Chapter: 1
Len pulled the rail carts down the track towards where Rick was working. Both of them were wearing their dungeoneeing gear, armor with a litany of tools on their belts and chests a sword on Len’s hip. Rick’s hammer in his hand as he tapped on the wall at the end of the rail tracks.
Len coughed through the rag covering his face, the stone dust from the tunnel had caked it and the rest of his clothes long ago.
The walls shuddered and dust fell from the ceiling. Len studied it for damage, thick stone ribs arching overhead.
“Looks like the Andarri arrived,” Len said.
Rick grunted and kept tapping the wall, not taking the time to wipe the dust that fell on his bald head.
“How long till you reach the vault wall?”
“Just another length,” Rick hit the wall, cracks ran through the stone from his point of impact. The stone parted in an archway, the rock crunching against one another as it was fused together into arched ribs and slats that connected the archways together, holding the secret tunnel’s ceiling up.
The floor dropped to reveal newly compressed rails.
Rick hit the piles of extra material.
They dropped slightly, stacks of compressed stone bricks.
Len’s mana sight picked up the enchantment covering the wall at the end of the tunnel. Might not be able to make enchantments anymore but I can still learn about them, break and redirect them.
Rick waved his hand, storing half the bricks in his folded space, giving Len a path to the wall. “Your turn.”
Rick went to the furthest rail cart and dumped in the bricks, moving up the train.
“The All-Seers vault,” Len touched the wall. So close. The man was a legendary figure, a guardian over his city Harmonia, a wasteland that he continued to protect.
Rick and Len caught a rumor from someone that had lived in the city before the collapse. A vault that contained the wealth and everything that the All-Seer cared for.
Now they were a hundred meters underneath the broken city in a secret tunnel they’d built over months in anticipation of a raid the Andarri guild had set up to defeat the All-Seer finally.
Len pushed hopes and worries to the side. It wasn’t his first delve, not by a long shot. He’d been a dungeoneer for a hundred and thirty years now.
Don’t get sloppy. He studied the enchantment.
“How’s it look?” Rick asked as two more impacts ran through the tunnel’s supports.
“Old, this kind of enchantment was new after the apocalypse. Its powerful and big. Alarm type, doesn’t have any defensive features.”
Len sent a thread of mana pulsing through the enchantment, charging it. The enchantment lit up, showing lines and runes through the wall and into the distance on either side. It only went down half a meter before it flattened out.
“Looks like we shouldn’t be too far off of the floor.” Len pulled out a bypass from his storage. It was a doorway someone could crouch through, covered in runes and lines, part of an enchantment.
The tunnel shuddered from impacts on the surface. Dust fell from the ceiling as he held himself steady, bracing against the impacts and movements rippling through the stone.
Len gritted his teeth, his muscles coiled in tension.
"All-Seer still got some kick in him," Rick, said from behind him.
Len grunted removing the wax paper on the back of the metal frame before pressing them to the wall. He placed his hand upon the wall to steady himself. Another impact hit above their heads, a cracking noise sounding down the tunnel.
Len shot a look back at Rick, the other man turning his head back from where the noise had come from with wide eyes.
That sounded like stone in the tunnel breaking. Rick did not build things weak.
“Maybe hurry up? I built the tunnel strong but they’re really going all out,” Rick said.
Len turned back to the metal doorway and the enchanted stone beyond. Using his mage sight he picked out the runes that made up the enchantment.
Where are the linking runes?
He drew out his chisel from his hip, using his hand to steady himself against the rock as the ground shook around him. There you are, just need to alter the direction.
Len activated his chisel, the edge glowing with a blue mana blade as he dug it into a rune, altering it.
He moved with precise movements, removing some runes, altering others, a complicated maze.
He removed his chisel from the stone watching as the runes within the space of the metal frame stopped glowing and the runes within the bypass lit up, becoming part of the defensive enchantment.
"All right, Rick, you're up. The defensive enchantment’s bypassed."
Rick pressed his hands to the small of his back, cracking his spine as they moved past one another.
More impacts rang out above. Fighters are going all out up there.
Rick took out his hammer from his tool belt, both of them were covered in tools, from those on their belts to those on their chests.
“Over a hundred and fifty years old, survived the apocalypse to live under the Arrivals, and now carrying out one of the largest heists in history, right underneath the god-emperor's feet,” Len shook his head.
"Well, it certainly was nice for the Andari to distract old Dennis up there," Rick said as he tapped the stone within the metal frame with his hammer, turning his head as if to listen. “With this we’ll never have to go explore another dungeon, realm, resource node, or hidden vault ever again.”
"Full heated water ration, enough food to eat every day, even one of those beds with a mattress, not just a cot,” Len chuckled. “You going to open us up a passage?”
