7:39 P.M.
February 5
Frostmonth 7
Newly-formed Dungeon, Limeroom, Veotera
The final chamber awaited. The sounds of chittering, screeching, and the stomping of feet seemed to gather in a swelling orchestra of evil intent. Without a word the Delvers looked to each other and took a collective breath of preparation. Something in the cacophony reached a climax as a bassy roar overpowered the screeching in a clear tone of unquestioned authority, then the ground seemed to shake slightly as a pattering of far too many feet echoed up the corridor.
The shieldbearers positioned themselves, leaving a couple of small gaps that the Delvers with spears and shortswords lined up with. Yet more of the men moved to physically brace the ones with the shields, clearly expecting a force to crash into them horribly. Gary felt 「Danger Sense」 jostle him in a way he hadn’t felt it do before, almost forcing him to cringe at the sensation. His knives were in his hands as he coiled up in readiness as he saw a tide of the green creatures surging from the central chamber.
Their chittering took a sadistic tone as they picked up their jogs into full runs. The shieldbearers heard this and leaned their full weight into the tower shields. As the bodies clashed Gary heard the scrape of metal on stone as the bottom edges of the shields ground across the cave floor a few inches before the momentum died. Spears flashed out into the surging crowd, and shortswords snaked between the gaps when the spears withdrew for their wielders to coil up for another strike. Quickly, the burgundy blood began to seep past the shields as the casualties mounted.
It went on and on as the chittering and screeching and dying screams filled the corridor as one long cacophony of death and desolation. Any green limb he saw try to get through the gaps in the shield wall he snaked in towards and cut to ribbons. Gary kept the Passive Skill in his attention, noting it bounced from Goblin to Goblin as the tide began to thin finally. After at least ten to fifteen minutes of solid work the chittering finally stopped as the shieldwall opened to reveal a nearly diaphragm-high pile of corpses blocking the route. The Delvers made sure to hack any suspiciously-intact bodies and were rewarded with finding a few that were playing dead and waiting for a chance to sneak in an attack on an unsuspecting human.
“And now you know why I was throwing the bodies out of the dungeon,” Gary decided to quip as he helped pull verified Goblin corpses aside to open a corridor for advancement. That earned him a round of worn-out chuckles as the Delvers took stock of their situation. More minor wounds had come up, and Gary primarily led the effort to see to them with what supplies he could wrangle or improvise. It felt better to do this than to kill the monsters, but Plundering felt better than any of these things.
They decided to take a rest where they were finding places that weren’t drenched in monster blood to sit down and keep watch up and down the corridor for any ambushes. 「Danger Sense」 told Gary the largest remaining threat was still in the chamber ahead, and he voiced this information. The others nodded grimly as they took what relaxation they could for a few more minutes before there was an unspoken agreement that it was enough. Reassembled into their formation they pushed into the central chamber unopposed. They stopped at the entrance and collectively shuddered at the sight before them.
Gary had seen desiccated carnage at the haunted manor, but the fresh stuff was a different visual presentation. A crude stone throne was at the far side of the chamber, and upon it sat a gore-drenched green humanoid that spotted the Delvers and grinned with the Goblin’s needle-teeth, but these teeth were clearly serrated. The reason it was slicked in gore was because it had been eating the corpses of some of the Goblins that had previously called this chamber home; if the random pieces of discarded viscera were to be accurately discerned.
“God in Heaven; that’s a Goblin Champion,” one of the Delvers uttered. That confirmed Gary’s mental designation of these things as Goblins, and the tone the man had used meant this one was going to be trouble. As the Champion began to rise to his feet, Gary made a choice. 「Leap」 came into play as he vaulted over the shieldwall at the entrance and charged right at the monster. The chamber was wide enough and tall enough that it struck Gary idly as a wonderful boss arena for a video game. The Champion snatched up an iron-banded reinforced greatclub and immediately moved to meet his charge.
Gary ducked his angle of approach into going inside the monster’s too-fast swing, feeling the weapon clear him by perhaps inches as the Bowienet lanced out and struck for the Champion’s side. He felt the muscles there fight the bite of the blade as his momentum carried him by and leaving a wide but shallow cut. Skidding to a stop as the monster began to recover from the first swing and start for a backhand sweep of the greatclub, barely giving Gary the time to hop over the arc of the swing aimed at his legs. Past the monster Gary could see that the rest of the Delvers had decided to take advantage of his distracting actions and begin to charge across the room themselves.
