Chapter 08

Second chain: Pathless vegetation. Level 3.

As soon as we entered the dungeon, I knew that this would be an entirely different beast. There were no paths forward. Only dense jungle.

Outside it snowed. In the dungeon, it drizzled. I donned the gaping hood of my cloak and tried to move through the brush.

Plants were so massive and close together it was almost impossible to even squeeze a foot forward. Stems and leaves had grown so tall that they towered over us and blocked our view. If there were trees, we couldn't see them.

Vynk led us forward by chopping through the jungle with his greatsword one square meter at a time. It was brutally slow going.

We stopped often so that he could take a break and recover his strength and stamina.

Robern and Arris both had spare daggers, but the meager blades proved largely ineffective against the dense vegetation. Lep’s spells cost a tremendous amount of damage for little progress, and Foli’s Steed of Elwohire was equally useless. I was of no use since my spearhead couldn’t clear nearly as much as a single swipe of Vynk’s greatsword.

“We’re getting nowhere and I’m soaked!” Foli said.

We were all soaked to the bone, even though the rain was light. Leaves overhead would collect enough water along their stems that the weight would make the whole plant dip, pouring water all over us. We were absolutely miserable. None more miserable than Vynk who was doing all the work. He showed us his hands which were pruned and wrung red. Blisters were forming and his health bar reflected that damage.

We did try using Lep’s Hand of Flames once, but the amount of smoke and steam it produced was intolerable. That was aside from the fact that it didn’t clear as much as we’d hoped it would.

“Oh no,” Pelle said. “Behind us! The plants are growing back!”

Sprouts erupted from the ground along the path we’d made. In mere seconds, an assorted variety of vegetation grew stories tall. Massive leaves unfurled and draped overhead. Flowers budded, grew, and bloomed.

They weren’t ordinary flowers. They were large enough that anyone of us could crawl into. They also reeked of eggs and corpse meat. The stench was immediately all consuming. Robern puked to the side. I dry heaved, and my eyes watered.

“Guys, I don’t know how long I can keep this up for,” Vynk said after a few more swings, earning us two meters of progress. He panted heavily from exertion and stopped to show us his hands. They were starting to blister once more and they were fully pruned.

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Give me your hands.”

Vynk held his hands out and I scooped the length of my cloak up to wrap it around his hands and wrists. I cast my mana bar into a small ring and activated the drying rune on my cloak. The rune absorbed mana point after mana point, requiring a total of 10. Vapor rose from the length of the cloak, from the shoulders, and from the hood. Its weight lightened and I felt just a bit dryer. Vapor rose from the cloak where it was wrapped around Vynk’s hands. He visibly relaxed.

“Oh man, that’s good,” he said, removing his hands and finding them nearly dry.

Foli was quite jealous and insisted I dry her off as well. Before I did that, I leveled up the drying rune by 10 permanent mana points, making it my third highest leveled item right behind the spellbook.

We took turns sharing my cloak as Vynk cut through dense jungle. Between Pelle and I, we kept healing his hands, but less often now that we were keeping them dry. By the time we ran into the first wall, I’d ended up using 200 mana points, mostly just to keep us dry.

Vynk’s greatsword cut through thick stems of some type of giant fern. We were startled when his blade struck solid rock and the sound of steel rang out.

“Aye! The shock went straight to my funny bone!” Vynk said, dropping his greatsword and shaking out his hands.

The wall he’d struck was solid stone that rose beyond what the vegetation allowed us to see. Though impossible to determine how thick it was, we concluded it had to be the dungeon boundary.

“Let’s take a look at the map,” Arris said, unrolling the parchment.

The map was useless. There was no legend that told us where the entrance was. Only random symbols in the center of the squares which formed the area, and a large X in one of them.

“We need more information,” Lep said, just as the stench of flowers growing in our wake began to catch up while we paused.

“We should follow the wall,” Arris said. “We need to find a corner. Then we need to find the corner after that and judge the length. Look at the map. See how the squares aren’t aligned? This means that some of the walls will be quite short. Depending on how far we go, we’ll be able to start narrowing down where we are on the map.”

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“Not a bad idea,” I said, “but then what?”

“Then we go to the X. Might be the boss. Might be the item for the next chain. Who knows?” Arris said.

“What about all the symbols in the middle?” Foli said.

“If we need to, we’ll get to them,” Arris said.

We all wanted to confer some more, but the stench was encroaching, and the flowers looked menacing. Some were blood red with barbed petals and pistils shaped like tongues. Others were spotted with saturated colors that warned of something akin to poison.

With a great sigh, Vynk set himself to work again after another dry off. We were stopping more often now since he was greatly exerting himself. We all started taking turns hacking and chopping, but the rest of us weren’t nearly as skilled at swinging a greatsword as Vynk was. Through our efforts we’d managed to marginally increase our pace.

After coming to a corner, and then another corner, we estimated our location. There was a chance that we were on the upper east side of the map, but chances were more likely that we were on the western wall where two squares met.

