For a good five minutes the livestream chat is in chaos, with only static to meet their questions. Eventually, the screen goes black and text starts appearing on-screen, indicating that Annabelle is talking once again.
[Sorry to make you all worry! I’ve figured out the problem now. Turns out the reason why the stream went all static-y is because it was receiving too much information too fast. I’ve started to slow it all down to understandable speeds now, so just give me a few more minutes and I’ll have the stream back online!]
There is a general sense of relief shared by everyone watching, one that Alex shares along with them. Since it will be at least a few minutes before this very interesting livestream goes back online, he decides to grab some things to idly work on while he watches. He takes a few pieces of balsa wood and a carving knife from his little shop, and uses some scrap paper and a quick google search to sketch out futhark runes. Having something productive to do during the boring bits of the show would be a nice way to spend the time, and this way he’ll be able to start working on something he’s been thinking of trying out.
Soon enough, the stream is back online, with the video showing an odd room as Derik finishes crossing through the portal. There is definitely a theme to this place, since it uses mostly white marble and silver decorations. Even the door across the room from the group is made from some kind of silver colored wood. The rest of the party seem relieved at the sight of two other humanoids in the room, rushing over to greet them.
“Gwen! Natasha! We’re so glad you guys are ok!” Elizabeth pretty much leaps onto one of the two, slim with white hair and fur of the same color up to their elbows. The beastman-er, woman in question barely catches her, stumbling a bit as she responds. “Whoa! Easy Eliza, what’s got you guys all freaked out? And why are you guys dressed like you’re going to war or something?”
Ben speaks up somewhat incredulously, not understanding how the two could be so calm. “What do you mean, we geared up to try and get you out of this place! You’ve been gone for 4 hours!”
The other woman speaks up with confusion in her own voice, the glint of a large, dull red scorpion tail apparent behind her back. “Wait, what? What are you talking about? We’ve only been in here for like two minutes.” Everyone in the group turns to look at the same point in space in an almost uncanny fashion, looking like they’re reading something that isn’t there. Annabelle’s text shows up at this point, pausing the video to explain what exactly is going on.
[So, you’ll probably need a bit of explanation here. Their Sub-Systems are explaining that they have entered a Dungeon, and is also the reason for all of the time confusion. Since everyone in the group has their Sub-Systems connected to each other, they are considered a ‘Party’ by the Dungeon, and so when Gwen and Natasha-Gwen’s the Ferret Beastman and Natasha is the Scorpion Beastman, by the way-went inside, it slowed down time while waiting for the rest of the party to come in. Then it started to speed up time inside itself once the whole Party entered. That’s why the livestream went all wonky, time was being sped up so much the information got jumbled. The only reason the Dungeon started speeding time up without me there too is because of my intent to not enter, which labeled me as a ‘Party Non-Combatant’. So yeah, this is less a livestream adventure and more a live review of the video of an adventure. Sorry about the text wall, I’ll let you get back into it!]
With that, the video continues, with the group apparently talking to their Sub-Systems even though it looks like they’re talking to thin air, getting the same information that Annabelle had just relayed. Ben sighs at the misunderstanding, turning around to walk back through the portal while calling to the rest of the group. “Welp, that was a lot of worry and buildup for nothing. Let's get out of here-aaand the portal thing is gone.” And it is indeed gone, leaving a mostly bare room with seven young adults and a single set of double doors.
The group stares into space again, quickly making their own individual exclamations of anger or distress while Annabelle explains once more.
[So as it turns out, once an individual or a Party enters a Dungeon, they have to beat at minimum the first level to be allowed out of the Dungeon, though with multi-leveled Dungeons you can decide to go to the next level instead. Which, obviously, did not sit well with everyone.]
Ben starts to pace while thinking the situation over, Steve stamping his hoof nervously while the others in the party watch on anxiously. “So, what do we do now? I know we got geared up to save Gwen and Natasha, but we weren’t exactly expecting to be forced through some death gauntlet.” Ben pulls his hair back with his hands as he responds, understandably freaking out a little. “I know! I know, but what the hell else are we supposed to do? We don’t exactly have many options here-” “There’s only one option right now.”
