When I finally woke up, I was sore.
Given my recent less-than-optimal sleeping conditions, that wasn’t too abnormal. Quickly, however, it became clear that this was no mere muscle stiffness.
As if to drive that understanding home, the first thing I noticed on opening my eyes was the blood.
Hell. What did we even fight that bleeds that much… The bulk of it was dried, forming a sticky crust all over my skin and clothes, both of which were looking worse for wear. Skin-wise, I noticed a few gray patches, belatedly realizing that some of my body felt completely numb. My outfit was even worse off.
Unlike was true for the others, nothing I wore had any self-cleaning or self-repair enchantments, but with how I tended to wear my armor during any serious scuffle, they’d fared pretty well so far. The very worst they’d received was the scrape I’d gotten from that first Vitality Panther. Now, though, I wondered if I could even call them clothes, more scraps than anything else.
With the state of my clothing, I had a fairly slow realization.
That blood was probably mine, wasn’t it?
“What even…”
A response followed immediately: “She lives!” Before I could even process my surroundings, Cal was in my face, prodding and poking at me. “You do live, right? Because it would be really awkward if you’d turned into some sort of undead after all that.”
After sufficiently assuring Cal that I had not turned into some sort of Tess zombie, I moved onto more important matters. “What happened?”
With a shrug, Cal flipped the question on me. “Shouldn’t you be telling us that? Best we can tell, you went off and beat whatever was controlling all the undead, and then they just fell apart. Good timing, too. I hid invisibly in one of the mummy cubbies, but when my mana ran out, they all found me and I had to run around. Got a few wounds here and there. Pretty similar situation with Verin. Another minute or two, and we might have been undead ourselves.”
For the first time, I fully took in my surroundings, noting the thousands and thousands of corpses.
I did that? I remembered starting the fight with Necropolis Lord, but as the battle continued, my memories grew foggier. Wasn’t I mining something? I could feel as God’s Mind ever-so-slowly pieced things together for me, but not nearly fast enough to clear anything up.
“Anyway, once things ended, I went to help Verin -- we’re being nice to her right now, by the way. Apparently ‘being trapped and immobile in a block of ice as skeletons slowly claw at your flesh’ wasn’t as fun as it sounds -- and then you showed up looking like a zombie yourself. Did my best to heal everyone once my mana came back and then pulled you out of your armor. Think it’s been a day since then?”
Verin sat a short distance away, by no means far enough not to overhear Cal’s remarks. For once, she made no move to correct the rogue, and as I took in her form, I could see why. Huddled up with her knees to her chest, her eyes had a despondent look that felt all too familiar to me. I felt like I was supposed to do something to cheer her up, but I had no idea exactly what.
Laid out behind her was all my armor, my class skill keeping the plate mail around given that I hadn’t manually dismissed it. Even more than it had for all the blood and clothing damage, my mind refused to take in what it was seeing.
Dents, holes, and gashes polka-dotted and striped my armor, making the entire set look like some demonic zebra/cheetah-skin hybrid. In the very worst of my fights, I’d never seen that much damage to my armor. Was that the result of all those greatswords the champions had wielded? When had I gotten hit that much?
Unwilling to think about that any further, I dismissed the armor immediately, resummoning it in its pristine state.
“Anywho, not to rush you or anything, but neither of you have eaten in over a day now, and after that, we should really get going.” Preemptively answering my next question, Cal pointed back to where I’d fought the lord. A portal, much like the ones that formed at the end of dungeon runs, hung in the air, making it clear just how she planned for us to make it out of here.
I followed her suggestions in somewhat of a daze, going through the motions of making us all food and conjuring water. It was one of our more tense and silent meals, and I could tell that all three of us were eager to finish.
Not forced to make any form of small talk, I decided to fill my time by reviewing my notifications, having racked up a surprising amount given that I’d only been in one fight since last checking them. With far too many kill notifications, I urged the system to group them all together, glad to see it comply.
You have killed Skeletal Guard x 93.
You have killed Hollow Mummy x 289.
You have killed Skeletal Champion x 4.
You have killed a Necropolis Lord.
Based on your contribution, you have earned 17,315xp.
It was a staggering amount, both in terms of kills and experience. The part of me that knew we needed to level up to escape almost considered asking the others if they thought we could run the sub-dungeon again somehow. Had I kept fighting the remainder of the summoned undead, I would have had even more experience, the thousands of corpses around me that I hadn’t gotten experience from serving as a painful reminder.
I wasn’t entirely sure why, but something told me that this was not a good question to ask right now.
As it turned out, all that fighting was good for more than straight experience, too.
Life Magic has reached level 18!
