Well, perhaps friends was a bit of a stretch. Rieren wasn’t certain she would call Silk or Rollo friends of hers. Not exactly. She was glad to see them all, nevertheless.
Especially Amalyse.
“What in the Abyss are you doing here, Rieren?” Amalyse yelled at her as she fought off one of the sharklike dungeon guardian with a glowing crimson greatsword.
“I should be asking you the same thing,” Rieren said.
Battle fury was taking a hold of her. She itched to jump in and join in on the fray, but before she could do so, Mercion stepped forward. Ah, of course. His lightning.
“Stand back,” he said.
He didn’t need to explain himself. The lightning crackling out from his fist caught the attention of all three of the Lionshard Sect disciples. As bidden, they quickly backed off. Rollo even shut down the spears of light he’d summoned.
Rieren glanced at him. Rollo. Standing. Her eyes widened. He was standing with the help of legs that looked as though he had torn them off of a poor Ceramic Guardian.
Mercion shot his lightning into the dungeon guardians’ midst. They screamed and fell, jerking as the electricity ran over them, burning their wet scales and flesh. In moments, they had gone silent and unmoving.
“Thank you for the assist,” Amalyse said. She was trying to meet Mercion’s eyes since her words were clearly directed at him, but she kept looking at Rieren.
For Rieren herself, she was enjoying the pleasant shock of finding such familiar faces out here in the middle of a dungeon so far from Lionshard mountain. She had a feeling there was a story to tell here, but now was not the time for it.
They needed to clear this dungeon and find the missing people first.
“You are welcome,” Mercion said. His tone was careful. Diplomatic. “Judging by your acquaintance’s reaction, I am going to assume you are foreigners to this land, and since I never knew of the presence of others in this dungeon, I assume the Stannerig sent you here.”
Amalyse nodded, but it was Silk who spoke.
“We came at the behest of the Stannerig clan, yes,” she said, standing straighter and angling her head so that the dim light made her flowing dark hair appear like her flowing namesake. “They requested help from Lionshard Sect. The Sect decided to send me, Amalyse Arraihos, and Rollo Karlosyne to assist in whatever form we can.”
“You!” Mercion’s mouth gaped a little like a fish on land at Rollo. “Rollo Karlosyne! I wasn’t expecting you to show up.”
Rollo’s frowned. “Oh, you know of me? Or do you only know of the Karlosyne and are… attempting to curry favour?”
Rieren was a little surprised by his reply, as were the others. Before, Rollo would have puffed up his chest as a proud scion of an Archnoble clan. It was only natural for the rest of the world to know of his clan, and by extension, to know of him.
Now, he seemed almost cynical about it.
Still. It wasn’t surprising that some of the Archnobles and their scions might know each other. High society tended to move among themselves, as a way to foster connections and grow their internal networks. It was no surprise that Mercion might already know Rollo personally, even if the latter failed to remember.
“Yes,” Mercion said, holding onto admirable equanimity despite the insult. “We met at the festival in Ishisor.”
Rollo blinked at him. “Ah. Of course, how silly of me.”
Amalyse cleared her throat and pointed at the doorway. “We came here on the trail of some people. I don’t suppose you’ve found them already, have you?”
She once more met Rieren’s eyes, but this time, there was a clear message there. They would talk, just later, after this dungeon business was done. Rieren had no problem waiting.
“We have not found them yet,” Mercion said. “I suspect they’ve been taken all the way to the central chamber.”
“To the Dungeon Core?”
“Dungeon Core? Hmmm… perhaps. I had not thought of that.”
“You sound like you had other suspicions, my lord,” Silk said, her eyes screwed in thought. The only thing marring her regularly pristine looks. “Care to share what you’re thinking of?”
Mercion considered for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a point in doing so. I believe we will find out in due time. But as a small warning, be prepared for any encounter. Even ones that seem insurmountable.”
