“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Mace in hand, Victor pulled the metal lever and stepped back. As the door groaned open, he briefly shared a glance with Thomas.
The two boys had spent most of their time talking about lighter topics as they savored the raisins. Once cleaned and refreshed by the bath, they agreed that they would take a short break before continuing.
It was really more for their mental and emotional state rather than their physical or magical stamina. While Victor knew he would have to gain power quickly, he also knew that it would still take him a while before he could even begin to fight back.
And even then, he obviously wouldn’t be taking on someone like Lord Grantly directly. He didn’t actually know how he was going to play things yet — he needed a lot more information — but he suspected the only viable approach would be an indirect one.
But either way, he needed to grow stronger — which obviously also meant not dying early on. You can always try again if you aren’t dead.
The two boys had positioned themselves such that Victor was in front, ready to whack anything that tried to get through, while Thomas stood behind and to the side of him, bow already loaded and aimed just to the side of Victor’s shoulder.
They were as prepared as they’d ever be.
The door ground open fully — opening them to the immediate assault of an unexpected enemy.
Victor gagged. The stench wafting into the rest chamber was nearly unbearable. “Fucking hell.” It was even worse than the dumpster Deva had dumped him in. Seeing nothing but a wet, crusty stone corridor leading off to either side, Victor glanced back at Thomas.
The other boy’s face had contorted into an expression that Victor had only ever seen worn by a botched taxidermy job. “…Do we really have to delve this one?”
Victor sighed — and then immediately regretted it, as the action forced him to inhale deeply. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Coughing, Thomas lowered his bow. “Maybe that’s why the dungeon was so nice to us with the baths. Sort of like an early apology.”
Victor snorted. “Doubt it. Come on, let’s go.”
Peering down either side of the corridor, Victor didn’t see anything else in sight — save for rusty sewage gratings, a few dim, yellowish alchemical lights, and a few normal sized rats.
Victor narrowed his eyes. Perhaps they really were just ordinary vermin — but we wouldn’t count on it. Stepping out, he had to catch himself on the edge of the doorway to prevent himself from slipping.
“Fuck.”
The cobblestone floor was slick with slimy, partially dried fluids that Victor didn’t particularly care to identify. “Careful, the floor is super slippery.”
After regaining his balance, Victor stepped forward cautiously, returning his mace to his inventory as he did so. He wanted to get used to how to walk in such deceptively difficult terrain without trying to manage the cumbersome weight of the weapon.
Thomas stepped out as well, grumbling under his breath. The door slid shut behind them, and the rats all turned to look. Victor didn’t appreciate the eerie green light reflected in they tiny eyes.
But they didn’t make a move. After several still moments, the vermin turned their attention back to nibbling on some unidentifiable scraps of organic matter. Victor waited several moments before nodding slowly. Satisfied, he glanced over to Thomas. “I think we might as well go the other way.”
His companion shrugged. “Sure.”
Carefully, the two boys began making their way down the passageway. It was slow going — painfully slow — but the slickness of the terrain demanded caution. Victor didn’t doubt that it was a deliberate, precisely crafted choice the core made for this area — it was probably half the challenge.
Or at least, Victor hoped it was. He did not want to fight something as strong as the cat, crab, or spider in here.
As the pair drew closer to where the passageway bent off at a right angle to the left, Thomas froze. Following his lead, Victor stopped as well, turning to the other boy with an inquisitive look.
“Footsteps,” Thomas whispered.
Straining his ears, Victor suddenly heard it as well. A faint, scraping shuffling, echoing from around the bend.
“Thanks,” he whispered back. “Wait where you are — we’ll use the same formation as when we entered.”
Thomas nodded, conjuring a spectral arrow and notching it on the bow. He didn’t raise it or draw it back yet, however.
After stealthy steps forward, Victor planted himself as firmly as he could and conjured his mace. Finally, the newcomer stepped into view.
It looked like it might have been human, once. The monster wore a miner’s helmet, a pair of ragged trousers, and carried a long and quite heavy looking sledgehammer. Victor’s eye lingered on the weapon. If it can actually wield that thing with any force, I don’t think my mace can stand up to it.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The monster itself was mostly bone, though chunks of putrid gray matter that were undoubtedly once flesh clung to the skeleton here and there. Victor frowned. If all of the monsters in this area were like that, then it would certainly explain the noxious stench.
It was obviously undead — which raised an interesting question, at least for Victor’s personal situation. Did it have a soul he could harvest?
“I’m going to shoot.”
Victor didn’t take his eyes off the undead miner. “Go ahead.”
With a sizzling crackle, a sickly green bolt of corrosive energy streaked down the passageway, hitting the monster right where its nose should be. The monster’s skull tipped back slightly, but it continued forward with ease.
Corrosive green magic dripped to the stone floor, sizzling and smoking on the ground. And while it ate straight through the chunks of rotted flesh, the bones of the monster appeared mostly unscathed.
Victor frowned. Bone wasn’t especially corrosion resistant — was there something more magical in nature at play?
Either way, the turn of events unsettled him. If they couldn’t fight it at range…
“I’m going to try firing without using the enchantment.”
