Duncan started his day with picking up boxers from the window sill again. The nightly cleaning of his socks and underwear has become a ritual by now. He smelled his clothes, which also needed another visit to Clara’s. He decided to do it after coming back from the mine.
As he came downstairs, Wazsh was already waiting for him.
“Bolgar and Elland stopped by early,“ Wazsh said while yawning.
“Elland delivered two antidote potions and two bug repellants. Bolgar brought a helmet,” Wazsh said as he pointed at the kitchen table.
There were 4 potions on it and a shiny silvery helmet.
“Don’t drink the bug repellant. Here take this,” Wazsh said as he produced 2 bowls of rat stew and 2 plates of roasted rat legs.
“Make sure to come back. I am going back to sleep,” Wazsh said and went back upstairs after seing Duncan nod.
“Thank you. And thank them if you see them before me,” Duncan said as Wazsh was leaving.
As he walked out of the bar Duncan looked back.
“I made some good friends here. I better not disappoint them,” he thought.
He made his way down Main Street towards the mine as he identified the helmet.
[Steel Helmet – Superior]
“Bolgar really went all out. I better bring him some good ore.”
Duncan’s nerves were getting to him the closer he got to the mine. Questioning his decision to go in alone and so early.
“Why again, am I doing this?”
“Is it because Bolgar hid the key from me?”
“Nope. If he didn’t hide the key from me, I would have already gone here yesterday.”
“It’s because I am a retard.”
“Yes. That’s the only answer.”
“Stupid is as stupid does. As Forrest Gump’s mama said.”
He readied a torch. Put on his helmet. His leather armor was on him tightened as it could be while still allowing him to breathe. He stuck the torch in the ground and readied his sword.
He sighed and unlocked the door.
As he pulled it open, he jumped back and observed the darkness. It was anticlimactic. Except for some dust rolling from the ceiling there was no movement at all.
Duncan picked up the torch, walked inside and stuck it in the ground again. He closed the door but didn’t lock it.
Except for the light of the torch and a few rays that manages to pass through the gaps in the door he was in total darkness now. Duncan got goosebumps all over. He gritted his teeth and turned around and started walking toward his destination.
After a long walk, since he was taking it slow, as he followed two parallel tracks on the ground which he made by pulling Bolgar he was delving deeper into the mine. By following the drag marks of Bolgar’s feet, he was not afraid of getting lost. Observing every odd shadow as if it would suddenly move, he finally came to the part where orange streaks started to show. It was not the dark that bothered him. It was the silence.
Hearing his heart beating rhythmically while walking into the unknown was getting to him. It was like a soundtrack to a horror scene in a movie.
Badum, badum, badum.
Every time, he perceived his heart beat he expected something to jump out at him.
He finally got to the spot where he fought the Shade.
Remembering Elland asking for the Shade’s residue he looked around and found a pile of white powder on the ground. He used Identify on it.
[Purified Shade essence]
Thinking about how to pick up the powder from the rock and sand floor without contaminating it he realized he still had the Earthling mentality. He shook his head as he focused on it and put it into his inventory without any contaminants whatsoever.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
He pressed on and soon got to where Bolgar’s drag marks stopped.
Taking a big breath as he held the sword hilt tighter, he moved on. The streaks on the wall were getting more prominent with every step.
He reached the hole in the ground where the floor of the first floor connected with the second floor. There was a slope now. The hole didn’t cover the ground from wall to wall. He could go around it and mine first. Duncan decided it would be a bad idea.
If the noise of mining attracted something he would be pinned in a dead end. If he went down, he could run up the slope and run towards the exit. The choice was obvious. He also noticed the debris completely covering the other direction so he didn’t have to worry about something coming from behind.
As he came down the slope, he noticed a change in the walls. They were straight and polished. It was wider than the tunnel above. Duncan judged it around five-meter mark. The ceiling above was more than twice Duncan’s size away. The walls were not jagged like mined rock. This was meticulously made by someone.
He observed the pillars every few meters. It reminded him of Greek architecture. Duncan read about it in the library, where he worked for a while, after his stint at the juvenile hall.
Suddenly there was a screech and something dark was closing in fast. Duncan threw the torch besides him and held the sword in front of him. He was starting to shake in anticipation. His head was jerking to the slope behind him. Like his body telling him to run. But he didn’t. He started yelling.
“-BLEEP-. Come Mother-BLEEPER-.”
