Haywoods teleportation spell took them into the heart of a small camp. Some eyes fell on them, but any attention spared was soon turned back to its original task. People sat in groups around small campfires deep in discussion, or practised blade and spell, sparring, and thrusting spears. All of the people looked rugged and battle hardened and a little in need of a bath. Even the [Bard] looked like a capable warrior. His instrument was as sharp as any blade Jem had ever seen. The only thing that distinguished it from an ordinary axe was the width of the haft and the strings that ran along the length.
You know you’re in trouble when even the bard looks like he stinks. Jem took a quick sniff at himself and it was painfully apparent that he didn’t use any deodorant that morning.
“Come on lad. We’re going this way.” Haywood led Jem to a square set of low walls that had probably been a house once. The walls were too low to tell if there had ever been windows, but it was clear where the door used to be. Something about the space was odd, and when Jem looked through it, everything on the other side seemed to shimmer like a heat haze. “Now make sure to hold on to me, we don’t want to get separated.”
Unsure of whether Haywood’s clothes would count, Jem grabbed onto Haywood’s hand.
They stepped forward and Jem felt the telltale tingle of [Identify] wash over him. “Wait, you shouldn–”
*Ding* You have entered the Rift Dungeon Atemeru(A). As a rift dungeon experience gains are delayed until the Dungeon is completed. As a rift dungeon the exit and the rewards will be revealed upon defeat of the boss, rewards based on contribution.
*Ding* As you are significantly below the expected level for this dungeon your completion rewards will be increased commensurately.
Jem took his hand back.
“Haywood.”
“Yes?” Haywood’s voice lited upwards, his face carefully blank.
“Might you have any inclination as to why, perhaps, or even a small hunch as to why, this dungeon has labelled me as significantly below the expected level?”
One of Haywood’s eyes twitched. “No.”
“Haywood. I know you’re lying. Whatever that ritual did it’s given me the ability to get a feel for intentions. That said, a three year old would be able to tell that you’re lying, so please tell me why.” Said Jem. ”If you’re planning to kill me for some reason just get it over and done with please.”
“No. No I’d never. What? Why would I want to kill you? I brought you here because I thought it would be best for your growth. You’re totally safe here.” Haywood put his arm out and rested against a tree.
Then a branch swatted down like divine judgement and knocked him to the ground. “Almost entirely safe, just don’t touch the trees.”
“I am absolutely filled with confidence.”
“Oh good, I was worried you’d have lost some faith after seeing that.”
Haywood stood up and dusted himself off. Jem glared at him.
Haywood met Jem’s eyes. “Ah. I see. But I promise you are entirely safe. My [Starting Class] was [Barrier mage] and with my stats my shields are incredibly sturdy.”
“Even if I do say so myself.”
“So how are we doing this?” Asked Jem, resigned.
“How are we doing this? You misunderstand. I’m going to cast barrier spells on us, and you’re going to do it. This wouldn’t be worth anything if I did it.”
“What? How am I going to do that? Punch them? I don’t even see any monsters.”
“No of course not, without a class for it, punching them would be a terrible idea. Take this.” Haywood pulled another object from the void. This time it was a sword with a slim profile.
Jem tried to [Identify] it.
It’s a sword with a sharp blade.
Was that description snarky?
He wasn’t sure if that really was all there was to it or if his [Identify] skill was just too low levelled to glean any further information.
“Wait, why am I doing this all by myself?” Said Jem.
“You’re doing the majority of this,” said Haywood, “because it will be valuable for your class. Do you remember when I said that the more exp you use to unlock your class the better the class would be, even if the class rarity was the same?”
“No?”
“Well anyway, I’m certain you’ll get at least a B grade class option to choose from, probably higher tiers too, but that’s the tier where class modifiers become available. These modifiers break the rules somewhat, for example I could get a [Power] modifier which increases the potency of all of my class abilities by 50%. That would be an example of one of the higher quality options that sometimes show up.
“This is to say, we can get you a much more powerful starting point, simply by doing this now. We could just go and hunt an incredibly high level monster, but this seemed like a far safer bet to me. There aren’t any level 60 monsters capable of breaking through my barriers.”
“Did you say level 60? How am I supposed to fight something at level 60, I haven’t even fought a monster before. Also if 60 isn't a high level what is?”
“Don’t worry, I told you my barriers will keep you safe. And even if they come close to breaking I’ll know and I can be there in a second.“
“Wait, just what level are you?” said Jem.
