World Sphere - 71 - First Delve

Chapter 71: First Delve

I already knew six was the limit. “Gimble, it is your call on who enters. You are in charge here,” I stated with an assuring smile.

Gimble looked at me and said, “Even though Remy has a lot of experience in the Frist Vault, I think having a strong healer will help expedite their first delve.” He had a grin, and Remy looked pleadingly at me to take his place.

“Fine, I always wanted to see the inside of a dungeon. One time should be fine,” I replied, conceding to join the delve.

Gareth, who was still anxious and excited, mumbled clearly for everyone to hear. “Famous last words, Stormy.” He turned, but I caught the grin on his face.

We left to take a walk to the dungeon entrance. Everyone was talking quietly amongst themselves. Gareth and Sammie each carried two ten-gallon buckets on a yoke. The forty gallons were our target harvest for honey this delve, as well as a few bags of the berries.

As we approached the dungeon entrance, Gareth bounced excitedly like a kid. Two guards in the Dungeon Academy uniforms stood guard, and Gimble handed one of the guards the bronze token. The Dungeon Academy controlled access to this dungeon.

We were allowed to approach the stone archway entrance surrounded in runes. The entrance was a black pool of darkness. The runes gave a lot of information on what to expect in the dungeon. Gimble stepped forward to explain the runes, even though everyone here should know exactly what the runes explained about the dungeon.

Gareth wanted to talk, but Gimble just eyed him, and Gareth calmed down. “Most dungeon entrances are arched like this one, and you read the runes from left to right,” Gimble started. “The first rune on this dungeon shows the number of challengers that can enter at one time. It shows the number six clearly here,” he pointed.

“Some dungeons will reset a floor if a team moves lower, allowing another team to enter. As long as someone from the previous group was still alive on the level, the entrance would remain solid stone.” He paused and looked at everyone to make sure they understood.

He continued. “Now, it is important to always max out your party. You don’t want to enter a six-person dungeon with just five members. Otherwise, a sixth uninvited person can enter behind you.” One of the guards scoffed and chuckled at his explanation, but Gimble ignored the interruption and continued. “When you defeat the first level’s guardian, an arch, a stair, or a passage to the next level will appear. For this dungeon, it will look similar to this arch. If all party members enter the second level, then the first level will reset, allowing another group to challenge it. This dungeon, like most simple dungeons, takes a little time to reset its challenge.”

Gimble cracked his back, and I noticed an hourglass draining by one of the guards. Our time to enter was almost here. I asked a question to Gimble and the guards. “Gimble, since we are only harvesting on the first level, could we all exit and reset the dungeon and go back in our eight-hour block of time?”

One of the guards, the older man, stepped forward. “Sir, that is acceptable. Not common for this dungeon, as most delvers go to the second layer to harvest there, and it usually takes about six hours to defeat the first-floor guardian.” I nodded at the guard’s helpful answer. My mind was thinking maybe we could double my honey quota.

Gimble nodded and continued his explanation. “The second rune denotes what the dungeon thinks the difficulty of its first floor is. I will repeat myself…it is what the dungeon believes the difficulty of the floor is. This one shows tier 1,” he pointed at the rune. “The two monsters on the other side of this gate are giant frost bees and lesser frost goblins. We have trained on how to combat each of these, but if you were unaware of their tactics, you could easily become overwhelmed.”

I had researched the monsters and knew the frost bees were just large bees that had ice-crystal-looking hives in the frozen forest. Their stingers were only three inches long and caused minimal damage. Since the bees made a loud buzzing sound, they didn’t surprise you, and each hive only had twenty-three bees and one queen. The danger was that the sting had a minor cold-slowing poison. It could stack and freeze you in place with enough stings. The queen was just a stronger and bigger version of the rest of the hive.

The frost goblins were three feet tall and wielded blades of ice. They fought poorly, and the only real danger came if you decided to try and kill the hobgoblin chief floor boss without killing all the goblins. Then you would have to deal with maybe fifty of the goblins at once while you fought the chief. The goblins did hide under the snow drifts but never appeared in groups of more than six when they attempted their ambushes.

