[SD:RtR] Oats And Bean Soup - Chapter 6

Inky points at the passage Gem picked out, “Okay guys, let’s head on out!”

Though their progress down the passage soon comes to a halt once again and Gem laughs. “Look at that! Damn thing splits in three. Won’t those people back at the start feel foolish if this is how things go!”

Inky frowns, “To the left.”

And left again a bit later when the passage splits into three again. Then it becomes a right proper maze, with other passageways joining up and splitting off almost at random.

Though when Bell says that, Gem shakes their head, “This isn’t random. I can feel it. There’s a plan and the whole mess is laid out for a reason. Also, where are the undead?”

Just a bit further. The two parties pass by a couple more splits when suddenly from down a path that had looked empty, a ten strong group of skeletons with spines for arms and instead of hands, jawbones with sharpened teeth, pull themselves up out of the floor.

Inky, “We’ve got a spawn trap! Keep going until we’re completely out of sight of what’s down there, then we fight! Can’t stay where it can detect us or this won’t ever end.”

The ten rush past the emerging skeletons and turn to face them. Though the first fully around the corner barely has time to start whipping their weapons around, before they get a charged wind spike to the face, dropping them where they stand.

The nine remaining skeletons have an easier time of it, not giving Gem time to charge another shot.

Inky, “Gem, hold fire. Jeff, rapid fire.”

Jeff had also been charging up a spell, but for quite different purposes. Given permission, he releases a fire dart. Except as it travels towards the skeleton horde, it splits and splits and splits again. A barrage of fire darts, weakness but not weak, they slam into the undead, scoring many direct hits.

Inky, “Cris, slip and slide!”

Cris slaps the floor and a sheet of eyes races down the passage and under the feet of the skeletons, which right away begin to slip around.

Inky, “Hold! Cris, slow release. Melee, advance and slaughter!”

The ice sheet begins to melt away, allowing Samuel, Bell, and Percy to advance slowly towards the undead, which are now flailing around not as an attack, but simply from being unable to keep their balance. This does not go well for them as the three melee fighters make short work of them.

Inky claps her hands, “Good work! Now we just have to repeat that a few hundred times and we might have the teamwork side of things down proper.”

And they certainly had the time to practice. Dead-end chambers full of withered, stuffed there to be out of the way. Patrols of larger skeletal monstrosities, some of which the group were forced to run from. And more summoning traps to bring in skeletons of all sorts.

Inky frowns as they put down an undead made mostly of feet bones assembled into hands. “Okay, this was a good first day. Time to get out of here.”

Gem looks around, “Well, I hope you have a way to do that. Bit of a maze, and we left a few unbeatables behind us.”

Inky nods, “I’ve got a running map on my head. Should be able to figure our way out. Always been good at this kind of maze, anyway. Besides, I’m calling an end to this early so we have time to get out. We’ve stuffed our pockets with enough grave goods.”

And she wasn’t wrong. Inky took maybe an hour, but eventually they ended up back at the way up. Though as they get to the exit of the pyramid, they’re met with a much changed situation. There are guild officials set up at the exit and forcing everyone to turn over the loot.

It isn’t hard to see why either. The camps were in quite the disarray as something had gone down. Either an explosion or some sort of high-intensity fight.

The answer? Easy enough to find out just by listening to the guild officials calmly explain to an irate delver why they don’t get to keep their loot.

“Now, sir, we promise to keep a record of what loot belongs to who. However, as you might have noticed on the camp over there, things have happened since you went down. A team brought back some sort of ring and one of them was foolish enough to put it on, which resulted in that.

“Thankfully, they were on the weaker side. It is not often that you see the flesh explode off a person’s body with that much force and then have their skeleton revive and start attacking others. If their body had been any stronger, it could have caused even more damage and forced one of the D rank teams to have to handle the resulting skeleton.”

That wasn’t quite enough to convince the team to hand over their plot, but it got there eventually. And while Evil aligned, Inky was “mess with the staff” Evil. So they handed over everything they’d picked up. Which included a now disturbing number of rings.

Back in their camp, it takes them a few minutes to tidy up, but thankfully the explosion didn’t spread quite this far. More damage coming from panicked people running away from or towards the excitement.

Later, after a filling meal around a campfire, Inky looks around and meets everyone’s eyes, one by one. “Okay, people are going to be delving non-stop overnight. By tomorrow, I expect one or two of the passages to be considered clear and the chances of us running into other teams almost certain. Do we want to hang back and join in on the final fight or keep going?”

June shrugs, “We had run at least five times yesterday. Yet, we were able to run. I say we dive back in. We clearly haven’t discovered the main area down there.”

Bell, “Yeah, given the sort of undead your group stirred up the first time, we’re only seeing the experiments and not the actual guards.”

Emrys, “I would guess that the passageways to each side of the big passage will have more excitement for us.”

Gem shrugs, “Besides, we’re players. If we die, we die. The Guild has already recorded our loot so we will still get that when we respawn.”

