Today’s Earth date: September 23, 1991
Horcus came back this afternoon, and I’m not sure he slept the entire time he’s been gone.
Where the rest of us are level 10, he is now level 16. He started to insist that we go train to catch up, complaining about having to carry the party in battle. We haven’t hunted as a party since he left, but he’s already assuming we are going to slow him down.
He seems… It’s hard to describe. His eyes are distant, like they are never fully focused on any one thing, and they rapidly dart every which way, like he wants to look at five different things around us at once.
He has also given up shaving or cutting his hair, giving him a wild man sort of look that doesn’t help with the unsettling feeling I get when he looks at me.
But he is strong as hell, though. I doubt we’ll have any trouble getting to Cuan.
-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin
***
Wayne needed a few days to prepare for his first dungeon crawl.
Did the Jason and Tammi bunker count as a crawl? Maybe .5 of one, he decided. It was spooky and underground but not remotely dangerous. The Chosen Heroes described the monsters in the Breaker Mountain dungeon as being all manner of gargoyles. In other words, the statues came to life and attacked, whether that was a snarling fiend or a knight with a halberd, they broke through their stone shells and defended their territory.
If they were reported to retain their stone bodies when that happened, Wayne would have passed on the quest. He spent a summer sledgehammering concrete in basements and garages, and it was awful. The amount of effort it took to break the materials apart was greater than he would have thought, and floors didn't fight back. They were just stubborn as hell.
After several trips here and there across Teagaisg, Wayne secured the rangers he met a few days back to be their escorts. He knew they weren’t assholes, and he had been attached to the back of their leader for the better part of a day, so they were also familiar. When multiple guard posts confirmed their competency, they were an easy yes.
Fergus resisted the few small attempts Wayne made to change the old scholar’s mind, so that would be their party: the Zero Hero, an old scholar, and three rangers.
Wayne used a portion of his prep time to test Brake from Super Monaco GP and the difference the extra 7 vitality from ESWAT made in his performance.
With a great deal of experimenting, he determined that the Brake skill brought him to a perfect dead stop without the typical challenge of arresting the momentum of his body. He didn’t need to dig his feet or absorb the force of his speed with his knees.
He simply stopped.
That in itself took some getting used to, and he still wasn’t completely comfortable with the skill. The feeling reminded him of wearing a laggy virtual reality headset. His brain struggled to accept the exception to physics, so much so that he felt kind of dizzy if he sprinted at full speed and hit Brake. When he tried Brake with Blitz, he stopped partway through the dash and threw up.
Gaining the option to cancel Blitz was awesome, however. That gave him much more control over his fate. He’d have to suffer the nausea long enough to adapt to it.
The vitality boost was a giant leap ahead in his stamina and his mana pool. In a battle context, where he rapidly cycled between spells and skills, he didn’t feel faint or weak like he had when he pushed his limits before.
In his attempt to burn his mana to zero to fully test his mana pool, he learned that if he repeatedly cast a spell with no pause in between, he could still run himself low enough to faint, but that experiment revealed something unexpected.
If a spell didn’t have a cooldown, like Missile, he could mash the option in his mental menu and rapid-fire a dozen Missiles or more. Learning to quickly repeat Missile-Missile-Missile-Missile-Missile mentally was oddly challenging, but he would suffer through that too. Frustratingly, it was much easier to Nee-Nee-Nee-Nee-Nee-Nee a whole row of shrubbery, whatever good that would do.
With supplies, support, and a better understanding of his new abilities, he was ready for dungeon crawl 1.5.
***
The tunnel entrance resembled a wild west mining operation. A cart track ran out of the opening, splitting into multiple directions. The tracks ran progressively farther along the base of the mountain. It seemed the excavators extended the track each time a dump spot got too full of dirt and rock. The dozens of piles in a row looked like segments of a giant caterpillar.
At first, Wayne was surprised to find a collection of five huts nearby, but Kryss did say the dig took years, so the workers building more permanent housing made sense. At this point, with the discovery of the dungeon, the majority of the operation was shut down. Four diggers stayed behind, as did four bored looking guards. Otherwise, the dig team found what it set out to find, so job well done.
The men on site took the party’s horses to look after them while their riders were underground.
Wayne and the lead ranger–his name was Gus–took the frontline. The other two rangers, Artie and Dekar, walked on either side of Fergus. All of the rangers carried shortswords but had quivers and bows as well.
Where the original tunnel was still intact, the surface of the mountain wall around him had a swirling brushstroke texture, like they were left by a large boring drill.
