Once we were down to level two inside the dungeon we went to an out of the way location to talk. “Ok,” said Cam. “Some of you might not like this, but our mission is once again in the Rat Warrens.”
Everyone sighed, except Brie, who spoke up. “Are you sure we’re ready to go back in there?”
Cam nodded. “We’ve gotten in a lot of training, and Michael even ranked up. You have a healing spell, and we know how to deal with the dangers better. We can definitely get past the dark/cold area, if not deeper.”
Edam nodded. “So, more crystals?”
Cam shook his head. “Actually, this time, the client is a talent trader. The Royal Academy will be starting in a month, which means that the noble children will be trying to get their hands on anything they think can give them an edge against the others, especially magic talents. I hope everyone is stocked up on talent crystals, because we are going to be wiping out every rat we can, as all of them use magic.”
I had twenty in my bag, but I didn’t know about the others. Judging from the way they were shaking their heads, I doubted it. Cam sold each of the others five crystals, and we set off. Several hours later we had made it to the point where it started getting dark. We had collected several magical talents from the rats in the cave, and a few other talents, due to clearing every tunnel side tunnel and spawning chamber we came across. Last time we had avoided the side tunnels, as we needed to get to the crystal deposits, but this time the thousands of rats that lived in these caves would all be slaughtered in hopes of getting their talents. No one had entered the tunnels since we managed to escape, so there were far more rats here than we had expected. The dungeon had probably drastically increased their numbers in response to our last mission, thus leading to the majority of water, fire, light and cold talents we had picked up being petty.
I had a minor Light Magic talent in my bag now, but I wasn’t sure if I should learn it or not. After all, we had collected it as part of a mission, so it was kind of like stealing from the client. I brought the idea up with the team, and they didn’t see a problem with it. Normally talents belonged to whoever captured them, but as the mission was for talents, I would have to pay for it out of my cut, as we wouldn’t be able to sell it, but we were free to claim loot before selling it. Most of my teammates were even considering taking a talent for their own. As most of what we had gotten were petty talents, however, most of them would take something of lower quality. We would be paid half the selling price for a magic talent, five silver for a petty and a gold for a minor. And if we got really lucky, we might get an average and be able to sell it for five gold. Though if we did get that lucky, we might give it to Brie so that she could become a stronger mage.
I popped the crystal in my mouth and, once I was sure that I could make my palm glow without the ring, I handed the ring to to Cam. “Be careful with it.” I said.
He nodded. “Don’t worry. I won’t lose your momento of your girlfriend.” She wasn’t really a girlfriend as much as...a friend that was also a girl, and that I had slept with. Those totally weren’t the same thing.
Once we were ready, Brie, Cam and I made our weapons glow, Brie her staff, Cam his sword, and me my shield. Edam and Fontina wore minor light stones around their necks, providing them with a bit of light, though not as much as the rest of us. We stepped into the main room where we had so much trouble a week ago, and were immediately surrounded by hundreds of rats. After a minute or so I noticed something walking upright in the edge of the Darkness. “Rat Man.” I called out as I decapitated a rat the size of a medium dog, a rush of energy running through me. The others went on even higher alert, remembering how the last rat-man had a knack for sneak attacking people. The girls were in the middle of us, attacking from range, and we kept the rats from getting too close to them. Fontina would join us once she was out of arrows.
When I saw a flash of him again I threw an ice bolt at him. He squeeked in pain, so I knew I had hit him, but I didn’t know how injured he was. After a few minutes of killing lesser rats, though, he hadn’t attacked us, so there were only two possibilities. Either I had gotten really lucky and killed or even crippled him, which would mean I was in for some serious consequences, or he was planning something. I suppose he might have ran, but dungeon monsters rarely did that. Something about them made them want to kill us, even if they were naturally docile creatures.
As the numbers started to thin out a wave of darkness washed over us, covering the area as if we were in a thick fog. It didn’t block the light we were producing entirely, but none of us could see more than thirty or forty centimeters in front of us. The reduced visibility let several of the rats get through our defenses and I got several bites on my legs, as I was only wearing a leather chest-piece. I could tell from the sounds they were making that the others were getting injured as well. Behind me something clashed with Brie’s staff. “Shadow Clone!” she called out. “Average level.”
This wasn’t what we had expected. Average level magic was a possibility down here, but I didn’t expect it from a Darkness element, our biggest weakness. I didn’t know how the power worked, but I knew it could get past the front line and to the girls. I swung my shield behind me, where someone would need to be to attack Brie and hit something with the consistency of mud. Brie stabbed it in the stomach with her staff and fired a light beam, destroying the attacker and sending the beam past me to hit a rat.
