★★★★★ - Haven’t Fought Boss, but Otherwise Fun
The darkness room was a rush! Also good training for future darkness rooms - missed opportunity if the dungeon doesn’t do more like that. The Deep Geckos are a bit too weak without that trick, but the darkness makes it a balanced fight.
★★★★★ - This Dungeon Reflects My Soul
Full of bugs and darkness. I belong here.
★☆☆☆☆ - Hate. So Much Hate.
Why did the dungeon think it was a good idea to put us in darkness? Absolutely terrifying. It’s not a test of skill or power! Completely unfair. Anyone who dies here should be entitled to free gold sent to their family. Everyone giving five stars just doesn’t want to admit that it’s a miserable time, or knows nothing about how dungeons are supposed to work.
Calith watched as the next group cleared the Deep Gecko room. Third today - people were getting better at it, and for the most part it had been good for reviews. Granted, every single one of her one star reviews so far also mentioned it, but far more people left five stars for it. It had been enough to move her average rating up to four stars.
“The negative reviews weigh more than just your average,” Rathel said, when Calith did the math and realized if it was all evenly balanced, it should be four and a half.
“That doesn’t seem like it’s right,” Calith said, frowning. The group was starting to cultivate. Hopefully they’d test the boss. Calith had a feeling they might be able to handle it.
“I agree, but when the system was created, the adventuring guilds argued that most people that died probably would have left a negative review.” Rathel shrugged. “It’s not a terrible point.”
Calith couldn’t see a good argument to that, so didn’t make one. The group was still in mediation. She had time. And while she was still hoping this group would test themselves against the boss, Calith was reminded there was something she hadn’t told Rathel. “Oh, by the way. Kandra stopped by my meshsite while you were gone. I taught her to search the mesh.”
Rathel stared at her. “You say that so casually. You taught her… what, exactly?” Before Calith could go on, Rathel just shook his head. “Actually, just… tell me everything.”
Calith did so, leaving no details out. By the end, Rathel was taping his fingers on his knees, staring at the mirror. “What’d you get out of it?”
“Told her to do a relaunch. Bought us two days where she’s not progressing - the way things are going, I’ll hit Amethyst today. Then we’ll be back on even footing.”
Rathel nodded slowly. “That’s something. But you shouldn’t have helped her. As bad a mentor as Fulsi was for her, that would have cut her advancement off at the ankles. She would have fallen behind you for decades. Now she’ll be able to get a better mentor.”
Calith didn’t speak at first. She just stared out over the mists. She’d started working on her own personal site, but it was a half-finished mess that looked like a drunken storm cloud laying in the center of the mesh. “You know,” Calith said. “I’m all right with that.”
“Oh?” Rathel asked.
Calith nodded. “I understand that in ages past, the Circle and the Cable were at war. But now, no one’s lives are on the line. Only my future. And don’t misunderstand me - I want to win. But if I win and it’s because I let her mentor torment her… that’s not a win. That’s just her losing.”
Rathel looked over at her thoughtfully. “It’s not just your future,” he finally said. “The Pact is holding for now. But mortal memories are short. Dark Lord ambition is great. And our hunger is unending. It will, eventually, break. It may be ten years. It may be ten thousand. But it will happen. And then… her being stronger than you could mean your death, and the death of others.”
“I’m not willing to sacrifice the present because of a theoretical bad future. Show me proof the pact is breaking, and I’ll tear Kandra apart before she can hurt me or anyone else. But for now, fighting dirty just makes me feel dirty.” Calith felt surer of that with every word.
The response got her a sigh, but it sounded more exasperated than actually frustrated. “I hope that, if she surpasses you, and you’re stuck at lower ranks for decades until you can catch up, that you still feel that way.”
“Won’t matter.” Calith shot him a grin. “I’m going to win.”
That at least got a laugh from her mentor. “Let’s make sure that happens. I do approve of your cost. You could have demanded other things out of her, but none of the ones she would have accepted would have given you a chance to catch up.”
Calith basked in the praise as the group stood up. She hadn’t bothered to learn this group’s name - she just called them Tank, Healer, Archer, Stabber, and Other Archer. One thing she took seriously was Rathel’s warnings against getting attached to mortals.
Tank seemed to lead this group. Most groups apparently had the tank or the healer as their group leader that Calith had seen. “We did well. No one took serious injury.” He looked at the next door. “The scout team downed the boss, but no one else has yet.”
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“The scout team is all Quartz-AAA,” Stabby said, balancing a dagger on her fingertip. “Same as the boss. Think we can handle that?”
“Worth a short,” Archer said. No one reacted, and he grinned at the group. “Get it. Because I’m an Archer, and I shoot-”
Healer clamped a hand over his mouth. She didn’t have the power of other healers, those who used their faith as part of their cultivation to create a core that let them mend flesh. She had a similar skillset to Stabby, and lots of potions that worked when she splashed them on people. This was important because she’d put one of those potion bottles in Stabby’s mouth. “We understood. It just wasn’t funny. Now, bite down. It’ll shut you up, and you need the energy if we’re going to do this.”
Stabby did, grinning when Healer’s hand was pulled away. “That’s the good stuff. So you agree?”
She nodded and looked at Other Archer. “You want one?”
She shook her head. “I’m on the edge of potion sickness. Just heal me if this goes poorly.”
Healer looked at Stabby. “We don’t go if we don’t all agree,” she said.
Stabby looked at the boss room, then at Healer. “I wasn’t planning on dying at an old age anyway,” she said. “Let’s give it a try.”