Fifteen minutes into their walk and it had been nothing but straight ahead. It was just an endless view of samey rock walls, so much so that Wayne had the sensation of walking in place, like he was on a treadmill making no actual progress.
Three hours later, they came upon the crevasse. Wayne noted the tunnel beyond had not been cleared. That would have been more convenient than taking the mountain road when they ultimately moved on to Cuan.
Arty and Dekar went down first, repelling expertly on ropes. Then Gus rigged a harness and lowered Fergus with Wayne’s help. Fergus made his displeasure very clear. He felt like a child and should have been permitted to climb down on his own, he believed. The final two party members descended after.
Wayne didn’t bother with tying a harness for himself. Not only did he have plenty of strength, he also knew fuck all about knots.
As he descended and enjoyed the novelty of having remarkable levels of upper body strength–an experience he never came close to having on Earth–he had a thought.
Brake.
He stopped.
Now even more curious, he activated the skill at a point between shifting one hand below the other, where gravity did more of the descent than his muscles.
He stopped again.
Then it felt like gravity came back on and he lowered the final four or five inches of the movement. A moment ago, he was buzzing with anxiety about the dungeon ahead, ready to get started on a proper crawl. Now he was stopping and going like an old lady taking driving lessons.
Stolen story; please report.
When he was only three feet above the ground, he released the rope completely and activated Brake.
He stopped in midair for a beat, and then fell the rest of the way. Like when he was running, Brake somehow cancelled all of the physical consequences of stopping suddenly. His brain felt a bit unstable for a moment, still struggling to process this strange new facet of reality without feeling sick to his stomach. Another part of his brain raced to unpack what he could do with vertical applications of Brake.
Wayne had apparently stood at the bottom of his rope for some time. When he looked up, the rest of his party stared at him with mouths open.
“What the hell kind of scholars are you guys?” Gus asked.
“I don’t belong in this group of unusual scholars you just lumped me into,” Fergus said. “I’m still trying to decide if the rope burn around my groin is bad enough for me to say the hell with this and head back to town.”
“I was just… playing with an idea. It’s nothing.” Wayne moved as if to spark the rest of the group to resume the journey into the dungeon, but they didn’t come along.
“Do you know that I’m the Zero Hero?” he asked.
The three rangers said they had heard that, yes.
“I didn’t get access to the same system as the Chosen Heroes. Everyone knows that. I have found a way to make parts of it work, though. I wouldn’t complain if you kept all this between us.”
“We respect the privacy of our clients,” Gus said. “While we’re dispelling mysteries, is it fair to assume that sword of yours isn’t just for show?”
Wayne shook his head. “I can hold my own.”
“Huh.” Gus scratched his neck and adjusted his armor, getting it back in place after the climb twisted it up. “Suppose that’s that, then.”
What they called a dungeon, the first dwarves called home. Dwarves in this world embraced the underground in a manner that was different from fantasy novels on Earth. They didn't build grand structures in giant open voids, as imposing as castles and skyscrapers were on the surface.
In this world, dwarves loved low ceilings and dark corridors. Nothing down here could be described as open. No matter where Wayne went, he was fully aware of the mountain on top of him.
Knowing that dwarves were extinct made the darkness deeper.
With his head pulled down to his shoulders to keep from hitting the ceiling, Wayne and Gus continued taking the lead, but the halls weren't wide enough for the back row to walk three across, so Fergus was in the middle, happily mapping their route with a piece of paper and charcoal.
They passed what looked like laboratories, which Wayne found odd but Fergus said was to be expected. Dwarves were avid students of spell craft and alchemy, and all of these bottles and pieces of equipment were in service of that passion. Even their digs were enhanced through magic.
Here and there the party saw broken statues, pieces of carved arms and wings and claws and armor. The monsters had flesh when they came to life to attack, but they returned to their stone forms on death. At major intersections, they found piles and piles of them. These were the remains of the monsters the Chosen Heroes fought.
As a gamer, Wayne struggled with first person dungeon crawlers. He loved them, but he got lost so easily that he often retraced the same steps dozens of times before finding the next floor. Doing it for real was almost as hard. Everywhere he looked was the same brick in the same pattern.
The rangers were competent navigators, thankfully, and referencing his HUD as well as Fergus’ map helped Wayne with orientating himself.
Though the Heroes didn't leave a map themselves, Wayne’s party knew if they followed the piles of dead gargoyles they would eventually find the stairs up to the exit.
The Heroes had escaped the dungeon at the settlement's entrance high up the mountain. The tunnel entry forced the Heroes to start at the bottom, so it was more dungeon surfacing than dungeon diving.
