New Story -- Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Slinking through the cavern tunnels as quickly as he could, Thaden passed through a long stretch of empty corridor without seeing or hearing anything at all. He was tempted to stick to the shadows in between the magical torches that dotted the stone walls every once in a while, but quickly decided that it was pointless; the blue-ish barrier surrounding his body didn’t necessarily light up the area around him, but it was still quite visible in the darkness.

Finally, after what he thought was at least 200 feet from the room he had just left behind, he came to a Y-junction that split off in two different directions. He stood there silently for a few seconds while he tried to decide where to go; what finally got him moving was the sound of many high-pitched voices and the slap of feet against stone coming from the left-hand tunnel. Obviously, he wanted to avoid running into the reinforcements that had likely been gathered, so he went right at a run this time.

Approximately 50 feet down the tunnel, he stumbled on the stone floor as his foot seemed to sink down slightly with one of his steps. As he fell forward, a portion of the stone wall to his left suddenly expanded toward him with frightening speed, with the intention of squishing him against the opposite wall like a soda can in a trash compactor. Fortunately, his Weak Repulsion Field intercepted the wall and stopped it in its tracks; unlike when it prevented the attacks from the Vogmites, the wall wasn’t repelled – or at least not to the point where it was visible.

Even as he landed on his knees, he quickly threw himself forward in case the wall somehow broke through his barrier, and as soon as he was clear, it slammed into the opposite wall with stone-pulverizing force. The sound as it made impact was so loud that it felt like a bomb had just went off, and he was momentarily deafened and dizzy as his equilibrium was messed up from inner ear damage. That deafness was gone and his equilibrium back a few seconds later as the Weak Regeneration – which he had been renewing every time it ended – healed his ruptured eardrums.

Picking himself up, he looked back to see the wall retracting swiftly and silently to where it had been before, and it slid back in place with an audible *click*; at the same time, a small square of the stone floor seemed to pop back up, revealing the place where he had stepped and obviously triggered the wall trap. Great. Now I have to worry about traps?

Hearing the sounds of pursuit behind him, Thaden figured that if they didn’t know where he went before, they sure did now; the sound of a two stone walls impacting each other wasn’t exactly silent. He took off again at a run, now even more desperate to escape from the Vogmite reinforcements heading his way, which was why after passing through a winding tunnel, his foot hit a tripwire hidden in the darkness between torches. As he tripped forward, landing flat on his face, the *click* he heard was just barely enough warning before a dozen, sharp-tipped iron spears emerged from holes in the floor with the intent to impale him.

Again, his Weak Repulsion Field saved his life as it prevented the spears from impaling him, stopping them in place, but it did nothing to prevent his own face from smashing against the floor. A pain in his nose followed by liquid gushing out indicated that he had likely just broke his own nose, but he ignored it as he scrambled ahead and moved away from the trap he had triggered.

His nose had just healed when, further down the tunnel, he was forced to choose between three new directions. The choice was again easy as he heard sounds coming down two of the tunnels he was faced to choose between, and he took off down the only option.

After running for nearly a minute, his heaving breaths showing that he was quickly running out of energy, which he thought was probably because his resurrected body hadn’t ever eaten anything, he began to think that he was finally starting to gain some ground because he hadn’t triggered any traps lately. That thought was barely finished before another *click* preceded the corridor become awash with green flames.

Unbelievable pain accompanied the verdant firestorm surrounding him, and it was all he could do to blindly run forward and hope that he exited the trap before it killed him – and he was sure that it would, because his Weak Repulsion Field did jack squat to block it. As he stumbled out of the flames, falling to his knees as he uncontrollably screamed out in pain, he wondered why it hadn’t actually felt hot while within the fire, even though his flesh felt like it was starting to melt off his body.

Not caring at the moment if there was something else dangerous around, he canceled his Field spell and scrounged up enough focus to activate Weak Healing from his Access Slots. His arms could barely move from the damage done to them, but through great force of will he managed to get them into position to cast the spell. At the same time it started to be channeled and the cool healing energy flowed through his body, his Weak Regeneration also ticked over and healed an additional point of his Health, bringing with it a relief that finally allowed him to stop screaming.

