DD 204 Ch 9

Chapter 9

We stepped out of my portal and into Star City, my new group in tow. Penny was our tank, Charlotte was our healer, Des and I were damage, and Felin was a flexible support and damage dealer.

Felin's shaman class had a wide range of abilities, largely themed with ice and lightning. She could use these elements in attacks and to enhance our abilities. She had a small heal, but more powerfully, she could create barriers of ice to protect people from blows at critical moments or use her lightning and ice to lock down a target.

I pointed off in the direction we needed to go. "Third tier down, just about there," I said. We couldn't see the entrance in particular, but my Eyes of Wisdom was good enough to highlight it in the distance.

"What level is the third tier here? Technically, if they've carved this place, it currently takes up from the 45th floor safe zone to the 50th floor safe zone of the dungeon, right?" Charlotte asked.

"So if we go three tiers down, that would be level 47," I said, counting the top floor as the safe zone that would lead upwards to lower level floors.

"I doubt it works that way," Des said after a moment. "We haven't seen anything that isn't five floors sandwiched by a safe zone on either side, even if you consider this all one giant safe zone. I would bet some of these entrances drop us out at either zones starting at level 46 or zones starting at 51."

Penny frowned and looked around for some sort of indication.

"The Great One does what it wants," Felin intoned. "Far be it from us to try and ascribe our mortal senses to it."

We all turned to Felin, who stuck out her tongue. "What?" she teased. "You don't think I learned how to talk fancy when it comes to the Great One? People think you're more of a shaman if you can try and confuse them with haughty language." She nodded to herself.

Everyone in the group waffled their head, no one disagreeing with that statement.

"Come on, before Felin, the cream thief, gets too serious," Des said, poking the Nekorian in the side and heading towards one of the elevators.

"We could skip these and save a few crystals," Charlotte offered. "I mean, it won't hurt us to jump off the edge onto whatever bridge we're going to."

I glanced at her and shrugged, realizing that she was right. Not that I was penny pinching, but no one else seemed to bother with them. And something about that made me want to avoid using my mana stones for them as well.

We headed to the edge of Star City and I checked once again with Eyes of Wisdom, spotting the entrance we needed. I swung my arms to get momentum before jumping off. I grabbed a bridge on the floor between the two, flipped through the air, and landed neatly, brushing off some non-existent dust while I waited for the rest of the group to come.

At this point, we were all superhuman and a 40-foot drop did very little to us. That and I hadn’t really had a chance to work on such acrobatics, it was pretty fun. I had more control of myself than I realized.

Felin squealed as she jumped through the air. With a certain grace only someone with a tail could pull off, she landed in a full crouch and bounced to two feet with feline dexterity.

Penny was next, landing with a solid thud. Her frame only collapsed partway before standing up straight again.

Des jumped straight for me, her arms spread out in an unmistakable catch-me gesture.

I rushed forward and snatched her out of the air. "Really?" I said as her weight settled on me.

She gave me a loving kiss on the cheek. "I knew you'd catch me.”

“It doesn't mean I like you jumping so dangerously like that."

Charlotte, however, the one who had recommended this course of action, was hesitating atop the city.

That was until Bun-Bun came flying from behind, striking her in the back and knocking her off the platform. The rabbit landed on the edge and shielded his eyes with a paw to watch his master plummet. 

"Bun-Bun!" Charlotte screamed, flailing in the air.

I rushed forward. Her angle wasn't the best and, being unprepared, she was flailing on her way down.

Felin turned out to be the savior in this instance, waving her spear and sending a gust of wind straight up at Charlotte. This pushed her trajectory back on course for the bridge we were all on.

I managed to leap to the edge and snag Charlotte out of the air before glaring up at Bun-Bun. "Do you want me to make you into soup?" 

He jumped down far more gracefully than any of us, perhaps his light body aided in that. The fall certainly didn’t do anything to his mood as he chittered angrily at me. 

"I think in this instance I'm happy, but I can't understand you. You should be," Charlotte rubbed her face as we heard half the conversation. "Bun-Bun, shut up." 

His face fell and he stared at Charlotte as if she was a completely different person, before chittering at her noisily again. 

"Yes, I will talk to you any way I want," she wagged a finger at him. "You just pushed me off." 

Bun-Bun leaned back, and only let out a small chitter, with a smug look on his face. Charlotte then blushed. 

"Shut up, Bun-Bun. For now, you're going to take a rest," she unsummoned the rabbit, something she rarely did. She must really be upset with him. The last thing we saw was the stunned look on his face, as Charlotte's move was not within the rabbit's prediction before he faded out. 

"We should do that more often," Des said. 

"No, Bun-Bun doesn't like it," Charlotte sighed. "And as much as I'm sure you would love to antagonize him, he is helpful.

“Debatable." Des refused to concede on this one. "And besides, we got Penny here, a tanking extraordinaire." Des hooked a thumb at the blue-haired frost knight. 

