I arrived at the mine early the next morning to see Samantha doing a handstand beside the teleporter. One of the other men was trying to outdo her by balancing even longer. I saw Paul approach and walked over to him. “Bit chilly out here, isn’t it?” I blew on my hands, as they and my head were the only things my under armor didn’t cover and therefore couldn’t keep warm. It was mid April, though, so it should warm up once the sun started to rise.
“I like it. Reminds me of when I was in Russia right after the Cold Wars ended.” He responded.
“So that’s why they called it the cold war. Everyone was freezing.”
He smiled at the joke. “Since when could Samantha do a hand stand?” he asked, pointing at her.
I shrugged. “Don’t know. I did try to get her to do some dexterity exercises and stretches last night. Maybe she figured it out then.”
Paul didn’t look like he accepted that answer. “Summers, come here.”
“Yes sir,” she said, and took three steps with her hands before collapsing. She stood up and ran over. “Problem, sir?”
“Tell me the truth. Did you use any enhancers last night?”
I almost stepped in with an excuse, but she nodded. “One dose of Niirik before I went to bed. It really loosened me up. It didn’t really help my Strength or Endurance, but I got four points of Dexterity and another one from stretches and exercises.”
Paul nodded. “Where did you get it? Tim knows not to sell to any of you without permission. Using Boosts too early can stunt your growth and cause other problems. Did Greg give it to you?”
Samantha started to pout. “No. Tim was closed already before I thought about it, so I bought it from the System Market. Am I in trouble?”
Paul sighed. “Well, it doesn’t look like you caused any permanent damage, but don’t do it again until I give you permission, understood?”
“Yes, Sir.” she said, saluting him.
“As for the rest of you, you aren’t going to touch any boosts until I say you can.” He spent the next five minutes lecturing the recruits about how he’d seen various Boost drugs go wrong and sometimes even leave people worse off than they were before. The safest way to use them that he had found was to be almost at your limit before using them, sometimes at lower than recommended dose, to get the most out of your exercise. Which is one reason why he was trying to get them at or near their limits, so that they could safely continue training on their own, with boosts if they so choose. “Well, now that that’s settled, let’s head out.”
We teleported to AR, then to Sanctuary before everyone equipped their gear and we walked to the dungeon teleporter. His lieutenants would be leading four more teams in, every thirty minutes, but we got the first slot. “Ok, I’m not sure if any of you know it yet, but the Outpost Core here has a skill called Create Party that I made. It’s also on the bulletin board. We all need to get it.” The skill was a bit different than most. The level was based on how efficiently it could transfer your data to others, but low levels would just make it slower to update of use more energy. You could form teams, squadrons, and other groups, and it would tell everyone in your group your HP, MP, SP, and status conditions as long as it was active, and anyone could sort their teammates out on their HUD, like an MMO video game. You could also send texts of voice chat through it and track your teammate’s position, even placing a dot on your map for each one if you also got the ‘map’ skill from the System. “The Dungeon uses this to figure out who’s on the same team for the purpose of Loot and the teleporter. If we aren’t all on the same team when we activate it, it will take the biggest team, and leave the others behind, as it only lets one team in every thirty minutes.” I invited everyone to my team once they had downloaded it, then made Paul the Team Leader. “Each monster kill also earns Zerka after you pass the first level, to incentivize people to fight the hardest ones they can, so Paul will need to handle the loot rules too.”
Once we were all teamed up, we stepped onto the teleporter. A minute later, the control panel turned on, and Paul pushed the button to send us down.
We appeared in an empty room with a few glowing lights in the ceiling, meant to look like stars. They kept the room about as bright as the night of a full moon. A minute later Paul spoke up. “Ok, everyone, I’ve arranged the teams into three scout teams of four and a twelve person main team. The Mayor is technically part of the main team, but don’t expect me or him to fight. He’s just an observer, and I’m just here to give orders to get you as deep into the dungeon as possible. Now, scout teams,” he pulled up a map of the level, the corner where we were being in the center of the map whenever it was added to everyone’s HUD. On lower levels you would need to explore to automap it, or buy maps from others. “This is the path we’ll be taking to the center. I want you to check side passages to make sure we aren’t going to get flanked. Treat this as an escort. We need to get to our objective, not wipe out the enemy.” The path he had designated went through three animal lairs before making it to the central boss room.
