Sell you a Bridge chapter 64

The Cathedral July 28th 2010 7:00 PM EDT

Artemis  couldn't wait to get back into the dungeon, so we naturally headed down  there the next day to hopefully start gathering some gear for her  ritual. We told Zee about it, saying it came from Madame Xanadu, which  considering the woman was an immortal sorcery prodigy she seemed to buy  with little trouble. She was fascinated by the idea and insisted that we  let her sit in. I felt a bit bad about lying to my girlfriend but I  wasn't ready to share my powers quite yet, not after things with Annabel  went so badly.

Getting through  level one wasn't so bad. It was more of the same, and once we mapped the  first level retracing our steps got much easier. The instance we were  in seemed to be anchored to us, it may have been random the first time  but we got a consistent second run and were able to break into floor two  in just a few hours. The monsters on the first floor had respawned, but  we were more than strong enough to take them down since we had a bit of  practice and an idea of where to go.

Level  two however ended up being a bit more of a problem. The number of  potential enemies was much higher and the array of abilities they had  was expansive. I stopped us all in the first room "Ok hold up guys. The  second floor is where things start getting really dangerous so we should  talk over our plan going forward. First up stick together like we have  been and make sure you never enter a new room alone. Second at the end  of this level is the first boss and we might see some unique monsters so  we need to be ready."

Zee cut  in eagerly "I'm sure we can find some interesting gear that will help  down here. Tell us about the boss a bit, he doesn't seem as random as  you said monsters usually are, he sounds scary, what can you tell us?"  She sounded excited about the idea of fighting a legendary monster,  which I could definitely understand. "Also getting down here was tougher  this time and from what you said level one is the smallest level by  far, will we be able to get back down to where we are next time? I don't  want to waste half our raiding time on travel."

I  laughed at that one "That particular issue is one we can solve with  your staff. We'll be using town portal to get out at the end of our day.  We can leave the portal open and just come back down through that." I  took a deep breath. "In the spirit of keeping the portal and us safe I  want to open it into our base, we have really impressive protections in  place and we don't have your dad hovering over us. Would that be...ok  for you?" This was a huge step for me. Trusting Zee with the location of  our lair, not as big a commitment as telling her about my power but  still important.

She  had been there for me through so much of this, and unless she was  secretly insane (and what were the chances of me getting struck by THAT  lightning twice) my aura sight told me she really cared for me and  wouldn't betray me. Given everyone at the clock tower knew about this  development and had agreed to it, albeit grudgingly in Jim's case,  because they could protect themselves so I'd decided to go for it.  Besides, the wards would make it impossible for her to find again after  she left and Jim wasn't worried about her bypassing them at her level.

Zee's  eyes looked huge and shimmered like the moon on the surface of the  worlds bluest lake as she stared at me. She knew about my trust issues,  and knew this was a big step for me. Artemis cleared her throat "Hey,  Romeo and Juliet, as touching and beautiful as this moment is we were in  the middle of talking about the potential ways a super monster can kill  us. We can get back to your epic love story after you explain how a  monster Zee told me you implied could curb stomp fucking batman isn't  going to just murder us."

I  coughed a bit and flushed turning to talk to Artemis while Zee reached  out and grabbed my hand. Reggie just sat back and watched on amused and  Kit looked like she wished she had some popcorn. "Right, sorry." I gave  Zee's hand a squeeze and shot her a dopey smile she returned before  refocusing. "Anyway The Butcher. Yes, he is insanely dangerous. Luckily  he stays in his weird little room until you open the door, chopping up  bodies or whatever he does, so we can prepare for him. We need some gear  to boost our stats, not to mention some magic for Zee before we can  take him on."

I  walked over and hopped up on a nearby crypt, careful not to open it and  possibly trigger traps or skeletons. "Batman would have some trouble  with him yes, because he's basically a walking tank. But we know how  this place works, we can do this. The Butcher is strong as hell, but he  isn't that fast for his level. We need to boost my dexterity and my  reaction speed can take care of him. My reflexes are top notch and will  make any dexterity boost exponentially effective on me. Once I have some  dex I can dodge tank him while you guys whittle him down from a  distance."

I  pointed to Zee. "You are our secret weapon babe. The Butcher has no  magic resistance, any spells that bind or slow him will be invaluable,  and we can trick you out with some intelligence gear so your spells hit  harder and you can cast more of them. The only thing we need to do is  make sure no one opens that door before we're ready. The Butcher lives  in a square enclosed room with a big sturdy door. If you see any  enclosed room that is a perfect square, stay away from it. Hell any  doors at all would be best avoided to start."