Gimble was on to the third rune, “This rune indicates the number of levels, floors, challenge monsters; however, you interpret a dungeon. This dungeon has five levels. It is important to note that this dungeon has no lower-level restrictions. There could be hundreds of delvers on the lower levels.”

The guard interrupted Gimble. “We have a log of everyone who is in the dungeon. Each group is deposited in a different area when they travel to the lower levels. The second level is a maze that is a few dozen square miles.” Rather than be irritated, Gimble just nodded in thanks. I had read that the danger was mostly getting lost in the maze and being unable to find an archway to exit. “Your timer has started. You can enter at any time. You have eight hours to descend of exit the first floor.” Gimble nodded but still continued his explanation.

“The fourth rune shows the terrain on this level…wooded, snowy plains, and cliffs for this dungeon. The fifth rune is the dungeon’s age, this one is 12,430 years old, extremely young as dungeons go. The seventh rune is the dungeon prize for defeating the entire dungeon. Not the first floor, the entire dungeon.” I looked at the marking, and it was an axe.

One of the guards interrupted again. “If you earn dungeon essence from any chests, you must sell it to the Triumvirate when you exit.” I knew the guards were just doing their jobs, but I was a little angry at being told that the Triumvirate could swoop in and take something we worked hard to get. Of course a delve team could always consume the essence in the dungeon. Only if a dungeon essence was shown to be the final boss prize, would the guards know an essence was harvested when the symbol changed.

Gimble appeared done and pulled on a heavy cloak lined with fur. The others were doing the same, and I realized I had not brought warmer clothes. I had the cloak Gareth bought me in my dimensional space and would remove it after entering. Gimble indicated with his finger. “Gareth and Sammie, you two go first. Talia and Aelyn, you two will go second. Remy and Lana, you two can wait for us to return.”

Remy gratefully went over to a stone bench and sat down. Lana followed him but looked at me for approval. I nodded, and she pulled out the dimensional closet spell book as she sat next to Remy. In the future, we could cycle teams by resetting the first level. That would make sense if they did two runs every time we made a reservation to enter. Otherwise, I was paying them to sit around.

I followed Gimble, who had disappeared into the blackness already. I was feeling my adrenaline spike as the blackness folded around me and chilled me my skin.

The white blinded me as I got oriented on the other side. I had just been teleported thousands of miles and was now within the ley lines of the Sphere. The first thing I noticed was that the sky was pearly green with a prominent sun. Gareth, seeing me staring up, said, “It is an illusion, Stormy. It is about 200 feet to the ceiling in here. It is also buried deep within a ley line. If that sky were the surface of a ley line, then the sky would be alive with purple-veined lightning.” Gareth had studied dungeons extensively, and I knew he would become an expert in a few years.

I looked down to find a line of trees to the left and open white snow field to the right. Cliffs looked to be jutting into the sky far to the right. I felt a chill breeze and summoned my cloak.

Gimble stood before us, “If we followed the forest edge, then we would reach the frost goblin village in three miles or so. But our primary goal is to harvest honey, so we will make our way into the woods and look for the ice crystal hives.” Gimble set the formations with Sammie and Gareth in front and me directly behind them. Talia was in the middle, with Aelyn and Gimble screening the back of our formation. Aelyn looked excited, and we exchanged smiles.

It wasn’t long before we heard our first buzzing. A white and black bee was coming to investigate. Talia fired an ice lance that missed the bee. She swore as it bee-lined for her. It was not overly fast, and I moved to get in front of her, but a lash of fire sprang from her hand, and the bee crashed down directly on me as its wings curled in the heat of the fire.

I had moved but was still stuck by the bee’s stinger. The stinger barely penetrated, but I felt a wave of cold spread from the spot. I pulled it out and tried my neutralize poison spell. The cold vanished instantly. With the spell, I also now understood the poison…it slowed blood flow in the target.

