After taking a moment for everyone to rest up, we went downstairs to the basement, where a set of banded iron doors stood silently, and we got ready as Khargol unlocked and opened the massive doors. Before us, stood a length of mineshaft, with cart tracks running down the center of a wide tunnel, lanterns hanging from the support beams at intervals to provide at least some lighting for us to proceed by. The entire section sloped ever so slightly downward. More interestingly, there was a set of empty minecarts at the top, and I paused a moment, my eyebrows raised, "Hey guys, hold up."

My fellow party members came over to join, and most of them immediately had the same thought, "We'll put it to a vote. Yay or nay, do we use the carts to get down?"

The yays came in immediately, with only two exceptions in Denise and Umbaar, who were more skeptical about using the carts. Umbaar was quieter about it, but Denise had some issues, "So what, we're going to just jump in a set of minecarts and hope for the best?"

Khargol was already checking out the carts himself, locating the brakes as he responded, "It's a gamer thing. Devs put stuff like this in games all the time. And since this is the starter dungeon, it's probably here to teach us something for future dungeons. Looks like each cart can hold four, so we split it?"

I nodded, "Yeah, sounds good. We split even, Layala, myself, Khargol, and Denise in the first cart, rest go in the second. That'll give us two smaller parties in case we get separated. Let's do this!"

Khargol nodded and started helping others into the cart, but Denise was delaying. I came up alongside her, "It'll be fine. It's like Thunder Mountain at Disney."

"I threw up on Thunder Mountain."

I snorted slightly, "Yes, but there's no vomiting in Valoria Saga, so it's not a concern. Hop on in."

She finally got in the cart, and I took my spot. Normally, I would be at the back with Layala, but if there was a track switch, I would need a clear view to hit it. Next to me was Khargol, shield up in front, and his other hand on the break. Behind him was Denise, who looked incredibly nervous, "Denise, get your swords out. We'll probably get attacked on the way down."

My sister was not loving this state of affairs, but she nodded and drew her blades. Looking back, Temur was setting things up similarly in his cart with Umbaar to his side at the front. We got thumbs up from the back, and I gave Khargol the go-ahead to release the brake. The cart began to roll forward and pick up speed. Denise wasn't wrong in her apprehension: In the real world, you didn't just hop in some random minecarts because they were there, but then again, in the real world you also didn't take eight people into a bandit fortress to take out scores of bandits so you could get stronger. This was still a game, just an incredibly more realistic-feeling one, and in a game, if you see a minecart that stretches through the level you're on, you're meant to ride the minecart.

The ride picked up speed, and we could see an open area coming up ahead, "Ready!"

We came out into a larger cavern. A Bandit Overseer was managing a group of NPC slaves, and seeing a slight glow to the chains of the slave group, I fired off a shot, breaking the lock, and the slave turned, entering combat with the Overseer. Theory confirmed I started taking out as many of the locks as I could while I passed by, and Temur was doing the same in this cart. Umbaar was holding onto the cart for dear life, his face contorting as he tried to hide the fact he was terrified. He wanted to scream, but he didn't want to be seen as a wuss, and seeing the ratcheting between the two extremes was, admittedly, pretty hilarious. Hounds under the employ of the bandits threw themselves at the carts, giving the melees something to do, though oddly, Layala seemed to just be taking a minute to drink from a wineskin like all this was just another day that ended in Y. She threw out some damage, but between those, she looked not like she was riding Thunder Mountain, but sneaking wine on the Jungle River Cruise ride and playing along to keep the kids entertained. All she needed was a big hat and a sundress to complete the look.

Denise was screaming, but taking out her frustrations on the hounds as they closed... and then there's Khargol. He was screaming too, but in a very different context, "Ah, man, we gotta find a way to go faster!"

The corridor continued for a while as we we fought off threats, and freed the slaves the bandits had taken. Behind us, the team was on mop up, and ahead, I saw a switch for the track, one side leading off and down, while the other maintained a more steady route off to the left. The track was set to send us left, and I took aim at the switch, "Hey, Khargol!"

