Several rocks flew at the girls and I blocked with my shield. With Cam having to get Edam to the back line so that Brie could heal him enough to fight, I was the only front line fighter that we had left.

Fontina fired at the stone figure in front of us, aiming for an eye, but the figure held up a hand and the arrow hit stone, doing no damage. The closer she got, the less accurate the rat woman had to be to hit someone, so I ran at her. Hopefully I could keep her distracted enough to buy them some time. I Raged, and swung my shield down at her. I didn’t want to use my sword because I didn’t want to risk it breaking like Edam’s dagger. It hit her in the head but the stone took most of the blow, chipping slightly. She drove a stone enhanced fist into my stomach in return.

I stumbled back a step, then swung the shield at her head. Maybe I could give her a concussion without breaking the armor. Just as the shield almost hit her head she waved her hand and it felt like it was suddenly pushed to the side. I swung it several more times, putting more strength into it to try and overpower her, but every time she did the same thing. This was getting really annoying. I wasn’t sure how she was doing it, but I’m sure someone would explain it to me later. Probably some use of her metal powers.

If metal wouldn’t work, and wood wasn’t strong enough, I would have to find something that would work. I considered Stone, but she had Earth magic, so it wouldn’t be any better than metal.

I jumped backwards to give my friends a chance to attack, and threw my shield. It curved around her and back at me, hitting me in the stomach a second later, knocking the air out of my lungs. I bent over and gasped for breath and she ran at me. Just as she got there and tried to swing a punch, I jumped at her legs, lifting her over my shoulder and falling backwards so that she hit her head. I rolled off of her and she started to get up. I could see that the helmet was badly damaged.

I guess if weapons wouldn’t work, I would have to use my fists. Still, I wasn’t so stupid that I would punch stone. I grabbed at her face, forcing her to dodge. I figured that if I could grab her I could still slam her into walls or the ground. The armor might keep her from slamming into the ground, but it wouldn’t keep her internal organs from slamming into her ribs or the armor.

She stepped back as I grabbed again and got hit in the face by a light ball. I was also half blinded by it, but I recovered enough to stab my finger into her left eye, blinding her permanently on that side. As soon as I did that, she screamed in pain and I felt a force grab all of the iron based metal I had on me, pushing me away. Rocks and dirt flew away from her and everyone hid to keep from getting hit. What few rats were left were killed by their queen’s tantrum.

I laid on the ground and held my hands over the tip of my head. Several rocks hit my arms and I felt one of my bones crack, but at least they didn’t hit my head. I really needed to buy a helmet just in case my head was at risk. You can fix broken arms. It’s much harder to fix a broken skull, especially when the break is accompanied by brain damage.

When the rocks stopped flying ten seconds later she saw me laying there and held her had towards me. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but I knew it would be an attack. I rolled to the side just as a lightning bolt hit where I was. I kept rolling until I got to my shield, dodging three more lightning bolts, then held it up to block as I stood up. A Lightning bolt hit my shield and the wood caught fire. Realizing that it was worthless now, I threw my shield at her head with all of the strength my Rage could give me. Maybe she was taken off guard or maybe her reaction time was slowed by the exhaustion of using so much magic, but it hit her in the face and made her fall over backwards.

One of Fontina’s arrows was laying on the ground nearby beside a stone rat, the arrow’s head broken off from hitting its armor. I grabbed it and ran at the queen. Before she could get up I charged the broken arrow with Ice and stabbed at her missing eye. She held up her hand and I felt her start to push me away by my belt buckle, but, as the arrow didn’t have a stone or iron arrow head anymore, she couldn’t affect it. I plunged it into the socket as hard as I could, then dumped a good bit of freezing magic into it for good measure. A few seconds later she stopped twitching and a rush of energy went into me.

“Uh, guys, I just got a skill from her.” I said. Everyone got excited. An Average Lightning or Earth talent could earn us a nice profit. And if they had happened to combine into the rare Metal talent when they were captured, we would get five times as much.

I quickly dug through my Talent crystal pouch. I had several petty or minor talents from the rats, and even a Photosynthesis Monster talent from the sunflowers on floor one. There was only one green crystal that I couldn’t identify. I looked at it and, upon seeing what it was, I started laughing. All of that work, and when we got a talent from her, it was this? It was too ridiculous.

“You’re that happy?” asked Edam. “Must be something good. So what is it?” He was probably too far away to see the color of the stone.

“Well, unfortunately it wasn’t a magic talent.” I said when I stopped laughing. “It was a skill talent.”

“Well, that’s not bad.” said Fontina. “So, what are we talking about? Animal training? Swarm control? Armor?”