We sat out, trying to keep the scout teams at least twenty meters ahead of us. Samantha was part of the main group, as her heavy weapon was for hitting stationary targets with maximum firepower, not dealing with ambushes and rapidly moving enemies. After about a hundred meters we heard the slight pops of railgun fire, the only noise coming from the small sonic booms the rounds produced. “Enemy spotted. Looks like wharf rats.” said someone over the radio. They were actually one of the weaker animals down here. After a minute or so, the gunfire ended. “Enemy neutralized. Continuing the search.” We kept walking and soon we were walking past dozens of large rat corpses. There wasn’t anything worth keeping in them, so we left them behind. The Conservation Core collected any monster corpse that wasn’t interacted with after thirty minutes, so there would be nothing but a bit of blood left there before long.
They killed over three hundred more rats over the next hour, at which point Paul ordered everyone to stop except one scout team. The first Lair was ahead and they needed to see what was there and let us know. A few minutes later we received live video feed through the Party skill of over a hundred sleeping rats in a room with one that was maybe twice as big in the center. “Looks like the boss,” one of the scouts sent over text, unwilling to speak lest he draw the attention of the rats.
“Yep,” said Paul. “Ok, here’s the plan. Main group will attack from here. Scout team, get to these three entrances.” The room had four entrances, and could be bypassed if needed, so they could make their way to the opposite side in a few minutes. “No gun fire until we are ready, as it might wake the King. Use swords or punch them. Signal us once you are in position.” The two scouts with us nodded, while the other sent ‘affirmative’ and then made its way down the side corridor. Two minutes later everyone gave the signal and Paul ordered the attack.
Twenty one of them opened fire with their rail pistols, as it was the only weapon they had, and Samantha aimed at the King. Just as she pulled the trigger, though, it disappeared and drop on her from above. The other rats swarmed at their enemy as she screamed, trying to pull it off of her as it bit into her left shoulder muscle. The rats started falling rapidly, most of them dying with only a few shots, as Samantha grabbed the King by the head, pulled it off of her, and squeezed, crushing its skull. She dropped the corpse on the ground and held her hand over the wound which shed surprisingly little blood. “Damn.” she said as a silver layer of nanites closed the wound over, only after which she removed her hand. With the rest of the rats dead or dying, one of the other men, the closest thing to a medic they had, came over to check on her. “I’m fine,” she said flexing the bitten shoulder with only minimal pain. “It didn’t get anything major like a blood vessel or tendon.”
“You sure?” he asked and she nodded.
“So, any idea how it could teleport?” asked one of the men. “That would be pretty useful in a fight.”
Everyone shrugged, then a twenty year old man spoke up. “This is basically a video game dungeon, right? Usually monsters with magic have cores. Maybe we should check.” The others agreed that it might make sense to do that, and volunteered the guy that spoke up as the harvester. He carefully cut it open with his sword, and reached inside. After a minute or so of fishing around he found a small orb in the center of its chest. “Anyone have the appraisal skill?”
One guy nodded and looked at it. “It’s a mini teleport orb. It can move one person to a known location using their nanites for power. The rat probably had a way to communicate with it so it could teleport where ever it could see.” The man took the orb and demonstrated it by teleporting into the center of the rat nest. “See.”
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Paul nodded. “Give it to me. I’ll store any loot we get and split it up later.” The man handed it over and it disappeared into Paul’s inventory blood and all. “Probably the only thing worth taking here, but let’s look around anyway.” A ten minute search of the room revealed only a few bits of scrap metal that were covered in rat bite marks. Most of it was iron, steel, aluminum or copper, but there were some silver and gold coins mixed in. The System price for scrap silver and gold wasn’t the best, but the silver might be worth five each and the gold twenty, assuming they weren’t alloys. Might as well keep them.
We continued through the maze, next having to deal with wolves. They were more nimble than the rats and took more shots to kill, but otherwise the trip went about the same. The Lair this time had a three meter tall wolf in it, surrounded by three dozen normal sized wolves. They split up like last time and this time let Sam fire first. She managed to hit the King’s front left shoulder and it seemed wounded but not down. The other wolves attacked and she fired again but, despite its limp, the Dire wolf managed to turn and just get a graze on the hip. It howled in pain and from several side corridors barking could be heard.
“It called for reinforcements!” called one guy, finishing of the twentieth wolf.
Seeing that the gun wasn’t going to hit it, Sam unequipped it and drew her sword, charging. The Dire wolf lunged at her and she blocked with the edge of her blade, deflecting the blow but losing her weapon in the process. Without a weapon she punched at its eye, getting her fist stuck in the socket as her punch proved too effective. It howled in pain again and shook her off, throwing her twenty feet into a wall as her hand came free. Not giving up, she picked up a human-sized femur that I had given them as decoration and used it as a club to continuously hit it in the head. The pain from its wounds and missing eye was enough of a distraction that she managed to beat it unconscious after two minutes.
