[Shrubley, the Monster Adventurer] Chapter 123 - Dungeonley 2, the Dungeoning III

Miranda and Konko tumbled into a large cage suspended over a dark, lightless abyss far below.

Several other cages gently swung from metal chains that rattled in the dark. Each cage had a few monsters each, with a central platform providing a pale white light from an obelisk.

Miranda picked herself and Konko up off the hard metal bars of the cage floor. Konko took out a small dagger, but Miranda put her hand out. “There’s no need for that.”

There were no monsters in their cage, but Miranda could quickly see the intent of the Dungeon. She didn’t have the capacity to talk or read a Dungeon like Shrubley, but she understood traps well enough.

“What we’re supposed to do,” Miranda said, stepping forward to put herself in front of Konko, “is unlock each of the cages in a circle. Defeating the monsters within while avoiding what I assume is some sort of ranged attack from the obelisk over there. See how its light pulses in a circle like a lighthouse? Observe.”

As the white light of the obelisk settled on Miranda, a beam of scorching energy lanced out and struck the Countess. She batted it aside lazily, using the beam to slice through the bars of their cage and into its neighbor.

She looked back at Konko. “See? Nothing to it.”

“You don’t want me to–” Konko began, but Miranda shook her head.

“I rarely get to fight,” Miranda confided. “And this Dungeon has picked a fight with the wrong lady. You’re welcome to join if you want, but I’m not going for entertainment here. This Dungeon is beneath me, and I’m going to show it just how far.” She winked at Konko. “Won’t take but a moment.”

“Why did it separate us?” Sose asked. “Is there something different in each area to find, or has this simply been a deterrent?”

“No doubt it was meant to separate a group into smaller pieces to make it easier to destroy them,” Miranda said, leaping through the gap in her cage to the next.

“Those tactics are too advanced for what should be a Bronze Ranker Dungeon,” Sose said with frustration.

A moment of focus had her long claws turning into whip-like razors. She sliced lazily as the hulking brutes lumbered toward her, turning them into chunky style monster bits.

“I agree,” Miranda said. “Which means somebody more advanced than Bronze is pulling the strings.”

With another slice of her 5-foot-long claws, the Countess cut through the iron bars as if they were made of soft cheese and leapt to the next cage. There were significant benefits to drastically outranking the power of the nearby environment. Tiers of mana density affected everything from trees to stone walls. In somewhere like the Inner Ring, the Countess would have been met with considerably more resistance.

Konko watched in awe and amazement as the Countess leapt from one cage to the next, each one containing nearly a dozen monsters that looked ready to smash her into a grease stain.

And each time, the Countess lazily destroyed them with the simplest motions. They never stood a chance.

Before the central obelisk had a chance to create one more rotation–and likely kill Konko with that deadly beam of light–the Countess had destroyed every monster in each cage.

She took the fight to the obelisk, leaping onto it and wrenching the white orb at its peak. As soon as she did, it began to glow ominously.

Konko tried to cry out, but the Countess was two steps ahead of her. She pierced it with two claws, causing the thing’s dangerous buildup of mana to fizzle out.

All that remained was a white orb the size of a grapefruit with a cracked hole in it.

The obelisk blurred and stretched, forming a doorway. Sose poked his head out of Miranda’s clothing and summoned a lasso of paint that attached to Konko’s cage and pulled it close so she could simply step out and into the door.

“Too easy,” Miranda said with a haughty laugh.

“Hopefully, the rest have fared nearly as well,” Sose said.

***

Cal stared at Slyrox. Afraid, he shook the koblin, trying to wake her up.

“Oh, it’s no use,” he said miserably. “I’m on my own!”

Strangely enough, this did elicit a reaction. “Bang-pot!” she muttered, flailing a mitt momentarily.

The irony was not lost on Cal that the stronger one of the pair was out of commission. His mind changed when that mitt collided with his skull, knocking it clean off his neck and to the ground.