"Don't put too much pressure on me," Penny blushed. "But I think I can do a passable job.”

“We'll have to ease in," I said. "So that as we're getting used to the new tank, we don't make any dangerous mistakes." 

Penny nodded, as did the rest of the group. "And we're going into a place a few levels higher than us," Des pointed out as we finished walking across the bridge to the latest level to the new dungeon entrance.

We began descending down the stairs.

“By the way Ken, could you understand Bun-Bun?” Des asked.

“Ah. No. Universal Language doesn’t appear to work for him.” I realized.

“Probably for the best.” Charlotte sighed and shook her head. “He rarely says anything worth hearing.” She blushed again.

The simple stone stairway opened up to a creepy graveyard. Weird blue mist clung to the ground, while large tombstones and mausoleums greeted us in the distance.

"This isn't spooky at all," I said, looking out over the graveyard. I turned around to see how the others were handling it.

Charlotte and Penny seemed completely normal, as did Felin.

The anomaly was Des. Her face had gone pale, and her eyes raked back and forth nervously. 

"Uh, Des?" I hesitated, drawing everyone's attention to her. "Everything okay?”

“You don't look so good," Felin added, not so helpfully. 

"What?" Des said, her voice quivering. "If demons can be real, why can't g-g-ghosts?" 

Charlotte's shyness evaporated as a grin spread across her face. "Don't tell me you're afraid of ghosts, Des.”

“I mean, she has a point," Penny gestured at the warlock. "Given her family has the bloodline of demons, it makes sense that she would believe other creatures like ghosts existed, too." 

Felin popped up behind Des, shouting, "Boo!"

Only for the warlock to freak out and jump into my arms.

I chuckled and kissed her on the forehead. "Des, while I am absolutely flattered that you come to me for protection, perhaps in the future, if a ghost pops out here, you should run to Penny. She is the tank, after all." 

"This isn't funny," Des growled, pulling herself out of my arms and straightening her clothes. "This is the dungeon, we should be serious. Besides, it’s probably not ghosts. Right?”

I nodded along, doing my best to press my lips in a flat line and not grin at her. "You're absolutely right, Des. Because here, ghosts might be real. After all, it's the dungeon, and they could simply be ghost monsters." 

She narrowed her eyes at me.

"Maybe it's zombies," Charlotte added, hopefully. She added it like she was trying to be helpful, however, it did not seem to make things easier on Des. 

"Look, let's not speculate. Basic formation, Penny up front. I'll stick beside her. Charlotte, I think it would be best if we brought Bun-Bun back out. And then... Des and Charlotte will be behind Penny. Felin bringing up the rear." 

The Nekorian, despite being a caster, was incredibly competent with that spear. In other ways, it wasn't a bad idea at all to put her as the rear guard. At the very least, she was competent enough to hold anything off long enough for Penny to come assist, or in some cases, Bun-Bun. 

The rabbit materialized on top of Charlotte's head, and began chittering angrily at her, pulling at her hair slightly.

"Bun-Bun," I snapped. "On the ground, it's time to be serious." 

The rabbit slowly turned his head at me, two fistfuls of Charlotte's braids in his hand, before he saw the expression on my face, and he calmed down before leaping off of her head, and doing his best impression of a dutiful pet. 

Charlotte smoothed out her hair. She had two braids, one coming down each of her shoulders. The left one had a flower stuck in it that needed to be corrected from Bun-Bun’s fury. She was completely at odds with the gloomy graveyard.

"All right, formation up. Penny, you're leading," I gestured at her.

She summoned a large sword, with ghostly green veins running through it. It was another weapon off of the final boss for the raid we had been doing, though hers didn't have the unique ability that mine did, instead it had double the stats. 

We didn't get far before there was a soft rumbling, and a crack of stone, as a decrepit hand pulled itself up over a tombstone, and out of the mist. Another four hands reached into the air, all around the first.

Des already had a shadow bolt curling above her hand and shouted as she threw it at the zombies as they pulled themselves up from the ground.

Penny stepped forward, a wave of frost rippling off her blade, and into the zombies, putting small patches of frost along their skin, before she stepped up. Making that swing, fluidly with a second strike, this one cut hard into all of the zombies, before she finished with a flourish, as she stabbed her sword into the ground. Spikes of ice popped up from the mist, impaling the zombies in a cone in front of her. 

"That should be good, you can all start your damage," she said, pulling her sword out, and facing them head on.

I activated shadow ambush, appearing behind one of them. My two short swords were longer than I would typically consider a short sword, but with my enhanced strength, I had no problem dual wielding both of them.

My swords flashed back and forth through the zombies.

The first one moved slowly, at least with its legs, but its arm was wickedly fast. A heavy, blunt blow struck Penny hard enough to stagger her to the side. 