The Champion was at least seven or perhaps eight feet tall and Gary now knew it was fast and strong, since it could swing a giant piece of iron-shod wood around like a light stick. He was probably the fastest person here so it would be up to him to keep this thing off-balance while the others snuck in blows from other angles. As the Goblin Champion spun around from the force of the sweep missed against Gary, the greatclub angled up and caught one of the shieldbearers right square in the plate of metal. Gary could hear the wet bone-snap of something in the man’s arm give instantly and rushed forward to try and take advantage of the opening to ram his knives in the Champion’s back.
He succeeded in hilting both blades into the creature’s back but the impact and jerking as the monster howled in pain tore the weapons from his grip. The other Delvers fell in with the spears leading the charge but that greatclub spun in the monster’s grip and parried the blows. A few shortswords and hand axs scraped the edges of the monster’s flesh but the surprising resistance sent many people stumbling past. He could practically feel the monster’s smugness as he looked towards the recovering Delvers, but Gary intervened again.
He flung a jab at the monster’s face and felt a solid but satisfying impact with the mouth through his gauntlet. The Champion stumbled back a step or two and reflexively spat out some teeth. Gary continued the assault by launching into a backspin kick towards the head, which the Champion ducked. Without missing a beat the movements continued as he crouched into the spin and launched a 「Leap」-infused uppercut at the crouched creature’s jaw. As the second punch landed the Champion stumbled back even further and out of his immediate range, which allowed Gary to land safely and shake the numbness out of his right hand. Hitting this thing was like punching a brick wall.
The monster quickly regained its composure, and it winced when it poked at the wounded jaw which Gary saw was now clearly misshapen at the menton of the chin; more caved-in about an inch in the rough shape of Gary’s fist. Mustering itself back in a clear rage now, it roared through even more broken teeth and broken jaw with burgundy blood-flecked saliva spewing as a cloud from the mouth before it raised the greatclub and rushed at him with a swing coming from Gary’s left shoulder aimed towards his hip. Gary sidestepped into the swing again as he ducked it to give clearance, felt it whoosh past his head and felt the wind of the passage tousle his hair, and came back in with a vicious left hook for what he hoped was a liver shot.
His fist slammed into those rock-hard abdominal muscles and he didn’t feel he had anywhere near the impact he could have as the Champion simply leaned from the attack before coming back and giving Gary an equally vicious elbow to the side of the head. Gary felt himself falling away from the blow, momentarily stunned as he clattered to the stone floor in skidding metal and squelching leather. His Constitution thankfully kicked in as his head rapidly cleared from the concussive blow and he managed to roll out of the way of the roaring overhead swing that shattered a crater into the stone floor he’d just barely vacated.
As Gary continued to roll far enough away to get a second to spring to his feet, he saw the other Delvers coming in the capitalize on the rebound from the missed attack. Spears flashed in and found purchase in various points on the monster, and swords and axes joined in as the shields had been abandoned in favor of sheer offensive power. They were hacking and stabbing and slashing for all they were worth, and despite the rapidly accumulating damage the Champion seemed more frustrated than scared or pained. A brutal roar once more echoed out as it cast aside the attackers with a broad outstretching sweep of it’s arms. The gesture robbed the greatclub it held of killing force, but it still managed to send Delvers tumbling away and out of the fight for the moment.
Gary got to his feet and charged back into the fray again. Keeping his Reserves in mind for later, he triggered 「Plunder」 as he got close enough. The greatclub flickered and vanished from the Goblin Champion’s grip and appeared in Gary’s as he spun wide while moving past the monster. At the apex of the swing, Gary triggered 「Sneak Attack」 as well. The weapon’s weight was dense, solid, and entirely unstoppable as he felt the Active Skill’s nature jerk the swing into a perfect alignment to smash the Champion in the left leg’s thigh and continue on to ram the remains into the right leg, sweeping the beast off its feet finally.