“Two hundred and twenty six.”
“You’re the reason there weren’t any monsters in the forest aren’t you?”
“Well, now that the Bergil is out of the box, yes.”
“Honesty is a virtue you know.”
“Who has time for virtue? I’m old, go fight some monsters or something. I’ll wait here.” Haywood waved Jem off and summoned a four poster bed.
Haywood took off his shoes and lay back.
“Aren’t you going to put a barrier on me?”
“I did that while you were daydreaming about class modifiers. Now off you go.”
Haywood closed his eyes.
– – – – – –
Jem kept his centre of mass low as he snuck through the trees. The dungeon itself seemed to be a replica of the outside world sometime in the past. At least if the cottage was any indication. It followed the same layout as the ruin had in the real world so he was fairly sure it was the same one.
If there was one major problem, it was that Jem didn’t have a clue how dungeons worked.
There was no cottage in the immediate vicinity of their original arrival location, so they wouldn’t even start where they went in. Maybe this was a weird dungeon? Or maybe rift dungeons are weird? What’s a normal dungeon like anyway? Do other dungeons teleport you?
He didn’t even know if dungeons followed a set pattern. Was he just as likely to stumble across the boss as any other monster?
Jem had spent a lot of his time moving his body, but very little of that time was actually spent outdoors. He had no idea what he was doing. He was looking for monsters, would they be like normal animals, and if so couldn’t he look for tracks? That is what he did.
It was also why, when Jem met his first monster, it took him by surprise. Jem’s attention was locked on the ground so he had no idea where it even came from. His first indication that something was wrong was a falling leaf that suddenly started falling at half speed. It reminded him of those moments in movies where the protagonist is in a life or death situation and time slows down for them, only this time he suspected it was related to one of Haywood’s skills.
That distracting train of thought was probably why the tree rodent had the opportunity to clamber onto his head. Fortunately Haywood’s barrier spell stopped the creature's bites and claw swipes from making contact with Jem’s skin, but its paws still managed to get tangled in his hair. It was both undignified and painful.
In a move quite unlike one you would ever find in a tai-chi textbook Jem lifted his blade and swiped it at the space above his head.
The blade connected with flesh and sliced straight through. There was a hissing sound, and a high pitched shriek which abruptly cut off. Presumably when he hit something important.
*Ding* You have slain a Common Forest Bergil Lvl 45
Experience not awarded due to rift dungeon.
To Jem’s great relief and slight horror the scent of burning flesh reached his nostrils. I guess that explains the hissing sound.
No blood dripped down from his head but he did have a rodent to extricate from his hair. A minute later and with hair far shaggier, Jem unceremoniously dropped the Bergil’s corpse on the ground.
Jem walked away from it and came to a strange realisation. He actually quite enjoyed this monster hunting business. Even if he had to lean on someone else's power to do it while he got his feet under him, it really wasn’t that bad.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
– – – – –
Fifteen minutes later when a tree tore itself up from the ground and started chasing him, Jem was having second thoughts. Fortunately the tree was quite cumbersome and he was able to create some distance between. With a little buffer, Jem focused on finding somewhere to fight the tree.
With a tight thicket of trees he’d probably be able to hide behind their trunks and swipe out at the angry tree. He ran and passed by a few potentially suitable locations, but moved on unsure of their fortitude, eventually settling on a dense clump of trees with thick trunks.
Jem let out a sigh of relief as he stumbled in through a gap. He was once again reminded that he really needed to do more cardio. Then Jem touched his hand to one of the trees. It shook itself and woke up.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.”
Jem started running again, this time with a whole clump of trees giving chase. Because of course THEY WOULD ALL BE ALIVE.
As Jem ran his following grew, the trees already giving chase jostled others until Jem started to feel like the whole forest was trying to kill him. It also felt massively unfair that the trees were able to chase him so far.
Even if he wasn’t human anymore, he still started as a human, that had to count for something, surely. Humans were supposed to be one of the best persistence hunters.
Eventually Jem stopped. He’d found nowhere, not a single place where he could hide, and at that point his legs were cramping up so badly he almost wanted the trees to cut them off.
Jem decided he would fight them, now. His hooves would tread not one step further and his blade would grant no quarter. Feeling more dashing than he looked, Jem charged back towards the trees.
The ones in front stopped moving, seemingly in surprise. “This goat got teeth.” Ah yeah nope not a phrase I’m going to go for again.
The trees behind crashed had no such warning and crashed into the trunks of their brethren.
