Kai stepped through the archway and into another room; he had expected the typical shadowy corridor to reveal the next room, but he stepped right into another room.
In the middle of the room stood a horned man with blue scaled skin, wearing dark robes, who levelled cold yellow eyes on him as he tapped his foot impatiently, “Do you have any idea how long you have kept me waiting? Where’s the rest of your team?”
Alicia Stepped through the doorway, her bow at the ready.
Kai heard her bow tense as he held his hand up to stall her attack.
“Aah, good, at least the three of you aren't impulsive. Wait,” the man looked about, “there should be three of you.” A scroll appeared in his hand and he started reading, “Kai, Alicia and Sylph… entered the dungeon less than a week ago; one was a prior participant; however, the other two… actually killed it. Hmm, interesting.”
The man looked up. “Seems you also met the bitch, Atheos. No wonder you decided to take your time. What did she tell you? Where is Sylph? And how many adjustments do I need to make for this to be fair?”
Before Kai could say anything, there was a flare of light cyan flame. “What do you think she told us? I doubt it was anything that would ruin her tests as the architect of this dungeon. What are you, her dungeon master?”
“Great, a transient being, one that also knows more than I would like about dungeons,” he snarled.
The man looked over the three of them, taking their measure, seeing Kai still had his sword ready and a couple of mana bolts just waiting to be shot off, he tutted, “Let’s not waste any more of my time. This room is for you to rest and recuperate in; there are three separate bedrooms, a room to bathe in, and another to prepare food. Now follow me.”
The man turned and, without waiting to see if they would follow, walked through an archway at the far end of the room.
Looking about the room, it had the same blank dungeon walls and floors; only besides the archway they just stepped through and another archway the horned man had just left on the far side of the room, there were the doors to his left and another two doors to the other side.
Kai released his mana bolts and decided to validate what they had just been told; he moved to the left and opened the door just enough to peek inside. Seeing the comfortable-looking bed, he grumbled, “Are you telling me if we had just stepped through the archway yesterday, I could have slept in an actual bed instead of camping out on the cold dungeon floor?”
“Oh hush, you know you sleep just fine.” Syl said as she drifted through him to inspect the room further.
Feeling Syl literally pass through him, he shivered.
There wasn’t much to see, a bed with a small side table, a desk and chair, a wardrobe and finally a pot just sitting in the corner. It was basic, but to anyone who had spent the last week or more camping on the floor, having your own personal room with its basic furnishings seemed like the height of luxury within the dungeon.
“Syl, you do realise I’ve not once slept in an actual bed since I got this body,” he said, pointing to the bed, “that thing might not look like much to you and your fancy four-poster bed with a hundred pillows, but to me it looks like heaven.”
Syl tsked, “You know that bed would still help your soul rest better if you just joined us…”
“What's the pot for?” Kai asked.
Alicia was peeking in one of the other doors; she turned to see Kai, and she said, “Chamber pot… I think I'll stick with the flushing toilet in the house.”
“Alicia, please tell me Alea is more advanced than chamber pots.”
“If you are lucky, it’s a magical chamber pot,” she said as she deliberately looked away from him. “We shouldn’t keep that man waiting too long. He seemed agitated.”
“Let him wait; he's not the usual dungeon spawn, but he also isn't a person, just a copy of one.”
“How do you know that?”
“Dungeon masters usually are. Copies of someone the dungeon architect trusts, though trusting someone is a bit different than liking them… Not that it matters; the real version of that man will never know what his dungeon copies experience.”
A horned head popped through the doorway. “That is not a good reason to keep me waiting. I may not have his soul, but I have his memories, abilities and personality. And let me tell you,” he hissed, and smoke billowed from his mouth. “I was never a patient person.”
“For a race with such a long natural life span, you would think a dragon would have at least a modicum of patience.”
“If I could cook you, I would, but these rooms are restricted, and no harm may come to you here. Now I must insist, since you’re not the typical amateurs, I have to make adjustments, and I can’t make those adjustments until I have inducted the three of you.”
“Dragons, always so dramatic.”
There was an audible grumble as the man turned on his heel.
“Is it wise to tease the dungeon master?”
“Nope!” Syl said as she drifted through behind the grumbling blue man.
Kai followed through the archway to see the dungeon master standing in the middle of a round room with five dark, shadowy archways behind him.