Finally the monster let out a scream of pain as it collapsed from the devastating blow and thrashed in high-pitched agony as the shattered bones in the mouth, jaw, and legs finally overcame whatever pain resistance it had built in. The other Delvers recovered from the shove they’d been subject to finally and quickly took the opportunity presented to come in onto the downed monster and strike it over and over again. Each blow added to the howls of agony, giving Gary time to come over to the group and insert the greatclub into the conversation of pain.
The other Delvers understood his intent, backing away as Gary grunted and raised the monstrous weapon up high until it was a little past vertical and paused in mid-air. Taking a deep and ragged breath, Gary roared wordlessly as he brought the weapon down with every muscle in his body onto the Champion’s head. As predicted, the offending target vanished in a shower of gore and the body jerked a few times before going deathly still and sagging in place. The gray-eyed Delver stood in the aftermath, white-knuckled grip on the weapon and heaving breaths as the adrenaline was easily replacing his blood at the moment. He could feel his body shivering with the strain even through his Grandmaster-grade Constitution. The fight was short but intense.
Looking about finally, he saw several of his comrades trying to tend to the man who’d been hit first and had been screaming this whole time in pain at his broken arm. It was odd how easily one could ignore details in the heat of battle. He’d have to watch out for that in the future. Fog of war and tunnel vision would get him killed.
“We’re done here, right,” Gary wearily asked as he leaned on the Plundered weapon for support to keep himself upright.
“God, I hope so. That thing was a fucking monster!”
“We are in a dungeon,” quipped someone else as they helped the broken-armed man to his feet.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Fuck you!” A chorus of weary laughter answered the insult as people went to retrieve anything knocked away during the battle. Gary got his knives back, and eyed the greatclub. He decided he needed a trophy for verification since he’d crushed the thing’s head. Jack would bemoan the payments he’d have to make but that was most decidedly not his problem!
----------------------------------------
Gary walked out of the rift to the dungeon last, having volunteered for rear guard duty and also half-dragging the greatclub with him to present to Jack. As he flickered into existence night had properly fallen in Limeroom, and the yard was now lit with ornate braziers that Lord Wevre had probably sourced from nearby places as the designs were not uniform like they came from one home. Gary was pleased to see Remmy had joined the contingent of clergy present and was leading the efforts of getting people healed. The old priest looked up at the grating sound of iron-shod wood on stone and boggled a moment at Gary dragging the greatclub behind himself as he moved to the edge of the paved area the dungeon’s entrance was hovering over.
“And that should be all of them.” A simple statement; one that caused everyone but the Delvers that had gone in with him to stare incredulously. “The dungeon is officially cleaned out as of this moment. Not one survivor.”
“God in Heaven. Is that a Goblin Champion’s greatclub?” Jack walked away from where he was to Gary’s side, examining the weapon with a shocked look. Gary held the handle up for him to take and Jack accepted. The man didn’t flex or strain as he stepped back and slowly lifted the weapon for inspection in the firelight. So superior Strength to Gary’s, then. More notes. “How did you do it without fatalities?”
“I charged it, and led the distraction as the others came around me and hurt it. I managed to get an opening to 「Plunder」 the club off him and used 「Sneak Attack」 to bring him down, where we worked together to finish him off. Damn thing felt like it was made out of stone!”
“You should have seen him, Jack,” piped up a Delver off to the side who was sat down on the grass in exhaustion. “Kid took off like a lightning bolt the moment he heard ‘Goblin Champion’ and kept it busy while we got close. He lost his knives after one attack and just started smashing the thing with his fists. I’ve got into some brawls, but that was something he’s clearly trained.”
Gary shrugged as Jack looked to him. “I’m a man of many talents. My uncle saw to it I was trained to fight effectively bare-handed in case I got caught out like I was..” Not a lie, since Uncle Thomas had been insistent Gary have hand-to-hand training while under his roof. The Navy captain believed it was a good way to get and maintain a strong body. He’d naturally taken to Taekwondo, and a couple more types were worked into his own style. There was also the fact he had extensive manuals to learn from thanks to the nanotech Virtual Network in his head. Fuck the System and it’s vagueness.
