DTK 28

We rushed to the vine choked wall at the edge of the dungeon. The alternating day-night cycle of the dungeon meant it was dark on the next floor, but it was still bright enough to see by.

Moon light shimmered over the rivers, its reflecting dancing under a canopy of rainbow colored trees, leaves whipped about in a storm below.

There was a great, terrible cracking noise, and the glass-like wall that had separated us from the next floor split. Violent wind shoved through the crack, blowing back my hair. I covered my face as the transparent pane cracked apart, turning into sand-like dust that stung against my skin.

Then the wind was gone and the way to the next floor was open. I turned to Sandy just to meet her already staring at me. We exchanged an entire conversation in a single glance.

“Do you have the rope?” She asked.

I nodded.

Sandy stepped through the portal and I followed closely behind. The boss arena — there was nothing else it could be — was just bigger than a sports arena, but there were no stands. Instead, the ground fell away in a cliff that circled the forest below.

Beyond the rocky cliff was a barren wasteland that stretched on as far as  I could see. I turned around to take in the portal gate behind us. It looked not different from the entrances to the dungeon in the center of town; a raised archway of white stone bricks opened to another reality.

“Nothing to tie a rope to out here.” Sandy said, surveying the dungeon below them.

“Just a sec.” I said, stabbing one of the needles into the ground before pulling out the much longer rope from my bag. I knotted it then tugged at it, feeling it shift loosely. I stomped it down until I was satisfied it wouldn’t budge, throwing the rope down off the side of the cliff below.

Sandy leaned over the edge, whistling as she looked downwards. Rocks tumbled from the barren edge and fell below. The whole world looked off, somehow, like it was all slightly… purple. I looked up and learned why.

Multiple moons hung in the sky, a disorganized trio of celestial bodies. The largest of them blazed with purple light, enough to force me to blink. Was there a big purple sun below us? How wide was each floor of the dungeon? How much of it was real?

I’d probably never know.

I walked next to Sandy, holding the rope to descend in my hands and debating whether Dex or Strength would make it easier to climb down. After a moment, I switched outfits.

“I can’t see the boss. Let’s activate Stealth.” I said.

Sandy nodded, then disappeared. I felt the rope tug as she descended, waiting until it was slack again.

[Shadow Cloak I] [Mana: 6/10]

On a whim, I switched out of the Hunter outfit. The skill stayed active, my hands disconcertingly invisible as I gripped the rope and descended from the cliff face, sinking below. The forest that had seemed so small from the top now loomed above me, a thousand shapes dancing in the shadows where purple light reflected the bodies of water that snaked through the forest. It washed over the trees, light flickering to highlight the trunks of trees or the deep, deep shadows between the foliage.

“Sandy?” I asked, my voice a whisper.

“Right here.” She said. “I’ll follow you. I can see through the stealth, mostly.”

“How can you…” Her butcher skill? I shivered. “Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

We crept through the trees, creeping through the forest, the deepest either of us had ever been in the dungeon. It was just the two of us and the monster. Every minute we spent without finding it made me more paranoid, more restless. The wind blowing through the canopy above filled the forest with the sound of cracking wood and rustling leaves.

Finally, I heard something that wasn’t just the noise of the artificial forest. Great halting snores could be heard. I looked back to try to find Sandy. Her steadying hand landed on my shoulder, though the surprise nearly made me jump.

“Sounds like our guy.” She said, still whispering. “Lead the way.”

Besides the noise, the next area we found ourselves in didn’t seem any different. It was coming from the monster, nestled away in a dark copse of trees free from the body of water that cast light through the forest. It looked like a pile of leaves. I observed from a distance, staring into the dark clearing it haunted. Then I crept forward.

Quickly. Quietly. It was asleep; how quickly could I end this fight? Would one attack while it was sleeping be enough? My mind went back to that copper mole, the image of the system keeping it alive even as it was impaled directly through the head hovering in my mind.

We still had to try. If we killed this monster, the border would expand. The other dungeon entrances would open. Valjean wouldn’t be able to stop us.

I snuck to the monster, freezing as I heard the sound of sticks cracking below me. For a moment, I thought it stopped snoring, but then it continued.

My hands were practically shaking. The monster was the size of a car; it was bigger than the space that qualified as my bedroom. It was a bear; it was even bigger than a bear. I had never seen a polar bear, but I knew that it was even bigger than that. It had to be more than ten feet long. I didn’t whisper to Sandy for fear of waking the monster up.

Instead, I held my giant needle precariously over its head and activated my skill.

[Running Stitch I] [Mana: 5/10] [Cancel]

The [Shadow Cloak] around me dissipated, gone in a moment. I braced myself for the feeling of flesh splitting, of the needle carving into flesh. I had even mentally prepared to hit an impenetrable wall. But instead, the needle hadn’t hit anything. Just air.

The image of the monster below me wobbled in a heat haze before melting, fading away into nothing. I staggered forward, carried by the momentum of my strike and left blinking in confusion. Was this a trap? An illusion of the dungeon?

Then the world turned upside down as something hit me with the noise and force of a car crash. Everything hurt. Rocky dirt scraped me, the world doing flips as I sailed through the forest, bouncing off the ground, unable to even breathe as the force sent the air from my lungs.

