010 - THE TRUE MONSTERS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING
It was with gentle clinking that Conrad joined the waiting Seekers just outside the Inn. Small slits combined with some poor but effective stitching made pockets where a mishmash of metal plates of varying shapes and sizes fit, as securely as they could, and turned his ordinary leather armor into a crude brigandine.
He had done the same for his pants, though the slotting for the metal wasn’t quite as secure as the leather cuirasse. On his belt he had hung a couple of torn up gloves which he’d managed to fasten some scrap leather to, along with some bent up nails that formed his own approximation of caestus battle gloves. And tucked into his belt in a scrap sheath he had a sharpened shiv with some twine wrapped tightly around one end to form a handle.
The Seekers all started laughing as soon as he showed up.
“Is this what you were running around doing all day?” Karina said, bending over as she laughed, “You look like a homeless guy rolled through a garbage heap!”
Buck joined her, “Like a street urchin trying to fit in with the local scrap golem!” he put out his arms in a golem-like herky jerky motion, “Do not be alarmed. I am one of you!”
Joy just giggled along with them, probably not even sure what was going on because he said, “Look at his gloves! That’s a good idea!”
The other two shook their heads at him and finished out their laughs, Karina wiped a tear and motioned for Conrad to follow them, “Coulda asked us for something,” she said, still chuckling.
“I did,” Conrad said.
She laughed, “Aye, that’s true. And look how much better off you are for this tough love! Bet you earned a couple of XP for all this fine work! Wear it with pride!”
That was exactly what Conrad intended to do. It wasn’t much, but it was more than they would have given him and if it stopped even one scratch from landing, it did its job.
They headed off to the entrance to the dungeon, Karina explaining the plan.
“We take the stairs down to floor five, move straight to the exit to floor six, then clear both it and floor seven,” she said, probably both for his benefit and Joy’s, “If we find the King, we take him then, if not, we break and tomorrow take the stairs to floor eight, then clear it and floor nine.”
As they walked Conrad examined his interface. Between all the XP he had earned for helping out the adventurers get better prices and the modest amount he had earned putting together his gear and going through his exercise the day before he had managed to invest in Tireless.
In addition, he raised Adrenaline Rush to level two proficiency, which doubled the bonus to his speed and perception making it, essentially, a slow time buff.
His strength and endurance were both up a point, and his agility had risen an astonishing two points for a total of eleven, along with one more point in his dexterity. The real shock was after enacting this plan, he also managed to increase his intelligence - by far his highest stat - from twenty-two to twenty-three.
They entered the staircase courtyard and, to Conrad’s surprise, the looks only started with his gear. Once the other adventurers took him in, they instead directed their questioning or judging looks at the Seekers. It was known that Conrad was new, but what was surprising was that they would take him into the dungeon so poorly clad.
“Shoulda had him put it away,” Conrad heard Buck whisper to Karina.
“Too late now,” she replied.
They brushed off questions and inquiries and simply started on their way down the staircase. A few minutes of descent later and they exited, now familiar text fading into Conrad’s vision.
The Warren Dungeon - Floor Five
The staircase opened up on a fairly normal - in comparison to floor thirteen at least - cave environment. The tunnels were wide enough to be considered chambers in and of themselves and the obstacles of the floor seemed to consist almost entirely of stalagmites, stalactites, and occasional pooled water.
“Joy, up front with me,” Karina called from the front as she took out her sword, “ Don’t stop. They’ll try to bog us down on this floor but we’re not here to fight, we’re going straight to the sixth.”
“You know where the exit is?” Conrad asked.
“Floor type dungeons tend not to change the early floors too much and Buck picked up a little something to help us out,” Karina said beginning to jog and precipitating the whole group into following suit, “Gets people comfy enough to go deeper where things get dicey and people die. It's better for business. From the dungeon’s point of view, mind you.”
They ran onward. Buck had a crude map in hand and would call out directions at intersections. Periodically lizardkin or batlike creatures would dart out of the shadows to strike at them, but other than a few slowdowns to clear larger groups - netting even Conrad several kills - they moved without incident to a staircase that clearly led to the next floor.
Unlike the multi-floor staircase, this one was broad and square, turning downward with distinctive landings and no opportunity to exit early until they reached floor six and were greeted by the same intrusive dungeon text.
The sixth floor put a slight spin on the floor above, adding in glowing flora, especially lichen and mushrooms. And this time when Karina gave her instructions, she directed them all to stick together as they made a more methodical search.
