Chapter 5: Consistent Chaos is Calculable

After a decidedly not easy time, he left the blood-soaked room with nothing of obvious value gained. There was an important looking gland and a fang that looked cooler and shinier than the rest, but neither of which helped him immediately. He still begrudgingly admitted that it was probably the right decision, even as his stomach protested violently.

The corridor behind the rat was blessedly short, it immediately sending him straight into pitch-black room was slightly less blessed. His eyes refused to adjust, meaning that this was an intentional obstacle by the trial. Actually, he had never left pitch-blackness, had he? It was just that the trial stopped lighting it up here.

Cautiously moving along the right wall, he strained his ears for any sign of a threat. Of course, that meant he noticed when his quiet footfalls suddenly cut off, even as he continued walking.

As panic flowed through him he stopped moving and held his sword at the ready, imagining all the creatures that could be out there in the dark. His heart pounded as he stared out into the featureless blackness that could be teeming with all sorts of horrors.

Shaking his head, he tried to think about things logically. Should he run back to the entrance? What creatures or common trial mechanics could disable his hearing? And was he being affected by an external fear source, or had the trial protections against fear of the dark also been removed? Probably the second one, low-level emotional manipulations weren’t subtle.

The removal of his hearing was more telling. The two most common creatures with that ability were goblin shamans with their a curse of deafening, and alpha night lurkers, which could negate all sound in an area. Both of which would make sense with the dungeon’s progression, and would either of which would be an extremely hard FINAL boss without the dark and with his buff and weapon.

Granted, they could be alone, which would hinder their ability to actually damage him. But with the trial’s track record, he was assuming that he would find BOTH of them and a bunch of minions.

So yes, he did run back to the entrance like a frightened child. He was definitely had to kill them, but it would be ridiculous to fight them on their terms. He would wait here until something came out of the darkness. If it took a while, then he could see about strategies to fight them in the dark.

As he sat there, he thought about what he could be facing. Alpha night lurkers weren’t all that physically strong, but they came with a pack of their brethren that they could support effectively with their ability. They naturally liked to live in dark areas, so only way that they could be a boss in a Tutorial was if there was a way to force them into the light…

The goblins torch! It probably wasn’t as simple as bringing it into the room to dispel the darkness, but it was probably a solid start. He could only hope that the magic that kept it alight still persisted after he left it on the ground. Turning away from the impenetrable blackness, he ran back towards where he killed the goblin trio.

Unknown to Jax, if he had waited a little longer, he would have been doomed. What he didn’t remember about goblin shamans was that they were ritual cursers, and giving it line of sight for as long as he did almost allowed it to cast a curse of sleep, leaving him oblivious as he was torn apart. The monsters were not so hindered by the dark.

After reaching torch, he followed the standard Trial Objective Experimental FormulaTM to see what could help him brighten the light a little. He quickly found that pressing the weird sack from the giant rat to the head of the torch made it crumble to dust and coat the torch. But in the process, it put the torch out! Even though he knew that he had probably found the purpose of the organ, it still hurt to lose a material with no obvious results.

After much trial and error—read: mindless poking—he discovered that hitting the fang of the rat with his new sword created sparks that could light up the torch into a brilliant blaze. After the initial blaze died down, the torch just looked like some softly glowing white flames, but the tunnel as far as he could see was lit up like day.

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Jax, however, was frustrated. What a juvenile solution! It’s a good thing that a sentient creature hadn’t created his trial, because they would die from embarrassment if they were responsible for that pathetically lame puzzle of sheer moronity!

Returning to the dark room, he discovered that he had been correct. In the newly revealed cave, there stood—or hung—three goblins, one goblin shaman, six night lurkers, and one alpha night lurker. They unfortunately did not seem to be negatively effected by the light of his torch, although they certainly knew that he could see them. that or they were pissed at having to wait and didn’t want to let him get away again.

The night lurkers reached him first, their leader hanging back and cutting the sound again. But he wasn’t going to play by their rules. Charging forward, he surprised the monsters with his speed and sliced three night lurkers in half before the rest retreated a bit.

