"Okay," I said. "That was horrible. Em almost died. That is the second time we've run into a freakishly common MMORPG trope and have been utterly unprepared for it—first fire, then Poison. I don't know if we will go deeper into this Dungeon. Mushrooms and spiders. Lots and lots of Poison. I have [BASIC: Cure Poison], but I am sure I will need at least intermediate and maybe even advanced."
"The thing is, [Intermediate: Cure poison] costs 220 xp, and [Advanced: Cure poison] costs 520 xp, and All I've got from this battle and the morelipeeps village, plus what I had leftover is 187 xp."
Sid said, "You need another 33 xp to keep us safe? Here, remember you owe me."
"I don't need it so much anymore; almost dying got me [Learn: Poison Resistance - 51%]," Said Emily, sitting up and cleaning the dried blood off her exposed legs and arms.
"I've been meaning to ask, Sid. You managed to disappear quickly on your first delve with me, but you only had the [Beer Chilling][Crystal] as far as I could tell. What gives?"
"After I got my [Crystal], I spent every moment I could sneak up on EM, sneaking around the neighborhood; I bought a lock picking kit and instruction video and even broke into a few empty buildings. That made me as prepared as I could be."
"Okay, I just bought the [Intermediate: Cure Poison]," I said as I broke the [Crystal in my hand and let the spell enter my bloodstream. "Hand me one of those Death Cap spears."
Sid handed me one. "Sid, stab yourself with the poisonous bit," I said.
"Randy, I love you like a brother, but I don't want to be poisoned. What if you fuck up? What if the cure spell doesn't work?"
"We need to find out if the Cure: Poison spell works. Otherwise, we will have to turn around and kill morelipeeps until we get enough XP to buy Advance: Cure Poison."
"Don't be chicken shit, Sidney." Said Em.
"You do it then," Sid told his wife.
"Ohhhh… Someone's in trouble when they get home." I observed.
"Whatever," Emma said. "Hand me a spear."
Sid handed her the spear, and she held the tiny little thing from the end, which was not stained with a blackish color, above her exposed arm before thrusting the point in. "Ouch," she said.
Em's icon on my Party status view indicated she was poisoned and losing health rapidly. I cast [Intermediate: cure poison] once, then twice before it was gone. "It took two casts and drained about a third of my mana. Not sure even keeping [Basic: Increased Mana Recovery] will keep me topped up in a fight. But at least we have a reliable cure."
"Everyone ready to get started again," I said.
"Hold up, Randy. My [Learn: Poison Resistance] is at 67% now. It seems to me that would be a handy skill to have. I say we camp here and keep poisoning ourselves until we all have it." Emma said.
"Sounds good," I said
"Sounds horrible," Sid said.
The room had a slightly cold draft and smelt like a peat bog. I was buzzing, flying, biting insects that I considered investing in an insect repellant spell. But I didn't have enough Experience Points, and Em was reluctant. A kind of pale white moss grew everywhere, and the only light came from flickering stones positioned equidistant in the stone wall. In other words, typical Dungeon straight out of D&D. I healed everyone up and refilled their stamina, and we began stabbing each other with poisoned spears.
It took 4 hours of incremental self-poisoning to get the skill [Basic: Resist Poison] and another 8 hours to finish learning the [Intermediate: Resist Poison]; taking more mushroom poison would not push the skill any higher. After a couple of hours, the spears stopped working, and Em cut up some of the mystery Jerky she had gotten from Hofred, and I conjured and chopped up some bacon. She mixed in some of the wild plants she had picked up while walking and boiled all of these ingredients over the fire in the Viking helmet she wore in combat. I ensured she washed it thoroughly first and cast clean on it. She also slipped a variety of races of diced mushroom people into her soup.
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Sid was a baby, and Em had to lace his food with Poison to get him to begin gaining his resistance. "Em, you know I gonna tell my Therapist about this."
"Sid, stop being a child. It's just Poison, after all. It isn't like I am trying to kill you. And these death cap mushrooms added a tasty flavor and texture to the soup I made us. Especially when you pair them with the Morelipeeps, if it wasn't, Randy is here to fix you all up. Would you rather have eaten them on a bagel with cream cheese? It isn't like we have many choices in food now."
"Sid, I'll treat you to Fitz to make it up to you, Once we get out. Now can we move again since we all have the skill."
"When we get home, we will have to do this with fire and acid and cold too." Em said.
"When we get fucking home." I agreed.
Emily retook the lead. And Sid vanished, presumably scouting. I followed behind.