"Holy crap, Penny!" Charlotte exclaimed, hurriedly casting a heal. "That thing took nearly a quarter of your health."

"You tell me," Penny grunted, rolling her shoulder. "I feel like someone just tried to run me over." 

She stabbed her sword into the ground, creating another ripple of ice spikes through the group. One of the spikes nearly hit me, but parted around me. Penny was carefully controlling her ability to ensure she didn't hurt me as well. 

The zombies stumbled forward, slobbering and reaching for Penny as she took a step in, blocking with her sword this time. The first blow from one was quickly followed by a second, and Penny slid back on a sheet of ice to get out of the way. 

"I think it might be best for me to kite these. Even blocking hits like a truck," Penny complained, gritting her teeth. "I'm sorry, this is a poor showing of my tanking."

"Don't be," Charlotte said. "I'd rather heal a tank who's good at avoiding damage. Felin, Des, let loose. I can handle the healing."

Lightning and ice from Felin slowed the zombies down further, while Des quickly stacked curses on them before throwing out waves of shadow. Even Charlotte got in on the damage, swirling balls of storm flew in amidst the zombies before exploding in windy gusts. Amid all of this, my stacks of [Liminal Speed] cut off nearly as soon as they began. 

The pack of zombies ended quickly, and I found myself turning around looking for more, only to be disappointed.

None of them had come up as souls to fight from the effect of my weapons. Was it perhaps because they were already undead?

"So what do you think?" Penny asked, swinging her sword back over her shoulder and turning around to look over the misty graveyard. "I'll bet we don't see the zombies until they pull themselves out of the ground."

"It would appear to be the case," I said, standing at ease, but still holding both of my swords. "The worst part is finding the loot.”

Felin was trying to peer through the thick carpet of mist that blanketed the dungeon floor, her hand patting around, until she came up with a mana crystal. 

"She has a point," Des said, though she wasn't looking at the loot. Instead, she was staying vigilant, spinning in a slow circle, and constantly peering into the mist suspiciously. 

I tapped at my CID and waved it over the area, telling it to suck up as much loot as it could. After a few dings, indicating that I picked up the items, I waved my sword through the mist, barely thinning it, only for it to re-carpet the ground. 

The frost knight nodded with a little hesitance. She pointed at the big mausoleum. "I want to make sure we don't have any other mob types on this floor before we go gung-ho."

I understood her caution, and nodded along. "Alright everyone, form back up. Penny's in the lead, show us what you've got."

The blue-haired frost knight nodded fiercely, and charged forward through the mist. It was another one of those tombstones that zombies popped up around. She must have seen the same thing I did and come to the realization that those were the markers of monster packs.

The dungeon wasn’t so cruel as to make us wander around blindly to find the monsters.

She stabbed her sword into the ground, a ripple of ice hitting them, before she moved to the next closest gravestone, and more zombies came out from there. 

"Well, we can at least do a few groups at a time," she said, "but when we get to that mausoleum, I'm absolutely taking that on its own."

I nodded. "Works for me. Just keep pulling." I stepped up behind one of the zombies and began to hack away with my swords, purple lightning charging down my arm. "You pull enough, I'll get my speed going, and if there's something big to surprise us, I'll take it down in a blink of an eye."

"I know," Penny chuckled. "I saw you at the raid. Just be careful not to rip agro from me. I have no doubt if you wanted to, you could." She flashed me a brilliant smile before she moved on to a third gravestone, shuffling the zombies around so that she could keep hitting them all in a single cone.

They bumbled after her barely matching a walking pace.

She kept stabbing her sword lightly into the ground, sending ripples of ice spikes through them as she backpedaled and kept her head on a swivel to make sure she kept tabs on her surroundings. Rather than keep them in a singular direction, she began to make a circle around our group so that the three casters could hammer the group without chasing after her. 

"If they're this easy, perhaps we should farm this floor," Des gleefully laughed as she began throwing out waves of shadow into the growing mass of zombies.

“Too bad the loot is bad, you can’t eat bones.” Felin grumbled.

At some point, Penny had to have gathered 50 of them. They were only beginning to die off now as she started to slowly spiral her way towards the giant mausoleum. She was doing a great job of timing it such that our group would be able to clear this large pack just in time. 

"Again, focus on the fresh ones," Penny said, stepping up to the newest group and cleaving her sword through them before she went back to launching cones of ice spikes on it.

I understood her plan, whittling them down quickly so that they would die with the rest of the mobs. The mobs' liminal speed had built up nicely and I was able to clear the pack quickly with ease, even though the last two turned on me. 

This got us to the larger structure, and when Penny approached, the whole building cracked. A ten-foot-tall lanky zombie with hair all the way down to the misty ground pulled itself from the mausoleum with a coffin on its back. A dozen of the smaller ones we'd been dealing with thus far crawled out of the base moaning and reaching for us.