The Shade struck him frontally. Unfortunately, for the Shade Duncan’s sword was directly in the way. The sword now electrified by Duncan’s punishment didn’t pass through the Shade like Casper through the door. It got stuck inside it and paralyzed it almost completely.
His sword was like a lightning rod focusing Duncan’s punishment on the poor Shade. All it could do was wiggle a few times as Duncan yelled insults at it. The insults were converted into BLEEPs, which were converted into lightning that purified the poor Shade.
“Well, that was surprisingly easy,” Duncan said as he picked up the remains and the torch.
He checked the log. It was another level 13 shade and it got him to level 11. He quickly put the 2 points in agility. It would make him faster when or if he had to run for it.
The only consequences of this slaughter, was a slight headache, a bit of tingling from the electricity and some smoke that was wafting from his leather armor.
Pressing on he soon came to a conspicuous tile on the floor with a big hole in the middle. Duncan played enough games in his life that he knew it was a trap.
“Could they have made it any more obvious?” he mused.
He stepped around it and noticed some holes on both of the sides of the wall too.
“I better go slow and carefully,” he told himself.
Duncan soon came upon a trip wire going from wall to wall.
He took some rope from his inventory and attached it to the trip wire then moved as far back as he could before he pulled it. The torch light was too weak to see what happened but he could hear clanking.
Coming back, he saw bolts littering the ground. Duncan used Identify on one of them.
[Poison bolt]
He stashed all 12 into his inventory and moved on.
Duncan soon found three more conspicuous tiles in a row and jumped over them before he heard heavy footsteps. He immediately decided to jump back over the traps and await the owner of the footsteps there.
The footsteps were slow and getting louder. First thing he saw was a giant bone foot. Then hips and ribcage and finally a head of a skeleton carrying a longsword. It was over 2 meters high.
It stepped on two of the traps and Duncan could see wooden rods stuck out and shatter upon impact. He moved backward, as the skeleton stopped and raised his sword.
It was like watching someone in slow motion. Then as it raised it to the apex the swing downwards was so fast you could hear the wind screech.
Luckily Duncan was moving back and all he got from that blow was a bit of wind in his face.
They repeated the same move two more times. Then as the skeleton ended his swing, Duncan lunged at him and hit its head.
There was hollow sound of metal hitting bone, but there was not even a cut mark on it.
Duncan was using only one hand, while he held the torch with the other but still this left him disappointed. He quickly moved away and rightly so as the skeleton made a horizontal slash right after.
The wind resulting from it was strong enough to give Duncan a push back. They soon came to the first trap and the skeleton once again broke through it like it was nothing.
Duncan’s head was working on all cylinders, trying to find a means to fight it.
He started bleeping as the skeleton once again raised his sword and swung. This time with electricity running through his sword the result was sadly the same.
Duncan quickly distanced himself as the horizontal swipe came.
Duncan was frustrated. He could hit it but did no damage. It was just slowly walking towards him and raised its sword when it got near enough.
“Arrrgh! Think Duncan! Think!” he yelled.
“Maybe,” he suddenly yelled as he backtracked now already reaching the slope.
He put away his sword in the inventory. Pulled out a bottle of water and started swinging the contents towards the skeleton soaking it.
“Sadly, it’s not holy water,” he said before he pulled out his sword and started cursing.
The skeleton raised his sword again and swung downwards. By now Duncan knew its reach and he effortlessly avoided it, then as the electricity flowed through his body and sword, he plunged it into the skeleton’s eye.
He was on the look out for any movement of the hand that held the sword. There was just a tremor as Duncan continued to curse.
“-BLEEP-! -BLEEP-hole! Mother-BLEEP-er! -BLEEP- you!”
Soon the skeleton’s head turned to dust and with it the rest of it. The only thing left was the bone residue and the sword that clanked on the ground.
Duncan fell back on the slope with his butt and took some big breaths.
“Woah! That was intense,” he mumbled cheerily.
Duncan checked his log. It was a Skeleton Guardian level 18. Defeating it brought Duncan to level 13 and he once again used both stats. This time he put one in Vitality and one into Agility. He picked up the bone residue and the sword after using Identify on them.
[Purified bone essence]
[Steel longsword - Superior]
He held the sword in his hands and tried a few swings but it was too heavy for him.
With that done he decided to have a romantic lunch under torch lighting at the slope and took out a roasted rat leg.