Two hundred yards down the path, we ran into another team of wild death cap mushrooms. Each death cap mushroom was riding a large portobello and had a pack of angry bouncing puffball mushrooms with spiked collars leading the way.
Em cast her [Taunt] and was peppered with spears again. No debuff popped up on my interface, so apparently, her skill was working. And the group of us began stomping on the little fungi freaks. The only hard part of this battle was that stomping on the puff balls released clouds of spores that caused momentary vertigo. But I cast [Basic: protection from spores] on the group, and the mele was over quickly. The fight was relatively easy, and Em took the time to salvage the bits of portobello that had survived Sid's stomping.
A few more turns to the right, and we began running into webs. At first, they were scattered, here and there, with tiny, almost invisible spiders scuttling between the stone, moss, and multitude of non-sentient mushrooms that littered the ground. A small yet steady trickle of water ran like a creek down the center of the hallway.
The further in we walked, the thicker and denser the cobwebs became, and the fewer hunter-gatherer packs of feral Deathcaps we ran into. After several more right turns, we came to the end of the path we had been following. By this point, our clothing was covered in cobwebs, and it had been hard to keep pushing forward.
"What gives," Sid said, "I haven't seen a spider bigger than an inch yet. This Dungeon is a cakewalk so far."
"Fuck. Sid, you jinxed it." And, of course, he had. Because at that point, a dozen bright blue and black tarantulas the size of German Sheppards came pouring out of a break in the wall and swarmed us. Em began taunting. Sid disappeared. I laid down mana, stamina, and health recovery spells. And they were upon us.
In some regards, it was good that Emma could taunt. Otherwise, the spiders would have been free to climb the walls and drop down on us from the ceiling. As it was, they chose to charge at Em, which was both good and bad since she had her shield prepared and sword pointed forward.
I began zapping with my [Basic: Shock], and after the second cast, I got a notification on my HUD, which I ignored. Suddenly my spell was hitting harder and using more mana. I finally finished learning the [Intermediate] version of the magic.
Sid kept popping back into sight, stabbing spiders into their thorax, and I kept an eye on everyone's health, stamina, and mana while slashing at everything that tried to get around Em.
Em was right, though, this was distracting for me, and I couldn't go all out for fear of burning through my mana supply in case someone needed an emergency heal. Our little group needed another primary DPS or two.
It took 10 minutes to kill the spiders; by then, we were all exhausted. The [increased Stamina Recovery] Spell I had cast going into the fight had ended halfway through, and in conserving mana, I had held off on casting it again.
We looted the spiders and then found comfortable web-free places to rest up. I cast the necessary spells to make rest time more efficient.
"So, Em. What are your thoughts on Spider Goulash? It seems to work for Gossamer in Bugs Bunny."
"Yuck. I'll pass."
Checking my Experience, I saw that I had 64 XP after this fight."
"Sid, Catch," I said, sending him the 50 xp I owed him.
"What? Oh. Thanks. What no interest?"
"Don't push it," I said.
After a bit, we backtracked to the last left-right decision we'd made, and instead of going right after Sid recorded our passage on the wall, we chose to turn left, which led us to another battle with dog-sized spiders and a dead end. So we backtracked again and again. We took the left branches at every right turn we'd taken. Whenever a left branch led to a left-right choice, we took the right turn after making a mark on the wall. This way, we systematically delved our way through the labyrinth.
Hours underground grew into days. We had lost count of the man vs. Spider battles we'd fought, or even man versus mushroom melees. I'd gotten up to Level 7 and had picked up [Intermediate: Sword][Intermediate: Heal] and [Intermediate: Increased Mana Recovery]. None of which I had to spend valuable XP on since the constant battles had leveled them up on their own. My attributes went into Endurance to increase my Hit Points. Both Sid and Em had moved up to Level 5 and picked up many skills relevant to their roles as tank and scout. We'd stopped needing to mark the walls when Sid had gotten [Intermediate: mini map] skill.
Sid and Em claimed to be sick of Bagels, which I initially took as an insult but later accepted once I became sick of them myself. Since training [Summon: Everything Bagel] to [Summon: Sesame Bagel] didn't help, I picked up [Summon: Chicken Broth], which Em mixed with edible mushrooms, and the [Summon: Russet Potato] and [Summon: Carrot] spells she bought. Sid decided to pitch in and purchased himself [Summon: Shredded chicken] and [Summon: Dutch Oven] And thus the whole "I'm so fucking sick of Everything, Cheddar Jalapeño, yes, and even Sesame bagels, Randy" dinner dilemma was ended — through teamwork.
I noticed that I had reached a point where the three of us were buying fewer and fewer new skills and were now improving our skills more organically by practicing them.