"What, man?!"

I fired the shot, and the track shifted, "Wish granted!"

Behind Khargol, Denise glared at me venomously, "Oh no you fucking didn't!"

We began dropping, speed wildly increasing as we entered into a spiral of track that, put lightly, was completely impractical to regular mining operations, but God is it fun. I caught sight of Temur hitting the switch after me as we came around, taking the other path. It was standard procedure for dungeon-running to take every path in the dungeon. Going the short way through a dungeon in an RPG was great for speedrunning, but lousy for doing 100% runs and power gain. A ton of gear, experience, and treasure was hidden off the beaten path that games wanted you to go in. Some of it was to reward those who explored more of the game, and some of it was a tradition of gaming, with a bit of padding thrown in to run out game time.

The mine track curved as we entered the spiral, with Khargol and Denise on the leaning side. Khargol was living his best life, while Denise was holding onto the minecart for dear life. Down track I saw the lever to open up the next section, firing to switch it, the doors to the next section opened just enough for us to pass through, and we encountered our first hazard up ahead. A stack of barrels was on the tracks, and it was pretty obvious these were meant as explosive ones following basic game logic. This time, I fired my flaming arrows, Double Nocking to try and ensure that the barrels went up. Denise was screaming for the brakes as the barrels detonated in a giant ball of flame that we then rolled right through, all of us ducking down in the cart as a precaution. In the back, Layala passed Denise her wineskin, "Don't worry, girl, it only gets crazier from here!"

Ahead, there were more bandits, but instead of attacking they were retreating and heading off ahead. We were closing in, but it was odd behavior. Generally speaking, in video games, the enemy stayed until they were all beaten. They didn't do retreats, fighting or otherwise. So what if you've killed the last two hundred guys you came across, these five unnamed randos had hands rated E for Everyone, so the retreat itself was an oddment. Khargol and Layala registered it as well, not being anywhere near our first rodeo. Denise breathed a sigh of relief, however, "Oh thank God, they're running away."

I started to say something, but Layala just put a hand on her shoulder and shook her head, wordlessly taking back her wineskin. Something was off, and as we rounded another turn, we saw where they were running to- A hastily erected barricade across the entire tunnel. Denise screamed from the back, "BRAKES!"

In response, Khargol and I dropped down in the cart, Khargol keeping his shield up along the front of the cart. The idea was simple: One of three scenarios played out. First, the bad one, Game Over. I discarded the idea out of hand. This was the starter dungeon, and everything I'd seen from the game thus far said that wasn't what was happening. An instant death mechanic this early on would turn off a lot of gamers, so they would avoid that until later in when people had built up more and gotten used to the basic mechanics. You needed places to progress to in a game.

The second option was that we would maybe take some damage and the cart would stop. Not impossible, but even if this was the case, it wasn't insurmountable, and there'd been no damage puddle or warning of such from the system. So that left Option Three, and as we blew through the barricade, it proved true. We did take some damage, true, but the object had been to get as much speed as you were willing to deal with. However, there was a downside to this turn of events, with the minecart derailing and ejecting us all. For myself and Denise, our characters were built around agility, and we were able to nail the dismount on our own. Khargol rag-dolled off the ground, skipping and then skidding to a halt. Layala was coming straight for me, and to prevent further damage to our healer, I shot forward, putting my arms out and catching her in the Princess Carry position. Layala just sort of went with it, putting on an air of the swooning maiden for a moment, "My hero!"

She then swished her wineskin and smiled, "And did I spill it? I think not!"

I set her down as she put the wineskin away. It was time to get back to work. Denise, however, was not so ready to move on, "Are you all out of your God damned minds?!"

