Chapter 685 / 664+1

Pathed: As I said in the other note, this is a double-chapter release today so no chapter tomorrow. We will continue with the one numbered 665 the day after tomorrow, but it is *really* 666.

Original comment:

While I was still trying to figure out how to do what I mentioned yesterday, I got some good feedback in the comments. I still feel like the justification to the reader for Serenity’s decision to hare off and worry about dungeon breaks before the attackers is a little weak, but there’s a reason Serenity was worried about the current situation; he’s seen it before and knows this is a problem waiting to happen. He has all the justification he needs. It's just a question of how I make that obvious to the reader, who doesn't have Serenity's background. I originally just stated it, but I think showing a bit more might be better.

I think I’ve come up with a way to handle it - and I think I can keep it to one additional chapter. Since it falls in the middle of Chapter 664, I’m going to be posting the new 664 and 665 today; that will shift all of the chapter numbers by one (I’m not sure if I’ll change them on Patreon or not, since there’s no way to change the order of posts). Either way, we’ll be continuing from Chapter 686 tomorrow!

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Chapter 664 - Still Not a Crafter

“No.” Gabriel shook his head and frowned. “I’m sure you’re trying to help, but I’m not going to let anyone else choose for me. I wouldn’t let my family pick, I wouldn’t let Daryl pick, and I’m certainly not going to let someone I don’t know pick my future. I know I’m not choosing the well-known Paths, but I’m choosing my Paths and that’s all there is to it.”

Serenity grinned. That wasn’t the answer he’d expected and it certainly wasn’t a wise answer, but it was a good one. “Good.” Gabriel looked confused by Serenity’s response, so Serenity explained. “You know what you want, you know who you are and where you’re going. That’s more important than always taking the best choices. The best choices are only the best if you can predict the future, and even those who can do so only imperfectly. You’re taking it farther than I would, but I’m old enough to be confident in my choices. Sometimes confidently wrong, but it’s always my choice.”

Indeed, for a moment, Serenity was afraid he’d just been confidently wrong. He’d accidentally invited Gabriel to ask how old he was. That was a question he didn’t want to answer.

“That’s not what I’ve been told,” Naomi objected. “Choosing the known Path is safe, it’ll take you to the known endpoint reliably. Choosing your own Path risks a dead end before that.”

Serenity shrugged. “And then you have to make your own Path or be at a dead end. A dead end later is still a dead end, and if you’re no longer sure who you are, how do you choose?”

“It’s a problem we’ll all have to face at some point. My Path doesn’t end until Tier Fifteen, so I’ll have plenty of time to figure it out,” Daryl claimed. “When does yours end?”

Serenity shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not like I’m on a known Path.”

Daryl snorted at that. “See? Clearly worse. You don’t even know when you’ll start having trouble. How long did it take you to break into Tier Four? Decades?”

Serenity bared his teeth at Daryl. He hated being talked down to like that. “I had a Tier Four available as soon as I finished my first Tier Three. I’ll have a Tier Nine when I finish my first Tier Eight. It doesn’t work that way for everyone; you have to have a Path that goes higher. Making someone else’s Path yours … well, it can work if you’re similar enough.” Serenity didn’t like the practice, but a lot of people liked the surety it gave them. “On the other hand, as you said, you’ll be Tier Fifteen. Maybe that’s enough.”

Serenity flicked his Status open. He had a ways to go before he reached the next Tier, but - wait, when had he advanced his Path that far?

He stared at it dumbly for a moment before Aide reminded him of the vision-altering spell. It must have counted as appropriate for a magitech Abomination.

Path: Magitech Abomination

Level: 94 (0/7520)

Tier: 4, 100/100 Spent

There really wasn’t much left. Maybe he should think about other spells he could enhance his body with, if that was what was needed. He probably needed to use his Magitech Affinity, too; that might be exactly what the Path was trying to teach him.

Fortunately, the food arrived before the discussion could get any more heated or Serenity could get any more distracted. They all took that as an opportunity to change topics; the clink of tableware against plates was the main noise until most of the food was gone.