The party all look to Stacy as she speaks, avian eyes locked onto the odd silver door as her wings start to twitch. “We move forward. If this works at all like the rest of the System, then it should have a game-like pattern, right? So all we have to do is kill whatever monsters might be in here, avoid any potential traps, and beat the boss at the end of this level of the dungeon. Besides, unless we are extraordinarily unlucky, then this is probably just a starting Dungeon right? There’s seven of us here, we can beat this.” She turns her gaze from the door to her companions, a determined glint to her eyes. Slowly, the rest of the group starts to calm down, returning her gaze with each of their own.
Natasha chuckles a little before giving the bird woman a thumbs up. “Thanks for the prep-talk Stacy. We still need a plan though, and while my little beauty here can do some serious damage-” She holds her scorpion tail in her hands almost like one would a child, which is…a bit disturbing, but whatever “-Gwen and I aren’t exactly armed or armored like you all are.”
Ben nods his head at that, taking off his backpack and starting to rifle through it, closely followed by Steve and probably Derik, seeing as the camera shakes around and points down at his blue-scaled hands while he goes through his own. “We thought about that too, and while we couldn’t exactly bring a lot and still be mobile, we got you guys some knives and hockey gear to wear. Not exactly much, but worse case we can just have you two in the middle or at the back of whatever formation we decide on.”
It doesn’t take more than a few minutes for the two to gear up and for the group to decide on a plan of action. Since they have no idea what they will find on the other side of the silver door, they go for a neutral formation, with roughly equal defensive and offensive options on all sides. Steve will take the front side of the formation, with Elizabeth directly behind him, Stacy and Ben taking her left and right flank. Behind them will be the backline, with Gwen acting as a backup melee fighter and Natasha as a mixed melee fighter and caster, since she knows a weak [Fireball] spell.
As Steve pushes open the double doors, the party braces themselves for whatever might be on the other side, only to find....a surprisingly average looking corridor. Granted it is quite spacious for a corridor, and it’s made from a silvery-grey stone material that doesn’t quite look like cobble, but otherwise you’d almost mistake it for some kind of fantasy dungeon but with less filth and grime.There are torches in sconces on each side of the wall at regular intervals, giving a decent amount of lighting even if it isn’t perfect.
The party cautiously moves forward, slowly easing up as they continue down the hall with no apparent enemies or traps in sight. Soon enough they simply wander down the hall with nothing else to do, speaking quietly with each other for a solid minute before finally seeing a room at the end of the hallway. As they reach this new room, cautious once more, they find themselves faced with a circular intersection made of white marble, three other halways other than the one they come from lined with silvery wood. They also find three...calling them creatures might be a bit much if you ask Alex, but there are definitely three things in the room.
Each of these things are similar in appearance, and look like piles of neon yellow jello or pudding from the glossy shine on their surface. Oddly enough the edges of the piles almost look like they are stretching out little threads and tendrils away from the central mass, though whatever they are, they aren’t moving.
The party slowly steps into the room, tensing for any sudden movements, but when nothing happens there is a collective sigh of relief. Steve and Gwen walk over to one of the piles while the rest of the group walks around the room and checking the other doorways, and Ben starts reading the air in front of each of them, Annabelle briefly saying what they are being told. Apparently these are called [Yellow Ambush Slimes], Monsters that are relatively easy to defeat so long as you have some kind of destructive magic, strong disinfectant, or access to fire, though it is recommended to not touch them if at all possible.