Bleed Resistance has reached level 14!
Heavy Armor has reached level 10!
Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in Heavy Armor!
Based on your skill usage, you have received an augment.
Augment of Enhancement
Increases the effects of defensive enhancements applied to your heavy armor by 5%.
Class quest completed: Reach level 10 with an armor skill (repeatable).
+1000xp
+1 class point
Hammers has reached level 10!
Congratulations! You have reached the Initiate rank in Hammers!
Based on your skill usage, you have received an augment.
Augment of Weight
When striking an opponent with a hammer, all damage and force will be calculated as if your hammer weighed 10% more.
Class quest completed: Reach level 10 with a weapon skill (repeatable).
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
+1000xp
+1 class point
Ignoring the fact that Bleed Resistance was quickly becoming one of my highest skills, it was good to see that Hammers was finally working its way up to my other weapon skills’ levels. It had started at a pitiful level 3 when I’d arrived, but it turned out spending every few days smashing high-leveled gryphons for hours really supercharged its growth. In comparison, Heavy Armor had taken ages to level, as I did my best not to take big hits when I could help it.
Given how heavily I’d been damaged in the last fight, I figured I’d probably put the new class points into something defensive, but now that we were out of danger, I decided to sit on it for a while.
Notifications completed, I scarfed down the remainder of my meal. When at last we’d all had our fill -- even Cal this time -- the three of us approached the portal which would hopefully lead us out.
As was true of any good dungeon portal, though, there was something we needed to take care of before entering it.
“Loot! I’m getting a weird sense that you two aren’t nearly as excited about the loot as I am, but you know what? I’ll handle the excitement for all three of us. You do the honors, Tess.”
I bent down beside the first of the champions to see if it had anything worth taking. Save for its weapon and armor, though, there was nothing. Admittedly, its weapon and armor were pretty good, but also unusable. Neither had any form of resizing enchantment, and I was nowhere near large enough to use them. For good measure, I grabbed some anyway, collecting the least banged-up set of armor and one of the swords, but more as a memento than anything else.
The lord was similar in his lack of anything besides his equipment, though his was perhaps more interesting. His weapon, a gnarled mass of blackened wood with a gray gem atop it, was a good find in its own right. The crown that had once rested on his shattered skull was what truly stood out, though, a Rare item while the weapon was only Uncommon.
Ultimately, it was hard to get too worked up over either of them. While they increased a smattering of basic spellcaster stats, all their other bonuses were strictly for Death Magic, the bulk of them empowering the usage of undead minions. They went into my storage, but unless one of us suddenly became a necromancer, they were effectively useless. It wasn’t as if we had anyone to sell them to, after all.
Which, frankly, left me feeling like the entire trip had been a bust.
No sooner than I thought that, though, did something catch my eye.
It was small, almost insultingly so, but there, resting atop the throne, was a box. With its diminutive size, calling it a chest felt wrong, but otherwise there was no real difference. I opened it immediately, before even thinking to wonder if it was locked or trapped. Thankfully, it was neither.
There, as a reward for all of our hard work, was a… roll of bandages? Not sure what I was looking at, I identified it.
The Necrolord’s Unending Army
The great secret behind the necrolord’s endless forces, this enchanted bandage roll can form up to five meters of cloth a day. Directly imbued with the chill of the grave, it is possible to raise a mummy directly from the bandages, without requiring an underlying body. All undead created with this material will be empowered and deal frost and necrotic damage on touch.
My heart started pounding the moment I read the description, and I stashed the bandages away immediately.
“Anything good in there?” Cal stood on her tippy toes and craned her neck over my shoulder, only to see an empty box.
“Yes,” I answered honestly. “But it’s a secret.”
That earned me a look I struggled to parse, but thankfully, she didn’t push.
Speaking of secrets, the very moment that the bandages had disappeared, I’d noticed something unexpected.
Detect Secret has reached level 13!
My Detect Secret skill. After reaching the Initiate rank, it had gained an extra feature, letting me gain a rough sense of how close we were to discovering all the secrets in a dungeon. For entire months, including the past week of finding hidden chambers and passageways, I hadn’t felt any feedback from it. By now, I’d figured that it just didn’t apply to an open-world dungeon like this.
But right as I claimed the bandages, at last, I felt it.
One percent. All of that, and we’d only moved the bar up by a smidgen. The scope of it floored me.
How many secrets does this place even hold? And equally importantly, would they all be like this undead palace? Did each biome have its own big secret?
It was ultimately too soon to be sure of anything, but between me and Cal, I was sure we’d be finding more sometime soon.