Rieren frowned at him and his ambiguity. He had been open enough about his suspicions regarding an Avatar’s possible presence here in the dungeon. Why was he bothering to hide it now?
“Then let us get going,” Silk said, leading the way.
Rieren and the others fell in behind her. They had made their party intentionally small before entering the dungeon, something the Lionshard disciples might have adhered to as well. This conjoining of the two groups sadly negated that. Rieren wondered if there were more of her fellow disciples outside. But no, she would have met them, if so.
As the group jostled into place, Mercion’s party fell behind the Lionshard disciples. Rieren decided not to think of any implications about that sort of positioning.
Instead, she moved ahead and took her position just behind Silk.
“You may want to be wary of stepping on any pressure plates and the like,” she said.
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Silk glanced back at her, but quickly looked away. “I am aware, Rieren.”
“Are you aware that we are about to fall down?”
Silk paused. “What?”
“Make sure you stop at the edge of the next room we enter.”
Silk made sure to do so. The chamber wasn’t far off, and minutes later, they had all huddled behind Silk as she paused on the inside lip of the large room. There wasn’t much space so some of them were forced to remain behind in the passage.
“What now?” Silk asked. “Why are we stopping here?”
Rieren looked past the girl’s shoulder. She blew away Silk’s dark hair trying to tickle her nose, which nearly made the other girl jump, her face flushed bright red. That would have been disastrous, so Rieren was thankful that Silk was able to contain her impulse.
The room itself seemed innocent enough. The cracked ceiling let in water, but it didn’t flood the chamber for the floor was cracked too, letting the gathered water drip off to some chasm below. It looked as though they could walk across and enter through the passage at the other end. Except…
“Do any of you have anything to spare that I can throw?” Rieren asked. “Something a little on the heavier side.”
One of the retainers grunted. “What is this nonsense? Why are we stopping?”
“Here,” Mercion said. He slapped his man’s chest to shut him up. “Take this.”
He handed her a rather heavy rock. Rieren had absolutely no idea why Mercion had something like this on him—well, more likely within his spatial storage ring. It had an ironlike feel about it. Hmm. It would do.
Rieren pulled her arm back, then chucked it at the centre of the room. As soon as it struck the ground, the entire floor shattered and fell in. At the same time, the roof cracked some more before breaking apart too, which released a deluge of the lake water as though they were in front of a waterfall. Which, she supposed, they technically were now.
Silk and most of the others had hastily stepped back as the floor had broken apart. All that was left of the ground was a thin circle of broken rocks at the edge of the room.
“I see why we are stopping now,” the retainer said from the back. “Apologies.”
“Worry not,” Rieren said. “At least we are all safe.”
“Thanks to you.” Amalyse flashed her a smile. Rieren returned it briefly.
“The edge is safe, though, right?” Mercion asked. He put an experimental foot past Silk onto the rock jutting over the watery chasm. “We should be able to shimmy along it to get to the other side, yes? Unless we took a wrong turn, somewhere?”
“I believe this is right enough,” Rieren said. “We should indeed be able to use the lip of the chamber to get to the other side. Though, we will need to be quite careful.”
“Why?” Rollo asked. “It looks like plain water.”
“Looks can be deceiving…”
They started edging along the little lip of broken rocks. As Rieren crept carefully along, making sure most of her weight was on the part of the rocks connected to the wall, someone cursed. She looked back to see Rollo pulling his hand out of the stream of water sinking into the pit.
“It stings,” he reported. “What kind of water is this supposed to be?”
“The kind meant to kill you, no doubt,” Mercion said.
“Oh, stinging water.” Silomene was eyeing the waterfall with new appreciation. “Wish I could take a sample with me to study.” She paused. “Oh wait.”
She fiddled with something from inside her robe. A locket appeared in Silomene’s hand, which vanished as soon as she had brough it out. She must have sold it to the System Shop. Ah, she required Credits.