Ben relays the information to the rest of the team, with Natasha reporting that the left hallway just seems to go dark, Elizabeth reporting two doors further down the right one, and Stacy sighting a large pair of lit double doors down the forward hall. Gwen starts speaking while watching Steve lightly poke one of the slimes with his batton, head tilted in confusion. “So, why are these things called yellow ‘ambush’ slimes? Not like they’re being all that sneaky-”
Steve’s pained shout cuts her off very suddenly, the rest of the party running over to see what’s wrong. When the minotaur started poking the slime in question, a mass of its tendrils sprouted out from the central body, climbing up his metal baton like lightning to squeeze into any cracks in his armor that they could find. He let his weapon drop as soon as the slime attacked, stepping back and cradling his arm in pain while tearing at the glove and arm guard straps to get them off.
“Ah, fuck! Shit that hurts like a motherfucker!” Despite only being in contact with his skin for a few seconds at most, the yellow slime certainly did some damage. Wherever it could make contact with Steve’s bare flesh, mostly in a circle around his wrist, the skin had almost completely dissolved and was bleeding quite a lot. Elizabeth was on him in moments, holding his arm up above his chest and reaching into her bag for some gauze.
“Language, Steve. It doesn’t look like it’s bleeding too bad, so it didn’t hit any arteries thank god. Can you still move your fingers, any loss of sensation in your hand?”
“No, no it just-ah-it hurts like all hell. It’s like somewhere between a bad burn and like someone gave you a papercut and squirted lemon juice in it.”
“I would think so, pretty much all of the skin tissue around your wrist is just gone. It looks a lot like a bad chemical burn, from what I see. I’m going to use [Regeneration] to help it along so you won’t be bleeding more than you already have, we don’t want you bleeding out on us or anything.”
The entire time she speaks is with a clinical efficiency, wrapping the gauze around his wrist tightly to put pressure on the wound. Once the bull’s bleeding is almost stopped, just a small red patch growing on the white gauze, she takes out an empty plastic syringe, sized to hold 60 ml of fluid from a holster around her torso. She pulls the plunger on it back to the 30ml mark and holds it near Steve’s wrist, closing her eyes and focusing.
A kind of white energy starts to flow from her hand and into the syringe itself, concentrating into the space in front of the plunger like an actual fluid. She starts to make a little chant, the white light taking on a more golden color as she does.
“These cells divide
For a doctor’s pride
Make this form anew.
[Regeneration]!”
As she speaks the name of the spell and pushes down the plunger, the mana escapes from the syringe and starts to flow over Steve’s wound like sunlight made into a gas. The magic seeps underneath the bloodied gauze, the fresh blood staining it rapidly turning a rusty brown and caking up. Steve gives a sigh of relief, pulling the gauze off to reveal healed-if a bit pink and sensitive-skin. “The hair will have to grow in naturally, unfortunately.” “Hey, I’m just happy to not have a hand that feels like it was dipped in battery acid. So what do we do about these things, then? That one ate my baton.”
Oddly enough, the slime that attacked Steve hasn’t moved despite all of the commotion, though it has crawled over the baton and submerged it completely in its body. Seeing as it’s made of steel and plastic, it isn’t having all that much luck dissolving it, but it sure is trying in its own slimy way. Natasha looks down at it, tapping her chin in thought. “The Sub’s said that these are weak to fire, right? Why don’t I just light ‘em up?”
After reconfirming with his Sub-System, Ben nods and gestures for everyone to take a few steps back. “Feel free to give it a shot at least. Not much else we can do. I don’t want to leave these things here to trip over if we have to retreat from one of these other halls.” The scorpion woman gives a disturbing chuckle holding her hand loosely towards the slime with the baton. “Welp, it’s the end for you little guy. Time to [Burn]!”
More white energy flows around her hand, seeming to come from nowhere-it’s probably how pure mana shows up in video, now that Alex thinks about it-before a string of it shoots out to the slime, spreading over its surface like a thin sheet. Once she says the literal magic word and snaps her fingers, the mana flares bright red as it heats up, manifesting as a bolt of fire shooting from her fingers and right into the yellow slime. As it turns out, they are very flammable despite looking moist, the slime bursting into flames and writhing for a few moments before going still.