I shook my head. “None of those, but I think Cam will get a lot of use out of it.”

I tossed the crystal to Cam and he looked at it and started laughing. “Yeah, I guess I would. Still think we should sell it though. I prefer learning that on my own.”

“Why? What is it?” asked Fontina, and he showed it to the other three.

“Average Seduction.” He said, and the others either laughed or facepalmed.

I checked the bodies of the two male rat-men. The lightning one had been disassembled by the bomb, and it took me a few second to find the chest piece where the crystal would be. The Earth one bled out. Apparently, when his woman threw a tantrum she accidentally sent a shard of rock into his jugular vein, killing him in his sleep.

The queen’s rock armor had lost much of its strength when she died and could no longer hold it together, so I managed to pry it apart after a minute or so and collect her crystal. By the time I was done everyone had finished harvesting from the smaller rats so we met up in the middle. My arm was swollen from the crack, but unfortunately Brie’s Healing Light couldn’t fix a bone it couldn’t see. We had gotten more than enough DP from this run, though, so I spent the thirty points to fix a minor bone break.

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We had to figure out if we would continue. Fontina was down to seven out of her original twenty five arrows, losing more than half to stone rats. Edam’s blade was broken, but he could use the Darksteel one we found earlier if we wanted to keep going. Brie was out of Light energy and low on mana, so we would need to rest if we continued. After a bit of discussion, they wanted to continue, so we took a break. All of us had leather gloves, so we were able to safely harvest the lightning crystals without getting shocked, and the earth crystals were just brownish chunks of quartz to anyone that didn’t know what they were. After that I borrowed the water ring and Fontina and I filled up a pot to make an early supper. It was probably around four pm on the surface, as we had wasted a lot of time searching every nook of the cave system, but fighting made you hungry.

“Does anyone have a water magic talent on them?” I asked as the soup boiled. Cam and Edam were stacking all of the bodies in the corner of the room so we didn’t have to deal with them.

“Only a few petties, if I remember.” said Cam, picking up two rats by their tails. “Why?”

“Well, during the fight I needed something to use as a weapon. Rocks and metal weapons wouldn’t work on her. So, now that I think about it, I wonder if an ice shard would work.”

“Well, it would do more damage than wood.” said Brie, “But against Stone only Sonic and Fire really work well. Maybe Telekinetic or Gravity, but those are hard to find. So it wouldn’t be the worst choice, but you should probably use one of the Fire talents instead. We even have a Minor of that.”

After a bit of debate I decided to get both. It would mean that I had to give up most of my crystals for this trip, but both Fire and Ice seemed really useful. I absorbed the Minor Fire and Petty Water talents, then, while the others rested, I practiced with them. By the time lunch ended I had learned “Condense”, the skill the ring used to produce water from the air, and “Fire Bolt”. I gave Fontina back her ring.

Over supper Brie had absorbed all of the minor light crystals we had, refilling her Light reserves to around 70%, and leaving us with only two Average light crystals to sell. Now that the rest was over, we set off once again.

Name: Michael, son of Brin Mason

Race: Human

Age: 18

DP: 313

Status Effects: None

Criminal Status: Banished (Gray Forest Town)

Common Talents

Strength: Petty

Endurance: Major

Dexterity: Petty

Intelligence: Petty

Willpower: Average

Wisdom: Petty

Charisma: Petty

Personality: Major

Perception: Minor

Stats

Strength: 26

Endurance: 30

Dexterity: 24

Intelligence: 11

Willpower: 27

Wisdom: 15

Charisma: 8

Personality: 28

Perception: 20

Talents

Average Improved Immune System

Average Devil’s Luck

Average Rage

Petty Ice Magic

Average Swordsmanship

Minor Light Magic

Petty Water Magic

Minor Fire Magic

Monster Talents

Average Troll Regeneration

Minor Tough Hide

Skills

Workout: 11

Study: 5

Spearmanship: 10

Shield: 12

Shield Bash: 10

Shield Throw: 2

Use Magic Item: 5

Throwing: 5

Swordsmanship: 15

Dodge: 6

Magic Skills

Freeze Touch: 3

Freeze Bolt: 5

Freeze Edge: 7

Glow: 2

Condense: 2

Fire Bolt: 1

We made our way into the next section of the cave. The first thing we noticed is that we were getting tired a lot faster than normal. My Regeneration was able to keep up with it as long as I didn’t exert myself too quickly, but before we got halfway through the section the others looked like they hadn’t slept in days, or like they had reached their limit in training.