A second later, a new item replaced the locket she’d just sold off—a small scroll. Rieren wasn’t sure what it was supposed to be. When Silomene opened it up and held next to the water, a stream of the stinging liquid curved away from the rest of the waterfall and directly entered her scroll. Some glowing script Rieren couldn’t read appeared on it before Silomene pulled it back.
“What?” she asked when she found that most of the others had paused on their trek to the other side of the chamber to see her work. “It’s just a Summoning Scroll. Have none of you ever seen it?”
Rieren sometimes forgot the sheer breadth and magnitude of things that could be found in the System Shop.
“How did you even find such a thing?” she asked as they all resumed getting to the other side.
“I spend my free time browsing through the System Shop to see what sort of things I can get more myself. It’s quite fun, actually. Gives you a nice little boost of motivation to start earning more Credits.”
The only way to earn Credits consistently was by selling off things. Rieren wondered what Silomene tended to sell. She didn’t look like the type to go scouring the countryside for monsters to kill.
Their progress through the dungeon was steady. They came across a few more basic traps, though Rieren and the others were able to recognize and evade them all. No sudden floods caught them unwary, no moving walls came close to crushing them, and no ceilings that broke above them to drop an assortment of deadly rubble and water ever managed to bury them.
The nice thing about having memories of the past was that they could use their recollections to inform themselves of any dangers they might face.
It was also nice that the Dungeon Core running this dungeon didn’t seem to have the brilliant idea of innovating all the traps and obstacles it might have placed along their way. Their memories, especially Rieren’s, served well.
Even the monsters they came across seemed feeble. Not worth the trouble, and certainly not deserving of the frightening features they possessed. Mercion kept defeating them with no ease.
Eventually, they came across the first of the corpses.
“This is one of the missing ones, right?” Silomene asked.
Mercion grimaced. There was no recognition on his face, but the healer who had remained at the back stepped forward and confirmed that it was indeed the body of one of those they were searching for.
Rieren frowned at the corpse. The poor woman had been mauled quite viciously, and her face was set in a rictus of pain, mouth open as though she’d been howling in agony all the way to her death. Unfortunately, the wounds weren’t clear if they had been inflicted by one of the dungeon guardians they had encountered or if they were the product of a different monster.
Like the Abyssals who had kidnapped them.
“It is strange we haven’t encountered any Abyssals,” Amalyse said, thinking the same thing as Rieren. “And yet, here we find a corpse that has clearly been viciously brutalized.”
Mercion pulled his face away from the corpse with visible effort. “I think the Abyssals know we are coming. As such, they have prepared a little welcome for us. Let us keep moving.”
If it was even Abyssals. For all they knew, this was something done by the Avatar to make them think it was the act of thoughtless monsters. To redirect attention elsewhere.
Only one way to be certain.
They headed onwards. One of the retainers took the corpse within his storage ring for proper burial once they were out of the dungeon. They came across more bodies. All of them were broken, terribly wounded one way or another, and all were dead.
“How many were captured?” Rieren asked after they passed the seventh mutilated body.
“Eleven,” Mercion replied.
Four more. There was no telling if any of those captured had survived. All they could do was forge onwards, bypassing traps that tried to stop them. There were no more dungeon guardians hiding on their paths. Either they had dealt with most or all of the monsters, or they had retreated and were now waiting for Rieren’s group to enter a certain location.
Probably a spot where they could attack altogether. So far, their disparate numbers had made them lose to Mercion rather easily. If they all worked together, however, they could nullify Mercion pretty quickly.
“There’s the main doors,” Amalyse said.
Their passage had opened up into an antechamber of sorts. The next room was barred by thick, heavy doors similar to the ones Rieren and Mercion had seen in the previous dungeon.
Mercion turned to face them, expression grim. “Are we all prepared?”
They nodded back. It was time to finish dealing with these monsters and figure out what had happened to the reminder of the ones they sought to retrieve. It was time to find out who exactly had done this.
“Then let us begin.”
Turing around, Mercion placed both hands on the dungeon’s doors and pushed them open.