“Alright, is everyone ready?”  Horvath asked as we all stared up at the large, circular ruined building.

“Sure, let’s do this.”  I said, activating my claws and preparing my whip.  I realized the claws likely won’t be much use, but I saw no point in not having them ready, just in case.

“We’re set.”  Celeste answered for both the twins.  Aurora was gripping her wand nervously, while Celeste was taking a few test swings with her spear.

Amber was fidgeting with her crossbow.  Once she finished whatever it was she was doing, she grinned.  “There we go.  I’m all ready.”

Finally, I glanced over to Simona.  She had her eyes closed and was slowly waving her scimitars around.  She seemed to be getting used to the rhythm for fighting the undead, as her movements seemed to be to music that no one could hear.  Eventually she stopped and opened her eyes.  “Alright, I think I’ve got it.  Ready when you are.”

“Alright then let’s go.”  Horvath hefted his shield in front and started toward the door, with the rest of us falling into the formation we had decided on.  Since we expected the hallways to be narrow, we planned to move two wide at most.  Horvath would take the lead alone, followed by Celeste and Simona who would need to close into melee range once the fighting started.  Next would be Aurora and Amber, then I would bring up the rear.  Honestly, since my abilities were so unsuited to this place I wasn’t the best for a rear guard position, but I was the only real option we had.  My job was mostly a warning system if anything was coming up behind us, so the others could react.

We cautiously made our way into the first room of the ruins, and began to look around.  Everything was still the same as it had been when I came before, with the old bed against the wall and books lining the bookshelf.  I decided since we were all here this time to take a closer look through the books, but as expected time had taken it’s toll on them and they were all worthless and unreadable.

As we made our way further down the hallway, I pointed out the two other rooms I had explored.  “That room is where the stairs are, while the one on the other side is where the undead started coming from when I got close to the stairs.  Anything further down the hallway is completely unknown.”

Horvath nodded.  “Alright, let’s clear them out before heading down.  I don’t like the idea of having some zombie sneaking up behind us, especially when Lilith’s our rear guard.”

After some discussion, we decided that Horvath would burst into the room with the undead, followed by Celeste and Simona.  Amber, Aurora, and I would remain in the hall providing support with ranged attacks and watching for more enemies coming from the unexplored section.

Looking at the room we were about to invade, the door was closed again, but the latch was evidently broken.  That would explain how the undead were able to get at me before, since zombies and skeletons usually aren’t very good with door knobs.  It was strangely clever of them to close the door again behind them, but it’s hard to say whether something smarted did it or if it was just the game resetting the ambush for the next group of players to walk in.

Horvath positioned his shield against the door, then activated a skill.  He thrust forward with the shield, sending the door crashing into the room as he charged in behind it.  The sound echoed through the ruins.  The dynamic entry certainly focused the attention of everything in the room on him, so it worked in that regard.  I just worried that it also got the attention of anything else on this level of the ruins.

Behind Horvath, Celeste activated her charge ability and dashed into the room on his right.  She smashed into a skeleton with her shield, scattering it’s bones around the room.  Then she swung her spear in a wide arc, crashing it into the side of a zombie’s head.

On Horvath’s other side, Simona was facing off with an axe wielding skeleton.  She weaved her swords around with an almost hypnotic rhythm, slashing at the skeleton and parrying the axe when he retaliated.  However, she was so focused on the skeleton, she didn’t notice a zombie shuffling toward her from the side.  Luckily, someone else did, and a crossbow bolt with a flat head on it caught it directly in the forehead, sending the zombie sprawling with a large indentation on it’s head. 

“Wow, that worked better than I expected.  This is going to be fun!”  Amber said with a grin.

I smiled and took a quick look further down the hall.  As I had feared, we had managed to get the attention of more than just one room, and now several zombies and skeletons were shuffling toward us.

“We’ve got more coming down the hall, so you might want to finish up in there.”  I yelled, readying my whip.

Suddenly a flash of light flew past me and into one of the zombies, causing it to disintegrate.  Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Aurora pointing her wand down the hall, an expression of pure disgust on her face.  She paused a moment to observe the result, then nodded with satisfaction and continued casting her Holy Bolt spell at the incoming undead.

“...Or, take your time.  Looks like we’ve got things taken care of here.”  I said with a shrug and continued to watch the undead in the hall get repeatedly blasted with holy magic.  One skeleton did manage to make it through the barrage, but I was able to stop it with a few hits from my whip.

"Are... are you alright?"  I asked Aurora after the last of the undead died.

"... They're gross.  So I wanted to get rid of them as fast as I could, and panicked a little.  I'll be more careful now."  She said, blushing slightly.  After she had calmed down she realized how childishly she had acted, and became embarrassed.  Honestly, I didn't think it was much of a problem.  Aside from a few minor hits she didn’t need to do much healing, so she might as well use her mana for offense.  Had it been riskier for her to stop healing, I would have stopped her.

Since we had eliminated all of the undead, we explored the rest of surface level of the ruins in safety.  This level wasn’t particularly large, and we had managed to attract everything to us in that one fight.  Unfortunately, the rest of the rooms were about the same as what we had seen previously.  There wasn’t anything worth keeping, aside from a few bones that Amber seemed strangely excited about.

Stolen novel; please report.

We took a short rest to recover, then headed to the door to the lower portion of the ruins.  As we walked through it, a window appeared in our vision.

Congratulations, you have discovered Belzak’s Crypt.  Because you are the first players to discover this dungeon, you will gain bonus experience and the experience penalty upon death will be lessened until you either complete or leave the dungeon.  Also, events in the dungeon may play out differently the first time through...

“Huh, I don’t remember a message welcoming us to the other dungeon we went in.”  I said, looking over the message.

