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The Book of Dungeons - A weak to strong litRPG epic
Chapter 35 Getting A New Perspective

Chapter 35 Getting A New Perspective

image [https://i.imgur.com/kxY10sG.jpg]

Going down the hallway, we stopped at the blue horizontal beam. It looked like a giant laser bisecting the hallway at eye level. The light landed against the opposite wall in no compelling fashion—it didn’t damage the surface.

“It’s too high to be a good limbo bar.” Fabulosa bent backward, limboing beneath the blue ray, while I shook my head. She needed better jokes than that to make me smile. After clearing the beam, Fabulosa lifted her fingertips to it, and something violently jerked her against the wall. An unseen force moved her as if Anticipate had triggered but without its telltale chime. She clattered against the wall.

I raised my weapons, looking for enemies or danger coming down the hall, but nothing attacked.

“Ow! That hurt.” She lingered as if dazed and pushed herself off the wall, avoiding the hole emitting the blue beam.

“Are you okay?”

Fabulosa lost a few health points, so I tried casting Rejuvenate out of courtesy but remembered we didn’t have spells. I stopped approaching her when I realized her feet no longer touched the floor.

My mind tried to make sense of her strange position. She wasn’t struggling, as if an invisible monster grappled her.

I stared, trying to comprehend her movements. “What happened, Fab? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine—I must have slipped.”

Fabulosa pulled her knees into the air, placed her feet against the wall, and stood parallel to the floor. Watching her stand on the wall disoriented me, and I subconsciously raised my hands for balance as I backed away.

When Fabulosa turned to me, her eyes widened.

“Patch? How are you standing sideways?”

“It’s not me. You’re standing on the wall.”

Her Phantom Blade and Reinforced Tortoise Shell shield stuck to the wall as if Velcro held them. She bent over, picked them up, and straightened to her strange posture parallel to the floor. She seemed at rest and not straining to maintain her horizontal position.

“Are you dizzy at all?”

Fabulosa shook her head. “No, I feel fine, aside from taking a spill. I have a Gravity Well debuff. By the way, I drank a minor heal potion, but it didn’t work, so it doesn’t look like we’ll have healing for a while.”

A new icon appeared in my peripheral vision by my Exhaustion debuffs. I hadn’t noticed its appearance. “Oh. I have the same thing.”

Debuff

Gravity Well

You are reoriented.

Duration

Permanent.

When had this happened? Had it appeared when we entered the foggy dimension? I remembered touching the blue beam in the other room. I’d never seen a permanent debuff, but I didn’t feel different.

Fabulosa’s eyes widened. “Oh! I know what it is. It changes gravity, and I bet I can reorient myself if I go back to the room and touch the other beam. The firepit is another gravity well, but you didn’t feel different because your orientation already pulled you to the floor.”

Fabulosa touched the horizontal blue beam. “See? Nothing happens because I’ve already been reoriented.”

Fabulosa followed me back into the first room, but she stopped at the edge of the hallway. She tilted her head and raised her eyes. “Oh, right. I can’t get up there.” She looked across the room.

“Up where?”

Fabulosa pointed to the fire pit on the other end of the floor. “Up there! That’s like twenty feet in the air to me.”

I turned again to regard the fire pit. From Fabulosa’s orientation, it wasn’t a matter of crossing the floor—it involved scaling a wall, an impossible prospect with the smooth surfaces.

“I suppose I could carry you.” The idea of picking her up to carry her back to the first beam wouldn’t be easy. Lifting someone falling sideways made for an awkward burden, and I wasn’t sure I could do it. I pondered how we could grab each other and cross the floor. “What if I just tied a rope to the grill? That way, you could pull yourself to it.”

I tied a knot into the fire pit’s grill. For a second, I worried the blue light would burn it. But the light harmlessly illuminated the rope with bright blue hues. With the knot secured, I led the line across the room to the edge of the hall.

Fabulosa accepted the line but hesitated. “Wait a minute. Let’s see if we can make this work in our favor. Maybe I’ll be able to get to places you can’t. It’s not hurting me—it’s just kinda funny watching you walk on the walls. Maybe if we run into a monster, they won’t be able to reach me.”

“Just to get this straight—you’re the one walking on walls, not me. And we don’t want to leave this place with our gravity misaligned. We might fall into space or something crazy.”

