Dungeons usually had only one entrance with the exit being in the same spot. If an adventuring party took too long conquering a dungeon the monsters and traps may respawn behind them forcing them to fight on their way back out. Fortunately when a dungeon is conquered the spawners stop working for a few days, allowing a fast party to get out without resistance.
Quite a few dungeons have shortcuts from the end back to the beginning, the bigger the dungeon the more likely there’s a secret one-way path back to the beginning. Other times civilized people have taken over the mana-rich dungeons and have tunneled multiple entrances to increase access to the resources hidden inside.
#Demitri’s View
“What just happened?” Dimitri’s companion had a confused look on his face as he reentered the room and joined the barbarian.
“I think she just kissed you, my man.”
“I know that, but why?”
“Do I look like I know women? If I lived in Japan I’d be known as the high-level NEET. You’re the one who’s married.”
The warrior shrugged his shoulders and headed towards the exit of the room. “I just hope she’s right about what we’ll find out there. We should also see what we can do about looting the chests we find. At least pick up some disposable income.”
It took Dimitri a few moments of hesitation to follow the confused man, he gave a mock salute to the fountain and slung his staff over his shoulder as he left the room. He held the journal in one hand and started to figure out where they were based on the notes.
“It’s a good thing I have that linguist skill, and I can read this. The second door on the left might have some treasure in it. There’s a chest in there that is three times out of ten is a mimic. Two times out of ten will explode in an elemental fashion if you touch it. Most often fire. You have to wonder how long this guy was in the dungeon to figure these numbers out.”
“Pretty long I think. Or else the dungeon made some modifications to the book too.” Warnik sighed to himself, making a low grumble as he thought.
“I can see the gears turning there Warnik. What are you thinking about?”
“Why is the book correct down to where the air elemental boss is?”
“It could be a trap, beyond the obvious.”
“We still need to be wary I think. Though I have the feeling that you’re overpowered for the dungeon, Dimitri. Well, when it comes to the areas that don’t have anti-magic. And being a forsaker seems to cheat the dungeon for me.”
They got to the door and opened it without issue. Warnik doing the opening, since most traps in the Elemental Playground were based on magic. They hadn’t run into anything that his forsaker enhancements couldn’t deal with.
“There’s the chest. Hey Warnik. I know Forsakers are heavy on passive abilities, are there any active ones you can use?”
“You mean like spells? Not many if you think about it. The most that we have is that we can focus on one of the passive skills like healing and enhancements. Kind of like meditating on it.”
“So what kind of things can you do with it?”
Warnik looked over at the door, “Well let's see. I can focus on strength.” He breathed in and out a few times, it seemed like his muscles rippled under his skin. Reaching out he grabbed the door and pulled. He then let out a grunt and the door was ripped from its fasteners.
He breathed deeply again, “Something like that. Some of it seems to be emotion-based in this world. In Second Shift Delver whenever I got damaged my DPS went up. Maybe that was reflecting the anger from being hurt?”
“That kind of makes sense. Anyway, we have a chest to open.”
“Right.” The warrior swung his oversized poleax down on it. It did not act like wood, instead the poleax bit into something squishy.
“Mimic!”
The mimic did have some fight left in it after the surprise attack by the warrior. Tentacles spewed from the opening lid and lashed out towards Warnik. They wrapped around his poleax and tried to rip it out of his hands.
“I got it held, finish it!” The mimic must have thought it had Warnik, but he didn’t move an inch and didn’t let go of the poleax.
“Right!
#Levyna’s Perspective
They found an armory before they went too far. Levyna was outfitted nicely, and Mariya had her armor. The other two needed something to wear besides what the demons had intended to sacrifice them in. Which wasn’t much more than the demon-steel bands they wore.
Lauqueuluana found a set of white robes with a high deep hood and long sleeves on them. They were what you would expect a fantasy-Esque female priest to wear. Belted at the waist with a simple sash, and slit up the sides from the belt down to the floor to allow her legs to have freedom of movement. She also picked up a pair of leather boots. Her main weapon turned out to be a mace, backed up with a dagger.
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“Are you a priest or cleric Lauq?” the Elementalist asked.
“Yes, I worship the Goddess of Knowledge. All of the royalty need to know something of the gods, but I’m the only one who took it seriously enough to get to level thirty as a cleric.” The elven cleric picked up a backpack, and started to fill it with necessities: Food, water skins, fire starters. Levyna looked surprised when the stewpot and tripod fit into the backpack, as well as other cooking material.
“Is that a bag of holding or something?”
“I’ve never heard of it, but the backpack does have spacial magic woven into it, so it can reduce the weight down to a twentieth, and has a volume of about the size of a small tent.”
“Are there more of those here?” Lauq just pointed to a cabinet and the Elementalist went over and grabbed three more of the bags. They started to fill the backpacks with what they thought they’d need.
Irina traded in her rags, that were valiantly trying to protect the human’s modesty, for a simple set of leather armor. They did not have the same style enchantment that Mariya’s armor had so they provided obvious cover to the woman. The armor was dyed a dark grey that helped blend with the shadows. She also selected a half jacket that had a deep hood and face cloth to help her blend in even more. For weaponry, she choose a short bow, a short sword, and a dagger. She belted a quiver to her waist and dumped another ten into her magical backpack.