Buck took his crude hand drawn map on which somebody - Conrad assumed it wasn’t Buck given how lazy the man seemed - had marked a dozen larger chambers with interconnecting tunnels, along with some icons - maybe representing treasure? Or stronger monsters? Conrad wasn’t sure. But as they entered each room or tunnel, Karina would glance back at Buck who would nod and give her an indication that the room was what they expected based on what the map showed.
In this environment, Buck’s skills seemed to be at their most valuable. The caves often lent themselves to sudden narrowness or passages with so many obstructions that maneuvering was difficult, and a well placed Fireball could make short work of anything they were able to get the drop on.
It wasn’t always so easy though. As they entered a chamber with a large underground stream snaking through it, an aquatic variant of the lizardkin came bursting out. Buck fired off a stream of flame as they ran forward but the creatures, in addition to being still covered in water, boasted an impressive resistance to the element and simply shrugged off the attack, hurling themselves into the line of adventurers.
“COME ON!” Conrad shouted as one singled him out and leapt. He triggered Adrenaline Rush and the whole world seemed to slow as he sped up. He raised his iron banded club and invoked Tireless, waiting just a fraction of a second in real-time for the creature to reach striking distance. He swung with all of his strength, sparks of energy falling away from him as he landed his blow right on the head of the leaping water lizardkin.
The power of the blow sent the beast crashing to the ground in front of Conrad where it clawed forward for a moment, weakly, before he finished it with a final swipe of his club. Before he could recover from the kill another of the things was on him, shoving him backward into a stalagmite which, fortunately, kept Conrad on his feet.
It struck again, sweeping the club out of Conrad’s hand but recoiled, seeing its fingers cut on the edge of the jagged nails sticking from Conrad’s gloves.
Still seeing the world in the slowed time of Adrenaline Rush Conrad squeezed his makeshift caestus clad hands into fists and began his assault. He didn’t have any training in unarmed combat, and Chaos take him, he didn’t even have much experience in armed combat! So he let ferocity stand in for skill as he sent blow after blow into the recoiling monster, each wet slap of his fist against the fish-like scales of the lizard sending blue blood flecking and tearing out small chunks of flesh.
As time returned to normal speed with Adrenaline Rush’s expiration, the creature tried to scramble away but he caught it by the leg and dragged it back, drawing his sharpened shiv from his belt with his free hand. He managed to pin it to the ground, one knee on its back and began stabbing frantically into its neck and shoulders.
“JUST DIE ALREADY!” he yelled, beginning to feel bad for how long this kill was taking. After a few more quick thrusts though, Order rewarded him with a prompt confirming the kill and a fresh influx of XP.
He looked around the cave, realizing he had become so focused on his own fights he didn’t even know what the rest of the group had been doing. Joy was picking a fallen Buck up from the ground and brushing him off. Buck seemed to have taken some small wounds from scrambling with one of the creatures on the ground, but Joy was unharmed and sporting a bloodied ax.
Karina was pacing the edge of the stream and peering into its depths, a trail of dead and dismembered corpses behind her.
“Try it again, I’m ready for you!” she growled at the water.
She was a bit like an angry dog, Conrad thought vaguely, impotently barking at prey that was completely beyond her reach. He wondered if dogs held grudges the way she did, though, and concluded that it was likely dogs had more sense than that.
It wasn’t long before they managed to pull her away and continue their methodic search of the remaining caverns on the sixth floor.
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The next room proceeded much like those before it, with the group entering and making a slow circuit of the area, sure to either kill everything that challenged them or to check for any hidden passages or trap triggers. Conrad was beginning to get a feel for how the flow of the dungeon runs could go when he had his first encounter with the real reason adventurers challenged the depths of the dungeon.
It was common for adventurers and NPCs alike to say that the reason the adventuring profession existed was to provide warriors to the front line in the fight of Order against Chaos. The whole world was set in perpetual opposition of the two deities, with humanity relegated to dwelling in the safety of their magically protected nodes of Order, and adventurers were the means by which Order gained further footholds in the Chaos Lands.
But that was all a bunch of monster shit in Conrad’s opinion, and he should know, he and his family, not to mention the entire city of Edge profited handsomely on what the adventurers pulled from the dungeon. And if some day they happened to destroy the dungeon core and defeat the Warren Dungeon, it wouldn’t be too long after that Edge itself would decay into ruin. The dungeon was the lifeblood of the city, and the adventurers it attracted were the lifeblood of the dungeon.
It made a sick sort of symmetry, and finally, Conrad found himself at the origin of the wealth transfer between the dungeon and the city.
Once the final monster was killed, a particularly brutal Heavy Mauler that Conrad could barely damage with his club - leaving Joy and Karina to do the real damage while Buck charged up and canceled spells uselessly - a burst of light appeared at the center of the chamber. And in the center of the light, a chest manifested.