Inky nods, “Right, well then we better turn in soon. Though I’m going to go and listen around. See if I can learn anything more.”

Jeff, “As always. Make sure you hear the real juicy stuff.”

Inky grins at him before leaving the light of the campfire and fading away from sight.

Gem yawns, “Welp, time for bed!” And heads off to their sleeping mat.

Next morning, Gem wakes up to a delightful breakfast of oats and bean soup. Plain oats. Which to be fair, they’re out in the desert, so they aren’t exactly going to have syrup and fresh berries to spice things up. Gem just shrugs and mixes the oatmeal in with the soup.

The others looked at them strangely, but they shrug, “I used to eat this a lot before I started ordering out more. Bean soup overnight in a crock pot will last you a good while and I also figured out a nice overnight recipe for steel-cut oats. Then I’d mix the two together so I didn’t end up killing myself on all that sugar. Because, lordy lordy, if I started adding sugar to my oatmeal, there would be SUGAR.” and they smile real wide.

June sighs, “Yeah, I can see that.”

After that, breakfast goes by quickly, with Inky giving them an overview of what she learned. Though it mostly came down to the fact, they were right. The passages next to the boss tunnel were the toughest, but richest in loot.

That left one final question. Left or right?

And once they got down there, Gem pointed to the right. “Feels good that way.”

The others shrug, Inky hadn’t heard anything more either way and so the group made their way back into the maze of tunnels. Though today the difficulty certainly was ramped up. Within the first half hour, they already had to run away from an enemy. And in the half hour after that, they ran into another group of adventurers and got into a bit of a tiff over some loot.

They stood there, arguing back and forth till Gem got bored with the situation. So they simply walked right up to the shiny jewel on display and grabbed it. A move no one was expecting and didn’t even notice until they were back with the others. Mostly because they interrupted them, “Heyo, got the gem. Let’s move on.”

The leader of the opposing party turned to the side and gawked at the empty pedestal. “What!? Everyone ge—”

Gem hits them with a blunt Wind Blade. “Blah blah blah, we have it, you don’t. At this point, it would be stealing to take it. Don’t be a crybaby.”

Inky whistle, “That was cold!”

Gem shrugs, “Eh, it’s their fault for getting distracted.”

Now a few turns into the maze, Inky laughs, “They weren’t distracted so much as watching the wrong thing. When you have a group mostly made of fiendkin, you’re going to watch the fiendkin to ninja the loot. We’re Evil, after all!”

Gem rolls their eyes, “And I’m Chaotic. There weren’t any rules for loot sharing between unrelated parties. Even a Lawbound could have done what I did without a worry. In our entire group, only June would be against it.”

June shrugs, “Eh, this was a corner case. I wouldn’t have personally taken the gem, but I don’t consider it an evil thing for Gem to have taken the gem.”

With that behind them, they continue exploring. Though those experiences are just a preview of what is to come. Except for a few small-time groups, everyone has moved to exploring these two corridors. Which means they’re constantly running into one another.

Not only that, but the big unbeatable undead are more present than ever. Worse, they aren’t just running into them, but groups being chased by said monsters are running into them. The only thing that stops Inky from calling it all off is the fact that they keep finding loot. Suspiciously so.

In fact, more and more insect-themed jewelry was turning up. Which given what one ring could do, none of them were particularly happy about.

Then the skeletons in the shape of insects made themselves known. Which represented the end of the normal delving. The skeletal faux bugs pushed everyone back and back, all the way to the way up and then out of the pyramid. It is only at that point where they are stopped. All the C rank teams are holding the line there.

Well, right up until some guild officials finished setting up a barrier that could hold the undead inside. It was only a D rank barrier, but specialized to face the undead, which boosted the barriers effectiveness. It wouldn’t hold forever, of course. It did hold long enough.

All the adventurers were allowed an hour of rest and then they gathered up in front of the barrier. Not that it was needed anymore. The Guild leader was standing in front of the entrance and the undead had retreated back underground before them.

They turn to the gathered adventurers. “Well, it is time to finish this. The barrier will remain up so the officials I brought in can keep sorting the loot. Now, those who are still tired or worried about surviving, this is the time to stay behind. If you help guard the camp, you will be rewarded for doing so.”

The leader stands there in front of everyone, their eyes boring into everyone, seemingly at the same time. With that, it doesn’t take long before about a tenth of the group retreats to the camp.

The Guild leader nods, “Now that I’ve decimated our numbers, it is time to fight. From the reports, the large tunnel should fit a good few through at once so I don’t see any difficulty arising there.”

They turn back to the pyramid and advance into it. Behind them, those that are left follow them back into the pyramid and down into the darkness. Round and round they go until they reach the bottom, facing the giant opening into the last unexplored location.

The Guild leader examines the carvings around the corridor and sighs. “Prepare for enemy holy magic.” And they step into the darkness.

Scouts Scouting - Chapter 5

I Want To Almost Kill Stuff - Chapter 7