That’s when the rats started to attack. With the others being so exhausted I had to keep them all at bay with my sword, letting the others handle digging out the crystals. There were considerably fewer rats than in the previous section, but every time one of them attacked the others seemed to get weaker. I found a second treasure room off to the side and stood in the entrance as Fontina worked on disarming the traps. This one had only a single chest, but multiple traps protecting it. Because of her exhaustion Fontina was eating coffee beans from her rations to try to stay awake and the other three were sitting down.

Just as they started to doze off, Brie noticed something. “Hey, don’t go to sleep.” she said in a weak voice.

It didn’t seem like the others had heard her, so I looked at them. “HEY!” I shouted, waking them. “Don’t go to sleep. Brie seems to think it wouldn’t be good.”

“You mean like with a concussion?” asked Edam, and I nodded.

“Not quite.” said Brie. “I know what this element is.” I hadn’t gotten lucky enough to catch a talent so far, partially due to only killing twelve rats so far, so we had just been guessing.

“Poison?” asked Edam. “It’s an uncommon element, but it would explain a few things.”

Brie shook her head and pulled back her sleeves. “Death.” On her arms were black marks, like her skin had started to die. She told everyone to strip, as the lesions could be anywhere, then went around checking them for necrotic spots. Cam was embarrassed by the fact that one had started on his private areas, but not enough that he would risk an important part of himself rotting off. It used all of her stored Light and some of her mana, but eventually she had treated everyone. I didn’t have any spots on me. Apparently my Troll Regeneration made me immune to this level of Death Aura. Brie had heard that the petty level of Death Magic had that spell, but had never met a Death mage to confirm.

Once everyone was dressed again, and seemed to have much more energy, even if they were tired, Fontina continued to work on the chest. There was a magic circle on it she didn’t understand, but the other traps were disarmed. Brie had learn most of her magic through her Talent, but she was still the most skilled with magic circles. When she wasn’t sure she couldn’t disarm it, there was only one thing left to try.

The others backed up, and I opened the chest. Immediately a purple-black burst of energy hit me and I fell on the ground. My skin started hurting badly, then I couldn’t feel the pain anymore. I knew that wasn’t a good thing. I checked my status to see that I had Necrosis at a Major level. Cam and Edam came over to pull me away, and the skin on my arms started to peel away as they drug me.

This made the Necrosis jump to a Serious level, the equivalent of an Excellent skill in ranking. Brie absorbed one of the Average light crystals and started healing me. The skin didn’t come back, but the condition decreased back to Major. She consumed the second and healed me further and, while it didn’t decrease the wound to Average, the timer for the healing only had an hour or so to get me to that level, at which point my Talent would kick in a heal me faster.

“That was remarkably stupid.” She said, fighting to stay awake. Now that the trap was tripped, however, they opened the chest, grabbed what was inside, and we left for the Earth and Lightning area.

Once we were there in the boss room I was placed on a bed roll so that I could heal and the others started to recover from exhaustion. Once they were awake enough to not be impaired they looked over what the chest contained. It was a book. “Major Death Grimoire”. It contained all of the Death Magic spells up to the Major level. It was from books like these that people without a specific talent learned magic, including almost everyone before we discovered how to make Talent Crystals. This book would probably sell for thirty gold at auction, though it was too rare to be an actual textbook at the Royal Academy. The books used to teach magic there contained simplified copies of these spells. Well, most of these spells. Death magic was restricted due to its danger. After all, just the Death Aura of a few dozen rats had almost killed the whole team.

Not wanting to retreat, we camped there that night. It would stop the Dungeon from repopulating this chamber, but the dungeon would still probably fill in the areas we had come through with more rats. Hopefully no Rat-men, though. Those were hard to beat.

By the next morning I had completely recovered. The others had taken watch last night and killed around a dozen Earth or Lightning rats, and Edam had gotten lucky and captured the Petty Death Magic talent of one of the three Death rats that had attacked. He considered absorbing it, as Death made sense for an assassin, but he was hesitant to do so. What if it would effect him like the magic? Sometimes people took on the traits of strong talents, so it was possible.

We talked it over and knew we were unlikely to clear the next area. We spent the next hour after breakfast killing Death rats, collecting two more petty Death talents, careful to not get near the boss room. After we had cleared all of the rats we thought we could, we went back towards the surface.

The Earth and Lightning rat-men had been replaced with a considerably weaker couple, an Earth male and a Lightning female, both the equivalent of teenagers. Brie guessed that the other lovers had been here for months or years slowly getting stronger.

While we did collect many talents on the way out, they were all Petty, as they hadn’t had time to grow. After a few hours of hunting we made out of the cave. The animals outside were easy to defeat and we eventually made it to the nearest portal, having an extra String Shot Monster talent from a giant spider we killed. Upon activating the portal we went back to the surface.