As Serenity had come to expect, it was Rissa that put everything back on track. “The four of you will be doing the deepest dungeon near here, right?”

Naomi licked the last of her sauce off her fork, then set it down in the empty bowl. “Yes. Probably only through the eighth level, but that’s still farther than we’re making it with the three of us. It’s as far as I can go. With just the three of us, we’re managing level six, maybe seven, so eight would be a big increase. But Serenity beat all three of us, so…”

“That doesn’t mean I’m as good in a dungeon as having another three of you,” Serenity interrupted. “I beat you by taking advantage of your weaknesses. Most monsters don’t do that. It’s especially uncommon in dungeons with their focus on other things. You said this was a dungeon based around hazards?” Serenity looked over at Gabriel as he spoke.

“Hazards?” Gabriel looked puzzled for a moment before he realized what Serenity was talking about. “Oh! Environment hazards! I hadn’t really thought about it. The dungeon’s themed, but every single theme is an unpleasant or dangerous place to be. A swamp, a desert, a blizzard … ah, what are the others?”

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The next day was a visit to the Enchanters’ Guild that Serenity expected to be quick and actually took all day. By the end of his discussion with Master Enchanter Levit, Serenity had turned down three offers of apprenticeship; the last one, from Master Levit himself, even came with the offer of not having to pay for the apprenticeship with anything but his apprentice goods.

Serenity didn’t even have to think before he turned them down. He didn’t want to be an enchanter, even if the Voice seemed to think it was a good idea. He didn’t care if it seemed all too similar to his runic knowledge, similar enough that Master Enchanter Levit was openly interested in the rune on the biplanes.

Serenity didn’t care. He had to keep repeating it to himself. He didn’t care. Even if he did care, he didn’t have time for it right now.

In the end, that was what really made the difference; he didn’t have time. An apprenticeship was years of effort and learning; he wanted to get back to Earth sooner than that. He wasn’t sure how he’d handle being on Earth at his Tier, but he had to try. Maybe he could just stay in a dungeon or a nexus.

Maybe he could import an enchanter to teach … Students. Yeah. Students.

Actually, wasn’t one of Katya’s relatives an enchanter?

Serenity sent her a message with the question, then scolded himself. He didn’t even have the students lined up yet, why was he looking for a teacher?

At least he was going to get to kill some monsters soon. That should clear his head; he hadn’t had any really good combat lately, other than the exhibition fight against the Silver Blades.

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The day of the delve was misty and chilly in the morning. Rissa saw Serenity off with a warm breakfast, a kiss, and her well wishes. She was headed to join a different delve that day, acting as a low-Tier healer, but they planned to meet at the dungeon, which was closer to the Library than the Mercenaries’ Guild.

Serenity met the three Silver Blades at the Mercenaries’ Guild. He arrived shortly before they did and spent the time relaxed on a chair talking to Aide. Aide was excited about enchanting and kept asking about the relationship between runes and enchantments; it was enough to make Serenity want to hire a teacher just to answer Aide’s questions. Serenity didn’t know the answers.

From the Mercenaries’ Guild, it was a five minute walk to the nearest local Portal Node, then a quick hop through a portal that took the four of them to the far side of Takinat. The area was deserted; it had clearly been overrun by dungeon monsters repeatedly and simply walled off rather than trying to defend the dungeon.

Serenity had seen the strategy before, but it was only used in places where there weren’t enough delvers to reliably keep a dungeon cleared. Instead, it was encouraged to have small dungeon breaks, which were simple to take care of, by running the easy levels. The overpressure at the deeper levels would cause a dungeon break, but the lack of monsters in higher levels would limit the break to a small number of low level monsters. It wouldn’t relieve much pressure, but it was still far easier to handle.