Before anyone can react, the flames go out completely as they lose their fuel. The rest of the slime’s mass starts to glow white, dissolving into little motes of light and drifting up into the ceiling and walls. “Oookay, I’m assuming that’s a regular Monster thing, right?” “Seems like it. At least it didn’t take my baton with it.” As Steven and Gwen speak, the minotaur kneeling down to take his weapon back, Natasha goes about lighting up the other two slimes in the room.
Despite only using the spell three times, little wisps of steam can be seen drifting off her skin, and when she lets out a sigh it comes out like a heat wave. Other than those effects she doesn’t seem to actually be hurt, it’s likely just some form of magic exhaustion if Alex had to guess. As the last slime disappears into light, the sound of a light tinkling bell sounds out. in the Monsters place is a small potion-like bottle of viscous neon yellow liquid, almost like a concentrated version of the slime’s body.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Natasha picks up the bottle, holding it up to the torchlight and examining it. As she starts a little and starts to read the air in front of the bottle, Annabelle comes to the rescue and explains what she’s reading.
[As it turns out, Monsters can sometimes drop items when they die! This in particular is a [Bottle of Yellow Ambush Slime Acid], pretty obvious considering what Monster it came from.]
“Huh, that’s pretty interesting. Hey Elizabeth, you mind holding on to this? You’re not supposed to get hit by anything, at least in a best case scenario, and I don’t want to know what would happen if this bottle broke right inside one of our pockets.” As Natasha and Elizabeth speak, the medic gushing a little about the potential applications of such a fast acting acid, the rest of the squad groups up and figures out what to do from here. Eventually they decide to tackle whatever might be down the left hallway first, then find out what’s in the right hallway, and then finally deal with what is obviously the Boss room last.
With the party grouped up, they go back into formation and start walking down the dark hall. Well, at least they start to until Ben brings up a good point. “So...did anyone bring flashlights?” A moment of silence is shared between them. “Yeah in hindsight bringing flashlights into what looked like a black void from the outside would have been smart.” Elizabeth sighs before taking out her phone, turning the light on and pointing it forward.
The whole party regrets that decision almost immediately, as the light shines on a group of about 10 rat-like Monsters. Although they have the same basic body plan of a rat, they are mostly covered in grey scales, with only a few lines or tufts of white fur in specific areas. They are also almost big enough to come up to a normal person's knee, and look vicious enough to give New York sewer rats a run for their money.
Gwen, Steve and Elizabeth immediately scream, Elizabeth almost dropping her phone in her panic, and the whole party runs back into the room behind them. The rat creatures-Annabelle lets the viewers know that the Sub-Systems call them [Grey-Scaled Rat-Lizards], a descriptive name indeed-are right behind them.
Steve stands at the front of the group, hunkering down behind his shield as a red glow flashes around his body, a faint roar of an angry bull sounding around him. The Rat-Lizards, which had started to spread out to try and surround the group, instead focus on him, forcing the minotaur to dance around on his feet to make sure that none of the Monsters could get behind him or start climbing on his gear, knocking them away with his shield whenever they get too close.
Stacy begins unloading clips into the creatures, though it still takes two or three bullets per rat to put them down for good. The same could be said for Ben and his crossbow bolts, though Natasha seems to be having a better time damaging the things, even despite the cooldown or whatever it is she has going on with her magic. Gwen, Derik and Elizabeth can’t do all that much without getting in their allies line of fire, so instead they simply wait for the fighting to die down.
Eventually, all the rats are dead and dissolving away, several chimes ringing out as they do. While the fighters take a moment to calm down and take a breather, the three non-combatants collect the dropped items. As the team reconvenes, it looks like they managed to get three leather pouches of [Grey Rat-Lizard Scales], as well as one [Rat-Lizard Pelt]. “Maybe it’s just me, but I wouldn’t say it’s worth being attacked by a horde of giant rat things.” Steve gives a little shudder, but still helps pack away the items before the group moves to the east hall.