The prospect didn’t bother Fabulosa. “I can just reorient myself in the first room later.”

I shrugged. “It’s up to you if you want to play Spiderwoman.”

I ducked to avoid the beam when we turned back down the hallway. It felt strange walking next to sideways-Fabulosa. We had to lean away from each other to avoid bumping heads.

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The hallway ended at a ledge overlooking a shaft big enough for a freight elevator. I couldn’t see the floor or ceiling because of the thick glowing fog, but it stood 20 feet long and wide. Down the shaft, another horizontal blue beam spanned the chasm to the far wall.

The only opening in the shaft lay five stories down. Unlike everything else in this transdimensional space, hardwood covered the floor. The opening’s elevation suggested the room with furniture might connect to it, and the hardwood floor implied it connected to a furnished room.

Figuring out how to get a few stories down to the hardwood floor without using magic would require more ropes—and we had plenty of line in our inventories. Experienced dungeon crawlers always brought extra rope.

Fabulosa crouched down on her haunches and looked down the shaft. Even for a daredevil, her posture struck me as nonchalant. She shrugged when she saw me looking at her. “I can drop down and take a look if you want.”

“Are you crazy? You’ll kill yourself?”

“No, I won’t, silly boy. Here!” Fabulosa handed me a coil of rope. Instead of hanging downwards, it hung sideways. Pulling it taut, she crouched against the side of the hallway wall and slid five feet onto the side of the elevator shaft.

She dropped her rope. “See? It’s no big deal.”

Watching her stand on the side of the elevator shaft made my palms sweat while my mind wrestled with the twist in logic. From Fabulosa’s orientation, the elevator seemed as dangerous as walking down a hallway.

She strolled down the length of the elevator shaft to the opening with hardwood floors, crouched, and looked in. From her perspective, the hardwood corridor opened like a pit. “Oh, goody. I can’t see the bottom, so you’ll make it over here. Jump into that blue beam.” She pointed toward the beam roughly thirty feet beneath me in the elevator shaft.

“You want me to jump? You’re crazy.”

“Oh, stop being a baby. It’ll reorient your gravity to the side. Look!” She patted the stone wall next to her in the elevator shaft.

Following her logic, I would have falling momentum, but hitting the beam would send me into a tumbling roll—a rough but survivable landing. If I missed the blue light, I looked at a fatal fall—or worse, a bottomless pit.

I looked for another way down.

“Patch, all you need to do is hit the beam, roll to a stop, and walk over to me. Then we can walk down this pit—err—this hardwood hallway.”

I laughed weakly, and a flop sweat covered my body. “I’ll jump, but I want to hold on to the other end of the rope.”

Fabulosa laughed while I stared into the foggy white abyss beneath me. “Just don’t miss the beam.” The smile on her face betrayed the jest in her warning.

I shook my fist. “You are not making this easier!”

If she tied the rope around her waist, could she stop me from falling? Would she have to cut me loose to avoid sharing my fate? Thirty feet down, the blue beam awaited. Twenty feet further, Fabulosa stood at the edge of the hardwood opening.

Weighing at about a hundred and seventy pounds, I tried to calculate the force she’d have to withstand if I missed the beam. Charitybelle would make short work of this physics puzzle, but fears of a bottomless pit scrambled my thoughts.

Assuming this dimension’s gravity matched Earth’s, a thirty-foot fall put my velocity at less than 30 miles per hour. Fabulosa wasn’t as strong without her magic gear and couldn’t brace herself against anything. It seemed like this maneuver pushed the envelope. The only sure way to survive this involved hitting the beam to reorient my gravity.

Fabulosa’s voice echoed up the shaft. I could barely see her silhouette in the omnipresent fog. “Come on, you big chicken. Just drop into the ray. I won’t let go.” She made a show of wrapping the line around her waist.

After securing the rope around me, I stepped off my ledge and dropped into the elevator shaft. Staying close to the wall would minimize the fall damage once the gravity well beam reoriented me.

After a moment of weightlessness, I fell. A loud mechanical click alerted my senses, so I opened my interface to slow passing events to a crawl.

To my horror, a metal shutter in the beam’s hole dropped over the blue light, and the ray disappeared. Without the beam, I’d continue to fall.

In slow motion, I passed the metal plate and continued to plummet. Without magic, I could only cling to the rope for dear life.