Serenity felt something strange about the area before they were even all that close to the dungeon. He didn’t just dismiss it, but he had no idea what it was. It wasn’t uncomfortable; it was simply weird and he didn’t know what to think of it. Perhaps it was because of his new Dungeon Deity Evolution? They were approaching a dungeon, and while he couldn’t remember anything like it from the trip, he hadn’t actually been in a dungeon other than the one he rescued Andarit from in quite a while. There simply hadn’t been a good time for it.

The fact that there was a wall that didn’t look new outside the dungeon told Serenity that Takinat had been using that strategy for this dungeon since long before the attacks started and the delvers left. That was not what he remembered from the discussion at the Mercenaries’ Guild, but it was entirely possible that the wall predated having enough high-Tier people to regularly clear the deepest part of the dungeon. It was also possible that they thought some level of small breaks was normal; Serenity couldn’t guess which from the small amount of information he had.

The first real clue that something was very wrong was motion ahead of them as they walked towards the wall protecting the area from the dungeon. It wasn’t until they were closer that they could see it: a humongous monitor lizard. It was probably ten feet from its nose to its tail.

The four delvers made out the lizard only moments before it realized they were there and charged towards them. It should have been taken care of easily at long range by Daryl, but his bow wasn’t ready; he clearly hadn’t expected an attack before they passed the wall.

Serenity didn’t have that problem. Not only did he always keep at least one weapon ready, he had Skills that didn’t require preparation. A single Death Magebolt was enough to drop the lizard in its tracks. Serenity watched it only long enough to be certain it was dead; his attention was on his surroundings. A monster, especially a monster with no thoughts other than to attack, this close to a dungeon was all too likely to mean there was an ongoing dungeon break. Worse than that, this was well outside the wall that surrounded the dungeon, which meant that it hadn’t contained the dungeon break.

His caution was rewarded when a second giant lizard charged them, just as nonsensically as the first. Fortunately, it was just as easy to kill as the first. By the time the third lizard attacked, the Silver Blades were ready. There were a lot of lizards, but as long as they kept attacking as individuals they were easy to handle.

Naturally, the moment he thought that was the moment one of the lizards roared. Serenity wasn’t sure real lizards could make that much noise, but lizard monsters definitely could; really, almost any monster that came in groups could. They had to have a way to call the rest of the group, and noise was the most common.

This time, it wasn’t one or two lizards; it was at least twenty. Once he saw them, Serenity didn’t wait for anyone to say anything; he just dropped a Fireball on top of the group and pumped mana into it, expanding its size until it hit every single one of the lizards running after them. When the spell faded away, nothing moved in the area it had covered.

“Fucking hell,” Daryl swore. “We have to get back to the portal and call the guild. Run!”

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Chapter 665 - A “Normal” Dungeon Break?

Serenity supposed it was good that they had a process in place for when a dungeon break happened and went outside the wall. It was significantly less good that they both needed that process and didn’t have enough people to have someone watch the dungeon. The only other good thing was that despite the fact that this was a Tier Nine dungeon, those monsters weren’t Tier Nine or anywhere close. There was always the chance that something more powerful had escaped and flown away, but there was a very good chance that this was a dungeon break or series of dungeon breaks too large for the walls but still relatively low power.

No, there was one other good thing he could say about it right now: it justified his fears; if they were having regular dungeon breaks, the dungeons weren’t being delved frequently enough. If he could call that good, anyway. Twenty giant lizards might be low Tier, but if they were what made it past the wall, it was likely that there were more monsters inside. Daryl certainly seemed to think that they shouldn’t try to handle it alone.

When they reached the portal node, Daryl hurried up to it and used it, but he didn’t call a portal. Serenity suspected he was using it to put out some kind of an alert; many cities had systems like that set up. He hadn’t looked into it so far, because it really wasn’t necessary on Earth; there were better methods that didn’t require someone to be at a node to contact someone else.

They stayed there for a few minutes while Daryl finished with the node. “Alain wants us to check the local area, especially in the areas that ought to have people. We should travel in pairs, just in case; I don’t think there will be anything too strong this far from the dungeon when we’ve only seen the desert lizards, but we still have to check. Anything could be a problem for people who aren’t prepared for it.”