Meanwhile the men formed firing lines and fired at the incoming wolves as they came into view. Paul and I stepped into the room to give them clear line of sight, and by the time Sam was standing over the wolf’s unconscious body breathing deeply to try and cool off, they had manage to kill or wound the others enough that they ran away.
Sam walked over to where her sword was laying, picked it up, and cut the wolf’s head off. “I guess we can search the room now,” she said. As the wolf was merely giant, it didn’t have any useful parts, unless someone wanted a large hide to make some leather from or wanted to try wolf meat. They spent the next ten minutes looking for anything that was worth taking, only to find two broken swords and two rail pistols. The unnamed Conservation core basically made new ones then dumped them in the middle of the room along with cloned meat so that the wolves would chew them up. They cost me forty three zerka worth of material each to make a pistol and twenty seven each to make a sword, but as they would no doubt be recycled they only cost me the thirty or so salvage price for a gun and twenty or so for the sword, which was insignificant with all of the money the place made just in selling the materials from its ongoing expansion.
We then made our way to the last room. They didn’t find any animals on the way there other than a few poisonous snakes that tried to bite them if they got too close. The air started to get humid as we approached the Lair, and when we were near it we started smelling decaying vegetation. After shooting another group of snakes we saw the last room. It had a ten foot walkway around the outside, but a pond of murky water in the middle. Not sure how to handle this, as there were no animals around that they could see, Paul ordered them to walk close to the wall around the edge of the room. Knowing what was going to happen, I pulled out my flying disk and hovered to the middle of the room, as high as I could. Once they were about half way there they noticed the main threat of this room as two crocodiles stepped in front of the group and two behind, with a fifth coming towards the middle. Some of them opened fire, but the weapons didn’t do much to them and only made the middle one, who was still in the pond, dive back under.
A few seconds later a jet of water left the pond and struck the center of the group, knocking several people over with the power of a fire hose. The men were forced to dodge jets of water that could knock them down and leave them open to an attack from the ends of the column. One of the men at the front got knocked over and one of the crocodiles lunged at him, grabbing his leg and trying to pull him under. One of the other men noticed this and fired several rounds at its eyes, causing it to release the man and flee to the water.
They pulled the wounded man behind the rest of the group then joined the others that were waiting for the crocodile to reemerge from the water or attack the ends of the group. “Switch to swords.” said Paul. “They penetrate better if you have high strength.” The men were quick to follow orders.
Soon the crocs attacked again, only for the ones on the ends to have their faces sliced open. They pulled back and a particle beam hit one in front of us in the face, blowing a hole through its forehead and killing it. The man who was bit, now with his leg healing over and wanting revenge on the one that attacked him, jumped on its back and tried to choke him. It started rolling to try and get him off, but he drew his blade and slit its stomach open, killing it.
Sam took aim on one of the ones in the rear and was about to fire when a jet of water hit her in the side of the head, knocking her sideways into the wall and making her drop her gun. As she went to pick it up one of the crocs in the rear managed to grab a man’s arm and pulled him out of formation. He held onto his sword, however, and, now that he knew that their bellies were easier to hurt, stabbed the one that didn’t have him in the side. With only one obvious enemy left, three men ran over and slashed at the croc that was trying to drag their friend into the water. It released him but before it could get away one of the men that came to the rescue swung down like he was chopping wood and took off the animal’s tail. It was unable to continue and collapsed from blood loss at the edge of the pond. “I’m turning you into a pair of boots.” the man said before rejoining the group.
With the one with water powers being the only one left the men focused on it. It surfaced to take a breath only to take a particle beam to the face. The water helped minimize the damage, but it still had a good bit of skin burned off of its nose, and started bleeding from its wound shortly after that. One of the men, tired of the fight, pulled out a grenade and threw it, causing the bleeding to get much worse as the water sprayed out of the pond. They waited another minute, but it didn’t surface again.
“What do we do now?” asked Rogers, the man whose leg had gotten bitten and who had wrestled a crocodile.
“It probably got too weak and drowned down there, but I don’t want to take a chance.” said Stark, the one whose arm was grabbed. They waited for another five minutes, but when the animal didn’t come back up, Sam made a suggestion. “I can hold my breath for a really long time. Want me to go down and see if it’s dead?”
“Your particle cannon will be worthless down there, but a sword should still work. It will just be slower due to water resistance.” said Stark.
Sam nodded. As no one objected, other than Paul who told them to tie a rope to her so they could pull her out if she was attacked and injured, she walked into the pond. Three minutes passed before she surfaced again without the rope tied to her, tossing an orb to Paul. “That was in its chest. I’m guessing that’s what let it use that water attack.”
Paul nodded and held it, ordering it to shoot water. Nothing happened. “You probably need to use the water in the pond.” said Stark. Paul tried again, ordering the water in the pond to move, and created a wave.