“I read something about this.  Apparently there are a number of undiscovered dungeons throughout the game.  Maybe the message only shows up when you find a new one?”

Horvath finished reading the message, then looked around.  “I’m a bit curious about that last sentence.  I wonder how it will be different for us, and why…”

Amber shrugged.  “From what I read, in a dungeon somewhere else there were different enemies for the first party then for everyone else.  I guess that’s what they mean.”

As we began exploring the dungeon, we quickly realized it was much larger underground.  The winding passage was wider than the hallway had been on the surface, allowing us to fight comfortably.  Which was good since we frequently encountered groups of undead.

Along the walls throughout the dungeon were a large number of murals that seemed to tell a story.  Initially, they showed an army of what seemed to be orcs following an orcish mage.  There were numerous paintings of this army fighting with other races or besieging cities.  Eventually they faced a much larger army comprised of several races, all of which they had fought previously.  It seemed the races had banded together to defeat the orcs.  Interestingly, within this multiracial army, there were a few orcs as well who were fighting against their brethren.

It seemed that the other army was able to corner the orcs against the desert so they could not retreat, and defeated them there.  The murals only showed one survivor, the mage who was leading the armies.  He was shown hiding in a cave, and a sinister red glow surrounded him.

After that image, the murals stopped, and from there on the walls were undecorated.

I smirked.  “Hmm, those paintings don’t seem ominous at all.  I can’t imagine they’re here by coincidence.”

“True.” Horvath nodded.  “They could be backstory for the crypt.  Though since he was defeated and his army destroyed, it doesn’t make sense that he would have such an elaborate tomb.  Either way, we just need to keep going.”

As we continued, the undead that we faced began to appear in larger groups, so I had to get involved more with the fights.  I maintained my inspire on myself to help some, but I still couldn’t do much damage with my whip.  I could at least stall an enemy or two until the others could come finish them off, though.

Eventually, while holding a couple skeletons back I managed to wrap the end of my whip around one skeleton’s leg.  Pulling back, the skeleton fell to the floor, shattering.

You have met all of the requirements to unlock the Whip Mastery skill.  You will now be able to use special whip attacks.

Ensnare unlocked

Your whip wraps around a target’s leg, stopping their movement.  After ensnaring a target, pulling back on the whip will cause the target to fall over.

* Falling chance is dependant on strength of both the player and the target.

Energy Cost: 10

Huh, I knew you could unlock skills by accident like this, but I honestly didn’t expect to get a weapon skill.  I’ve heard that the actual requirements for each skill are kept secret, so you can only get them by trying various things, or by having someone teach you.  Still, now I’ve got the potential to be a little more helpful in here.  I immediately tried it out on the second skeleton in front of me.  He didn’t fall, but because of my whip being tangled up in his legs, he couldn’t do anything but flail his arms around until Celeste came and killed it with her spear.

“Uh, Lilith… Why are you grinning like that?”

“I just unlocked the skill for my whip.  I can now get combat abilities with it.  The one I get lets me tie up enemies legs and potentially trip them.”

“That sounds convenient.”  Horvath said, coming up behind me.

“Should be, though the tripping effect is based on my strength, which I haven’t put any points into at all.  Also, now that I’m getting things that I actually need energy for, disguising myself will become considerably more of a sacrifice.  Ah well, at least I’ll still have magic in those cases.”

After that, I continued to ensnare the skeletons that came after me, rather than trying to beat them with the fire spell on my whip.  When I was able to trip them the brittle skeletons would shatter every time, so I was able to quickly defeat them.  Even if they didn’t fall, they were immobilized so my companions could quickly finish them off.

Zombies were still a problem for me.  I could ensnare them, but they seemed to have more strength than skeletons so I couldn’t trip them even with Inspire.  For them I resorted to using the Flame Slash spell embedded in the whip.  It didn’t smell particularly pleasant, but it worked.

As we continued on, we encountered a new type of enemy.  This one was a translucent humanoid shape, a ghost.  Both Celeste’s spear and Horvath’s mace passed right through it when they attempted to attack it, though confusingly their shields were still able to block its attacks.

Amber tried to shoot it, but was met with the same result as the others.  We did find that due to her blade dance enchanting her weapons with holy magic, Simona was able to hit them fine with her swords.  Aurora’s holy bolt spell also worked against them, as did my Ice Spike spell.  My whip usually didn’t work on them, unless I used the Flame Slash spell on it before I struck.

We decided Simona was primarily responsible for dealing with the spirits, while Aurora and I would assist her if needed.

“But, they’re ethereal!  It doesn’t make sense!”  Horvath yelled.  He still couldn’t get over the fact that he was able to block the attacks from the ghosts.  He managed to tolerate a lot, but that was just a bit too much I guess.  “I can’t hit them with a non-magical mace.  Heck, I can’t even hit them with my NON-MAGICAL SHIELD!  But I can still stop them from hitting me with it!  It’s absurd.  It’s like something you’d come up with!”

“Alright, alright.  Calm down.”  I smiled.  It actually did sound like something I’d think of, mostly because this reaction is pretty funny.  “Nothing about the undead make sense.  They’re dead, but not.  You can’t expect them to follow the rule of logic or physics.”

“They should still follow their own rules though.  It’s just silly.”  He pouted.

“Alright, fine.  You can write a complaint to PassCom later.  For now you need to accept it so we can get moving.  I’m almost to level 8, so hurry it up.”

“Easy for you to say.  It makes sense you can hit them…”  He continued muttering to himself for a bit as we pressed further into the dungeon.

Eventually, we came to a large room.  Guessing what was to come we took a short break, then walked in fully on guard.  And we were right.  As we entered, a large figure fell from the ceiling, kicking up a huge cloud of dust.