“Even the frogs?” Naomi sounded doubtful.

Daryl paused. “Maybe not the frogs. Okay, anything other than the frogs, but kill them anyway if you find them. Naomi, why don’t you go with Gabriel; I’ll walk around with Serenity. That’s the best split I can come up with.”

Serenity shrugged; it seemed at least kind of reasonable. It put one of the two Tier Nines in each party, along with someone who could stand between them and trouble if it came down to it. It sounded like Daryl wasn’t expecting trouble, but that didn’t mean trouble wouldn’t find them anyway.

Four hours later, Serenity half-hoped that trouble would find them. The area was abandoned. It didn’t look like it had ever been densely populated, but what was left at this point was broken, rotting, rusting, and sometimes all three. Serenity wasn’t sure what half of it had been; some sort of large open building was the best he could come up with.

The other half he could be sure of; it was mostly cheap, dilapidated housing. Very little of it was well built; indeed, most of it looked like it was slapped together by people who barely knew anything about building things. Some of that look might come from the generally poor condition of the buildings, but Serenity was confident they’d never looked all that nice.

Unfortunately, they’d found just enough monsters to have to keep searching, especially since the place wasn’t actually completely empty. There were people living in some of the broken-down shacks; Serenity didn’t know why, but he didn’t need to know why to know that they didn’t need monsters on top of everything else they had to deal with.

It was especially true since almost all of the people out here were Tier One. This was the first time Serenity had noticed Tier Ones that weren’t essentially children on Asihanya; the planet made getting past Tier One relatively easy for almost everyone, yet for some reason these people either hadn’t achieved it or had someone fallen back to Tier One. The monsters they’d found this far from the dungeon were indeed the giant frogs Naomi had thought so little of, but frogs might actually be dangerous to Tier One people if they weren’t prepared, and no one could be prepared while they were asleep.

It was necessary work. It had to be done. It simply wasn’t something Serenity liked doing. He’d far rather be in the dungeon preventing the problem in the first place.

Even worse, he knew that every hour they spent outside the dungeon searching for anything that might have gotten loose was an hour they weren’t inside the dungeon keeping it from happening. High Tier people like the group Serenity was with could cover a lot of ground quickly and safely, but they weren’t the right people to be doing this. This was work far more suited to the many people who were Tier Three; they could also safely deal with the frogs and there were far more Tier Threes than people at Tier Seven or higher.

Fortunately, it seemed like Serenity wasn’t the only person who thought that. Five hours after Daryl reported the huge dungeon break, other mercenaries started arriving in the area. They’d run or flown from elsewhere in the city, instead of using the portal; the portal was apparently too expensive for Tier Threes.

The first people to arrive were individual mercenaries, who joined the search but did little more. An hour after that, however, a familiar face trotted towards Serenity and Daryl: Alain, the man who’d handled the desk at the Mercenary Guild when Serenity stopped in. This Alain was dressed in leather armor and carried a well-made spear; he looked like he came prepared to deal with monsters that were closer to animals than anything else.

Alain stopped when he reached a reasonable speaking distance. Despite the run in his armor, he didn’t seem any more winded than Serenity would have been; he’d clearly paced himself appropriately. “Daryl, Serenity. We’ve got things from here; I need you four to sweep the inside of the containment area then run as much of the dungeon as you can. I’ll have some other groups follow you in when we’ve cleaned up what we can in here, but just having you in there should help.”

“Naomi-”

The name was barely out of Daryl’s mouth when the sound of two people trotting drew Serenity’s attention to Naomi and Daryl, who seemed to have followed Alain more slowly. Serenity assumed Daryl noticed them as well, since he didn’t finish whatever he’d been about to say.

