Snow kicked up in the distance as something barreled straight toward us.
“Are you ready?” I asked Nelly who was still fidgeting with her modified boots.
“Ready for wha…aaaah,” she cried as she finally noticed what was going on.
White Claw Bear
Level 17
All claw and no bite!
I wasn’t sure what the game meant by that. While I couldn’t see the claws beneath all that snow, the fangs looked more than capable of taking a bite out of…well, anything. Since hot-swapping cards in and out of the single slot in my heart deck slot wasn’t practical, I decided to go with Infuse Mana.
With only moments to spare, I scooped up a wad of snow and formed it into a snowball. I then used Make Explosive on it followed by Infuse Mana.
Snow Bomb
Element: Ice
I would have preferred also to cast Harden to give it that extra oomph but that would have required additional time that I didn’t have in the heat of combat. When the bear was close enough, I lobbed my explosive. Just as it was about to make contact with the rapidly approaching bear’s face, I used the keyword I decided on for Detonate: “Kablooey!”
Nelly shrieked as the snowball erupted in a shower of icicles that caught the sunlight in a cascade of prismatic light. The bear howled in agony as tiny shards peppered its face before resuming its maddened charge toward us.
Nelly was still on her butt and I barely had time to dive out of the way as it crashed into her. Her scream was abruptly cut off and I got the system message.
Nelly has been slain by a White Claw Bear.
“Damnit!” I cursed, taking out the ice pick and using Whallop on the side of the bear’s head.
It roared and swiped me back with one of its massive claws, knocking me back a couple of feet. I glanced at my health bar in the corner of my vision.
Veritas
Primary Class: Level 25 Excavator
Secondary Class: Level 1 Demolitionist
HP: 2150/2500
MP: - 140/200
SP: 5000/5000
I paused when I saw the levels. Why isn’t Demolitionist leveling?
Was it because I used Cannonball, an Excavator skill, when I sunk the pirate ship, or was there something else I needed to do to get experience in my secondary class? Either way, there was no time to think about it. The bear’s health had barely moved from my explosive snow. That was likely because it came from a level one skill that only used sixty mana. It was time to take out the big guns.
I used Super Jump and blasted out of the snow and into the air just above the bear. Then I pushed my entire stamina pool into myself and yelled the name of my go-to skill. “Cannonball!”
Snow exploded in every direction as I drove the bear into the ground with the force of a meteor. I expected that to be the end of it but suddenly I was falling, clinging to what I hoped was the lifeless body of the bear. Darkness even my skill couldn’t penetrate sped by as I plummeted into the void. It felt like the falling dream, only I was awake while it was happening. Eventually, my senses returned and I became aware of the wind that was beginning to heat up. An eerie orange glow appeared in the distance below us.
“Great,” I mimed as the wind deafened the sound. “I’m going to die by falling into lava.”
Or was it magma? I closed my eyes and prepared for the worst.
Congratulations! You have reached level 26!
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
I opened one eye. I’d stopped falling. The bear and I came to rest several hundred feet above a pool of molten lava that bubbled and belched far below. The heat was uncomfortable, and I was fairly certain I’d be roasting alive if the situation was real.
I rolled over trying to figure out what happened. A giant net spanned the hole I’d just fallen from. It was definitely man-made. While the snow had melted, quite a few large rocks and the corpse of the white claw bear were caught in the net along with me.
I wasn’t sure if I was encountering a bug or not. Falling through the world was a common flaw in many games, especially online ones. The only thing that gave me hope was the net. Perhaps a well-intentioned NPC or GM had placed it as a precaution. Then again, if it was a game master, why not just let me fall in the lava and die?
I was in the process of trying to cut through the net when I heard voices approaching in the distance.
“Is that the body of a human up there?” A female one asked.
“There ain’t no way,” a male one answered.
“I think it is,” the female said.
“I’m still alive,” I croaked, still trying to recover my voice.
“See!” The female exclaimed. “And it’s alive.”
The net shifted as a loud cranking sound came from nearby. A minute later, I saw a pair of shadows from the vantage point of my face being pressed up against the net.
“How did you get up there?” The male, a dwarf from the looks of him, asked.
“I fell,” I replied.
“How are you alive?” The female asked.
I tried to shrug but my shoulders were tangled in the net. “I don’t know.”
There was more rustling followed by the sound of chains and suddenly I was falling again as the net fell away. It was a short drop that didn’t hurt too bad but then all the rocks that had been caught in the net crashed down on me.
“You could have let him down easy,” the female said.
Rocks shifted above me as the male replied. “It’s better this way. He could have been armed.”
“But you didn’t have to kill him,” the female protested.
The male grunted. “It’ll be fine. He’s a player. He probably already respawned.”