Gareth yelled, concerned. “Stormy, are you good?” Gareth had not left his position in the front, maintaining discipline even though he clearly wanted to check on me.

“Yeah, just a little prick,” I said as Talia was trying to apologize.

I knelt and looked at the twitching bee. The tiny poison sac was somewhat valuable for alchemy but very difficult to extract. More buzzing started to come through the trees. Gareth and Sammie tightened the formation at Gimble’s call. I healed my small wound and joined the bee massacre.

Gareth did lose one of the throwing daggers I made him. It cut through a bee’s wing and kept going, disappearing into the canopy. That was our biggest problem. When no one was looking, I knelt and stabbed my hand gently on the stinger. The coldness flowed into my hand, and I smiled. Gimble had noticed and looked at me questioningly.

I didn’t want to seem like I was a masochist, so I explained. “I have the neutralize poison spell and have not been able to level it.” He nodded like self-inflicted harm was natural to level spells. I then moved to the back with Gimble and started using the stingers that Sammie and Gareth didn’t mangle too much.

The first hive we found was hex-shaped crystals going up a tree about twenty feet. Seven bees came to greet us, but we were now used to their movements, and they were quickly cut down. The queen emerged and was much larger than the smaller bees. It was also faster and had some ice shield armor that was easily shattered. Gareth just roared and cut through the shield in one swing and nearly cut the queen bee quickly in half.

I could tell he was trying to impress Talia as he looked right at her with splatters of bluish blood on his face. The harvest of the ice honeycombs was next.

The white waxy honeycombs had cells about the size of your fist that you punctured and drained of the honey. The honey had an extremely weak cold aetheric aura to it. I was planning to use it in making mead for the Shiny Platinum and not for alchemy, so cold affinity was not useful. The beeswax didn’t have much of a use in alchemy, but rather than waste our efforts, I just started pushing the entire honeycombs to my dimensional storage.

“Stormy, if you were going to do that, then why have we been lugging around these barrels?”  Gareth complained.

“Practice, Gareth. I won’t be here to do your work every time you delve,” I said as Gareth punched a cell and started licking his fingers.

I teased him. “Gareth, that is gross. I know where that hand has been.” He was sucking his index finger and suddenly stopped. He looked at me and then at the finger, shrugged, and continued to lick it.

Aelyn rolled her eyes as she was climbing and retrieving more honeycombs for me. Sammie looked as though she was about to copy Gareth and sample the honey, but after my statement, she stopped and helped Aelyn.

We spent six hours harvesting hives without any issues. I managed to raise my neutralize poison spell to level seven. At level five of the spell, I added a small range effect to the spell. This allowed the healer to cast the spell and avoid contact poisons. At level seven of the spell, I added a minor element to repair the damage done by poison. This was only good for tier 2 poisons and below, though.

With my other healing spells, this evolution was not really necessary, but it was a standard evolution for neutralize poison because poisons could be purged but enough damage was done, it wouldn’t matter.

We had only explored about a square mile of the woods and had exceeded our harvest goals. Gimble asked me. “We have about two hours left, Storme. We can probably get another hive or two if you want, or we can explore the snow drifts and work on fighting the frost goblins as a team.”

“You are the party leader Gimble. You make the decision,” I said as I added the last of the latest honeycombs to my storage.

“Ok, we will move into the snow. Slight mounds mark the berry bushes. I hope you all brought your gloves to dig,” he said as he began walking out of the forest.

We followed, and the first goblin made me jump as it exploded from the snow to Gareth’s left. He wasn’t surprised and skewered the small creature. It was white-skinned, naked, and ugly as all hell. Thankfully, the misshapen creature was so ugly that I had no trouble spreading out to kill them. Gareth, Gimble, Sammie, and I took care of the goblins while Aelyn and Talia dug for the berries.

The berries looked like cherries but tasted closer to strawberries. They were fibrous and didn’t have a lot of juice. They were primarily used in alchemy. Talia asked, “Are you going to start an alchemy lab, or do you plan to sell these?” 