His perspective abruptly shifted to floor level. He looked up at his skulless upright body and Slyrox, who remained asleep on the ground.

“Maybe she can still do something…”

Cal picked up his skull and fixed it back into place before looking around at his surroundings.

Giant carved cubes marched off into the distance. Each one with broad and tall enough openings set into each side that even the Countess could stride through.

Cal didn’t like the fact that along the side of some of the cubes were cut grooves resembling a ladder.

He looked up, seeing more and more of those giant cubes. Then he looked down at Slyrox’s sleeping form. “I am not sure how I will get you up there.”

Thinking this over, Cal decided to go for the smarter option. He raised his staff, conjuring a floating mirror out of essence. He moved it forward and then up, scouting the way.

With his ability to see through the mirror, Cal saw that there were strange metallic monsters here and there that didn’t even notice the flying mirror. Some were larger and more threatening than the rest, but other than that, he didn’t find anything that might signify a way to go yet. They seemed to be sleeping. Much like Slyrox.

Likely waiting to ambush me, he thought nervously.

Cal continued to scout across the massive space until he found a metallic monster guarding one of those cubes with a floating yellow sphere in the center. That was as good of a clue as any.

If he had to scout any farther with that mirror, he would have reached his distance limitation.

Kneeling, Cal marked down the path to take towards the sphere, then mustered his courage to get going. He prodded Slyrox a few more times in an attempt to rouse her, but it didn’t work.

Between one poke and the next, Slyrox flailed her mitts, which gave Cal an idea. He pulled out some spare bones from his inventory, which was really little more than the space within his middle and rib cage.

“Please work,” Cal said to himself, knowing no one could hear him. He rearranged his rib cage into a much larger version. Using a few spare bones to shore up the structural weakness, he created the equivalent of a child’s seat for Slyrox to sit in.

The unconscious koblin was nestled in an oversized rib cage, all four limbs sticking out of Cal’s ribs so that she could fully articulate them. Cal looked at himself in his conjured mirror.

“I look like a character in one of those fanciful stories Shrubley likes,” he mumbled. The ones where people piloted big golems the size of buildings from a magical compartment inside the golem’s chest.

Only, instead of being the pilot, Cal was the golem. Even living out a fantasy, I can’t catch a break, he thought morosely.

The hardest part had been taking off Slyrox’s backpack without getting his lights punched out. Wearing it over his cloak, Cal triggered the [Hide] imprint and was impressed that it now included Slyrox.

If she woke up, it likely wouldn’t be a pleasant experience. Cal wasn’t too concerned about that, however. It was more important to get out of here alive and together.

Just out of curiosity, Cal poked Slyrox’s side. She kicked out. He poked a different spot, and she gave a hearty left hook. “I am a genius,” he whispered, understanding the mechanisms of control. “Maybe I am like one of those pilots.”

Feeling suitably like an awesome golem pilot (ignoring that the roles were technically reversed), from Shrubley’s favorite book series, G Golem, Cal carefully ventured through the path of giant cubes.

Invisible, he slipped past the monsters easily, until he arrived at the yellow sphere. As soon as he stepped inside, the monster guarding it knew something was wrong.

It roared, waking Slyrox up long enough for her to mumble and kick feebly. Cal inched his way around to the orb, snatched it with an invisible hand, and then realized the trouble he was in.

As soon as he grabbed the orb, the [Hide] effect from his cloak was dispelled and the monster could see him.

The metallic monster charged Cal. He struggled to get his staff up and ready, momentarily forgetting about his setup with Slyrox.

Stuffing the orb into his cloak’s pocket, Cal jabbed and tickled Slyrox as the monster closed in on him.

Icy blue flaming essence surged over Slyrox’s fist. Blurring with speed, Slyrox’s Comet essence enhanced fist collided with the metallic monster. The tremendous impact boomed like a thunderclap.

Cal staggered back from the sheer force of that jab. To his great surprise, there was no follow up attack from the monster.

