowing lichen.
It took Sam and his team approximately a second to figure out what the purpose of the room was before a wave of monsters rushed at them through holes at the top level of the cavern.
“Get ready!” he exclaimed while raising his sword, ready to strike.
Instantly, a wave of gentle light swept through them, courtesy of Clarissa, granting them a shield. Dan’s club instantly began to smolder with barely held-back white-hot fire, and Katie let out a cackle, echoed by Puffball’s eldritch meow.
Coming at them was a wave of labrador-sized mites, their eyes shining with the same green that the lichen was, though there was a certain amount of purpose in those eyes. They were here for Sam and his team, and they wouldn’t leave until they were dead.
He took a glance at the others and then nodded.
At the same moment, Dan let out a yell and swung his giant club at the incoming horde.
“Sea of Flames!”
The next moment, a literal sea of fire came forth directly from his club, burning the first few mites into cinders, while the next wave received burns all over their bodies. Sam smiled a little, and with a swing of his sword, let loose a simple gust of wind.
The moment the air movement reached the mites that hadn’t burned up, they lit up with flames and died while letting out small screams.
Dan let out a victorious roar, and Katie groaned in disappointment, but Sam just spoke up.
“Don’t celebrate too early. That was just one wave…”
Before the others could reply, he was proven correct when another wave of mites rushed at them. Some crawling on the walls, some on the ground, and a few dropping from the ceiling.
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After taking care of the mites, they came to the most beloved part of dungeon delving.
The loot distribution.
The loot in Magic Unbound’s dungeons worked in a rather weird way. The dungeons, or rather fractures, were dimensional in nature, thus they were inherently unstable. That’s why they mimicked the nearest example of flora and fauna. These monsters they created weren’t real, thus they couldn’t be harvested, but upon destruction, the energy it was made from would have to go somewhere.
Thus, when the monster died, the energy would take in the surroundings (i.e. the dungeon type) and get a small sample of the killers’ (i.e. player’s) mana and crystalize into a small object. There were a lot of factors that influenced what kind of object would crystalize. For example, the bigger the monster was, the bigger or more numerous the items that crystalized were. However, that didn’t change the chance to have a very valuable item crystalize from a small enemy.
Or as it was commonly known: loot table and drop chance.
Analyzing the player’s mana would allow things to drop that were useful for said person. Naturally, the biggest influence on the drop was the dungeon itself and the strength of the player’s mana, that is their level. A nature-themed dungeon, like the one they were in, would never crystalize something related to undead and vice versa, but it would, with a lower drop chance of course, crystalize neutral things. Like a chair. Or instrument. However, they could expect that most drops would be nature themed or related to trees.
The mites were all low-level and small enemies, so the drops in this case were a few solidified sap droplets that Sam knew carpenters loved to use for creating wood finish, as it granted a rather nice protective coating.
Sam simply collected them, placing them into his inventory after everyone took a few seconds to wonder at their first dungeon drop, then began leading the team towards the only exit from the cavern.
Though, in his mind, he made a note to have somebody craft something with the sap droplets to commemorate the event of the first dungeon delve.
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The next half an hour was spent moving from cavern to cavern, defeating waves of mites one after another and getting the same boring drops. By the fourth cavern, Sam began to wonder why the dungeon wasn’t more famous, as the drops were still the same solidified sap droplets.
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As they left the cavern, and he beheld the next corridor, covered in fine, almost see-through silk, Sam suspected they were about to find out why.
It was Clarissa who had voiced their thoughts.
“Ugh, spiders… I hate them,” she announced while shivering.
Dan laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Come on, they could be silk-moth caterpillars for all we know…”
She looked up at him with a hopeful look, but they were interrupted by a skin-crawling screech, and the end of the tunnel lit up with eight menacing eyes.
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The first spider was easy. It was almost as surprised by them as they were disgusted by it. Though its size, somewhere between a small bear and a car, was rather intimidating. Or disgusting if you asked Clarissa. Sam was just happy he didn’t have arachnophobia.
Sam simply dashed forward, his speed enhanced by Wind Movement, and with two quick slashes cut the rather long legs of the arachnid, and with a final flourish sunk Moonlight into the thing’s head.
Stretching his senses as far as possible, he could feel several bundles of mana moving rapidly toward them. Knowing it would take a few more moments, he gave a signal to the others and refocused on the monster in front of them.
He watched as it froze, then slowly, from the tips of the stubs of its cut-off legs began to disintegrate into multicolored light until all was left in its space was a small bundle of cloth. Maybe two or three yards worth.
Sam leaned down quickly and snatched up the cloth and began to examine it. The game was nice enough to show him what it was.
[Phantasmal Spider Silk: A silk made by the phantasmal spider infesting this tree. The preferred cloth of enchanters.]
Sam stared at it for a moment, then quickly put it away. ‘Now I understood why this was kept secret…’
“Just good silk…” he explained simply to the others.