“No patience in the youth today,” Rick grumbled. He had no more hair and looked to be in his mid fifties, tempering his body and cultivating had staved off the worst of aging. His clothes were dust stained and his salt and pepper beard had grown ragged. “Time to make some reinforced walls and bricks,” Rick took out his hammer, tapping on the stone, he listened, nodded to himself and then hit inside the metal doorway.
The wall collapsed into bricks.
Rick reached out his hand, storing the bricks, before holding his hand out to the side and dumping them to the side of the tunnel in organized stacks.
Len looked down the square tunnel framed by the metal doorway, into a room filled with racks.
A dozen shudders ran through the stone as dust rained upon him.
A cracking noise rang out through the tunnel behind Len. He peered through the absolute darkness as if it didn't exist, spotting a crack running through the ceiling. "I think we better hurry up, it looks like the Andari and Dennis are making a lot of trouble up there."
Len moved past Rick, his sight active as he looked for the tell-tale signs of traps. Nothing jumped out to him as he reached the other end of the tunnel.
He crouched at the room’s new entrance, his sight allowing him to see through the stone for a few feet and pick up any traces of man-made enchantments and other kinds of traps that dungeons and hidden vaults were so fond of using.
They were between two racks, filled with enchanted gear.
Emperor’s vaults.
He drew his vision away from them, searching the metal of the racks and the stone floors and ceiling.
"No traps and no enchantments I can spot," Len said, holding onto the side of their bypass tunnel. "Not an alarm, no defensive darts, not even a pitfall trap."
“Thought that the walls and the door would be enough?” Rick asked, coming to a stop at his shoulder.
“Guessing so,” Len took another look around before he stepped forward and into the vault.
Nothing happened, he moved swiftly across the floor, to the edge of the rack, and peering around it. Racks lined the room, to the right there was the vault door, to the left was double door made from wood.
Several impacts could be heard but the vault didn’t even shudder.
A cracking noise ran through their tunnel, Len looked back to see the tunnel collapse up to the bypass tunnel as Rick jumped forward, landing ten meters ahead of where he had been.
A wash of stone dust obscured him from view.
Len ducked his head against the dust, screwing his mouth and nose shut. The dust stopped hitting him as he blinked away the dust.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Rick hacked up a lung and stepped out of the cloud.
“Well, that’s going to take some working,” He sputtered before sneezing several times and spitting to the side.
“Clear a path out or check the room?” Len asked.
“Check the room, won’t take me much to clear us a tunnel, we already have a path,” Rick said. He took out his canteen and rinsed his face, clearing his eyes and beard.
It was rare for any plan to go to fruition without a few alterations. Heck, when they went to dungeons or to different realms, there was no guarantee of anything. The very environment could be completely alien and different. Sometimes it was best to go in without any plan at all, just preparation.
With these thoughts, Len moved down between the racks, glancing to either side. Weapons, armor, even ingredients were stacked on the racks.
Rick and Len exchanged glances before turning their attention to the large double doors leading deeper into the vault. Len moved first, his eyes scanning for any traps or other impediments to their progress. Everything was covered in a thin layer of dust, and the air carried an old, stagnant smell.
He turned his gaze on the double doors. "Looks like we've got an alarm enchantment on the hinges.”
"Through the wall or through the doors?" Rick asked.
“Wall.” Len said, taking out a piece of glowing chalk and marking a rectangle out.
Rick stepped up to the wall, tapping it with his hammer and listening. "Ah, this is easy." He swung his hammer at the wall. The stone gave way, creating a doorway only a half meter thick into a chamber beyond.
Len drew his sword and went first, his steps coming to a halt within the room.
Rick moved around him, hammer at the ready.
The room glowed purple. “You ever seen a mana vein that’s purple?” Len asked.
“I heard about denser kinds of mana, but this, dude.” Rick shook his head.
Len studied the obelisk that rose out of the mana vein in the middle of the room, it was covered in dense runes. The hell is the enchantment?
Around the obelisk and throughout the room were various enchanted devices and items: manna batteries, manna condensers, healing and stamina formations.
A sarcophagus next to the obelisk hissed with released air as the front fell away, revealing a woman chained within.
"No, Dennis, this is wrong. Please, Dennis, listen to me. Not again. Not again. I'm not doing it--wait, who are you?" The woman blinked rapidly, staring at Len and Rick.
Rick and Len shared a look. There were few who knew the All-Seer’s real name, few that were still alive from before the apocalypse. And she said it with such familiarity.
Len kept his weapon at the ready, if she was allied with Dennis, they needed all the time possible.
“Wrong room, don’t mind us,” Rick said with a smile as he and Len backed up towards their ‘entrance’.