Defeated with a single blazing strike, the monster’s form began to blur and shift until it stretched out into a yellow door. Hearing the howls of other monsters waking up, Cal decided it was time to go.

As soon as he put his hand on the doorknob, Slyrox booted the door open like some sort of badass city watch who didn’t play by the rules chasing after a suspect.

“I really got to stop Shrubley reading those pulpy stories,” Cal mumbled.

***

Shrubley and Smudge walked through the red doorway that appeared and into a narrow but impossibly tall chamber. Directly in front of them was a door of massive proportions.

“Pyuu?” Smudge asked.

“I don’t think so, Smudge,” Shrubley told him, putting one wooden hand against the door. “I see no locks, but there does appear to be a series of… plates?”

“Pyuu, pyuu!”

“A puzzle?” Shrubley took a step back and looked at the whole of the door. There were multiple depressions beneath a variety of plates. He pulled out the [Red Eye Orb] and tossed it up and down in his free hand. His other still held his shield, [Adrastos], just in case.

Above each hemispherical depression was a plate with an engraved scene on it. Shrubley couldn’t make heads nor tails of it. There seemed to be 10 in total, arranged in two vertical rows on either side of the seam between the doors.

If Shrubley’s guess was right–that his friends would also get orbs of their own–then that meant there were at least 7 wrong places to put the orbs.

Out of curiosity, Shrubley placed the [Red Eye Orb] beneath a carving of a man standing on a pulpit. He looked angry, like he was yelling at a crowd just out of sight.

As soon as Shrubley put the orb in, he knew it was the wrong choice. It was no innocent error noise or a buzzer that told him he had chosen poorly.

The room shook and Shrubley suddenly understood why it was so narrow. The walls inched forward with a horrible grinding sound he could both hear and feel through the floor.

Shrubley’s [Red Eye Orb] fell out and clattered to the ground. He picked it up again and dusted it off. “Okay… perhaps that was a bad choice.”

“Pyuu-pyuu?”

“If you think you could do better, be my guest,” Shrubley said a little peevishly. Smudge took the orb from him by swallowing it. He rolled and bounced up to the door and jumped, depositing the [Red Eye Orb] into another depression.

This one was of a young woman with a broad hat kneeling beneath a great tree. Shrubley liked that one. The tree looked good and healthy as all trees should. She looked happy, respectful.

The walls rumbled, and the room shrank by another foot. Shrubley, who wasn’t the best at math, could see rather quickly that they only had a few wrong choices left before they were crushed.

“I do not wish to be turned into paper,” he told Smudge. “I think it might be best to wait for the others.”

“Pyuu?” Smudge said, rolling back with the orb.

“If they do not come, then we will make a decision, but until that point, I think–”

A white doorway appeared in the wall to Shrubley’s right and out walked Miranda and Konko. They seemed to be talking heatedly amongst themselves as they entered the room. At least, until the Countess noticed the odd dimensions of the room.

Miranda snorted and looked at Shrubley. “Crushing trap?”

Shrubley nodded. “Crushing trap.”

“Tactless,” she spat. Without missing a beat, she went up to the door and examined the square engravings. “Ten choices…” She looked back at Shrubley. “I take it you’ve already given this a try?”

“Twice.”

Miranda did a double take. “Well, which did you already try then? At least we can rule out some options.”

“The angry man and the woman at the tree,” Shrubley told her.

“I figured you’d go for the tree,” Miranda said thoughtfully. “Well, there’s 10 choices, and two orbs. I take it Cal will have another one, so that’s 3 orbs and 10 choices. Just because your red orb didn’t work with the ones you chose doesn’t mean mine won’t.” She looked at the walls and, with a shrug, pushed the white orb into the depression belonging to the woman kneeling beneath a tree.

The walls rumbled closer.

“Not it then,” Sose said. “I don’t think we have more than two or three more tries before we’re squished flat, Mistress.”

Konko, who had been quietly studying the engravings, gasped. “I know what it is!”