Tank took point. “From what the scout team said, the boss is not as strong at range, but the dungeon does push us into melee. Vanda, run around back and shank it. Everyone else, hit it with every ranged attack you can, with all the power you can muster. If we can kill it before it puts us in melee… well, that won’t happen. But the less strength it has when we get into range of its hands, the better we are.”
“Does it even have vital points?” Stabby asked. She must be Vanda. So that was one name she learned. “It’s a tree.”
“Good question,” Healer said. “Once we’ve won, you can cut it open and find out.”
Stabby stuck out her tongue at Healer, and they walked into the room.
Cathar, the Matribark, shifted to look at them as they filed in. She snarled in hunger. The tank raised his shield. “Everyone ready?” he asked the group. Once then confirmed, he gathered his mana and shouted. A mana shout was a popular spell for melee fighters, from what Calith had seen. It didn’t hit very hard, but it didn’t require your hands, and at close range it could knock lighter foes back. It also let tanks establish aggro.
Cathar responded with a pressurized jet of water. At the same time, the floor at the edge of the room crumbled, leaving a foot-wide gap that would send anyone tumbling onto a spike pit below. Only one segment remained intact - a narrow bridge leading to the entrance. A second later, the next foot of the room crumbled away. It would happen every second until they were in melee.
Tank held up his shield, weathering the water jet, then looked at the edge of the room. Something clicked for him, and his eyes went wide. “Vanda! Get back in front now! Hopefully that stops this trap!”
Vanda ran back around the Matribark, leaping over a sweeping blow by one of the great tree’s branch arms. She landed in a roll, coming up to stab the boss between Cathar’s eyes.
The floor stopped collapsing, and Cathar stopper her water jet. Tank rushed in, slamming into the boss’s teeth with his shield.
“What are you doing?” Vanda shouted at him.
“Do you want to be in melee with those arms when there’s no floor to fall back to?”
Vanda went pale, and the distraction cost her. She got smacked by one of the arms and sent flying back. Just a couple of feet, but enough to illustrate Tank’s point. If the floor hadn’t been there, Vanda would have fallen to her death.
Tank weathered a couple of blows from Cathar, but he was starting to weaken already. Healer tossed one of her potions, hitting him in the back. It splashed against him, and he straightened back up. Healer then held out her hands, channeling mana, and released a spear of Void mana that punched a hole in the boss’s bark. The bloodsap of the dechwood leaked out from the injury, but Cathar didn’t notice it. Being a tree had one advantage - she didn’t seem to feel pain. Just endless hatred of anything made of flesh.
This group didn’t have the coordination of the scout team. They were adjusting on the fly, responding to each other. The archers kept pausing as one of the melee fighters got in the way of their shot. Vanda and Tank almost tripped over each other at one point. Only Healer didn’t have any problems with the rest of the group interfering, but more than once she hesitated before deciding to cast a spell or throw a potion.
Calith couldn’t help but hope for them to get a win. She wanted to reveal she had a magic sword to give as loot. The group was starting to struggle though. The archers were firing more and more arrows without any mana augmenting the shots. Healer’s pouch of potions was looking fairly empty. And Tank was clearly in pain. It looked like that win wouldn’t happen today -
-wait. Where was Stabby?
Calith had lost track of the knife wielding fighter in the thick of the combat. After a couple moments of searching, she found the rogue. Stabby had climbed up Cathar’s back, and was holding a flask. It looked like one of Healer’s, but this one was made of glass, and the liquid inside was brown instead of red. “I really hope dechwood burns,” she said, then slammed the glass down. Liquid poured out across Cathar, and Stabby channeled some of her fire mana into her dagger.
Then she leapt back, hurling the flaming dagger at the liquid.
Flames erupted across Cathar. The boss went into a frenzy, lashing out at the group and trying to spray its water jets in a way that would quench the flames - but the water shot too far out. The group got out of melee range and, in response to Tank’s commands, gathered on the bridge to the exit as the flames engulfed more of the boss. He turned to his group. “If those go out and it’s still alive, we run!” Tank shouted.
He wasn’t looking at the boss.
A jet of water caught him in the back of the knee. He hadn’t accounted for how much stronger it would be this close to the boss. His knee folded under him, and Tank dropped down. If his knee had caught the bridge, that would have just been a lesson. However, his knee landed on the open air next to the bridge. He had just enough time to let out a shocked gasp. Healer reached for him, but he was already tumbling to the side. Vanda screamed.
Tank landed hard. Healer looked over the edge, but pulled back and shook her head. Other Archer tried to look, but Healer stopped her. Probably for the best. A few of the spikes had fully penetrated Tanks armor - and the body it contained.
To spare them from seeing that, and to get the last of the mana from Tank, Calith absorbed the body. A shiver ran through her. No, a full blown tremble. Her mana pool… it felt like it was going to overflow.
She laughed and threw herself back into her core, spinning the mana around her. With foreknowledge, advancement was much less traumatic for her than it had been for Kandra. Moments later, her boss was dead, and Calith was Amethyst. Raphel joined in her excitement, although he did remind her to drop loot.
Right. Dungeon tokens rained outwards from the boss, as did the magic sword she could create. It would have been great for Tank, but Tank was dead. It was a bind on use item, not a bind on pickup, so the group could give it to their next tank or sell it, Calith didn’t care.
She was Amethyst now, and still had a full day before Kandra reopened. The group had gotten their rewards, and even if they left bad reviews for their tank’s death, news of the magic sword would spread. Something that Kandra wouldn’t have been able to give out yet - if the scouts had even gotten to her before she closed up to relaunch.
Their match was finally swinging in Calith’s direction.