Reggie  cut in. "I might be able to help too actually. Big sturdy fuckers like  that are the easiest targets for my translocation. We can have Arty  armor up and stand at the back to snipe him away from everyone else,  then if he becomes too much to handle I can swap them so he's far away  from us. Hell we can use it to trap him back in the room if we need to  bail, since you said that door is supposed to be durable as fuck." He  coughed a bit and looked away "Plus maybe if we don't need as much gear I  could take some for Bette. She was really excited about the idea of  having abilities like that. It would mean a lot to her."

I  couldn't exactly turn him down on that after inviting my own girlfriend  back to out secret base, even if she wouldn't actually know where it  was. I just laughed and put my hands up to show I was staying out of it  "Gear belongs to whoever gets it. We alternate on chests. Civilized  looting is the bedrock of any good adventurer team. If you want to give  away some of your loot to your lady love that's on you. I know any first  drop tomes I get are going to mine. " I shot Zee a wink and she giggled  and kissed me on the cheek.

With  all of that handled we headed out to begin exploring the second floor.  The first room was a marked difference from the even the hardest part of  the first floor. The mixture of the different enemies combining into a  more dangerous whole than the sum of its parts. The first few monsters  were Ghouls, whose magic immunity made them a mess to kill. With a  series of Skeleton Archers in the back taking pot shots and the fallen  imps rushing between them we had an actual problem with this room.

I  intercepted the Fallen Ones with my tanto, having gotten much more used  to dealing with them after last level. Kit circled around to deal with  the archers while Reggie kept the Ghouls off balance with teleportation  so Artemis could put arrows in them. Unlike the skeletons arrows  actually worked on the Ghouls, albeit not as well as I would like. Zee  in the meantime was sending out pulses through the ground that made the  stone a bit gummy and let the enemies sink into the stone.

The  Fallen Ones were giving me real trouble this time. The little bastards  mostly had their big ass knife but a few of them were wielding spears  and I had no training in dealing with longer weapons. I actually got  stabbed a few times, albeit I was fast enough to make sure those blows  landed in places that wouldn't be life threatening. My next buy with my  power was that Yoga dvd, my bulky body builder muscles made capitalizing  on my ability to dodge impossible and got me injured more than once.

Finally  I managed to put them all down, and after downing a healing potion to  close the wounds up I headed over to take out the Ghouls. With that  taken care of Artemis and Reggie were able to focus on the archers and  the whole battle was over withing a few minutes. I slumped against the  wall, panting. I'd moved around way too much. I needed more training so I  could learn to dodge minimally. My ninja dodging skills were made for  small lithe muscular people not big ass hulks like me and they drained  stamina like crazy.

Zee  came over and muttered something and my body flooded with energy, I  smiled and pecked my amazing girlfriend on the lips before putting an  arm around her and turning to my equally exhausted friends. "Ok well as  we can all see this particular floor is going to take us quite a bit  longer than the last. Aside from being bigger its harder and we'll need  to pace ourselves. Still that was a pretty awesome start I think, anyone  get any magic gear? The letters will be blue on them, we also need some  identify scrolls, though Zee might be able to brute force it with her  magic."

Kit  laughed breathlessly "Ok, am I crazy or was that really fun? I know I  haven't been as gung ho about this place as Arty and Reg but that was a  blast. The healing potions really make it less worrying to get hurt,  though I suppose that's sort of the point because your ex wants as many  victims as possible to build up her ascension. Anyway I got a blue ring,  and I saw a room over there that definitely isn't square and looks too  thin to be that boss guy's place." She pointed as the others gathered  their loot, mostly gold and some normal gear.

The  room was full of skeletons, but after we dropped the archers and a  captain we found a veritable treasure trove. First a series of plinths  with scrolls on them, all identify, three in total. Then a book case  with a book of healing on it that we gave to Zee to learn. Finally we  found something very interesting, a murky pool, which I knew would give  us infravision, we tool a drink and then had Zee conjure a bunch of  bottles with stasis spells on them so we could save the stuff. We ended  up with a huge bag full of makeshift potions of infravision.

We  were at this point all carrying bags to lug around gold and stuff we  found and we stopped to identify the ring that Kit had found. [Ring of Might. Plus five to strength.] Kit  kept that one since she had found it and none of us really specced  strength. When she put it on she gasped, and we tried a few tests with  and without it to map the effects. Her strength was natively about six  from what we could tell, which put baseline human max around ten. At  eleven she was now stronger than a full grown man who worked out. Hell  she was now stronger than me.

We  used the town portal to head back and once we were home we talked over  today's gains and went over some of the enemies we faced and how to take  them out better next time. Then I walked Zee out and kissed her before  she teleported home, giving us an extra layer of security since now she  didn't even know what neighborhood the tower was in. She seemed giddier  than usual and promised to study one of the identify scrolls to see if  she could duplicate the spell. I smiled and headed back inside. It had  been a good night.