Expecting that, Jax had already changed direction and headed toward the alpha. It tried to fly away, but it didn’t have enough time before it had a wing amputated. After finishing it off, he turned to meet the goblins’ wild swings. Barely able to dodge them, he realized that these goblins weren’t as weak as Tutorial ones should be.

Their strength wasn’t too different, but their speed seemed to have received an even greater buff than his. The night lurkers didn’t seem like they had gotten a buff to their speed, so he made a note to not let them hit him. The goblins were completely uncoordinated, getting each others way more often than not. He managed to slit one’s throat, his blade encountering more resistance than he had come to expect. He reaffirmed his decision to avoid the lurkers claws.

Unfortunately, this was when the surprise factor his planning had given him ran out. The lurkers swooped in as he was distracted by the other two goblins. He was aware this would happen, and managed to dodge two of them. But the third lacerated his side, tearing through flesh and ribs like it wasn’t even there. Screaming, Jax slashed the perpetrator in twain as it tried to fly away.

The goblins were becoming more difficult to deal with while managing his wound, and the remaining night lurkers were circling around for another pass. The situation looked pretty hopeless, and the shaman, a powerful and tricky boss monster, hadn’t even done anything yet. The situation was looking pretty hopeless.

Jax considered all of this in less than an instant. In the end, his conclusion was simple. After all, it had worked so far. Changing up his sword style, a trick that was usually reserved for the ridiculously talented, he went on a violent offensive.

Taking a hit to his uninjured side, he pressed on, killing both goblins in less than five seconds. Whirling, he rushed toward the goblin shaman. The old goblin was covered in far more warts than the normal pests, a permanent grimace on its face as it muttered under its breath. It could barely react before he loped its head off. Capitalizing on his momentum, he rushed down the remaining night lurkers and killed the both before they could properly maneuver to attack him.

Jax stopped to catch his breath. Looking around at the scattered corpses, he wondered again why his Tutorial was so dementedly hard. And, for the first time, why he was beating it. He had somehow continuously defeated the odds, despite his complaining.

Unfortunately, victory did not spell a healing for him. Wincing, he reviewed the damage to his side. One of the claws had sliced open a lung, and lower down, he thought he could feel some damage to organs in his belly. If he didn’t get healing soon, this was definitely fatal, and it would heavily impact his ability to fight.

Fighting down his despair, he remembered that goblin shamans often brewed potions in the True realm. Searching its corpse he found a vial filled with a sickly greenish-yellow fluid.

With nothing else to lose he took a deep breath before pouring half of it on his side and upending the other half into his mouth. The taste was indescribably vile. The urge to puke overcame him, but none of his stomach muscles moved. All his other muscles, however, started spasming violently as he was caught in the throes of an intense seizure.

Unable to fully black out, he lay there paralyzed as his body started venting its innards through his pores. After an eternity, he got up, feeling better than ever despite lying in a pool of waste so vile he suspected it was a representation of impurities rather than anything his body produced.

“Well.” He spoke for what felt like the first time in ages. “That was a decidedly unpleasant way of getting a temporary Improvement.” Performing the standard tests, he determined that both his Aspects of Constitution and Strength had been boosted. He wasn’t sure by exactly how much, as they sort of canceled each other out for self-testing, but dropping rocks on himself determined that the difference wasn’t small.

But really, he shouldn’t be getting boosts from that, he should be getting his beer from the bartender! The fight he had just won was harder than the hardest final boss fight of any of the Tutorial’s he had heard of. And most of those gave a bunch of powerful buffs along the way! His buffs were negated by the buffs the monsters got! He could see this as being a fight in a really hard boss rush trial, IF you got a buff every fight.

But no! The format matched that of much easier dungeon run trials, and in those, this would be the entry level. After that there would be dozens of the same enemies one at a time, before the final boss room. Following the pattern of those trials, he would be alternating fighting groups of three buffed goblins and a shaman, and packs of super-sharp night lurkers. Doable in a single fight, but back to back? With the risk of attracting another group? That would be a nightmare.