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The “containment area” was the area within the wall. It was filled about three inches deep with water, which covered a layer of gloopy mud. Serenity took one look at it, turned on his Footwraps of Air Glide, and floated above it, but the three Silver Blades had to trek through the muck. When Serenity found out about the monsters hiding (sometimes not very well) in the shallow water, he was even more glad that he didn’t have to enter it.

Serenity never got a good look at the monsters. He thought they were probably some sort of tiny squid or kraken relative, but he simply couldn’t be certain. They started off trying to fight the small carnivorous mouths-with-tentacles with individual attacks, but there were enough of them that they soon changed tactics.

Gabriel’s Ice Wall spellwand had a secondary feature: it could strengthen itself with the water near where it was established. Gabriel couldn’t use it to directly hurt anything; the spell wouldn’t allow it. Serenity knew that was because of how either Gabriel or the wand’s maker conceived of the spell, but it wasn’t a bad thing. It would at least mean that the Ice Wall couldn’t do too much to allies if Gabriel accidentally got too close to someone with it.

After Gabriel used the wand to create a circle, the water inside the circular wall would be less than an inch above the mud. Serenity could drop a Fireball on that and roast the two-inch-long multi-armed beasts. Fireball wasn’t as effective in the soggy terrain as it had been against the giant lizards, but with the help of Gabriel’s wand, they were able to clear out the sodden ground inside the wall.

Naomi, Gabriel, and Daryl were all coated in mud up to their knees, with splashes above. Serenity wasn’t in as bad a shape, but he was still spattered with mud even though he hadn’t set foot in it. Far more important than the mud, unfortunately, was the smell; flash-dried mud, seaweed, and whatever the fishy things were didn’t smell at all nice.

Once the area was clear, they headed to the stone pedestal at the center of the containment area. Serenity recognized the pedestal as a relatively common setup for a clearly instanced dungeon. The dungeon needed something as an entry point and a stone pedestal was easy to find.

Serenity wasn’t expecting any surprises, since he hadn’t seen anything odd about the Cliff Dungeon on Zon. On the other hand, the Cliff Dungeon was in a weird state when he entered, since it was being controlled using a dead dungeon’s core; he probably should have tried entering a normal dungeon before he went in with a group of strangers. Fortunately, it seemed like no one else could see the same message he did.

[The Layered Dungeon greets the Dungeon Lord]

I am honored by your presence. Please grant me your blessing; if there is anything that is not in accordance with your wishes, please tell me and I will correct it.

Serenity shivered at the abasement of the message. He didn’t like it; it sounded like the dungeon was afraid of him and trying to appease him.

Please treat me like any other delver.

The dungeon didn’t respond immediately, so Serenity tried again.

I want to see what you’ve prepared for others. I’ll be traveling through the dungeon with a team you’ve seen before.

That seemed to work.

[Dungeon: Layered Dungeon]

[The Layered Dungeon is a creation of joy and exploration, stacking similar or disparate things together to achieve something as sensible yet unique as possible. It has no purpose other than challenge]

[Status: Active]

[Tier: Nine]

[Type: Environment, Level-Based]

[Maximum capacity per group: 5]

[Availability: Currently Unlimited]

[View Additional Information?]

[Enter Dungeon?]

[Bind Dungeon?]

[Command Dungeon?]

[Enter Core Space?]

Serenity selected Enter Dungeon. He could only guess what Bind and Command Dungeon did, but they were definitely not something he wanted to do right now. Perhaps they’d permit him to avoid killing dungeons in the future, though some were simply better dead. He didn’t like admitting that, but he was pretty sure the volcano dungeon would never have been happy without its continual eruptions.

When Serenity appeared in the dungeon itself, the first thing he noticed wasn’t the squishy ground or the terrible smell. Instead, it was the fact that he could feel everything about the dungeon level he was in. It was almost like being in his Rest from Death dungeon, except that he could only feel everything and not control it.

At least, he didn’t think he could control it. He didn’t want to try. Whether or not he could, it wasn’t the right thing to do; this wasn’t his dungeon and he didn’t know the dungeon core. Maybe he could talk to Aki about trying it when he got home.