Chapter 18

A Poem?

Vynk leapt and said, “Replace Blade!”

Zekaidean’s Anvil, Danera’s Wisps, and Star Armor were active. Vynk promptly disappeared and his greatsword appeared in his place. His health dropped threateningly low. Since we had measures in place, his health quickly rose to full.

I let him use my inventory pouch so that he would have an easier time looting the chest. The rest of us bit at our nails as we waited. The most important thing we could do was make sure Vynk’s health was full so that he could quickly cast his power technique once more.

“This is nerve wracking,” Pelle said.

Just then, Vynk’s blade disappeared and he appeared in its place. He tumbled to the ground, soaked to the bone. Water ran from his hair and clothes and he shakily got to his feet. He lifted a hand over the hot spring and muttered under his breath. Only a moment later did his greatsword come bursting from the water. He deftly caught it. The leather handle made a deafening slap when it struck his open palm.

“I need a breather,” Vynk said, and promptly collapsed.

“Vynk!” I said, rushing to him. “Are you alright?”

“The pressure… the pressure at the bottom…”

He coughed and rolled on his side, grimacing as he moved. I checked his health bar. A dark blue orb bobbed in the middle and throbbed.

“You’re afflicted by something,” Pelle said, looking over my shoulder.

“I feel like I can’t breathe right,” Vynk said.

“Pelle, keep an eye on his health. Arris and Filo, will you guys scout how far the exit is? In the meantime let’s give Vynk all the room he needs.”

“I got this,” Filo said, putting a hand to Arris’s chest to stop him from accompanying her.

She called forth her Steed of Elwohire, leapt atop it, and the beast of roots and twisted vine galloped off.

Vynk was having a difficult time breathing. He was wheezing and it seemed there was nothing we could do for him but to give him space. His health wasn’t suffering and he’d been cured of poison. The affliction simply remained a mystery

“Vynk,” I said. “Will you let us know if it gets worse? We’ll need to rush you back to the guild if this gets worse.”

“Yea… I’ll let you know. It feels… like there’s a horse… standing on my chest.”

“Filo’s coming back,” Arris said.

I heard the clomping of hooves echo around the corner. Then Filo arrived astride her steed. Her steed skidded to a halt, mastered at the ends of spring grown vine reins.

“The exit’s not far,” Filo said. “How’s he doing?”

“Still struggling,” Lep said.

“Hoist him up behind me,” Filo said. “Think you can hold on to me, warrior?”

“Yea… no problem…” Vynk said, giving a weak attempt at a thumbs up.

With a bit of help, we hoisted Vynk onto Filo’s steed. He sat awkwardly and circled his arms around Filo’s middle as tight as he could.

“Hya!” Filo cried out, snapping her reins made of vines.

The three of them sped off down the corridor. The rest of us took up a quick pace to follow them. The return took us nearly a whole day back through marsh and valley. Filo’s steed’s hoof prints were easy to follow. Not to mention the trail of roots and leaves her steed left in its wake.

We suffered through the biting chill of a dark night before arriving at the guild by morning. By then, Vynk had been cured, and he and Filo had begun walking the path to meet us on our return. It was evident how worried we’d been about Vynk because we jumped him the moment we saw him. It was a sweet reunion.

“So the affliction was a thoracic squeeze,” Vynk said once we’d all simmered down and bundled back into our cloaks. “You healers have a book of afflictions at your lodge, so it was easy to fix. Garmar helped.”

“I’m glad you’re alright,” I said.

I felt so relieved. I don’t think I could bear losing a teammate. I thought about some of the worst adventurers I’d dungeon crawled with before. No matter how horrible they'd been to fight alongside, losing anyone would tear me to pieces.

“Yea me too,” Vynk said.

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“So what do we do now?” Pelle said.

“Look at the loot of course,” Vynk said. “I stuffed everything in Tosin’s inventory pack as fast as I could and didn’t get a chance to look at anything.”

Since Pelle and I were the only ones of the group who shared a dorm, we decided to hang out there while we took a look at everything. Something compelled us to seek out the privacy from other students. It could have been that we were just exhausted—who knows?

When we arrived, it was clear that gathering in our dorm might have been a mistake. Pelle and I had forgotten about the hundred and some potion bottles that were stacked in piles around the room.

“Holy Felke,” Robern said. “I’ve never seen so many potions in one place. Mind if I grab some?”

“Maybe,” Pelle said. “I’d be happy to trade with you.”

“Oh come on. You guys have more potions than you know what to do with. Can I have at least five?”

Pelle gave me a side glance to gauge my thoughts. I just shrugged. I wasn't against it at all. In fact, I thought it would be nice to hand them out.

“Why don’t each of you grab a handful of potions?” I said.

“Nah, I’m good,” Vynk said. “I’ve got you guys for healing and I’d probably crush the bottles in combat anyways.”

“Let’s get to the good part,” Lep said, taking a seat alongside Arris and Filo on the edge of my bed. The rest of us got comfortable, and Vynk passed me my inventory pouch.