“Huh. Well, the man clearly had you taught well.” Gary gave him a cheeky smirk before bowing his head slightly and turning back to the rift’s location again.
“Now. I think it’s high time we be done with this fucking thing. Less than a day and it’s already working on my last nerve.” He stepped back up to just before the rift would grab him with whatever aura it had that triggered the transition and glanced around at the assembled men. “I’m going to be using a powerful Active Skill now. I don’t know what this looks like or will do to anyone too close so I would ask you all to back up.”
The fact he was clearly warning before he was going to use a Skill instantly sent everyone moving back quite a few feet. Lord Wevre was lurking in the shadows as he sat on a chair that had been brought outside for him to sit and observe the goings-on. Gary decided to let the bastard watch. Let him understand that Gary would be a problem if angered. He mentally added the Velvet Court to the list of people and things that could get bent.
Taking a deep cleansing breath, Gary raised his hands to the absolute brink of the Cherenkov Blue tear in reality and triggered 「Quintessence Vivisection」. In response to the familiar torrent of mana pouring out of him and tearing into the thing before him, a keening howl pierced the air. Everyone but Gary flinched as the cloud he saw began to find itself glowing visibly in the air, treating the others to a spectacle they’d probably talk about for the rest of their lives. As his Skill dug into the rift’s essence, Gary felt enormous resistance. The rift was fighting the Skill!
He growled and felt his hands claw as the torrent continued and the rift flexed and tugged and writhed with a torturous wail. The wind picked up heavily and began flowing into and out of the area immediately around him as he slowly felt the tear give way. Heartbeat by laborious heartbeat the essence slowly came into his System-fuelled grasp. The glow faded from sight as it pulsed and tried to escape the grasp that already had it in a deathgrip. Finally a critical mass had been attained on Gary’s side of the fight and with a screeching wail and a popping detonation in the air which drove Gary back onto his ass, the rift vanished.
In the ensuing silence, everyone stood with silent unbelieving expressions. The gray-eyed Delver shook his head a bit to clear it and flinched as he felt the remnants of the blow from the Champion make his sight go fuzzy for a moment before his Constitution kicked in to suppress the injury again. Jack - the closest of the Delvers - let the greatclub slip from his grasp as he walked up to the chalk circle and without uttering a word swiped his hand through the space where the chalk circle marked. The hand passed through empty air without a hint of Jack slipping through a crack in reality.
A second swipe followed the first. Jack then did a third swipe, followed by simply stepping into the dungeon’s space. He simply remained there, stunned into incredulity. A spooked look was on his face as he turned to regard the young Delver sitting on the ground, leaned to one side to rub his sore buttcheeks and not paying attention to the spectacle he’d just caused.
Gary was too distracted as the now-familiar System message popped into the world in front of him.
Hello again! It seems you’ve gained a new.. Skill… ... ... How?! That’s not.. Oh dear me. I don’t know how to parse this one. This is unprecedented! This is something the System’s never seen before! This is going to take a moment to calculate how this Skill will manifest.. Please hold. … … … … … … Let’s take a look now, shall we?
At the new Skill text clearly freaking out, Gary grinned. As the message went on, his grin got bigger and decidedly more feral. He’d been right!
Rift Maker This Active Skill allows the user to generate traversable rifts between two places. This Skill taps into your Passive Skills 「Knowledge: Physics」 and 「Knowledge: Theoretical Physics」 to allow you to aim what is effectively an invisible-to-others ‘wormhole’ to a target destination. Objects retain their momentum upon entry, but the user determines the point of exit. One rift must be within five feet of your person as you serve as the anchor point for the calculations this Active Skill requires. The other end is limited to a line-of-sight range of five hundred feet. The rift ends are static in relative position to where they are once created, and last for five seconds per use of this Skill. Rifts cannot be generated inside of objects or living things. Only inorganic or biologically-inert objects may pass through the rifts, and said rifts are two-way passages. This Skill consumes [ten (10) percent] of Reserves per use; unaffected by Status grades, Affinity, or Class. This Skill is upgradable?!
A burbling sound came from Gary as he read the Skill’s description. The burble grew into a chuckle, then a guffaw, then a cackle before settling into howling mirth as Gary found himself laid flat out on the ground rolling in genuine exultation. He didn’t care what it looked like now or ever. He’d done it. He’d done it!