I kept falling. When I passed the closed hole, I realized our mistakes. Without the beam stopping my descent, I wasn’t falling 30 feet. Fabulosa stood fifty feet down, giving fifty feet of slack between us. Without a gravity well, I would fall 100 feet before the line tightened. My napkin math put it closer to 60 miles per hour. Given my momentum, the tightened line might cut us in half.

Falling damage wasn’t something to be trifled with.

As I drifted past her, her expression switched from amusement to alarm, like those classical theater masks. She tightened the cord around her waist, not understanding she ensured her death by doing so.

In my sustained panic, I opened my character sheet, forgetting that my spells and items didn’t work. The magic moons of Miros held no sway over this dimension. Unfortunately, the only ability applying to this situation involved Anticipate, but both of us had used it in the maze.

Spells and abilities counted for only two kinds of powers. The game also gave mandates, promotions, and blessings. Since we weren’t on an active campaign, promotions weren’t available, and we weren’t in the water or a foreign settlement, our Aggression and Amphibious mandates didn’t apply, but perhaps Forren’s influence extended into this realm.

I hoped the concepts of up and down applied to a place with such fickle gravity.

Closing my interface, I invoked Hot Air before our lethal lifeline tightened, instantly stopping my velocity. While the remaining loops of rope recoiled and flipped between us, I judged it to be halfway between Fabulosa and the extent of our line.

Wasting no time, I rose toward her while she reeled in coils. Unfortunately, Forren had only two blessed followers, giving me only twenty seconds of hang time—and I’d wasted several recovering my sanity.

With Fabulosa taking up the slack, I rose to her, and our miscalculation became clear. “Fab, wait! I forgot, Hot Air is only vertical. If I rise toward you, I’ll end up above you—at least from my perspective. You won’t be able to stop me from falling again when it ends.”

Fabulosa ran toward the hardwood hallway. “How long until—”

When my blessing ended, I started falling again. I’d wasted Hot Air.

As my legs flailed, I held onto the line.

Fabulosa jumped into the hardwood hallway as I dropped in a perpendicular vector down the elevator shaft. I didn’t fall far because she’d taken up most of the slack, and when the line snapped taut, I dangled against the wall, clutching onto the rope with all of my might.

“Are you okay, Patch?”

I couldn’t see Fabulosa, but I could hear her voice. The rope disappearing into the hallway told me she still hung from her end of the line.

I looked down the elevator shaft. There seemed to be no end to it. “I’m good, I think. How are you? Are you hurt?”

“No, but I see why you’re freaking out. I’m hanging over a pit now—although, to you, it’s a hallway.”

“Give me a second. I’ll climb to you.”

I pulled myself up the shaft while the trap reset in a series of metallic clicks. The shutter opened again, and the blue beam returned. I wondered how many people made it past the minotaur only to fall into this trap.

I reached for the ledge to pull myself in when I neared the hardwood hallway.

The line pulled down the corridor, and Fabulosa screamed. “Don’t let go of the rope!”

I forgot that only my weight stopped her from falling down the hall. I let go of the ledge, gripped the line, and peered over the ledge where my partner hung. She clung to the rope, hovering over the hardwood floor.

“There’s a pit of spikes down here. Don’t drop me, please.”

I couldn’t see what lay beyond her, but the news resonated. The corridor ended in a wall of spikes. It created a double trap. Anyone in my orientation wound up in the bottomless pit—anyone with Fabulosa’s impaled themselves at the end of the corridor.

Fabulosa pulled on the line and dragged herself across a floor. When she reached the edge of the shaft, she tilted her head toward me. “We need to transfer our weight to the ledge at the same time. Don’t let go of the rope until we both have a grip on the edge.”

I followed her instructions until we hung inches apart. We shifted our weight from one hand to another, released the rope together, and pulled ourselves up to a sitting position. We rested on the same corner, albeit in different directions.

After we made room for each other, we pulled ourselves to safety by exchanging positions. I pulled myself onto the hardwood hallway—Fabulosa pulled herself into the elevator shaft. Each relaxed over what appeared to be a pit of doom to the other.

Fabulosa breathed hard. “Sorry about the trap back there. I’ll try to remember traps are a danger. I’m used to using Mineral Communion.”

“It’s okay. We’re both adjusting without our magic.”