The silk itself was phenomenal. It could only be acquired from dungeons as the material it was made from also had a slightly dimensional nature. This made it so that anchoring an enchantment to it was as easy as breathing. It was one of the best materials to make enchanted clothing for anyone. It was beyond rare, but almost everybody knew what it was, as even the NPCs coveted it. There was a standing quest in the Merchant Association, the Crafter’s Guild, the Mercenary Guild, and almost every other guild and group to obtain this material.
‘Probably reward for the first Fracture Dungeon,’ Sam mused as he unsheathed his sword as several more spiders began to approach them.
He quickly had to raise his sword and send out a burst of Wind Blade as one of them raised their abdomen and shot a ball of silk at him.
The ball fell apart a few feet in front of him, and as the cut-apart parts fell to the ground, it signaled the start of the fight as the spider reared up, let out a screech that reverberated around them and began charging at the team.
Katie surged forward, spinning her greatsword into a great arc that took the head of the first spider, only to be beset by another. She brought up her sword, using it as a shield to protect herself from the spider sinking its glistening fangs into her face. She didn’t have to struggle longer than a second as Dan appeared, roaring and using his club to crush the offending spider head like it was just a grape.
Then, for good measure, he set the corpses on fire.
Sam used his Shadow Shield, then shot forward, body checking one of the spiders, causing it to slump at the wooden wall momentarily, one of its legs broken, then used its body to spring up in the air, where he simply rained down Wind Flurry on the spiders that were intent on consuming them.
He landed amidst chunks of spiders and nodded. ‘Dead spiders are the best!’
Taking a moment to collect the phantasmal silk from the dead spider after they vanished, surprised that all of them dropped it, Sam went over to Clarissa.
“Are you alright?” he asked, concerned, knowing that seeing and handling giant arachnids were hard for some.
Clarissa closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, then looked directly into Sam’s and nodded. “I-I’m… I was just… surprised how big they were…” she stated hesitantly.
Sam suppressed an instinct to comment on that phrasing, though based on how Dan snorted and Katie giggled, they couldn’t manage.
“Alright,” he said, ignoring the gigglers as Clarissa rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “But if it gets too much, don’t hesitate to tell me!”
The healer gave him a grateful look and nodded.
Sam clapped his hands together and exclaimed. “Alright, people! Five-minute break, then we continue!”
“Boooo! I want to kill more things!” came the yell from Katie, but she still sought out a small wooden protrusion and sat down on it, and began petting her familiar.
He would have given them a longer break, but by now, several other teams reached the portal and were on their way to claim the first kill of the boss. And sadly, in this dungeon, only the first kill mattered, as after the boss was killed, the fracture would close.
Thankfully, the dungeons were instanced, or as it was explained in the game: every entry created a different harmony in the dimensional energies, thus putting the people entering on a different layer of existence. So, there was no chance of running into a bigger guild.
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After their break, they continued their journey upwards as the corridors slightly sloped, leading them round and round, up towards the top of the tree. After the first spider room, came another mite room. However, this time the mites exploded on death, surprising Katie, who had simply charged into the incoming wave.
Thankfully, her skills and Clarissa’s healing saved her from an ignoble death. Following that, they moved forward a little more carefully.
Another three mite rooms, filled with exploding mites, was followed by another spider room, however, the room was much harder to traverse as everything from the ground to the ceiling was filled with sticky silk. One slight touch and the person was stuck until freed, surprising Katie, who again had charged into the room, aiming to take care of the watching spiders as fast as possible.
Sam couldn’t help but mention this.
“Maybe try not charging in without a thought?” he asked with a small smile as Dan was busy using fire to slowly free the squirming girl from the silk’s embrace.
“But where is the fun in that?” came the grumbling answer from the pouting girl while Puffball, still standing on her head, nodded in agreement.
Clarissa rolled her eyes, Dan chuckled and Sam sighed.
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The next room, instead of containing mites worse than exploding ones, was filled with silk on one end, with one of the biggest spiders they saw in the dungeon, sitting on a balcony made of silk and wood scraps next to a pile of white globes that to Sam senses sang with barely restrained mana.
“Is that the boss?” Katie asked excitedly.
Sam simply shook his head.
“Nah, see there,” he pointed under the giant spider, where they could see the entrance of another corridor covered by spider silk. “I would at most call it a mini-boss…”
She simply shrugged. “Good enough for me!”
And with that, once again, she charged forward, leaving behind exasperated teammates. The moment she began moving, the giant spider reared up, then with one of its many legs it grabbed one of the white balls from the pile and hefted it at Katie with surprising speed.
The girl naturally used her greatsword to cut it into two.
They had a fraction of a second to see the corpse of a mite in it before it exploded, sending Katie flying back.
Sam stepped out of the way, allowing the reckless girl to slam into the wall next to him, and while he eyed the spider that was simply content on staying up there, calmly waiting for them to approach.
He waited until Clarissa scraped the berserker up from the floor, then turned to the others.
“This will need a little more delicate approach!”