She was livid, and being perfectly honest with myself, I did get it. This wasn't anything she'd done before, and she only had the real world as a reference point. This was the first dungeon she'd ever walked into, and it was in a game that was essentially stuck in the ultimate hardcore mode. Heck, even in Minecraft, she'd only tried it a bit, and stuck to Creative mode. This was all incredibly new territory, and we'd been fairly close to dying a lot. I walked over to her, and hugged her, "It's gonna be alright. That's a path devs intended for us to go down. It's not real life, we're going to have things like this where they put something in because it's just fun."

"How are you all so calm about this, though?" She didn't step out of the hug, but she had questions.

I squeezed once more and broke the embrace, "Let's keep moving, and I'll explain as we go, alright?"

We proceeded down the tunnel, passing the cart stop as I started in, "You're thinking about this all wrong. It's like Princess Bride," her head cocked to the side, but she didn't respond as she let me continue, "In real life, Buttercup would've recognized Westley's voice, and no one would plan to climb up an area called The Cliffs of Insanity as part of their plan A getaway. They're objects of plot that only exist in media. Are you familiar with the phrase, 'truth is stranger than fiction'?"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

She paused the movie, "The Will Ferrell movie?"

Layala groaned, and Khargol snorted, but I got it. Our parents had done a number on both of us and whereas I was The Learned Child, racking up academic achievements that they could brag about, Denise had been The Beautiful Daughter. If I got even a single B+ on my report card, our parents would wonder if I was getting enough sleep, if I was playing too many games, or some other malady explaining my poor performance, while with her, if she got C-'s across the board, it was just the way of things, and they worried more about her losing her spot on Dance Team than the actual grades involved. I was held to lofty standards, but Denise was given no standards, and I'm still not certain which one is worse, "Close. The title of that movie refers to the phrase 'Truth is often stranger than fiction'. In real life, very few things have to make sense. Oh, someone got into a random fender bender on a bright sunny day? That's just a thing that happens. In movies, though, it has to be a point for the narrative, so maybe it's demonstrating how their entire life is going wrong, or it's a meet-cute with the person who hit their car or something.

"It can't just exist to exist in a movie. In the movie, Will's character owning a watch is critical to the entire story. His getting assigned to audit a bakery is part of the narrative to set up the romance plot of the film. The same thing holds true in games. If something exists here, it exists for a reason, to establish mood, build up lore for the world, or, in this case, to have a uniquely exciting minecart racing experience with your friends after two really hard boss fights."

Denise blinked a couple of times, but I could see she got it on at least some level. We continued on down the tunnel, and while we did hit resistance, it was negligible at this point. More bandits, some Captains, and Casters, but nothing that we hadn't faced down already. This was the final approach to the boss room, and as we approached the final door, we came into a more vaulted cavern. The door to the final area was big and imposing, intentionally giving those Final Battle vibes, "Like see here? No one's guarding the final door to the boss. In reality, this place would be crawling with guards by this point, but there's nothing."

To one side, we saw another minecart stopping point, and waited for a bit until finally, we could hear the other cart coming. The other team had been able to ride theirs to the end, but clearly, hadn't been going anywhere near as fast. Shalera jumped out of the cart first, a look of pure joy on her face, "Oh my God, that was the best!"

Temur and Velgres stepped out next fairly nonchalantly, but Umbaar seemed frozen in place, visibly trembling, "Hey Temur, I see you didn't take it easy on the kid."

We shook hands as we came together, and Temur looked over behind us, "Am I wrong, or did you guys have a minecart when we last saw you?"

I chuckled, and Khargol met up with Shalera, "Oh, you gotta take the right path next time! It was insane! We started a slave revolt, and there were exploding barrels, and..."

The two launched into a rapid back and forth over the events, and Shalera did indeed want to go again to take the right path. Denise took it upon herself to check on Umbaar, while Velgres went around to make sure everyone was full up on health, and Temur showed off some loot that they'd gotten from their end. Like I suspected, we'd gotten the faster way at the expense of looting. With everyone healed up, and only one path forward, we gathered together, "Alright, gang. We've completed every objective of the dungeon save one: To take down Kyron, and get hell out of here."