Each archway had two of those light crystals he had seen at the top of each dungeon room, only they were mostly dull. Only one of the crystals above the door on the far left side showed any sign of life as it glowed a dim amber colour.
“Each of these portals leads to a test; once you complete one test, the next will become available. I will be waiting for you in the fifth chamber, where I will deliver my assessment of your performance. The astute among you should have realised you will be participating in each test twice. Now that I have done my part, not that it is actually necessary,” the dungeon master said as he turned and promptly strolled into the smoke of the fifth archway.
“So we all realise that was for show, right?” Syl said once she was certain the man was gone.
“He is one of the tests,” Alicia said, nodding her agreement.
“Wait, will we be fighting a dragon?” Kai asked a little too eagerly.
"Don’t be ridiculous; he could crush us with a thought. That guy was around the third or fourth tier, probably higher.”
“So, are we going to get things moving? We are all prepared, right? There is no point in wasting more time than we already have.”
“Your the meat suit; where we go is the one decision you have complete autonomy over.”
Kai sighed as he looked over to Alicia to see if she was ready.
She was watching the fifth doorway wearily.
“What's wrong?”
“Nothing, I am just not used to conversing with gods and dragons.”
“Neither am I, but a little over two, maybe three months ago, I didn’t believe elves existed, never mind gods or dragons. Now I have someone riding shotgun inside of me, and I’m about to head into the unknown with a pretty princess of all things. I’m not going to pretend my sanity is a certainty at this point. I’m trying to take everything as it comes, but for all I know I’m wearing a straightjacket right now and bouncing around a padded room.”
Alicia looked thoughtful as he turned from her and walked through the archway.
“M’lord, we have been waiting for you and your party. The battery is set up and charging at the convergence.” A soldier in a blue padded jerkin immediately reported.
Kai was a little taken aback; one moment he was stepping through the archway, and the next he was standing in the middle of a clearing at the base of a tall cliff, Alicia already at his side as if she had been beside him when he came through. But he knew that wasn’t quite right.
“The scouts are reporting a large contingent of the horde has split off and is heading this way. High command has already issued orders to hold position and charge the battery for as long as we can.” The soldier said as he held out his hand, in his grip he held two pendants. “Your return stones. They have been set to send you and Lady Alicia to the field hospital should you break the stone.”
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Kai blinked in confusion as a flare of cyan flame announced Syl joining the conversation, “How long until the ritual will have enough power?”
“Ah, Lady Sylph, the mages have not informed us. Orders are to allow the battery to charge as long as we can. I have been informed the ritual will trigger if the battery is destroyed; the release of its energy will trigger the ritual. We need not do anything but endure the onslaught for as long as we can.”
Syl turned to Kai and Alicia. “I think I understand what we are supposed to do. We need to defend the crystal for as long as we can,” she said as she pointed to the large stone that sat in a shallow cave in the base of the cliff wall. “If it takes too much damage or we use those return stones, it will be the end of the test. How well we do on the test is dependent on how long we can hold out.”
“So, it’s a test of endurance,” Kai said as he scratched his chin in thought.
Syl looked around at the dozen or so soldiers that were setting up a defensive perimeter before turning back to the soldier that had addressed them and asking, “Who has command?”
The soldier blinked. “Lord Kai, of course.”
“Does everyone have a return stone?”
The soldier looked confused for just a moment before certainty filled his eyes, and he slammed the butt of his spear into the ground and thumped his hand to his chest in a salute. “We are prepared to die for the kingdom, our families, and our children.”
Syl turned to Kai. “I don’t think the test is just about protecting the crystal, but that should be our main goal.”
There was a guttural cry that echoed through the trees that surrounded their little clearing.
Realising they were on a timer, Kai immediately started assessing their situation. The sheer cliff they were set against curved slightly, effectively hemming them in. That worked for him, as escaping on foot was clearly part of the test. But the open side was still far wider than he liked; it was too large an area for them to set up an effective defence with just their numbers alone. He needed to change that.
The forest beyond the clearing was dense, and the attack could come from anywhere.
“Syl, can you turn wisp and get us a lay of the land, which direction we should expect the attack to come from, and how long we have to prepare a defence?”
Syl was gone before he even finished his sentence. Changing into her orange wisp form, she flew up as high as she could to scout things out.