“Looks like it. We’ll appraise it later.” He put it in his inventory.
“I tied that rope to a crate I found at the bottom of the pond. Mind pulling it out?” Sam asked as she got out of the water and shook like a dog to try and dry herself off.
The men pulled in a good twenty five meters of rope before the crate surfaced. They opened it and removed the objects from inside. There were four rifles. They only cost two hundred zerka each on the market, eighty five or so zerka in raw materials, but could shoot a bullet twice as fast as a pistol and were more accurate with a higher rate of fire, from about one hundred rounds per minute to about one hundred fifty rounds per minute.
“Nice,” said one of the men, shouldering it. It only came with one magazine, but used the same ones as the rail pistols, so they had spares.
“Good,” Paul said. “Main team can use them for now. Once we get to the surface we’ll sort out who gets to keep it.
Now that the pond had been searched, the team proceeded to the boss room. This one was a bit weird. They were attacked by various forest animals, as the closer they got the more plant life they came across. The only ones to offered any real challenge were two wild boars that managed to headbutt a man before the others opened fire. As Paul didn’t have the storage space for them, I shoved the bodies in my Inventory 2 along with three of the turkeys that tried to scratch or peck our eyes out, so that we could have a barbecue when we got out of here.
When we got to the boss room the scouts reported something strange. There was a four meter tall turkey in the room. Paul gave me a look that said he thought that was a strange choice. “What? There is a list of five forest creatures it can choose from, including the Boar and Wolves. It just happened to randomize a turkey this time.”
Paul shook his head. “Well, guess we’ll be selling this one to a restaurant if we can get it out of here.” I told him I had enough room, and he nodded. “In that case, lets take it down.” We entered the room and twenty other turkeys swarmed us, but they just got mowed down. When they opened fire on the big one, however, a transparent glow appeared in front of it and stopped the damage. Sam fired the particle cannon at it, and the same thing happened, though the glow seemed to dim slightly.
It charged, knocking several of the men out of the way, and running into Paul. Even though he wasn’t supposed to fight, he dug his feet in and stopped its advance. “Hey, Paul’s melee attack got through.” said one of the men and drew his sword to run at it. Several others did the same thing as Paul held it in a headlock, but only some of the sword swings managed to get through. The more powerful or skilled ones seemed to be blocked by the shield. Seeing that this worked, everyone else drew their swords and started swinging. They were able to eventually bring it down, however. Only one of the men seemed to injure it every time, and he was the one to finish it off as he stabbed it through the heart after the seventh attempt.
“You figured out the secret?” asked Rogers, panting for breath.
“Yeah, it’s like the personal shields from this old sci-fi movie. Slow moving stuff makes it through, fast moving stuff doesn’t. Or, I guess it’s more accurate that its based on the amount of energy, not the speed, which is why the particle beam was blocked.”
“Or, the particles in the beam are just going at over half the speed of light, which is definitely fast enough to trigger the shield.” said Sam.
Now that there was a whole in its chest, Paul reached inside and pulled an orb out. “Nice shield.” he said. I stored the body in my Inventory 3, using over seven hundred mana worth of energy to do so, as I didn’t have enough space in my Inventory 2 and they searched the room. Unlike the mini-boss rooms, there was nothing here to salvage, so we made our way to the teleporter room. Once there they saw that there were six crates in the room, two each on the front and back walls and one each on the side walls.
The two front wall crates contained small drones, the size of a person’s hand, only it contained a rail pistol flew via ionic propulsion, and could be controlled by its owner if they learned the “Minion” skill. Those cost five hundred zerka each on the Market, but cost me two hundred and twenty seven to make. The two side walls had weapons crates, one of which had another Particle cannon and one of which had another crate of rifles. These weapons were distributed to the men.
The back wall had the best rewards. Both crates contained a suit of low end power armor. At two thousand zerka each, nine hundred and sixty my cost, they had the defensive ability of the heavier armor Sam wore, but across the whole body. They also effectively added twenty to your strength when wearing them and had their own Inventory system and miniature Recycler for recycling air and human waste. With a proper power supply and food supply you could live in one indefinitely. The only issue I had with it was that it used a Power Orb for energy, which could be tracked through hyperspace and would give away our location, so it couldn’t be brought into Sanctuary without compromising security. To partially make up for this I added a bit of power storage in place of the power orb along with a Short Half-life Nuclear Battery which produced about half of the power an orb would for three to five years. This would let you wear it indefinitely, but would use its reserve power when needed.
Paul debated who to give the armor to, but in the end gave it to the two Heavies, now that he had a second Particle cannon to give the second strongest person in the group.