With a bit of scouting on Ben and Gwen’s parts, The party finds out that one room holds several slimes and rat-lizards, though one of the slimes is green instead of yellow, while the other one seems to have a chest at the end of it, a floor of tiles in between it and the door. Since the floor tiles are most likely a trap with unknown effects, the group eventually votes on tackling the rat and slime room first rather than deal with any potential injuries that may come from the other room.
The party enters the room in their standard formation, but just as the rats notice the group and start hissing, Derik-and it could only be Derik, since no one else is doing it-starts whistling. Even through the camera and probably hundreds of miles away, and likely has lost some of the quality of the original sound, Alex could almost feel himself becoming more relaxed at the tune. The rat-lizards seem to be hypnotised, swaying slightly on the spot and completely losing interest in the intruders in front of them.
So as not to interrupt the sound of the music, Only Ben and Steve attack, Ben’s crossbow being relatively silent and Steve’s baton making only a dull cracking sound of bone breaking when he brings it down on the rat’s heads. Out of the seven rat-lizards in the room, only three are left before Derik stops whistling, and by that point it’s relatively easy for the party to finish them off.
Since there are only five slimes in the room and they don’t react to anything unless they are touched, The party takes the time here to take a break, eating some snack bars while Natasha slowly lights each slime up. There is almost a close call when she steps a bit too close to the green one, but rather than the agonizing feeling of dissolving skin, there is only a slight tingling sensation. The metal clasps on her boot do dissolve though, throwing an acrid metallic smell into the air.
“Huh, I guess the yellow slimes use an organic acid, while the green ones use a metallic acid.” Elizabeth starts mumbling to herself, and though it’s hard to hear it seems that she’s gone down a bit of a hypothesis rabbithole. Once everyone is done resting up, they collect the item drops so that they can move on. They managed to get two more pouches of [Grey Rat-Lizard Scales], another [Rat-Lizard Pelt], two more [Bottles of Yellow Ambush Slime Acid], a [Bottle of Green Ambush Slime Acid], and an odd, amber-like yellow stone in the shape of a perfect sphere called a [Yellow Ambush Slime Pearl], as well as an odd silver key.
The party moves over to the second room of the east hall, though only Gwen, Ben, Derik and Elizabeth actually enter thanks to the small amount of space between the doorway and where the tiles begin. Ben kneels down and examines one of the tiles, slipping a knife in between the tile and the floor and prying it up. Although it can’t be seen thanks to the angle of Derik’s camera, Ben reaches underneath the tile and seems to press down on something.
Immediately, little darts come out of the wall on the left, and had anyone been actually standing on the tile, they would have been riddled with them. Ben stands back up after replacing the tile, nodding once. “Yep, it’s a trap.” “Wow, really? I hadn’t noticed.” Elizabeth gives him a deadpan look, which he simply rolls his eyes at. Gwen seems surprisingly giddy, jumping from one foot to the other. “This is my time to shine. I’m very glad I choose Ferret Beastman for my race now!”
Before anyone can say anything else, Gwen leaps forwards onto the tiles, ducking into a combat roll to dodge the salvo of darts and arrows coming from the walls. She continues to dodge, duck, dip, dive and...dodge, using an inhuman flexibility to move around anything that might try to hurt her. When she finally makes it through, the whole section of ground in front of the chest depresses slightly and a dull grinding sound echoes around the room.
Everyone freezes for a few moments, waiting for something bad to happen, but when nothing does Ben kneels back down and looks under one of the tiles again. “Huh, looks like that big tile you stepped on locked the mechanisms in the tiles. You won’t have to do your crazy acrobatics again to get back through.” Ben proves it by walking over the tiles, none of the traps activating as he does. Elizabeth and Derik follow, as well as the rest of the team when they get the all clear.
After a quick check from Ben to make sure the chest itself isn’t also trapped, Gwen opens it up to find a silver amulet with what looks like a lock in the middle of it. With little else to do, the team makes their way back to the intersection and down the last hall, standing in front of the double doors in confusion. It looks like a mechanism is missing from the middle of the doors, some exposed mechanisms making an oddly specific pattern.