“Well, hold on,” Robern said. “If we navigate about a dozen meters east from here, we’ll run into what the T symbol is supposed to be. If we don’t, then we know for sure we’re on the upper east part of the dungeon.”

With great effort, we arrived at a strange monolith. It was rough and upright, though a section of it was cleanly cut to reveal a lever. We had no idea what it was for. There were no instructions and no symbols of any kind.

“I say we stick to what Arris said,” I said. “Let’s not touch anything until we need to. We’ll cut straight north from here which means we should arrive at another monolith just like this one, if the symbols mean the same thing. Then we head east towards the X.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Foli, then Pelle, and everyone else.

Carving our way through the jungle would have been fine were it not for the persistent gentle drizzle. It was maddening.

It felt like hours before we arrived at the most northwestern symbol on the map. It was another monolith with a similar lever in a cleanly cut part of the rough stone.

“Having to go back to activate these is gonna be such a pain,” Vynk said, quite dismayed.

“Pulling them now might cause problems later,” Robern said. “It could very well be a trap.”

“Or we might have to do it in the right order,” Pelle said.

We ended up leaving the lever alone, drying off yet again, and cutting eastward through the jungle, towards the X. At some point, Vynk had to stop for a while. For a real break. We huddled beneath my cloak which we simply left draped over all our heads like a little fort. We took turns spending some mana to power the drying rune while Arris cast Elder Azure Mana Totem to replenish our mana.

“Thanks guys,” Vynk said, looking absolutely weary. “It’s just too much cutting and chopping. I need at least an hour, I think.”

We shared food and drink, staying dry most of the time. We stayed even through the horrid stench of the creepy flowers that had grown around us. It was tough. Sometimes the smell was just overwhelming, causing us to gag and cough in response.

At last, feeling at least a bit recovered, Vynk led us forward through the jungle once more. This time we all went back to trading off and using his greatsword. We left a mess of downed plants in our wake, which was quickly overgrown with newly thriving plants. All manner of vine and tree and fern and bush oversaturated every square meter of the dungeon.

As Vynk broke through a final barrier of jungle, a different stench assaulted us. The malodor was of decay and mold. The very air I breathed seemed thick with a texture of spores.

“I think we’ve arrived,” Vynk said, stepping through the opening he’d cut through jungle flora.

We followed him into a clearing littered with corpses. Animal corpses, human corpses, monster corpses, and all manner of dead things I could not identify. It was absolute carnage. The jungle floor was covered in layers of flesh and bone.

“Look at the teeth marks in the bones,” Robern said, crouching down to carefully inspect the utter destruction.

Exposed bones were marked by dagger sized teeth. Bite marks lined up perfectly along multiple corpses. It was as though the monsters who’d half eaten these fallen creatures had done so cheek to cheek.

“To arms!” Arris said, casting his mana bar wide.

We rushed into our positions of strategy. Vynk rushed up front and to the center with Arris to the right, and Foli to the left. Lep stood in the middle. Robern’s form was already being ensconced in a plume of shadowy smoke. Pelle and I cast our mana bars out wide and formed the support line.

Something was rising from the middle of the floor of flesh and bone. Piles of muscle and bloodless organs rose a meter off the ground. Then flesh and bone began slipping and sliding off the pile, revealing a massive chest beneath it all.

The chest was an ordinary large chest made of wood planks and steel borders. Much of the wood was stained with blood and gore. The metal was half rusted.

Nothing came out of the jungle. Nothing descended from the low hanging canopy. Nothing flanked us. Nothing happened.

“Is there no boss in this dungeon?” Lep said.

“There has to be,” I said. “There are at least a dozen other sites on this map we haven’t explored yet. Something killed all these beasts and monsters. Adventurers too,” I said with a gulp.

“I think we’re missing something,” Foli said.

Robern’s shadow dissipated and he strode forward, past the frontline, and carefully approached the chest.

“Careful,” Pelle said.

“I’m checking for traps,” Robern said.

He carefully continued his approach. Bones crunched beneath his boots. Corpses smeared against each other as he walked over them. Gore squished out beneath his footsteps. Then he cast his mana bar out into a small circle. A few points were drawn from it. After a moment, he turned to us.

“There’s a trap,” he said.

“What kind?” Foli said. “Can you disarm it?”

“I don’t know. It’s nothing I’ve ever seen before and I can’t exactly tell where it is. I’m guessing it’s protecting the chest though.”

“That's a more than fair guess,” Vynk said.

“I can try poking it with my flagstaff,” I said. “It’s the longest weapon we have right?”

Foli had her staff, but it was shorter than mine by about a half a meter.

“I’ll try,” Lep said. “I’ll use Hand of Flames to grab the chest. Worse that’ll happen is the chest will get scorched and blacken right?”

The plan was met with a collective shrug, so Lep cast his mana bar out and conjured his Hand of Flames. With gnarled fingers, he navigated the massive burning hand towards the chest and wrapped his fingers around it. Just as he lifted the chest, great white bones shot out of the ground and covered the chest like a rib cage. The bones pierced his spell, which then fell apart in a crumble of rapidly cooling cinders.

Screeching echoed in the distance, shaking the flora of the jungle.