“This is a good time to split the loot,” Filo said.

We earned ourselves each a mana crystal, a ton of varied arrows, bundles of herbs, a matching set of pants and tunic that were jungle green, a pair of torches, four different offensive spell scrolls, almost two gold worth of coin, a dungeon chain map for an altogether different quest, and 4 clay bowls.

I ended up with the new dungeon chain map. However, we didn’t see anything that was going to help us in the next part of the dungeon chain.

“Ah, actually here it is,” Lep said, unrolling one of the scrolls that went to him. “This one isn’t a spell scroll. It’s a… It’s a poem? The location of the dungeon is at the bottom. It’s at the foot of a mountain.”

“Read the poem,” Pelle said.

“Alright. It says: The fourth ends plain. The fifth is earned from grate and lane. One lane will win. The one that breathes a tepid wind. Each day is marked by a sleeping master. Beyond the trap, torches burn faster.”

“The fourth ends plain,” Arris said. “The fourth dungeon, I’m guessing. The fifth is earned from grate and lane… Hmm…”

“The dungeons have to connect,” Robern said. “Could be wrong, but it says connected by “lane” so they must be physically connected right?”

“Hard to say,” I said.

“Well we know there’s going to be traps,” Pelle said. “Sounds like we’ll need a lot of light since it sounds like torches will burn faster.”

“Probably a bunch of mini bosses,” Filo said. “Each day is marked by a sleeping master. I wonder what that means?”

“We might be in there for a few days,” Vynk said. “Do you think that a new boss or monster might spawn each day?”

We extrapolated as much as we could from the poem. We discussed until it was pointed out that it would probably make more sense when we were in the dungeon. However, we agreed that one thing was certain. We needed to plan on being in the dungeon for at least a few days. Since I was the only one with an inventory pouch, I volunteered to level its capacity so we could store a ton of food and water. In exchange for the mana I spent on leveling the item, everyone else would purchase all the food.

Count down to dungeon run: Two days.

In those two days, I decided to train with my flagstaff, visit Owl’s Ridge, and read up as much as I could on holy planes.

The requirements to access holy planes were quite rigorous, and I was quite far from even meeting the simplest ones. Which brought me back round to study more about Vicen’s holy plane. It quickly became clear to me that, of all the holy planes, I had the best chance of accessing that one first. The only difficult requirement was to turn a legendary dungeon fallow. That was something that would take me years to do.

I wasn’t dismayed. Not in the slightest. In fact I was emboldened. I saw the requirement as a blizzard to conquer. Losing my finger to frostbite didn’t stop me before I became an adventurer. Neither would a legendary dungeon.

Nothing is going to stop me from achieving legendary status.

As it turned out, legendary status was sort of vague. Heroes—adventurers—obtained legendary status through reputation. The most common way for someone to achieve legendary status was to defeat a legendary dungeon. Divine, and demi-deity, and deity were completely different. Those were based on things beyond reputation.

In the meantime, while I gained experience and leveled up, I’d have to start on the other requirements. There weren’t a lot, but there was enough to keep me busy. If I planned now, I could walk the path that would earn me the possibility to access more than one holy plane. I couldn’t fathom some of the requirements of the more ancient holy planes without doing more research.

Where Vicen’s holy plane was concerned, I had to be sure I had no alliances with entities outside of the healer class. I was lucky that Owl’s Ridge gave me the opportunity to learn a lot about my current alliances. Zekaidean was a dwarf committed to the healer class. Boera was not a healer. She was assigned to the arcane class called magik. Ghospo was categorized in the arcane class called purifik. Those arcane categories predated the healer class by millenia. There was no information available that could tell me whether alliances to either Ghosp and Boera were acceptable to Vicen’s holy plane.

I’ll just have to play it by ear until the time comes. I’d hate to break a long term alliance, but I need to access a holy plane!

For the next requirement, there was no information on lighting a Vicen’s torch, however I did find that Vicen had one single temple halfway across the world.

Hopefully Vicen’s temple will help me figure out how to light a Vicen’s torch and what that would mean. Then there’s the part about five years of devotion…

There was no clear information on what devotion meant. Some deities required a certain amount of years of devotion. Sometimes it meant donating to temples. Other times it meant traveling the world and healing people. A lot of the time, the details weren’t covered in any of the texts available at Owl’s Ridge.

I’ve got almost nothing to work with here. The only option I have is to travel to Vicen’s temple, which looks like it requires some travel by sea.

That was currently impossible for me since I had the obligation and desire to complete my years here at the beginner’s guild.

We had one more day before dungeon diving once more. I had a feeling it was going to be a long one. Who knew what legendary item awaited us at the end? Who knew which one of us would get it? It really depended on what the item was and which class would be better served by it.

It had been a long day of researching and learning. I was so tired that I skipped dinner. When I returned to my dorm, I fell asleep the moment I hit the bed.