Umbaar raised a question, seconded by Denise, "Wait, so when we kill Kyron, does that mean we have to go back up?"

I smiled and shook my head, "No. For those who haven't been through this before, dungeons will have a teleport area after we close out the boss."

Shalera was next, "What do we know about Kyron's tactics?"

Temur stepped up in answer, "Kyron uses an amalgam of the tactics we've already seen with Rawenna and Uk. He'll have backup here, bandits that we'll have to fight as we battle him, as well as traps around his boss chamber like with Rawenna. He isn't a Caster, so no clone jutsu this time, but on the other hand, he doesn't need it. When the testers ran through it, he didn't use larger AoEs, so we don't have to keep scurrying around the entire field, but the trade-off on that is his single-target damage is going to far higher. He'll start with a Tank-Buster so as soon as the fight begins, so we need both Tanks hitting their mitigation immediately. From there, he'll be targeting ranged DPS until we can get him to around 60% of his HP, and his bandits will start raining fire to mark the start of Phase Two.

"Phase Two goes until he's at around 30%, at which point, the traps will start going off, as well as another Tank-Buster to keep it interesting for whichever Tank he didn't hit the first time. Our main goal is to make sure the bandits are off the board before we get there or we're in trouble as the bandits switch to using the Volley ability, creating small AoEs around the field on top of the trap triggers. Kyron himself will start doing line attacks, and for those unfamiliar with them, that means a rectangle will appear from directly in front of him connecting up to one of our party members, and he will close rapidly. Anyone in that line will take serious damage.

"Finally, at 10%, Kyron gets the first Enrage timer. From the point where it ticks off, we have maybe two minutes to finish it. If we have not put him to zero by then, Game Over."

The more experienced players were talking to the more green players, giving them pointers during the speech. My main admonition to Denise was to mind her damage rotation. Spamming a single ability worked against smaller mobs, but with a boss like this, you needed the extra bonuses attached to get through your combinations. With Uk and Rawenna, we'd been forced to break out of our rotations multiple times to clear AoEs, "Okay, think of it like DDR."

"Oh my God, I love DDR!"

I nodded, "Both I and the guys at the movie theater who watched you dump twenty dollars a day into that machine are aware. Think of combos like that, they have a rhythm to them that sets up your future moves. Remember the guy who beat you in the tournament? He had both hands on the rail the whole time so he could concentrate fully on hitting his marks."

Denise was still sore about that loss by the way her face screwed up at the mention, but she got the point, "Rotation is everything in MMOs. Get it down to the instinctual level, and you can get absolutely insane damage chains, but don't neglect your oGCDs."

... And I'd lost her again, "O-what?"

"O.G.C.D.s, or Off-Global Cooldowns. When you attack, you know how almost all your abilities go on cooldown while you're making the attack, right?" I had to be specific here. For the most part, Denise was decent for a sprout, but with the stakes as they were, I needed her to get more in line with what a DPS was meant to be, rather than just getting by in the average, "Those are Global Cooldowns. The abilities that are still open are the oGCDs, like your Riposte ability. They don't do a ton of damage and they're situational, but you'll still want to be using them. Starting from the opening, pop Lunge to close, and then your rotation starts with Slash. Say the words, and tap your foot, imagine it like there's music playing. Lunge to Slash to Beat to Thrust to Slash. Tap your rapier on the ground in time as you say them."

Denise began repeating the terms, while I counted her off, "five, six, seven, eight..."

Attaching the system to her dancing, I saw the light coming on, "Okay, now, if he's coming at you, let the attack come in, and pop your Riposte. That's a parry followed by an immediate attack. If it starts to feel like Kyron has your pattern down, throw in a Feint to put him off. He's armed like you are, rapier and main gauche. Any questions?"

She went through her Character Journal, brushing her hair back as she read, and paused, "Uh, yeah. What are Fleche... not sure I'm saying that right... and I'm really not sure on this one... Attaque sur préparation? Attack preparation?"