Furrowing his brow, Victor glanced back at Thomas, who tilted his head. “It might be more vulnerable to simple physical attacks. Worth a shot at least.”
Nodding Victor turned back to the approaching skeleton. It was still fairly far away — it was rather slow, after all.
Another spectral shot flew down the corridor — slightly slower, fainter, and all around less impressive. But this time, it hit the monster in the neck — snapping the skull straight off the body.
It rolled across the floor, the body took another shambling step forward, and then the whole thing collapsed into a pile of bones. Victor blinked. “Well that worked.”
Soul harvested!
Harvested souls: 201
Victor blinked. Had he just… Wow. So I can harvest souls from undead — I mean, I’m pretty damn sure that was an undead. But that wasn’t the most important thing. And I can harvest souls from things my party members kill?
----------------------------------------
Three skeletons and three more souls later, and Victor was rather irritated. So far, the new area hadn’t been very difficult — but it was just a pain to traverse. They had almost ended up going in circles several times, as it turned out to be a basic maze — and every single step took concerted effort.
It was getting a little easier, of course — both boys were slowly becoming more sure of their footing — but it was still excruciating. Rather literally, as Victor was developing aches all over his body from the strain on muscles he didn’t normally use so often.
A hand on the back of Victor’s shirt yanked him back just as he was about to take another step. Losing his footing, Victor toppled backwards with an alarmed yelp.
He landed hard. The fall drove the wind out of him, and worse, a sharp pain coursed through his aching body. He had landed rather awkwardly, after all.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. No, the absolute worst part was that he was now lying down in the slippery, crusty muck of the sewer maze. It didn’t matter that his clothes were already worn and filthy — not even the bath could fix that — no, this kind of filth was on a whole other level.
Looking up, Victor wanted to glare at Thomas — but then his blood chilled. He wouldn’t just grab me like that for no reason. Victor sat up, peering down the corridor anxiously. He didn’t see anything.
“Don’t move.”
Victor froze. “What is it?”
Instead of answering, Thomas pointed to the floor just a single pace ahead of Victor’s position. Victor realized the problem immediately — a patch of four cobblestones that was significantly lighter in color than the rest of the corridor.
The patch was also raised just slightly.
Victor exhaled shakily. “Thanks.”
Climbing to his feet with some difficulty, Victor frowned at the mismatching patch of ground. “There’s no way that’s not some kind of trap.”
Thomas nodded. “For sure. Do you think we should test it somehow? See what it does?”
Victor frowned. “What if it does something that could hurt us even by just testing it?” He paused. “I don’t think it’s worth that risk. Now that we know there are traps, we should probably just keep an eye out and avoid them.”
Scratching his head, Thomas thought for a moment. “Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.” He frowned as well. “But what if we do accidentally trigger one? Like during a fight, we might accidentally trigger one, and then it would be good to have some idea of what to expect.”
The two boys shared a glance. It was a tough decision — but Victor’s curiosity won out. “Okay, sure.” Conjuring his mace, he planted himself in a slight crouch, leaning as far as he could away from the patch of stones. “You should probably stand back. No sense in risking injuring both of us.”
“Right.” Thomas retreated a dozen paces backwards before stopping. Taking a deep breath, Victor steeled himself and touched the tip of the mace to the suspicious bit of ground.
Dropping the mace, Victor leapt backwards as green, spectral chains coiled around the weapon. He was forced to let go, as the trap bound the mace tightly without letting go.
Fuck.
Steadying himself — he had almost slipped again — Victor ran a hand through his grimy hair. The result was both good and bad — on one hand, it meant that if he were to accidentally step on one, it wouldn’t be deadly.
On the other hand, he might have just lost his only good weapon. Frowning, Victor attempted to return it to his inventory — only to meet an alien magical resistance fighting against him. Cursing under his breath, Victor put his entire will into snatching the weapon back to his own spirit.
The mace shifted slightly — not physically, but in his mental awareness. Furrowing his brow, Victor channeled some of his arcane energy into it, boosting his innate will as he continued to fight. The power flowed not out of his spirit, but deeper inwards — into the very core, where something that was not himself lived.
And then he was somewhere else.
The dungeon corridor remained exactly the same, but Victor paid no mind to it. What captured his entire attention was the change in his spirit.
Victor felt naked. It was as if he had been underwater for his entire life, and now he had been dragged up onto shore, shivering in the bare air. Strangely self conscious, Victor gazed down into the distance — beyond the grimy stone floor — beyond hundreds of floors teeming with monsters of unimaginable power and variety — through leagues of solid rock — and then he met its gaze.
He wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. The entity beyond him was something that he knew he shouldn’t be able to comprehend — it was qualitatively greater than him, greater not just in scale, but in the way that a human being was more than a mere insect.
But Victor didn’t see it as an insect saw a human being. For a moment, he was on equal footing, able to see both himself and the other presence in full.
And he realized that it wasn’t looking at just him. It’s gaze pierced his spirit like a knife parting water, addressing that foreign fragment that was now intimately his.
But while they may have been equally aware of each other in that moment, they weren’t truly equal. While the difference between their scales was both finite and comprehensible, the sheer magnitude of it was beyond humbling.
And then the entity didn’t just stare. It spoke.
Show some respect, child.