As the shadow fog around us started to go away I noticed four other masses of shadow in the darkness, rat-man shaped shadows. They ran at us and two jumped at me. I managed to block one with my shield, but the other stabbed at me with a shadow shaped like a knife. It his my side, but slid off the armor, damaging it but not getting through. I pushed the first one back with my shield, then brought the edge of it to meet the side of the head of the one that almost stabbed me. If it was real it would have had its skull crack, but instead it just dissolved. I swung my shield back to block another attack, and swung down with my sword. It barely missed being blocked by a shadow dagger, caught the shadow in the arm and the arm fell off. Apparently shadows didn’t bleed, but the arm did dissolve quickly once it was no longer attached to him.
Now that he only had one arm he couldn’t stand up to me and the next attack resulted in him getting run through with a sword, disappearing. With four of his five clones now dead thanks to Cam finishing off another, the Rat man charged us in anger. I intercepted his knife with my shield, but with his speed keeping him at bay was worse that when I fought Edam or Nguri. It was all I could do to move my shield in front of each of his blows, that were coming at a rate of three or four per second. At this rate even I would tire out quickly, if nothing more than gaining muscle fatigue from moving that arm so much.
Then the rat man cried out in pain and tried to grab something out of his back. He fell forward and the last of the fog disappeared, revealing Edam standing over him. There was a knife in the middle of his back where the rat man couldn’t reach. “Lucky.” said Edam, pulling a blue talent crystal out of his bag and popping it into his mouth.
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We finished off the last of the rats and collected the darkness crystals from the wall, throwing them in a backpack so that the place could be lit up properly. With all of them gone even a single light spell was enough to properly light the area. As none of my wounds were above Minor, I went around collecting the ice crystals as well, wearing leather gloves so that I wasn’t injured by them and throwing them in the bag with the fire crystals we had collected earlier so that they could neutralize each other’s temperature change.
Brie was a bit tired from the fight and running low on mana, so she used some of the light crystals to help heal us. Normally you could only take half the energy for the spell from a crystal the same level as the spell, but as she had the light core she was able to completely absorb all of the light from the petty crystals we had gathered and use that to heal our wounds without using mana. Or, technically, only using mana to guide the healing and not fuel it. Mana was the same as mental fatigue, after all.
Once we were healed up and had collected everything of value here, including the DP crystals, we took a lunch break. All of that healing would make us hungry, after all. During lunch Brie explained to us that Darkness magic let you condense your shadow into semi-solid objects like weapons. The Shadow Clones the rat man had used were an Average level spell where you make a copy of your own body out of shadow to help in a fight, like an inferior version of a summon. The clones were never as good as the original, especially when you made more than one, as they needed to transfer information to and from the host’s brain to know what to do, kind of like how skill rings let you use the knowledge of the crafter that was inside of it. He had thrown the Shadow Bomb into the middle of us to give him more shadow to work with.
Now, however, Edam had absorbed his talent. He had already figured out how to use the petty level Dark Vision spell, so if we ran into another shadow area he wouldn’t need a light source to light. Fontina considered using one of the petty Darkness talents we had picked up during that fight so that she could gain the power as well, but wasn’t sure how it would interact with a talent she had since birth called “Hunter’s Eye”. Essentially, it was a form of heat vision, but also worked on cold blooded creatures. Brie said it most likely detected life energy, but as she didn’t know any Life magic she couldn’t be sure. When things had gotten dark last time we were in here Fontina had used it to track the rats around her, but the darkness magic was able to limit it to a range of only two meters.
Once we were rested our Shadow Assassin lead the way, scouting ahead as he didn’t need light. After a minute of walking past the bodies of rats that just seemed to spark at us when we poked them, Edam returned. “There is a treasure room down the left corridor. I suspect that it’s trapped.”
Cam nodded. “Ok. Lets collect the DP from these rats, and check it out.”
In the room there were several chests. No one had ever heard of a mimic in this dungeon, as the Dungeon preferred plant and animal types, but they could still be trapped. Fontina stepped forward and, after verifying that there weren’t any tripwires or anything that would prevent us from walking around, she started looking over the chests. All four were trapped and locked, some even having multiple traps. She knew enough about hunter’s traps to disable them, but it wouldn’t be fast. Five minutes and two minor rat group attacks later she unlocked the chest. The rats had sparked at us even more than the corpses, so we were definitely in a Lightning elemental area.
Inside the chest were four potions, one each labeled with the symbol for Fire, Ice, Light, and Dark. There was no indication what they did, so we put them away. It was too dangerous to experiment with potions, so we would have to have them identified. Five minutes and another wave of rats later and another chest was opened. This one contained a dagger. It didn’t appear to be enchanted or have any skills embedded in it, but the entire dagger was dark gray or black. We handed it to Brie and she and Edam talked about it for a minute. “Darksteel?” Edam asked, and after thinking for a few seconds Brie nodded.