She turned her journal, and I read the tooltip on the ability, "Huh... Temur! Need you over here. Might need to rethink some strat."

Temur cut off a rundown for our other sprout, Umbaar, and came over, "What seems to be at issue?"

I signaled Denise to show him her Journal as she had shown me, "I don't know these terms specifically, but Fleche is a short running attack, and Attack in preparation, I think? I think she's got a cancel ability that unlocked if I'm reading that right."

He read over the tooltips for both, "Hmm.... interesting... yes, Attaque sur préparation is a fencing term. If I'm understanding correctly, it's situational, meant to be used during an opponent's lead-up. So consider like with Uk, and those big moves he made before the big AoEs. I'm not sure it's a cancel, but it opens up a specific attack against opponents with build-ups. Bosses specifically use build-up times when they're doing their big attacks, and it's oGCD, so I would say that it's going to be a pretty valuable tool for you. Fleche is more about making a quick running attack as you're closing with an enemy, so throw that when you're getting to your positional."

She nodded and kept reading while we finished up our boss prep meeting. Finally, as ready as we were going to be, I rounded everyone up, "Okay. Let's do this."

The massive doors to Kyron's lair opened, and we could hear the instrumentals playing. This was the boss room, the final battle of the fortress, and the devs were pulling out the stops. As we stepped inside, we were inside a giant circular chamber, and by the feel of the floor, we were now standing in what had once been the caldera of a volcano sometime in the 'ancient' past. The ceiling was a massive dome, stalactites hanging from the ceiling, dripping some slight water down. The floor was nearly unnaturally smooth as we walked, and collections of luminescent moss, as well as sconces, lit the room around, and in the center waited the Bandit Lord Kyron. He was lithe but tall, smiling as though we were invited guests rather than the folks who had slaughtered our way through his men. He wore a simple silver circlet on his head, his crown, and I'm gonna be honest here, a really badass jacket. It was one of those longcoats that cavalry often wore, a brilliant emerald green with silver chasings, and a fold-up cowl that could be worn as a hood, or left down. Temur leaned over quietly, "You're gonna keep killing him until he drops the coat, aren't you?"

We'd done this sort of dance so many times in other games. One of us saw a particular item of loot that we just had to have, not just for statistics, but for the aesthetic. I'm pretty sure all gamers go through this, seeing some sort of in-game item that becomes their total focus. Dibs would be called in instances of loot that had multiple people flagging for it, and some had spent inordinate amounts of time grinding for particular items. Seriously, if you saw someone in an outfit in a game that looked truly amazing, they probably made getting it their full-time job... or it was some microtransaction thing by the devs.

A slow clap snapped me back to the moment, as Kyron applauded us from where he stood in the center of the room, "Well met, Lugh! I apologize for my lack of decorum! I should have had someone here to announce you. I shall do my small part for you here and now."

I froze, and Temur did as well, "He said Lugh."

Cutscenes in MMOs had been a thing for a long time, but when situations like this arose, everyone would receive a personalized version of the same speech. I'd have heard Lugh, but Temur would have been called by name in his hearing, as would everyone else be individually referred to, to make us feel like the story's protagonist. That hadn't happened, and he wasn't finished, laying out an empty hand in my direction as though he was announcing a title bout, "Unit Commander Lugh, leader of the Farrelston Irregulars, Slayer of Bandits, Master of the dragon Yndress! Beloved of Chrysta, and I heard your speech in front of the cathedral the other day, Ser Lugh. A hero well and true"

Crapbaskets. That last part shouldn't have been part of the speech. The bandits were easy to reference in a game context, as well as my station as Unit Commander since it was attached to a game mechanic. Calling attention to Yndress, and my speech to the server, however, wouldn't be referred to in an MMO. The speech had been to players, not characters in a game, it wasn't part of any quest chain, and nor was my relationship with Chrysta. Something had shifted, and now all our strategizing might just be getting pitched off a cliff.