Kai turned back to the soldier, “I want you and your men to hold back and defend the battery itself from anyone who gets past me. What are your ranged capabilities?”
“M’lord, we are a company of spearmen,” the soldier said as he thumped his spear into the ground.
“No ranged skills or abilities.”
The soldier nodded.
“Can you and your men work crossbows?”
“Aye, but,” the soldier looked about, “no crossbows, M’lord.”
Kai waved his hand, and a pile of goblin crossbows and their ammunition appeared beside the battery.
“Have your men get familiar as quickly as possible; don’t worry about ammunition.”
Kai watched as the soldier ran off towards the others, barking orders as he went.
He turned to Alicia, “Got any recommendations?”
“Terrains are not ideal for dedicated archers; there is no real high point I can get to, and the clearing is shorter than I like. I won't be able to use Gift to the fullest. “
Kai nodded as he summoned an axe from storage; he just hoped he would have enough time.
Syl appeared beside them both, shaking her head, she sighed, “It’s dense woods as far as I can see in every direction. By the dust that’s being kicked up and the fleeing birds, I would say the main force is hours away, but there are signs that there is a scouting force that could be here anywhere from half an hour to ten minutes from now.”
Kai just nodded as he walked up to the closest tree. Filling the weapon with mana, he performed his first infused strike; just as he hoped, the axe bit deep, and in two more strokes, the tree was felled.
As soon as the tree started to fall, praying the tree wasn't too large, he used his soul ring's looting ability on it. He felt some resistance, but when the tree disappeared, he grinned; his plan might just work.
“Alicia, Syl, keep an eye out; I’m going to give us some fighting room.”
“Got it, casting Limber and flow to help with your task; let me know if you would prefer mana or stamina regen.”
“Give him the stamina regen; he already has heaps of mana regen because of me and my earrings,” Syl said as she changed into her hidden orange wisp form to float protectively beside Kai as he dashed off towards another tree.
Kai felt his muscles relax as Alicia’s support spell hit him, it was like he had spent the last ten minuets stretching, his body feeling more flexibly, quicker and dare he say that little bit stronger.
For the next twenty minutes, Kai expanded the clearing under the watchful eye of his party and the dungeon soldiers. He worked as fast as he could, hoping to expand their sight lines as much as possible and create a killing field.
When he heard the whistle of an arrow fly past his shoulder, followed by the guttural cry of a creature he didn't recognise, Kai knew he was running out of time.
Hoping it was just a lone scout, three trees later and pouring with sweat, he felt Syl use a large chunk of his mana to create a barrier between him and the barrage of arrows that came his way.
The trees burst to life with the sound of yips, barks and wailing cries as the attack started.
“I’ve got your back,” was all Syl said as Kai ran back to where Alicia was firing off arrow after arrow.
Kai skidded to a stop beside Alicia and turned to examine his handiwork. He had somehow pushed the treeline back a good hundred yards or more. “Does that give you a better shot with Gift?” Kai asked through laboured breaths.
The bow chimed enthusiastically as Alicia fired off arrows at a relaxed pace.
“Yes. Gives me more time to do this.” Alicia paused her firing, holding her shot a little long to empower the arrow; her power shot fired off into the trees, where there was a boom, a cry, and the cracking of a toppling tree.
As Kai caught his breath, he wasn’t technically idle as Syl used him as her proxy to fire off mana bolt after mana bolt.
“What are we dealing with exactly? I still haven't gotten a good look.”
“Kobolds,” Syl said as she fired off three manabolts in three different directions.
“Kobolds?” Kai said as he tried to remember what he knew about them from fiction. “What kind, hyena or dog?”
The scaly dragon kind. Bigger and smarter than goblin wretchlings, they’re sticking to the trees, waiting for large enough numbers to make a push across the open area you created.
Kai heard the snap of crossbows as a couple of the soldiers came forward to pick off the growing numbers.
“M’lord, good work with the trees. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone work so hard so fast in all my life. But might I ask what you had planned for the lumber?” the soldier from before asked.
Kai had no idea how many trees he had managed to clear, but a quick mental check of his storage told him it was an impressive one hundred and eighteen trees.
“I planned to drop them on their heads when their numbers grew dense enough and they made a concentrated push. Why?”