Thaden attempted to look around to see where he currently was, but it seemed as though whatever the green fire had done to him had melted his eyes, and it took a few seconds for his magical spell to heal them fully. Once he was able to blink normally, his restored vision came back and he was able to finally look around – only to see the same tunnel he had been running down before he was hit by the flames. Glancing down at his clothes, he was surprised to see that they were perfectly intact, not even slightly harmed by the fire he had run through, as if it was designed to bypass clothing and burn whatever was underneath.

Magical fire? I guess it makes sense with the torches and everything, but this is totally unfair.

Knowing that he had likely almost died once again, his mind shoved away his near-death experience as he got to his feet, before cautiously making his way forward once again. His screams had likely alerted his pursuers, but that couldn’t be helped; he was going to have to take his time a little bit more as he navigated his way down the tunnels, because it had just been revealed that he was certainly not invulnerable like he had thought. The reason for that was included in the description of his Weak Repulsion Field, which stated that it only blocked all physical damage done to him up to Level 20; as the flames were magical in nature, he had been affected by them as if he had absolutely no protection.

If he were to accidentally stumble into a lava pit or even a vat of acid, he didn’t think his protective barrier would help him.

So he hurried down the tunnel but he didn’t run anymore, despite having the urge to do just that. Fortunately, his pursuers seemed to still be at the same distance behind him, so they weren’t catching up to him; if he felt that they were closing in on his position, he would inevitably speed his own pace up, which could be dangerous. Especially as he accidentally triggered another pair of traps shortly thereafter, one of which seemed to spit out glowing globs of acidic goo from the ceiling, which hissed and smoked as it plopped onto the stone floor. He had to delicately maneuver his way around the piles of goo as he made his way further down the tunnel, and a lone drop from the holes in the ceiling as he passed by on his arm proved that his Field was useless against the magical acid goo that burned a hole through his flesh before he scraped it off against the wall.

Thankfully, the other trap was only a barrage of stone-tipped arrows that emerged from the wall, which were all repelled by his Field with ease.

After those two, he ran into no more traps – or at least he didn’t trigger any more. A T-junction caused him to take another right tunnel as he couldn’t hear anything down it, and it was only at this point that he began to question why he hadn’t run into any other Vogmites thus far. Sure, it wasn’t as if he wanted to run into any, but he couldn’t help think that if this was a dungeon like the message had said, then he would’ve imagined that the place would be crawling with the monsters.

It was entirely possible that they were all in pursuit of him, but that was also strange that all of them just happened to be in the same place when the call for reinforcements went out, and judging by how much he had traversed already, the entire cave system was large enough that it seemed unlikely. However, he didn’t know what he could do about it other than keep moving, hoping that this was the way out, because he really didn’t want to turn around and stumble upon his pursuers en masse.

Four more turnings over the next minute made him completely lost, and he was beginning to tire from the constant rush through the tunnels and the persistent paranoia over activating another trap. Coupled with the fact that he was literally starving, his energy was starting to flag, and his throat was beginning to dry out as a lack of water was starting to get to him from all the exertion. He wasn’t in the best shape before all this happened to him, and that didn’t seem to have changed now that he was in a world and had his body rebuilt by some sort of magical force.

The change in the tunnels was subtle at first, but he eventually noticed that his pathway through the dungeon was beginning to noticeably widen and the magical torches had increased in frequency, leaving very little in the way of shadows in between them. As he looked ahead, the tunnel, which was at least 30 feet wide and half that tall, curved gradually to the right; as he continued down it, his breathing ragged at this point from his panic-induced flight, the tunnel finally ended.

Unfortunately, it didn’t end because it let out into the open world of the outside, but because there was a gigantic set of double doors made out of what appeared to be a red stone, contrasting starkly with the greyish stone of the rest of the dungeon. The doors were split down the middle in a barely perceptible line, and carved into the middle of the stone doors was a giant humanoid-looking skull that had green, flickering flames contained in its eye sockets.

Remembering the flame trap from earlier, Thaden shook slightly at the sight, but it wasn’t that alone that made him stop and debate on whether he wanted to go any further. A sense of danger seemed to emanate from the other side of the doors, as if he were prey and he could feel a predator through the creepy stone doors just waiting for him to walk into its trap.