Secrets taken care of, it was time to go. After a quick once-around to make sure there was nothing we were missing, we said goodbye to the death-infested palace we’d been trapped in for an entire week.
As one, we exited the throne room through the portal, returning to the sand and heat of the desert above.
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The trip back to the cabin was thankfully uneventful, barring the usual scorpion suspects. No new sandstorms swept us away, nor did we get pulled into any strange sub-dungeons along the way. There hadn’t even been a discussion about pushing forward to the darkness section like we’d originally planned. Not one of us thought that was a good idea. Having apparently spit us out far closer to the prairie, our return trip only lasted three more days.
To say that everything that returned to normal once we got back wouldn’t be entirely fair. For one, our group trips into the desert came to an end. On the surface, it was because we couldn’t be sure we wouldn’t be dragged into another similar situation we weren’t prepared for.
While I was still struggling to understand what others were thinking these days, even I could see that wasn’t the real reason. The only times I saw Verin in the next week were when she needed to eat, or the singular time she slunk out of her room to recharge the freezer. I wasn’t sure if she was spending all that alone time productively or not, but I had the vague sense that her behavior was concerning either way.
Lacking the proper toolkit to help her with my words, I tried something far more hands-on, leading to the second big change since our return.
I had a big new project.
For three weeks, I went back to my previous five-day schedule, training, fighting, and resting as usual. When it came to my home-improvement day, though, I made sure to do everything in my mountain cave, away from prying eyes. When at last I’d completed everything I’d set out to, it was time to present my results.
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When the knock came at Verin’s door, it was all the noble could do to stifle a sigh.
Some variety of intervention, then? In some sense, she was surprised it had taken this long. Still, she was hardly looking forward to it. Briefly, she considered just not answering the door -- had she mentioned how wonderful it was that Tess had built them all rooms with doors? -- before deciding against it. That would only worry her companions more.
As she moved to answer the door, Verin rehearsed her words in her head. Yes, I am fine. I have simply realized this place is more dangerous than I initially understood. I will be training for some time until I feel adequately prepared to manage it once again.
All completely true. There was no reason to burden them with any more information. If perhaps she sometimes woke up to the phantom sensation of bones piercing her flesh, of her ice running red with her own blood, then that was a personal matter. And naturally, she was not so foolish as to base her future decisions off such drivel. She was staying within her room for good reasons, out of an entirely normal sense of caution.
Thus prepared to fend off any and all lines of questioning, Verin was caught somewhat off guard when she opened the door to reveal Tess, her companion only uttering three words.
“Close your eyes.”
Instinctively, Verin searched for a reason to deny the peculiar request. Not immediately finding one, she complied.
Something heavy crashed to the ground behind her, followed by rustling. On the verge of opening her eyes to investigate, Verin was once again taken aback when her feet left the ground, her body swinging into the horizontal position of a bridal carry. She was placed back down before she could even protest, surprised to note that the ground was far softer than either dirt or wood. A moment later, something equally soft was nudged behind her head, and a warm and heavy fur was draped across her.
Most unexpected of all, however, was when someone latched onto her, one arm wrapped beneath her while the other stretched across her chest.
“Okay. You can open them.”
Doing just that, Verin was stunned to see that she was now in a bed. A real one, complete with a wooden bed frame, a mattress, some pillows, and a fur blanket. Admittedly, the mattress was a touch lumpy, more of a giant bag than an actual rectangle, and a few feather ends were poking out of the pillow, but it was more comfortable than she’d felt in months. In fact, everything beneath her had a pleasant chill to them, as if her pillow was always flipped to the cold side.
“Lady Tess. What is all this?” Had she truly managed to make an entire bed on her own?
Ignoring the question, Tess said something else entirely.
“This place sucks. I’m sorry about the skeletons. I know you don’t like sleeping on the ground. I hope this is better.” Her words came out strangely slowly, as if each sentence was a massive undertaking. Verin wasn’t quite sure why that would be, but with how polite she’d been trained to be, she decided not to force any more words out of her companion. It was a pure matter of Etiquette, and not at all that she wished to enjoy her first drop of comfort in so long.
Though not particularly tired, it was only shortly thereafter that Verin drifted off to sleep, wrapped up in an embrace she hadn’t asked for, in a bed she hadn’t even conceived of.
For the first time in weeks, no nightmares came to her that night.
It wasn’t until the following morning that she thought to examine her new furniture more closely, including the strangely familiar white cloth which made up the pillow and mattress. Realization dawning on her, Verin tried and failed to keep the edge out of her voice as she questioned the giver of her gift.
“Lady Tess. Would you mind telling me what exactly you made this out of?”