I landed with a splash.

[Health: 23/52]

My body spasmed, water forcing itself down my throat as I tried to reassert control of myself, my side burning. My arms finally started working, I dragged myself from the river, throwing myself to the shore and trying to orient myself, choking and throwing up water.

“Gwen!” Sandy shouted, practically slamming into me and dragging me away from the water. The cloak of shadow around her stretched onto me and then snapped, unable to keep us both in stealth.

She looked down at me.

“You alright?” She asked, sighing with relief as she poked at me. Then she whipped around, looking deeper into the forest.

The monster stood on all fours between two trees, its eyes glowing with the light of a nocturnal monster.

“It did… twenty-nine. Damage.” I said, pushing myself up and struggling to breath. The system’s health points kept alive, but they did nothing for the pain. “Can’t take… two of those.”

I reached for my sewing needle, but it was gone, scattered somewhere within the forest. The other was left behind at the top of the cliff. The monster stared with inhuman intelligence, slowly rising to stand on two feet.

It was gigantic, monstrous from up close, shaggy brown fur mottled with clumps of green like camouflage. It was like a bear with armored arms and claws as long as swords.

Then it split in two, a perfect copy of itself appearing by its side, standing between another two trees.

“We need to run.” I said, scrambling to push myself to a feet in time for the monster to split again. Four monstrous copies stood between the trees, staring. The monster’s roar was a distant side node in my mind as I forced myself forward, Sandy following behind.

The monster seemed to be right behind us the entire time, trees exploding as it crashed into them, its every footfall a terrifying, world shaking noise. And then its roar was on top of us, echoing all around us. I couldn’t stop myself from looking back.

A monster loomed over me, taller than me even on all fours, rows of jagged teeth close down around my head — 

And then it disappeared into smoke. It was so sudden I fell to the ground, slamming into the dirt and stone.

[Health: 22/52]

I rushed to my feet, staring back. Two monsters chased Sandy, gnashing behind her. But a third sat in the distant treeline, staring. The river below it had grown brighter and brighter, blindingly bright to look at. The monster was still a hundred feet back, where we had found it. With a popping noise, the river went dim, and the monster stepped over it, rushing closer to us — but still far away.

“Sandy!” I shouted, not looking at her. I heard her shout and fall only a few dozen feet past me.

I kept my eyes on the first monster.

“They’re all illusions!” I said.

“Fuuuuck.” Sandy said from somewhere behind me. One of the illusions must have remained, because I heard it roaring over her. There was a swishing noise as she swung her cleaver and the sound cut off. I heard Sandy approach me.

The next river between us and the bear was growing brighter and brighter.

“They’re like barriers. It can’t cross running water quickly.” I said, staring out at the bear.

“No shit.” Sandy said. “You think we can get Gerald to make you a bow? We just…” Sandy mimed shooting an arrow at the monster. It roared again from across the water as the water glowed.

Sandy and I both flinched as more ethereal copies of the monster charged us before exploding away into smoke.

“Light and Shadow. Those were the elements of the floors above us.”

“Shadow I get.” Sandy said. “How do you know the other was light?”

“The spiders gave light resistance to… to this.” I said, gesturing at my dress. The next river popped. There were only two between us and the monster now. “Let’s come back with a better plan than stabbing that to death.”

We jogged back to the wall, climbing the rope one at a time. The bear was still chasing… slowly. I started counting the seconds — it took half a minute for the bear to cross each river. It was set up like a raid, a game mechanic taking precedent over reality, the dungeon chopped into pieces like stages of a boss arena.

We stopped at the top of the arena, pulling up the rope and freeing my sewing needle. The other was left behind somewhere down there in the dungeon. I would have to come back for it eventually.

“Shit.” Sandy said as we stared down at the bear.

“All we have to do is kill it.” I said, staring seriously and massaging my side. The system kept me alive, but I still felt tender. A single swing from that monster had sent me tumbling through the forest. Not only that, three rows of scales had been shattered or destroy along the dress, something that would take more time and resources to repair.

We walked back through the floors of the dungeon. I rubbed my side the entire way, idly wondering at how long the trek would begin to take as the floors grew larger and deeper. We wouldn’t be able to go deeper and deny we were clearing the dungeon forever.

The way things were looking, everyone would know by Valjean’s return, anyway.

I sunk to the floor of Sandy’s workshop, trading out my outfits to place the Scale Dress on the stolen mannequin against her wall.

“That thing could kill us.” I said. “What’s your constitution at? We need to upgrade you.” I side eyed Sandy.

“Think I wouldn’t last more than a hit. It did twenty-nine HP? I wonder how much of that was you being scraped along the ground.” Sandy bit her lip. She was looking over the parts from the copper mole we killed in the Wild the other day. “Need better weapons, too.”

“So we start with the mining outfit. Get metal. Collect spider corpses. Once we can both take a hit without dying, we… what? How many stabs do you think it’ll take to kill it?”

“Maybe we can do it with arrows.” Sandy said.

I reached down to my belt, playing with a throwing needle idly.

“Or maybe we wont need a bow at all.”