Levyna decided to add some warm clothes to her backpack, while her current clothes were of high quality for the world they’d need to be clean and she’d need to wear something when that happened. While she was thinking about it, she found a block of soap to add to the backpack.
“This is more of an adventurer’s cache than an armory.” She commented.
“It’s near the start of the dungeon. We usually stock it for the training parties that go into the dungeon and keep the fauna in check. Often we make them stay here for a week while they’re training for adventuring outside the city.”
“That makes sense. If this is near the beginning of the dungeon, are we going to exit out through the palace? I wouldn’t suggest it. It was surrounded by demons.”
“No, we’ll have to go through the dungeon again and go out to the outer dungeon. It has an exit out in the green space park. But we’ll have to defeat a giant spider to leave the inner dungeon. That is going to be tricky. It’s a level forty-five boss.”
Levyna flushed as she heard that. “It’s already dead, we killed it on the way in.”
The elf paused and looked over at the Elementalist, with a disbelieving look on her face, “But you’re only level twenty-seven. It should take a party of four to six, averaging level forty-five to take it out. How did you do it?”
“To be honest I panicked. The system said we should prepare to fight a boss and I dropped a
The only response was an ear wiggle from the elf. Mariya stepped in, “That’s what happened, I barely had a chance to even realize there was a giant spider there, and Levyna already took it out. She’s powerful.”
“But her level is only twenty-seven!” The elf repeated herself.
“I don’t know. I was summoned here by the world, and that might have something to do with it. Perhaps the world made me a bit overpowered to do what I needed to do.”
Mariya didn’t bother with other clothes, none of the armor there had the enchantments necessary to fit her form. She was a tall elf and well-padded though you wouldn’t call her fat, not with her muscles. She instead carried mostly food and some water skins. Her club and short sword were replaced with a mace and dagger. The mace close enough to her club that she could use it without too much training. Lauq did give her a greatsword as well to hold in her backpack in case she ever had a chance to learn it. Normally greatswords were as tall or taller than their wielder, but Mariya topped it by a head and shoulders.
#Warnik’s Perspective
The trip through the dungeon was proceeding quickly. They choose the best route to get through, avoiding most of the monsters and only dealing with the boss monsters when they had to. They had reached the last four levels of the dungeon, each one devoted to a mixture of elements. The first one seemed to be devoted to the element of life, a mixture of earth and water.
“At least it’s not fire.” He muttered to himself, glad that they had a chance to look around. “Maybe there is some fire there.” The level of the dungeon was massive, at least massive looking, with the stairs leading down in a spiral towards the floor. It looked like an endless plain, filled with waste tall grass, groves of trees, and the ruins of a lost civilization.
“This has got to be weird, a giant stairway leading down from the sky and to the center of a plain.”
“You said it, but it’s a dungeon. I think we left normalcy when we entered. According to the book expect to find a lot of earth elemental based creatures. Giant boar, treants, ettins and the like.”
“Let’s get through here as fast as we can then, and down to the fire level. I’m not looking forward to that one.”
“I wish I could help, but none of my magic is creation magic. I can’t create a block of ice for you.”
“No, but maybe we can find the generators down there quickly and destroy them.”
“At least the flame monsters won’t be a problem for you. You just touch them and they should go, poof.”
They finished their decent and were immediately attacked. There was a whole host of monsters waiting for them. Warnik rushed forward to block the end of the stairs and held the position, and focused on his defense. The rage was starting to build in him as he ignored rushing forward into the throng of monsters.
Dimitri stayed two spirals above the onslaught of monsters. If they couldn’t get past Warnik and up the stairs he was safe.
Warnik could hear calls of
“I love the smell of … Nevermind everyone’s heard it before.” He said to himself as he took another swing at a centaur who was trying to impale him with his spear. His poleax gave him the reach to fight on even terms with the long arm the centaur wielded.
Every time he was injured he could feel the rage sing to him, telling him to step forward and slaughter the foe. And every time he drew blood he felt the rage lessen. His wounds closed the longer he fought, but he had to keep the focus on defense to keep the damage from overwhelming his passive healing. The more he healed the less strength he drew from the rage inside him, he was learning to balance how much damage he took with how much he wanted to dish out.
The fight continued for what seemed like hours but was less than five minutes. The barbarian was breathing heavily, his stamina was running low when he realized the sound of artillery had lessened and only a pair of monsters were left. Those were quickly dealt with and he leaned on his polearm to recover.
“You know, I’ve never been this close to the receiving end of an artillery barrage before. How are you doing?” He asked the warlock as he walked down the last spirals to join the barbarian at the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m very low on mana. The staff helped but I could use a rest. My intelligence will help me recover, but we should find a place to hole up for a bit to get some food and recover.”
“We have to go…. That way I think. There are some ruins over there, there might be a place to rest there and not be as exposed as we are here. After all, the stairs probably draw monsters like a fly to honey.”