"You aren't the Knights of Aurora,” She said.
Len stumbled and tried to keep walking backwards, though his legs kept moving weirdly. He tried to look down but his head kept jumping back into position.
“I felt it, you have the system,” She said.
“What’s going—on?” Len asked, his body snapping back into one position again and again.
Rick glanced from Len to the machines and back again with a look that asked. Destroy them? Len shook his head. They were being reset in time, would the machines as well?
Her eyes darted from Rick to Len, sharp, focusing. “How old are you?”
“Not really the conversation I thought I’d be having in here,” Len said.
“One hundred and fifty-three,” Rick said.
Her eyes widened as she took in a deep breath, the whole room seemed to breathe with her, the mana vein shuddered with her. Mana rushed through the obelisk, all kinds of enchantments activating.
“I need you to stop my brother and I,” she said.
“What now?” Rick asked.
“You have to stop me and my brother from finding this place. Stop us from trying to use our guild. Stop him becoming the God-Emperor.”
“Miss, I think it is best if you started with some context?” Rick asked.
“Once he finds out that you’re here he’ll go back and kill you, make this so it never happens. This is the first iteration. Fresh, new. Unaltered.” She coughed. “He will understand what is going on with these momentary blips of time and will act upon it.
The woman winced but continued. “Have you seen how he acts, like he already knows what’s going to happen, like he’s lived the day, the battle before and is just going through the motions?”
Len closed up his canteen as the stone under his feet sunk back into the ground. He stored the canteen and pulled his cane out of the ground as it levelled out with the rest of the room.
Len had seen the All-Seer fighting before, a terrifying sight as he destroyed all that stood in his path, moving like nature and the world shifted to his will. “Yes.” Len said, regret deep in his stomach. How were they supposed to win against such a man?
“That’s because he has,” the woman said. “This obelisk manipulates time. It drags souls back through time. Allowing one to know what will happen in the future. This used to be a dungeon. We were just young hunters when we cleared it out. My brother was badly wounded and pinned to the obelisk and I wished that we could go back and change everything—and we did.”
Len frowned, looking over the obelisk. I’ve never even seen some of these runes before.
“You’re Daniela Malone?” Rick asked.
“Yes.” She cleared her throat and pushed on. “We returned to the day before, my brother and I were back in the hunter guild about to sign up for the dungeon clearing. We went through the day and it repeated like it had before. We came to the dungeon and fought our way through, then we tested out the obelisk. It allowed us to teleport myself and my brother back a day again. We went through the day and secured the dungeon once again.”
“I thought you died nearly fifty years ago? With the fall of Harmonia,” Rick said.
“We linked our souls, he would go off on the dangerous missions. I would be here, then when he died I would know and I could roll back time, bringing his soul back as well and he could do the day again. It allowed us to become powerful quickly, our guild rose with us and we formed it here above the obelisk. We were turning the tide on the apocalypse, saving people.” Her head dropped, “Then the different guilds started arriving and we learned the limit of the obelisk. If you’re too strong then you can’t go back in time, it takes the equivalent amount of power to regress you, shorter time periods are cheaper than longer. He could only go back a little, now he’s too strong to go back anymore. He locked me in here to keep me safe while the city was burning above.”
She took a few wracking breaths and opened her eyes to look at them both.
“I can send you two back. You’re old enough that you’ll exist before we reach this dungeon. You also don’t have a high enough cultivation to cause issues.” She looked at them both.
Len glanced at his stat sheet out of reflex.
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Len
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Level: 183
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Body: 189
Mana: 183/183
Experience: 17,217
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“One hundred and thirty-six years. Use them wisely. You’ll have one shot at restarting the apocalypse.” Daniela’s voice cut through that moment, pausing it.
Daniela’s hair was rising around her with the charge of mana. She looked like some ethereal goddess, the obelisk drawing massive quantities of mana from the vein below. The room rumbled with the sheer power.
Len tried to get away, same as Rick, but they were stuck in place.
“Good luck. Dennis was a good man once, please save him.” Daniela’s smile was as fragile as her.
Power flooded into the room, the obelisk’s runes resonating with power that ran through its length. The room danced with light. Daniela’s eyes shone, her channels and core outlined in power.
The world seemed to contract, time held in a singular second.
Len stumbled, the coal on his shovel missing the furnace he was filling.
“Watch what you’re doing, shovel head!” a man bellowed, barely audible over the roar of flames and machinery.
There were a dozen furnaces lined against one side of the stone room, caked in coal dust that was brought to the furnace’s maws on tracks carts.
Noise filled the place, metal on metal, hissing, yelling, the scrape of shovel on stone and coal. The heat, it filled his mouth and his nose, drying out his eyes.