“Shh,” the female hissed. “You aren’t allowed to talk like that.”
“To who?” The male protested. “He died, and there’s nobody else within miles of this place. They probably still won’t locate Under Drunder for weeks even with his information.”
“Under Drunder?” I grunted as I wiggled around under tons of rocks.
Footsteps ran over to my location and the rustling grew more frantic. The voices began to whisper and I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
Then the male called out. “How are you still alive down there?”
I groaned. There was no way I was explaining myself to someone who just tried to kill me.
“Break Stuff!” I choked out, dumping all of the stamina that had regenerated into the skill.
Rocks shattered and more took its place. I could see the light coming through the cracks—just a little more.
“What was that?” The male grunted. “What did you just do?”
“Break Stuff!” I said again, using the skill to lesser effect. I would have to invest in stamina potions if I wanted to do that sustainably, not that I could drink them while buried under rubble.
That appeared to have done the trick, though, and a pair of powerful hands dug through the rubble and hoisted me up. An onyx-skinned dwarf with soot-covered red hair and glowing red eyes to match dusted me off. She looked like a stout mini demon.
“Can you keep what Drox said a secret?” She pleaded with me as she set me down.
“Keep what a secret?” I asked. “This place or the fact that you tried to kill me?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t care about that. What he called you.”
I had to think back. “Oh, you mean that I’m a player? That’s a naughty word for you guys, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “We might already be in trouble for saying it. Please, can you pretend you didn’t hear it?”
I grinned. “What’s it worth to ya?”
She blinked in confusion. “What?”
“This isn’t a dungeon, right?” I pointed to the lava-filled chamber behind us. “I heard you call it Under Drunder. Is that some kind of city?”
“It’s a hidden nation,” Drox, who looked more like a standard dwarf with soot-covered skin and a beard that went to his waist, said.
“You have to have special quests or hidden treasures down here, right?” I continued to bargain. “Surely you can point me in the right direction. You know, for keeping your secret.”
Drox turned to the female and threw up his arms in frustration. “I told you we should have killed him.”
“Don’t worry,” I placated them. “Your secret’s safe with me. I’m still going to hold you to that treasure though.”
“Oh, um, thanks,” the female grunted.
Drox walked past me and started sifting through the rubble. “How did you survive?”
I knocked on my hard hat. “I always wear my safety equipment. It keeps me…safe.”
“I’m Rassala,” the female introduced herself with an offered hand. “Since you, uh, dropped in, I suppose that makes you our guest. Do you mind waiting while we do our job?”
“Can. I help?” I offered, smelling a skill or a quest.
Rassala exchanged a look with Drox, who nodded. She sighed and led me over to a side of the rubble that hadn’t been sorted.
“Resources from the surface occasionally fall through vents into the underworld,” she explained. “We catch them and pluck out the good stuff.”
“Good stuff?” I asked.
To demonstrate, Rassala took out a sledgehammer and crushed one of the larger stones. She then sifted through the rubble and held up a shiny black stone that almost matched her skin. “This is hematite. It has a mana absorption level of seven. That makes it valuable. My suggestion is to take anything that isn’t labeled trash. Named rocks are good but unknown ones are usually much better. They have to be appraised but are quite rare. That can translate into such a big payday that you can take the rest of the year off.”
“Is this a class?” I asked. “Do you guys offer it?”
Drox laughed. “We’re just glorified trash collectors. If you want classes, come with us to Under Drunder. We have the best teachers.”
“Let’s hurry and harvest this batch,” Rassala said, striking another rock. “I want to get back. A human falling into our net can’t be a good omen.”
If she wanted to hurry, I had the right skill for the job.
“Stand back,” I instructed. “I got this.”
She looked me up and down. “Well, you are a miner at least. Show me what you got.”
I grinned. ‘’I’m not exactly a miner. Break Stuff!”
----------------------------------------
We walked in silence through a series of caves that wove through the vast magma chambers. There had to be magic at play because I felt for sure I should have baked after the first chamber. Because I broke up most of the rocks, Rassala let me keep some of the spoils.
“I’d give you more,” she explained. “But we’re on official business and it’s not a good look to come back empty-handed.”
“That includes those times you come back with a stray human that just happened to fall into the net,” Drox grumbled. “There’s no way that was a coincidence. I’m just saying.”
“Ignore him,” Rassala whispered. “He used to be a guard in a previous life.”
That left me with questions I didn’t know how to ask. Did NPCs reincarnate as new NPCs when they were killed in the game? It made a certain kind of sense to recycle them. Then I thought of Mary, and how I’d feel if she was ever recycled.
“We’re here,” Rassala said, tapping my arm to get my attention.