“If I may, we could set up a defensive cordon the kobolds would have to cross; we could use our spear to pick them off as they climb over the top.”
Syl flickered into her blue wisp form. “Kai, you take over. I can fly over and manipulate the trees into the best positions without worrying about dropping one wrong and having it fall on me.”
“Leave an opening, a choke point they’ll try to force their way through,” Kai said as he summoned three mana bolts and directed his attention to the tree line.
It was then Kai got his first good look at a kobold; a good head taller than any of the goblins he had encountered, the thing looked like some kind of a hybrid between a theropod dinosaur and humanoid. With a long, whip-like tail and swept-back legs, it stood on three clawed toes. Its green and mottled brown scaly skin helps to hide it among the shadows. Its neck seemed a little too long, and its head moved about in an oddly avian manner as it yipped and cawed with a toothy jaw at the others around it.
Unlike the other dungeon goblins Kai had been dealing with, he strangely understood that it was commanding the others to spread out and keep in cover.
He examined the one he picked out.
Kobold Scout master Lv. 5.
For a scout master, it didn’t actually seem that well equipped. It had a bow held in an oddly human hand and a quiver on its hunched back. But beyond that, it wore nothing, not even a loincloth. Kai was happy the thing favoured its saurian side and lacked any discernible humanoid junk. Either that or it was female, though it had no mammaries.
As he wondered if Kobold females had tits or not, he noticed the thing's beady yellow eyes catch his own.
It was as if something came from the kobold who had previously been telling its underlings to keep behind cover; it broke from its position and stepped out into the clearing.
Kai cracked it in the chest with one of his faster armour-piercing mana bolts before it could even raise its bow.
The other kobolds seemed to take that as a sign to make a push, and about twenty of them stepped from cover, picking up pace as they charged out into the open area.
It was madness.
Between Kai casting six mana bolts at six different targets at a time and Alicia's rapid-fire volley of arrows, the kobolds were all dead within feet of leaving the protective cover of the treeline. They just didn’t have the numbers to overwhelm them.
“I think they are a bit more resistant to the effects of my challenge stone, but it's still making them act rashly.”
“Agreed,” said Alicia as she fired off another power shot at a couple of kobolds that had grouped up behind a larger tree.
Seeing the trunk explode into shrapnel that peppered the foolish kobolds, Kai got an idea.
He checked his mana to see it read Mana: Kai-487% / 96%-Syl.
Realising his mana storage cuff was giving him about an additional four times his usual mana capacity, he decided he might as well push the treeline back further.
Ignoring how confusing working in with mana over a hundred percent was, he called up two mana bolts; he emulated how he killed the rune bear and poured about ten percent mana into each of them.
He kept the mana inside the bolt loose and volatile, only compressing the outer shell enough that the spell would hold when he fired it off.
Giving his first two test projectiles one last squeeze, he fired them off, but he didn't aim for the kobolds as they flittered from tree to tree, trying to move in closer for a better shot. He aimed for the tree they were hiding behind.
CrackBOOM!
Watching two trees topple and feeling a couple of kill notifications come in, Kai deemed his explosive manabolts a success.
He probably started methodically levelling the outer line of trees as Alicia picked off the kobolds that ran for cover.
Kai was a little worried about his mana capacity. Using a good ten percent of his mana for each shot could drain him quickly, but he found if he moderated his pace to one bolt every five to ten seconds apart depending on targets of opportunity, his mana actually slowly filled back up instead of depleting on him.
That was until Syl returned and copied him.
“Too fast, Syl, this whole thing is about endurance!” Kai cried as he watched chunks of his mana disappear.
“We need to do as much as we can to that treeline as quickly as we can because-“
The sound of several horns called in the not-so-distant confines of the forest cut Syl off.
“Because the vanguard is about to arrive,” Syl said.
“Adding focus to flow and mana regen,” Alicia said as Kai felt everything sharpen.
“I’ve had mana regen, but you said you are adding.”
“You have had a couple of different spells working on you since you first started cutting down trees. I have yet to learn what you can safely handle, so I am keeping things subtle. But focus is different; do not waste time when under its effects.”
Taking the hint, Kai picked up the pace, and together they obliterated the forest, only retreating to Syl’s defensive cordon when both Kai and his mana cuff were completely drained.