Stacy is the first to figure it out, asking for Gwen’s new amulet and the silver key from the slime and rat room. Everyone else quickly realizes what she’s getting at, and after a little fiddling with getting the amulet in the right position in the depression between the doors, they put the key in and unlock the Boss room.
As the group slowly walks into the room, they see a somewhat odd sight. There is what seems to be a humanoid version of the rat-lizards, maybe about chest-height compared to Ben, covered in glittering silver scales and pure white fur. It looks to be sleeping on top of a much larger than normal slime, this one a deep purple in color, almost acting as a waterbed. As the Boss room doors close behind the party with a thump, the odd rat-lizard-man startles awake, hissing at the group and standing on top of the slime with practiced ease. It pulls a crude spear out of the slime, purple ooze coating its flint edge.
Annabelle informs the chat that these two both have specific names and species, provided by the Sub-Systems. The rat-lizard-man is [Shetevar, Silver Scaled Kobold], while the large slime is called [Glubshugush, Royal Purple Predator Slime]. Ben immediately starts shouting out orders before the two Boss monsters can start attacking. “Elizabeth, Derik, backline, we don’t need you guys getting hurt! Heal and Debuff when you can. Steve, Gwen, frontline, Tank and Melee DPS. Stacy, Natasha, you’re with me in midline, fire when you can. Everyone keep eyes on that slime, it’s got ‘Royal’ and ‘Predator’ in the name which probably means it’s not going to be easy like the others.”
The kobold gives something between a hiss and a battle roar as the group rearranges, crouching down and tensing up as it prepares to leap. Surprisingly, a large pseudopod forms underneath its feet, pushing it forward and adding momentum to it’s jump, giving it enough air to nearly catch Steve off guard by landing directly on his shield. He manages to knock it away with a strong shove before it can do any damage, but the Monster lands deftly on its feet and gets into a guarded position, being careful to keep Steve between it and the rest of the party.
The royal slime begins stretching out more pseudopods, each one about 5 feet long, until it has a good 8 weird, slimy arms to work with. It slowly starts to move forward, reaching out to try and ensnare Steve, but a blast of fire grabs its attention. Before it can try to do anything else, Gwen slips between its arms, a knife only slightly too small to be considered a machete in her hands. In seconds she’s managed to cut one of the arms off at the base before retreating back out of its range, the severed limb writhing for a few moments before losing coherency and melting into a puddle.
Ben takes pot-shots at the kobold to help Steve out, though with it using the minotaurs mass to hide it isn’t very effective. Stacy takes shots with her pistol at the royal slimes arms, the force of each bullet causing them to blast apart. Steve continues his slow duel with the kobold, with him having the advantage in strength and armoring, and the kobold having the advantage in agility and range. Gwen is having a more and more difficult time cutting off the royal slimes limbs, as the puddles of slime continue to form around it, limiting her movements.
Eventually she hits a bit of bad luck, almost spelling the end for her, when some of the slime from Stacy’s bullets blasting one of the slimes arms off manages to land on her leg. The leg immediately goes numb, causing her to trip and fall over just inside of the slime’s reach, the only thing saving her being a salvo of bullets and fireballs into the creatures main body to distract it and the timely intervention of Derik running in to drag her back to the party.
With Gwen being examined by Elizabeth at the back, Derik turns back to the fighting and seems to come to a decision. A horse, rough voice, like one that hasn’t been used in a long time calls out to the party with a single word. “Ears!” No one else seems surprised at the voice, simply following his warning and covering their ears, Steven even taking the risk of dropping his baton to do so. Before either of the Boss Monsters can take advantage of the moment, Derik brings his hands together in a thunderous clap.
A visible shockwave reverberates around the room, leaving the party unaffected. Not so much for the Monsters though. The kobold lets out a shriek of pain, covering its ears and kneeling down on the floor. The royal slime seems to shake and vibrate like a massive piece of jello wobbling in place, several of its limbs seeming to slough off just from the force of the soundwaves.