With an acceptable level of wandering, they found the staircase up.
Funny thing, though. None of the records about this dungeon mentioned a staircase going down.
***
Collectively, the party was unsure about visiting lower levels. If they weren’t mentioned in the historical records, the Chosen Heroes may not have explored them either, which would mean all of the gargoyles under their feet were undisturbed. They could be numerous.
For their immediate objectives, they had yet to find the explorers who went missing. The party agreed to search the rest of the floor before making a final decision as to whether they go up or down.
No one was hopeful that the explorers would still be alive. Certain kinds of noises are only made by people in horrific pain. Permanent silence typically followed.
A few turns from where Wayne's party first entered the dungeon, he saw blue Xs on his HUD and soon found three bodies, their various pieces spread along a long hallway with intricate relief sculptures filling the walls on both sides. The chaos of the gore splattered here and there and everywhere suggested the battle happened in this spot.
The men appeared to have entered the dungeon armed, but only one of three swords was out of its sheath. Gus posited that these explorers were more archaeologists than warriors, smart enough to carry a sword for protection but not skilled enough to use it in truly dire circumstances. The attack was likely quick, which was fortunate for them, all things considered.
Wayne knew better than to galavant down the hallway full of bodyparts. Standing several paces away, what he could see of the relief sculptures were depictions of all manner of beasts–krakens, demons, giant snakes, and skeletal dragons. Where some relief sculptures Wayne had seen before were more engraving than sculpture, the art in this corridor was deeply three dimensional, like every scene was made from real creatures and objects and then frozen in carbonite.
Aside from the stone medium, the only thing making them look more like art than living monsters were the scenes depicted around them, like the kraken sinking ships or the dragon attacking a city.
“If we walk through there, they’ll come to life and attack us, huh?” Wayne asked, doing his best to maintain his composure despite the horrific gore ahead of him.
Gus nodded.
“I can break them apart from here,” Wayne said.
Fergus grabbed his arm. “And destroy this art? This is a priceless historical record, older than we can fathom. We can’t just smash it.”
“But it’s likely some kind of gargoyle.”
“Or perhaps the gargoyles came and went, and the art is harmless.”
Wayne and the three rangers gave Fergus a dubious look.
Fergus dug in his heels. “It’s a possibility. We shouldn’t destroy something priceless on a whim.”
“I won’t risk my men for art,” Gus said.
Wayne raised a hand. “Fergus, if we confirm they are gargoyles, would you be opposed to us killing them?”
“I would prefer to find a way to undo the magic that makes gargoyles, but I suppose such a magic may not exist… Okay, yes. I can agree to that."
With the party twenty yards or so down the hall, away from the sculptures, Wayne summoned Skycat F-14XX.
The tiny fighter jet shot down the passage, Wayne steering it to pass closer to one wall than the other to ensure it triggered the gargoyles. As Skycat zipped by the dragon made of bones, its head peeled away from the wall and snapped at the plane.
Skycat moved too quickly for the dragon, however, so it continued forward, dodging a tentacle, a snake bite, a demon fist, and a giant’s axe–which was to scale for the sculpture, so it was relatively small but still looked plenty sharp.
Wayne deftly avoided any damage to Skycat, but when it reached the opposite end of the corridor, he tried to turn it for a return trip and promptly smashed it against a wall.
“I’ve not seen such a spell before,” Gus said, puzzling over what he witnessed. “My heart goes out to these men and their fate, but risking our lives to recover their remains is not worth the danger.”
“I can bust them up from here.”
Wayne had used his Probe skill several times in the dungeon, getting no new dots save for the green representing his party and the blue Xs representing the unlucky explorers. He was reasonably certain the walls were coated with monsters, so he used the skill again here. The skill didn’t register any threats in their vicinity. Having just seen monsters a few yards from them, Wayne theorized that Probe could only detect them post-transformation.
Less helpful, but good to know that Probe had that weakness.
Wayne alternated between Missile and fully charged Swords of Water. A cannonball would have helped, for certain, but he still liked having an emergency option, so he saved it for a real fight.
The process was a touch tedious but went quickly enough. Soon the beautiful sculptures in the corridor were reduced to chips and chunks of stone. Gus went first, watching for any piece that may yet come to life, but nothing did.
When Wayne reached down to pick up an arm, he wretched and emptied his stomach into a pile of what used to be a civilization-destroying demon in miniature.
“We can manage the recovery,” Gus offered. “This work isn’t suited for scholars.”
A very pale Wayne thanked him.