“Just sell them. They are relatively easy to harvest, and there is a small market for them,” I replied as I approached a divot in the snow I knew had a frost goblin waiting underneath. It sprang up, and I took the head in mid-air with a two-handed swing. The splatter of red blood on my clothes was gone quickly as I cast my cleanliness spell.

Talia muttered to herself. “Definitely learning that spell soon.” She addressed me, “I have a suggestion, Storme. There is a friend of mine at the Mage Academy in the capital. He is in his second year, but is smart. He is on the alchemist path. He could supply our team with useful potions. He could turn our harvest into potions that could be sold at a substantial profit.”

Gareth was listening and yelled over to us. “Can your friend brew the explosive fire potion? Or the night sight potion? How about the fire-breath potion?” Gareth was getting more and more excited as he listed an array of potions preferred by delvers.

I gave Gareth a look to cool his enthusiasm. Talia spoke much quieter this time. “He is working mostly on tier one potions right now. His best is the standard healing salve. He makes a very good alertness potion as well. It helps a lot of the students’ study, but only lasts an hour, and you can only use it every other day, or you get a massive migraine.”

She was not making a convincing case for her friend. A potion with a side effect was not desirable because it indicated poor brewing. Skyholme did not have very skilled alchemists compared to the standards in the Sphere. Most of that was due to the limited alchemical ingredients we obtained from the dungeons on the islands. “If you want, I would be willing to meet your friend, but no promises, Talia. Most likely, my answer will be no. There are a lot of expenses with the delve team and the Shiny Platinum. Callem needs to see a return on his investment first.”

She gave me a dubious look and walked away to help with the berries. Was it obvious I was paying for everything or did she think Callem had more coin? I was paying my delvers twice what we would probably earn in total on this delve. In time, they would delve more than once a week and possibly go deeper to turn a profit.

I returned to locating goblin holes and dispatching them until Gimble said we had thirty minutes to exit the dungeon. We followed the line of the trees to the exit.

When we exited, we found a fully geared team of six in heavy armor with heavy packs waiting for their turn. I noticed we still had about ten minutes left on our timer, but the two guards waved the other team in. I looked at the guards curiously, and he explained, “They are a clearing team. They are planning to go all the way to the fifth level and claim the dungeon prize.”

Gareth moved and whispered in my ear. “That was Scarecrow and company. Famous delvers in the city. They are the third-ranked team on the island.”

I looked at Gareth and said incredulously. “Fanboy much?”  He was puzzled by my phrase, and I had to think about it and was at a loss of words. I assumed it was something from my past life, but I couldn’t recall what a fanboy was.

Gimble was already checking on Lana and Remy. Remy was sleeping, and Lana had bloodshot eyes from studying the spellbook. Had she been studying straight for the eight hours we were inside? 

My foul, smelly, and tired team made its way through the city to a bathhouse. I left them there while I went back to the Shiny Platinum. It was extremely early in the day, and I planned to get a quick nap before giving my second day of cooking lessons.

I stopped on the second-floor brewery and emptied all the wax honeycombs filled with honey out of my space. I guessed we had gathered maybe 45 gallons of honey and a few hundred pounds of beeswax. Most of the brewery equipment was here, but not assembled. I would have to hire someone to train Mera so she could get started on making mead with her fermentation ability.

Looking at the impressive pile, I wondered if the beeswax couldn’t be used as an insulator. If I lined the walls of the walk-in freezer, it should make the cold runes use less aether. I stopped in the kitchen, wrote out a list, and left three gold coins on the counter, which should be enough to cover the cost of the ingredients. This was a test of my cook’s honesty. I wondered if they would pocket the extra or completely use the funds to get as many ingredients as the coin would purchase in the city.

I went to my room, which now had some sparse furnishings. Two large plush leather couches faced each other in the living room. Since the bedroom windows were not installed, I slept on a large leather couch in the living room after adding a dozen alarm spells and my privacy cocoon. As soon as I lay down, I realized how tired I had been and passed out before emptying my aether pool to create coins.