What in the fuck? Len looked down at the shovel he was holding. His shirt was stained, exposed skin covered in sweat and coal dust, the two mixing into a black slurry on his skin.
His coveralls barely had signs of their once blue coloring. He stared at the machine he was feeding coal into with a group of three others. Their faces were black with the dust and sweat, the flames roaring in the furnace’s belly as it eagerly consumed the coal they threw in.
The pigworks. Not a rune or mana crystal to be seen. Before the apocalypse?
He called his stat screen.
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Mana Integration System
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Mana saturation: Low
Connection to system network: 10:000:00:00:00
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The screen shuddered.
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Mana Integration System
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Mana saturation: Low
Connection to system network: 1:135:14:37:15
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Len thought of his stat screen.
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Len
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Level: 0
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Body: 8
Mana: 0
Experience: 0
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The system only started up when the Arrivals appeared.
“What you doing? Get working!” A larger man yelled from where he was shoveling coal into the furnace, his ire growing. The others flinching away from his words, focusing on their work, not wanting to get involved.
“I quit,” Len said, walking away from the coal piles and the underbelly of the furnace. He was stronger than the average person that would be at five.
“What you think you’re doing?” The foreman’s meaty hand clasped onto Len’s shoulder. Born of a working strength and anger at his own position.
Len grabbed his hand, thrust his hip into the man’s side and threw him.
He landed on a pile of coal, coughing and winded.
Len grabbed onto the mana around him. So little? He condensed them and struck one of his five mana gates, he let out a sigh as mana started to flow into his channels.
Mana fatigue hit him like a sledgehammer in the head, he staggered for the door, trying to not throw up.
He pushed on, gathering up the little mana in his channels, condensing them.
Len got around a corner and leaned against a wood plank wall, focusing inward as mana collected at the center of his being under his guidance.
It was getting harder to push mana into his core, though the resistance was barely noticeable under his will. Like a spark to flour his core ignited, a translucent marble at the center of his being.
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You have opened a mana gate
+1 to mana
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You have leveled up!
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Level 1
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“Stat screen.”
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Len
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Level: 1
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Body: 8
Mana: 1
Experience: 0
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Len’s nose wrinkled at the smell from his clothes, his impurities flushed through his pores and excreted.
Enough for now.
Len pushed himself forward, jogging away from the smelter and towards the main road.
Len slowed and looked around, carts pulled by horses, donkeys and oxen rolled on cobblestone roads. He slowed to a stop as he reached the main road.
Industry filled the streets and stained the skies with smog. Trains deposited coal and iron from the Stained Mountains, foundries refined and smelted it all to be passed to the factories that would turn them into all kinds of products.
Through the coal smoke Len could see Eskon, rising up on its long lazy rise. The capital of Plynthia.
Am I really a hundred and thirty years in the past?
Len ran over to a muddy puddle and looked into it, seeing a wiry boy looking back at himself, stained with industry.
“Get out of the way you fool!” a man yelled. Len jumped out the way of a horse and cart carrying pig iron.
If I made it, did Rick?
His eyes landed on a group of buildings near the foundry, bunkhouses, general store, cafeteria, buildings that supported the workers. He ran for the ‘call house’
“Eugh!” People backed away from the smell.
Needs must.
Using his weaponized stench and elbows he pushed through the line to one of the sound talismans secured to the wall with only thin wooden walls between callers. It was half a meter wide and a meter tall, made of metal, with only nine rotating numbers beneath, a receiver to listen through, a speaker to talk into and a handle to activate it.
He pushed past a worker getting off of a sound talisman, rotating in Rick’s number and pulled the handle down. He felt the mana activate. Someone knew about mana already. The sound talismans had come about suddenly and been accepted by everyone, even though they didn’t understand how they worked.
“The fuck there’s a line!” the man next up yelled. Others glaring from where they stood.
Len paid them no attention, he looked at his hands as it rang.
No wrinkles. His back was no longer curved. His joints didn’t ache, his eyes were clear. He rubbed under his eyes, the perpetual bags were gone.
“Yooo, Len?” Rick said.
“Yeah?” Len heard something wrong in Rick’s voice, guilty.
“Hey dude, umm, so, probably going to get arrested. Gonna need you to post my bail,” Rick’s voice picked up as it would when someone was running. “Valoria Military Academy! Fuck it feels good to be able to run!” Rick was laughing as Len heard yelling in the background.
“We’ve been back in time for less than five fucking minutes!” Len hissed into the receiver.
“We’re back in time!”
“That’s not the point!”
“Kind of the poi—oh shit he’s fast!” There was the sound of air coming out of lungs and then feet on the ground.
Len lowered the receiver looking at the people in the room, recovering. “Fuck.” He rushed through the crowd out to the street. People’s swearing following him.