It was an eerie feeling, and he was inclined to heed the danger that the doors represented and turn around. He wasn’t completely ignorant of what might be waiting for him, as even with his limited experience in such things in games, a giant door found in a dungeon could only mean that there was some sort of elite monster or boss behind it, where groups of players would challenge and kill it for some sort of epic loot drops. But this wasn’t a game, at least he didn’t think it was; this was real life, and he wasn’t in a group, nor did he have any real way to inflict damage other than with what he’d already been able to do. Going into the dangerous situation he could sense behind the doors was tantamount to suicide, even with his protections – which had already been proven to be less than perfect in its defense. While it was possible that even if he died, whatever force that recreated his body might be able to do that again, there was no guarantee that his head would still be fully intact to do so.

A fate worse than death also presented itself to his imagination as he had run away from his pursuers. What if they discovered that my body would regrow itself if left alone for a few hours, and used it as a way to have a constantly regenerating buffet of flesh that they could harvest whenever it grew enough. I can’t even imagine how insane I would grow after watching my body being eaten day after day for years on end.

He really wanted to live, but such a horrifying prospect made him wish that he had actually died by being dropped into an active volcano. At least it would’ve been quick and relatively painless after the first few seconds of agony.

Thaden turned around to go back, but before he ran more than a few dozen feet, the sounds of his pursuers reached him a few seconds before they actually appeared – and it was worse than he thought. Dozens of the spindly legged Vogmites surged into the tunnel and spread out into its wider width, and he was immediately bombarded with the red-colored text that floated over each of them. There were at least another 30 or 40 visible Vogmite Workers similar to the ones that had discovered him in the treasure room (and he was almost positive that there were more behind the initial group farther into the tunnel), all around Level 5 to 6, but they were the least of his worries as he saw other kinds that were larger in appearance – and higher in Level.

Vogmite Guard – Minimal

Level 7

Vogmite Guard – Minimal

Level 8

Vogmite Guard – Minimal

Level 9

The Vogmite Guards carried longer knives or what were probably short swords in their hands, and a few of the higher-Leveled ones also had a small shield similar in shape and size as the Buckler he had seen in the treasure room. They were also approximately 30% larger than the workers, putting them at about 4 and a half feet tall; Thaden still had a height advantage at 6 feet, but that didn’t really mean much when facing literally dozens of them simultaneously.

Leading the massive group of blood-thirsty monsters was a Vogmite that was half again as tall as the Guards, putting it at nearly 7 feet tall and thereby taller than the Assistant Healer.

Vogmite Foreman – Minimal

Level 10

It carried nothing but a white-colored leather whip in its hands, but its intimidating gaze was almost a weapon in and of itself. The Foreman also seemed to be in charge of the other Vogmites, a fact that became evident as it barked out what sounded like an order in a slightly deeper voice than the others, and the veritable army of Vogmites suddenly ground to a halt, staring at Thaden with murder in its eyes. The gross yellow teeth in its mouth were longer and sharper than any of the other Vogmites he’d seen, as if they had been filed to create longer points, and a reddish substance seemed to have dripped down from its mouth and dried, giving it an even more nightmarish appearance than he thought was possible.

What was even worse was when it spoke to him, as being able to understand it shocked him so much that he didn’t know how to react.

“You have violated the sanctity of our hoard before facing our might, Contender, and our constraints have been lifted!” it shouted, the voice guttural but also higher-pitched than one would expect from such a monster. “Now you will die!”

As far as villainous speeches went, it left a lot to be desired, but the content of the speech was enough to snap him out of his stupor. “Wait, what do you mean—?”

He never got a chance to finish his question as the Foreman snapped his whip forward with a *crack*, which was apparently the signal for the others to charge at him. In a panic, he turned around yet again and sprinted with everything he had toward the dangerous double doors, hoping that whatever he faced inside was easier than what was already headed his way.

Thaden arrived at the doors a mere second before the charging Vogmites, and he pushed them open—

Or at least he tried to, but they didn’t budge even a little bit. Chastising himself for mixing up a push for a pull door, he gripped one of the teeth of the carved skull and pulled it as hard as he could… only for it to not shift in the slightest.

Oh, crap. Turning so that his back was to the door, he saw the massive horde of Vogmites closing in.

I’m so dead.