As the display went on Remmy hesitantly walked forward and warily eyed Gary as he finally got himself under some semblance of control and had downshifted his mirth into the occasional spirited cackle as he caught his breath. Remmy watched Gary’s face for a few moments before sighing in resignation and putting his hands on his hips.
“Don’t scare people like that, Gary. We all thought you’d gone mad!” Gary’s response was to roll onto his hands and knees and downgrade his laughter to giggling fits. He sprang to his feet and for a moment thought about giving Remmy a hug before he remembered he was covered in Goblin viscera. He instead flung his arms out wide and spoke in between his laughing fits.
“Why would I go mad when I found exactly what I needed? This is a cause for celebration! ..Maybe tomorrow. Yah, celebrating tomorrow sounds good! It’s been a long day, and boy is my everything tired. I’m so happy right now that I’m a Plunderer! This worked out perfectly!”
“It’s good to see you got over your concerns over your Class,” Remmy said as he lifted the cross relqa and gave Gary a dose of healing Pearl magic. His Affinity railed against the intrusion but he couldn’t care less at the moment. Gary turned to Jack and saw he was still standing in the circle. He also noted that his headache was completely gone. That solved the question then. 「Rift Maker」 said it was upgradable, and he had the feeling down in his guts that sucking up more of these rifts was precisely what the System ordered! He was so giddy it was making him a little light-headed.
“Rift’s gone, Jack. I Plundered it,” he hissed at the man’s shocked expression before succumbing to another manic giggling fit and walking a few steps back towards the way out from the manor. There was a spring in his step as he moved and pivoted to gaze at the night sky in ecstasy over his new prize. The part of his brain that was where he felt his Class was feeling nearly orgasmic, as he’d stolen the unstealable so much so that the System barely knew what to do with him!
Lord Wevre sat back in his chair as Gary glanced at him. He gave the criminal lord a sly wink and finally calmed down enough to look at everyone assembled in the place. With a wide, sweeping gesture Gary spoke to the assembled men. “I want to thank each and every one of you for coming out this evening! This was a triumph, a huge success!” He laughed at the Portal reference joke that no one got. The other people were coming to the understanding now that Gary had just done something without equal.
“He killed a dungeon,” someone whispered. The whisper started people murmuring the sentence to themselves. The murmur swelled as the guards and Delvers looked towards Jack who still stood where the rift had once been, a dawning look on his face as he grasped the realization as well.
“He killed a dungeon,” Jack said, hands on his hips as he shook his head in disbelief. “He killed a fucking dungeon! God in Heaven, he’s gone and done it.. No wonder he’s acting like a madman!”
“Looks like it,” Gary said with another sweeping wide-armed gesture to mirror the first he’d given. “And there’s more where that came from! But now, I fear I must leave you gentlemen with the unfortunate task of cleaning up the aftermath because I am wiped out.” He looked to Jack who simply nodded and gave him a shoo-ing gesture with one hand. Remmy took a few moments to make sure no one else needed healing before he walked over to Gary and inclined himself to Lord Wevre. Gary took a clearly ostentatious bow to the Velvet Court noble before coming up once more. “My lord, apologies for barging in like I did. Emergencies, you understand?”
“Oh, no trouble young man. You’ve prevented a tragedy from occurring here in Limeroom, and I can more than forgive you ruffling a few of my feathers in the face of the spectacle of someone so enthused about their work. Do not worry about it.” Lord Wevre was back on his game, clearly being magnanimous but probably internally screaming in terror at what he’d just witnessed. In the span of an evening his home had been invaded, a dungeon had formed in his backyard, hasty fortifications had ruined his lawn, and the person he was probably going to try recruiting into a criminal syndicate just came in and performed what was likely the biggest flex since the arrival of the System to Veotera. The thought brought the feral grin back to Gary’s face.
“And so gentlemen, I bid you a good night. Again, apologies for not staying.” Gary wished he still had his cloak, as a sweeping flourish as he turned would have fit here perfectly. He simply had to settle for a quarter-bow as he stepped a few steps backwards before turning and vanishing into the oncoming dark.