The group approached and Karina stepped up to open the chest. Golden light burst from it as it dissolved into sparks leaving an item floating at waist height where the treasure chest had been.
Conrad turned away. He didn’t even want to know what he would be missing out on but caught a breathy “That’ll fetch a bit more than a copper,” from an excited Buck.
The group continued onward after that, with Conrad dreaming of someday opening his own treasure chests to claim rewards of his own, intermixed with violent thoughts about what he’d like to do to the Seekers before that day came.
It took several hours to clear the sixth floor and they found only one more loot drop in addition to the spoils from the kills throughout the floor. And, unsurprisingly, they found no sign of the Lizard King.
The seventh floor presented an even more nuanced version of the cave theme, with occasional holes upward into what appeared to be night sky along with grottos full of plants of types and varieties Conrad had never seen. He wondered if this was a favored destination of Herbalists as there had to be plants worth collecting but, sadly, to his eyes they were all just decorations.
As before, they began their circuit of the floor after a brief glance at the next of Buck’s hand drawn maps he had managed to scrounge up.
They entered into a canyon like chamber that added a layer of verticality Conrad had not seen before in the Dungeon. There were several ways out, some higher and some lower, and so it seemed there might be chambers in the dungeon they could only reach by taking the correct path.
Shouts echoed out from one of the branched caves at the lowest point of the cavern. Human shouts.
The Seekers and Conrad took up a position overlooking the cave where they were likely to come out and, a few moments later, a group of three adventurers came stumbling out. One of them made an impressive stand at the mouth of the cave, twin swords swinging rhythmically and severing limbs and removing heads of what rapidly became apparent were dozens of lizardkin. They appeared to be the size of the lesser variants, but these were clad in simple armor - chitinous plates formed of some dungeon dwelling shelled creature, bone weapons, and even a semblance of order to their movements.
While the dual wielder held them at the entrance, the other two, a man and a woman limped their way up the path toward the exit to the fifth floor. The woman was on one leg, the other bound up in a makeshift splint while the man, a ranged class of some type, helped her limp along.
“Ready!?” the dual swordsman shouted at the pair as they limped up the slope. He was putting on a brave show of it but his voice betrayed how close he was to breaking.
The ranged class unslung a crossbow from his back, the woman collapsed to the ground behind him and held out her hands, now glowing bright with magic.
“MOVE!” she shouted, lightning arcing from her hands and connecting instantly with the massed lizardkin at the cave mouth. The man with the swords turned and began sprinting back to join the two on the hill, closing the distance as fast as he could.
The ensuing carnage from the magical attack was devastating for the attacking lizards, or so Conrad thought, but after the lightning finished arching among what had to be every single enemy in the doorway, and knocking most of them to the ground, it was only a few of them that failed to return to their feet.
The rest, shaky with residual static and a stunning effect from the lightning attack, slowly began to resume their pursuit.
Then the bolts began to hit them. The crossbowman was glowing with power, which pulsed every half second or so and manifested in a new magical bolt in his weapon, fired expertly into the slowed and still struggling lizard fighters.
With their numbers thinned and the lizards slowed for the moment by the attack, the trio seized on their chance to continue their limping retreat up the slope.
“We have to help them!” Conrad said.
“Shut up,” Buck said, “Let’s see what happens first.”
“We can turn this fight around!” Conrad argued, not sure he understood what Buck was getting at.
“Order preserve me,” Karina said, with an exaggerated sigh, “I’m going to have Joy explain this to you Conrad because even he gets it.” She caught her word choice and winced, “No offense, Joy, but be a dear would you?”
“Yes, Karina,” Joy said, not seeming to have understood the implied insult. Down in the canyon the lizardkin were taking up the pursuit again and the swordsman was looking back, no doubt preparing to attempt to run the same play again. But this time, without the bottleneck of the cave he would be overrun and surrounded.
“We let ‘em get killed,” Joy said patiently, voice oddly dead sounding in its severity, “And then we go in and take all their gear plus finish off the weakened monsters. More XP for us, more loot for us.”
“See? It’s two wins in one! It’s a win win!” Karina said cheerily with a mocking fist pump.
“You’re monsters,” Conrad breathed, “You’re doing Chaos’s work for it. You’re feeding the dungeon.”
“This is how the world works, Merchant,” Buck said, “I know it seems a lot prettier up there for the NPCs, safe behind the node just taking in the result of what we do down here, but for every face you’ve seen show up at your shop a second time, theres one, probably two others who lost everything down here in the dungeon. It’s all or nothing, and those that give all put themselves toward the dungeon making itself just a little fatter, just a little richer, just a little more giving to the rest of us.”