A branch thrust at Jem but he cut through it like a superheated knife through butter. In hindsight it would have made sense to assume that Haywood would have given him the tools he needed to complete his task.
Jem cut through another branch, and then another. The barrier dissipated the force of any of the branches that did hit him, while Haywood’s other skill kept Jem’s time relative to everything around him far slower. The more trees that targeted him, the larger the differential became.
Jem cleaved a trunk in two with one swing and got his first tree notification.
*Ding* you have slain a Forest Ent Lvl 56
Experience not awarded due to rift dungeon.
From there Jem became a whirlwind of tree murder. Or at least that’s how he imagined it looked to the trees. Jem leisurely walked around the trees slicing at every trunk he passed. Sometimes multiple branches came together effectively cutting off his path. In those moments he just carved through those branches too and continued walking onwards. By the time he’d cleaved through around half of the trunks, the Ents at the edges started to run. Jem was merciful, he would let them, afterall. He could always run them down later. I am faster after all muahahaha.
The borrowed power might have been going to his head.
Jem finished off the trees around him and started cutting down every tree he could see. Even the ones that were just ordinary trees. It never hurts to be too careful. Eventually Jem found the edge of the dungeon. There was a membrane he couldn’t push past, and on the other side everything shimmered as though he was looking through a heat haze. It was similar to the phenomenon above the dungeon entrance.
Jem ran around the edge of the forest in concentric circles. As he went he cut. It took hours and he’d passed by Haywood twice, but Jem had cut down every single tree bar-one in the forest. And a large number of rodents that had also made the trees their home.
By the last hour the Ents and the Bergil had actually started teaming up, though they were powerless before the sword and the barriers. Twice more Jem’s hair got tangled and he vowed that the first thing he would do when he got back was find a way to cut his hair.
Finally Jem cut down the last tree and the forest started to shake.
*Ding* You have triggered a special dungeon encounter. Wrath of the Forest Mother.
You weren’t content with killing her, you went after her children, and her children’s children. She has a bone to break with you. Boss is enraged, her levels are doubled.
Wait, didn’t Haywood say that nothing under level 60 would break his barriers.
Jem felt a bead of cold sweat run down his spine. He knew everything had been too good to be true.
Jem ran for Haywood.
“Haywood,” Jem yelled, “I think we have a problem.” His voice broke mid sentence.
Haywood looked up from his notes and looked at the forest around him. “Ahh. I see. And ahh, I see.”
Haywood yawned.
“Ahh well, I’ll just have to put a higher tier of haste on you. Give me a minute, I’ll have to use a proper spell for this.”
Haywood summoned a spellbook and started rifling through it. All the while Jem watched as an unholy amalgamation of roots spooled from the ground. They twined and rose into the air, creating a trunk wider than the cottage. Leaves and branches sprouted and roots flailed in the air.
It looked more like a Kraken than a tree.
“Haywood,” said Jem,” I think you might want to hurry up on that spell.”
“I’ve got it right here, don’t worry about it so much.”
A root lunged at Jem. Haywood’s time skill slowed it down, but it was still much faster than he’d ever seen the Ent’s ever move.
The root narrowly missed but Jem felt like he might have peed a bit regardless.
Jem looked at Haywood. Golden lines were spiralling out in front of him, the spellcasting seemed to be a different style to the kind the priestess had been using, but it was still an incredibly welcome sight.
The tree tore off a root, and threw it like a javelin. Jem moved backwards and tripped over the root of a dead tree. An instant later the root javelin shot by. Exactly where he’d been standing a moment before.
Jem was just about to scream at Haywood to speed up, when time slowed again. Finally the Mother Tree’s movements felt slow.
In slow motion Jem heard Haywood speak.
“Gooooo oooonnnn uulaaaaad, shhhhhoooow thhhhhaaaaaat treeeeee whoooo’s boooosssssss.” Haywood was smiling, but he looked drained. I don’t think this was part of his plan.
Shouldn’t have left me unsupervised with no guidance.
Jem ran towards the tree, scything through branches, roots and javelins as they came. The tree was still moving faster than the Ents, but the speed was just about manageable. Jem made a beeline for the trunk. He suspected it would be pointless to do anything else, whenever he cut the roots away they simply grew back.
Jem ran around the tree, carving two lines at 45 degree angles into the trunk, so they met at the tip. From there, he cut off sections, gradually opening the tree bit by bit. Thankfully, the trunk itself didn’t seem able to regenerate in the same way it could regrow its roots and branches.