This manages to turn the tide of the battle from ‘too close’ to ‘assured victory’, with Steve wasting no time and picking his baton back up, bringing it down on the kobolds head with the dull crack of its skull breaking. The slime is now much smaller than it was, and it only takes a few more blasts of fire and a clip of bullets from Natasha and Stacy to reduce it to nothing.
Once both of the bosses are dead, they both glow with a brighter version of the light that comes from regular Monsters, dissolving as some kind of victory music comes from nowhere. Once both Bosses are completely gone, all that is left in their place is a large leather pouch, another amber-like stone, but this time almost triple the size of the [Yellow Ambush Slime Pearl] and with a deep purple coloration, and a spear large enough for a regular-sized person, made of the same silvery wood parts of the Dungeon is made of and with a spear head made from silver metal, although the edge of the spear head is tinted purple.
As the party pick up the items and looks them over, Annabelle explains that the items are a pouch of [Silver Kobold Scales], a [Royal Purple Predator Slime Pearl], and a [Silverfall Dungeon Paralisis Spear]. Which, coincidentally, gives the group something to call this specific dungeon. Once all of the items have been picked up and stowed away-except for the spear, Steve decides to just hold it and holster his baton for now-a hidden door slowly opens, leading into one last chamber.
As the group walks into the last room, they can see that it seems to be some kind of small antechamber, but instead of leading into a larger room, there is a large void-black portal at the other end of it. In front of the portal is an orb on a pedestal, made from pure silver and with odd little etchings engraved into it. The group collectively starts reading the air in front of them, and Annabelle helpfully chimes in for the viewers once more.
[As it turns out, Dungeons have Dungeon Cores, one on each floor. You can take a Dungeon Core when you beat a level, which causes that level of the Dungeon to go into a hibernation-like state for a while as it gains more energy to make a new one. Apparently Dungeon Cores can be used in a lot of things, but the Sub-Systems won’t tell us what.]
The party doesn’t need much convincing, being able to shut this Dungeon down at least for a while could only be a good thing in everyone’s opinion. As the group starts filing out through the portal, Derik grabs the Dungeon Core and walks out last. Once everyone is out, the portal shuts behind them, leaving only the arches and a small black dot between them.
Everyone is looking around confusedly, seeing as they were in the Dungeon for a good two hours, but the sun is still in the same place in the sky. After remembering what his Sub-System said when they first entered the Dungeon, about the weird time dilation they could do, he simply sighs and starts walking back to the truck. “Fuck it, I’m tired and we need to head back home. We can look at the loot we got later.” After some general agreements, everyone follows behind him, and the stream cuts off.
[All right, that’s all we’ve got for today! Everyone should be back at my place in about a half hour from now so we can review the footage and look at the items we got. See you later!]
Over the course of the stream, the chat pretty much never rested, going crazy about the weird time dilation effects that seem to go contrary to the laws of physics, all of the weird things about the monsters and the item drops, the Abilities and Spells shown by the party, and just about everything else besides.
Alex himself had gotten several ideas for things to look into himself, such as what constitutes a magical focus, whether speech or somatic movements would make casting spells easier, as well as motivation to try out his one active Ability, [Dragons Breath (Fire)]. In the meantime though, Lucy had some announcements for him.
Well, that was very interesting to watch indeed. Anyways, even though you were only carving and drawing those runes idly while you were watching that, you did spend a good two hours or so on it, which gives you the [Runecarving (Wood): Beginner] Skill. Good Job!
“Thanks. I’m hoping to see if runes will have magical effects, and what the limits of those effects would be. Maybe even try to use them to make a magical focus of some kind.” Alex looks over his work, several planks of wood covered in different Futhark runes of varying sizes and quality. He grins a little-well, he does whatever the equivalent of a grin is in this new form, anyways-and can practically feel the maker’s itch inside of himself. First he needs to clean up all the wood shavings though.