“They give their lives,” Karina said, hand over her heart and speaking in mock solemnity, “So that we can get rich.”
“Until it’s you,” Conrad said, standing up and checking the fitting on his gloves.
Buck scoffed, “If that day comes, if that day comes, we’ll understand it the same way they do. But today,” he gestured at the three adventurers in the canyon, “it’s their turn.”
“Not gonna be their turn,” Conrad said, club in hand and already moving down the slope, “Not today.”
“You green little NPC, you’ll ruin this for all of us!” Buck hissed at him.
“NOT TODAY!” Conrad bellowed, and was already off and running. He didn’t want to give the Seekers time to give him any orders he might not be able to refuse. There was still time to save those people and he wouldn’t let the indifferent greed of the Seekers be the reason they never made it back to the surface.
Down below, his shout caused the adventurers running for their lives to look up as he came on sprinting, makeshift armor clinking as he brandished his club and drew his shiv in his off hand.
He thought he must have looked like a moron running into that fight, but the hope he saw in their eyes filled him with a charge of pride so powerful he felt he might blast through the whole crowd of pursuing monsters on emotion alone.
He passed the female spell caster and the crossbowman acknowledging their out of breath thanks with a salute of his club and he took up a position shoulder to shoulder with the swordsman. Well, slightly off to the man’s right, he wanted to give the deadly fighter room to swing.
“You solo?” the man asked.
“Might as well be,” Conrad replied, readying himself for the oncoming hoard.
The man stood in a fighting posture, swords still dripping blue blood of all the creatures he had killed.
“Troy,” he said, “Swordsman.”
Conrad kept his eyes fixed on the oncoming enemy but nodded his acknowledgement of the introduction and gave his own, “Conrad. Fighter.”
The screeching wall of lizardkin hit them like a wave. Conrad was already swinging his club when Adrenaline Rush activated. He brained the first of them, swiping at another with the sharpened edge of his scrap shiv. On his flank Troy was a whirlwind of steel and death, an impassable barrier against which lizards either died or flowed around to meet Conrad.
They stabbed and swiped at him, weapons cutting into him where armor failed or never existed - but his makeshift brigandine was putting in work. It had to. If he fell back, Troy would be surrounded and it would be over for all of them.
The press was so much that Conrad could barely keep track of what he was doing. He invoked Silver Tongue for a tiny extra edge in fluidity to his thoughts and realized the mistake he was making - he was swinging to kill, always aiming for the head with his club and pulling his arm back for enough momentum to put his target out of the fight completely. But that wasn’t the play here, there were too many for him to kill, and he was too slow to get them all, even with the 50% enhancement to his speed and agility from Adrenaline Rush - which was nearly out of time.
What he needed to do was hamper them, wound them, keep them here until that lighting attack could land. He started swinging both high and low, complimenting overhead strikes with fluid reverse swings that took the legs out from multiple lizards at a time. He kept his shiv moving, blurring it with the speed of his cuts as he sought any appendage, eye, or open space of flesh available. He didn’t have the damage or skill of the swordsman to his left, but he had the ferocity!
The creatures weren’t making it easy though. They took their toll in blood and pain on Conrad, still thankful he had put the time in to put on even makeshift protection.
A woman’s voice called from behind, “READY!” and suddenly the air in front of Conrad was alight with blue energy as lightning arced from the rearmost lizards and began working its way toward him and Troy.
He stumbled backward hastily, felt Troy's steadying hand pull him around and the two of them were off and running up the slope. Bolts whizzed past his head as they neared the two adventurers laying down suppressive fire as they bounded up the path.
“The hell are you doing with that garbage,” the woman said, pointing at his shiv. Conrad was about to explain when she handed him her own dagger. Long and double edged, it was far and away a better weapon than he had before and he registered a moment of loss, realizing such a fine weapon would soon become the property of the Seekers.
The crossbowman put his arm around her and the two continued limping up the path while Conrad and Troy turned to face the next wave of lizards. As before they hit them all at once, but there was a shift to their energy this time. Not a one among them was without cut wounds, broken limbs, burns from electricity or holes from magical projectiles. And it showed in their reduced ferocity.
The fight actually began to shift and both Conrad, even deadlier now with his new dagger, and Troy began pushing the lizardkin back. When the ready call came from behind they stepped back calmly to let the magic rip through the remaining lizards.
As they writhed on the ground ridden with magical stun effects, the two men set to cutting throats and smashing skulls.
The fight was over.