Jem ran around the tree, cutting, hacking and slashing towards the centre until he finally cut through it. Jem heard an ominous cracking sound and the tree trunk slid to the side, still upright. Then the tree started to tip. Uncaring, it continued to attack Jem.
Whatever passed for a brain must have been in the upper part of the trunk because the roots stopped moving. The top was still flailing and Jem had a feeling it was only a matter of time until it died on its own, but the tree seemed rather insistent on taking his life, so it seemed unwise to leave it alive.
Jem ran along the length of the felled trunk, hacking and slashing. The sweet smell of burnt wood was his only friend as he whittled the tree away. Something about Haywoods magic must have been keeping him energised because he knew for sure that there was no way he could have kept going that long otherwise. As he cut branch after branch, the trunk of the tree withered, It kept pouring its life into the branches and sending them at Jem.
Finally after hours had passed the tree produced one final withered branch.
Jem cut the branch and the tree died.
*Ding* You have slain the Mother of The Forest (Enraged) Level 140
*Ding* You have slain the boss of the dungeon.
*Ding* You killed 248/248 enemies.
*Ding* Your contribution is measured at 90%.
*Ding* You were significantly below the expected level for this dungeon Exp reward increased: 49,234,834 Exp available upon exit of the dungeon.
*Ding* You were significantly below the expected level for this dungeon, reward thresholds adjusted.
Available Rewards:
C(threshold met):
Skill Crystal: Photosynthesis(C)
Ent bioprint
A(threshold met):
Mother of the Forest bioprint
+10 to all stats
S*(threshold met):
Leshy bioprint
+15% to all stats while in dungeons(permanent)
+7.5% to all stats(permanent)
S*S*(threshold not met)
Jem walked back over to Haywood. “Ugh that took so long.”
Things slowed down again and a wave of lethargy washed over him. Jem yawned
“Only about ten minutes for me.” Haywood chuckled, his face already looked less drawn.
Jem held off on selecting any of the options. “Hey Haywood, what’s a bioprint?”
“You won’t want any of these, but a bioprint can be used to alter your body. Stats are like multipliers for what is already there. I.e. A muscular person with a strength stat of 10 will be stronger than a skinny person with a strength stat of 10. A bioprint can be used to improve or modify your body, generally to make it stronger, or faster, or change it in some other way to make stats more effective. You can’t just use any bioprint you see though. You’re flesh and blood, so you need things that work with flesh and blood. For example, you wouldn’t be able to use an Ent bioprint, unless you replaced everything with wood all at once, because otherwise its just incompatible.
“I assume that applies to Leshies too?”
“Yes, though a Leshy bioprint would sell for a lot. It's one of the few bioforms capable of turning your brain into the plant equivalent. If you got a leshy bioprint I assume you unlocked a high reward threshold?”
“S*. The options are Leshy bioprint, +15% to all stats while in dungeons(permanent), and +7.5% to all stats(permanent)”
Jem said ‘S*’ and Haywood practically started vibrating.
“The last one, you need to select the last one. Percentage stat increases are absurdly rare, only battle-maniacs get those without help, and it's not exactly common for level 0s to complete a level 60 dungeon. Or for stat boosts to show up in other places.”
“Why not the dungeon one?” Asked Jem.
“Do what you want,” said Haywood, “but it's limited in scope and most of your fighting will probably take place outside of dungeons.”
Jem selected +7.5% to all stats (permanent).
*Ding* please confirm your selection “+7.5% to all stats(permanent)” Y/N?
Jem selected yes.
“Now we’re going to leave the dungeon and you’re going to select your class. The moment you leave the dungeon, you’re going to feel a really intense pressure to let something coalesce in your stomach. Try not to let that happen until we get you back inside the city, but at the very least hold on until we get past the forest. Be ready for that and try to hold on. Ordinarily it wouldn’t be too bad, but how much exp did you get 100,000 maybe?”
“49 million.”
“Ahh, I see level 0, well do your best. Don’t worry about this for now but try to think hard about any modifiers and classes. You get 1 modifier with a B rank class and two with an A, they can be almost more important than the class you choose.
“I won’t be there with you when you pick your class, but remember that it’s not the end of the world if you don't pick the strongest class this time around. You can often unlock a stronger version of these classes when it comes time to pick a real class. So pick a class that you can progress with, and for the love of god don’t pick [Librarian].”
Haywood went through the exit, leaving Jem by himself.
Jem entered [Meditation] and followed.