“The blade is made of Darksteel.” she said, explaining the object to everyone else. “While it isn’t actually magical, the material helps the user more easily use dark magic. Only the equivalent of a level or two at this quality level, though.” Edam would probably claim it later, but for now it went into the bag with the potions.
Another ten minutes, as this chest had two traps, and three waves of rats later and the third chest was open. This time it was a set of mail. The material shined in the light of Brie’s staff. We didn’t need to ask her what this was made of. “Mithril.” I said at the same time as Brie. This metal was like darksteel, but for the light element and more famous. Many heroes used Mithril Armor and weapons, especially in legends. As both Brie and I had Light magic, either of us could use it, but I was the only front line fighter. While I wanted to claim it, I wasn’t used to wearing chain mail and I only knew one Light magic spell, so it went into the bag.
Another ten minutes and two waves of rats later and the final chest was open. We opened it to find a book. The words “The True History of the World” were written on its cover. Sure, books were a bit expensive, but why was this one treated as if it was the most valuable out of all of the treasures here? It was just a history book, not a grimoire or book of potion recipes. It didn’t even contain schematics for interesting equipment a smith might make. Still, we put it in the backpack. Surely someone would want to buy it.
We set off to clear the Lightning section and had four more lightning talents, three petty and one minor, by the time we went to the main burrow for the lightning rats. The design of the caves were pretty repetitive, with the system being separated into areas where one or two elements of rats roamed, and separated by a warren which contained a few hundred of that type and a boss rat, as well as elemental crystals. Once you made it past the warren you would find a new type of rat. So far the sections had been Water, Light, Fire, Ice/Darkness, and Lightning. If the dungeon only did the common types this would be the next to last one with Earth being next, or there might be a Death and Life section after Earth. Or lightning and Earth would be mixed together.
Brie was hoping for a Life one. Life magic had actual healing magic at minor level, and immune boosters and pain relief at petty. It would definitely be worth taking such a talent if she could. This usefulness, however, meant that Life magic crystals sold for five times what another element would, putting its cost on par with rare magics like Sound, Poison, Telepathy, Telekinesis, or Illusion, but not as expensive as Gravity, Space, or Time.
Another hundred meters deeper and it was confirmed that the dungeon had decided to give us a mixed type area when one of the rats threw sand at our eyes. These rats seemed to work together well, with the Earth types using their Stone Skin spell to act as tanks to block incoming attacks for the lightning rats, which fired at us from a safe distance. This was far too much strategy for the rats. They must have a Rat man commanding them.
We sent Edam ahead to scout out the location. While we were waiting on the chests he had figured out how to wrap himself in shadows, a minor spell known as “Shadow Stealth”. As most of the cave was dark if you didn’t use a light source, like him, it was easy for him to move in the shadows. The rats smelled him, but couldn’t find him.
He returned ten minutes later with a weird story. There were three rat men in the main chamber, or, to be more accurate, two rat men, and a rat woman. One man and the woman were on a raised area which overlooked the room, naked, and another rat man walked up in armor and stopped them. The naked man then drew rocks to himself and attacked the armored man, who threw lightning at him. The woman just watched the men fight, without trying to stop them.
Brie explained that it was common among beast people, especially wild ones, for the males to fight over the females. Their jealous brawl had given us useful information. While we didn’t know the powers of the female, we now knew how strong the men were, as they had displayed their magic in front of Edam.
After ten minutes we had a plan. Edam would sneak in and attack the female. We had collected an explosive apple from when we killed the boss tree, so when the men came to defend her he would retreat and throw it at her, finishing them off if he had the opportunity. That sneak attack should wound them enough that they can’t risk attacking us head on if they survive, which will mean that Brie and Fontina can finish them off from range. If they do attack, I will defend the women with my shield while Edam and Cam focus on fighting back the rats. As the enemy will be forced to use ranged attacks due to their injuries I should be able to block their attacks. Sure, the plan had holes, but it should work.
The plan started off well. Edam snuck in close to the female as she was engaged with the lightning rat man, the Earth man laying unconscious nearby. She smelled him, but before she could pull herself out of her lover’s arms an apple struck her in the chest, exploding a second later. Both she and the lightning man were engulfed in flame and blown apart from each other. Edam ran at her as she stood there covered in flames and spun around to add power to his stab, landing a blow in the middle of her back.
His blade snapped, and Edam ran, realizing that his blow had hit solid stone. As he left, she flicked her stone covered hand, and the broken blade flew at him, stabbing him in the calf muscle. He tripped and fell, and Cam ran over to keep the rats off of him as they started to swarm.
“Ferrokinesis!” yelled Brie. “She has Earth and Lightning magic.”