Chapter 30: Double Up
The first few hours of delving were rough ones for Blychert.
Sleep had come to him easily enough, sure, but staying that way had proven virtually impossible. It wasn’t the first time he’d had to take his rest in a dungeon, but that didn’t make it any less of a difficult task. No bedroll in the world could make sleeping on the cold, hard stone of a dungeon worthwhile, and he couldn’t help but to toss and turn all night long. The occasional stirrings of his party members didn’t help the matter either, each time the watch changed over or whatever the reason.
But more than this, there was something inherent to the dungeon that made Bly restless. He wasn’t na?ve enough to think that it had nothing to do with his previous interactions with certain dungeon elements. Alyse’s ‘Clear Mind’ spell was expensive, given its lack of synthesis, but it was having a noticeable effect on the frequency of his headaches, or lack thereof. And yet, it didn’t seem to fully negate that feeling on the back of his neck, that prickly sensation that spoke of something unnatural in his surroundings.
The dungeon was, by all accounts, a place filled to the brim with magical energy. And for some reason, be it related to his nature or not, it kept Blychert on the very ends of his toes. Even while he was trying to sleep, or so it seemed. Dreams had come to him in the night too… he couldn’t even remember what they were about now, something warm? Something red? Glowing? Either way, he remembered waking up, beads of sweat trickling down the sides of his face.
Seriously, could he just go one, whole day without something coming up?
“You good?”
Bly lifted his head out from the bowl of hot mash he’d been given for lunch, unexpectedly. He hadn’t even realized that he’d been dozing off. Or maybe, it was more accurate to say that his mind had been wandering, while his body somewhat focused on the very basic task of shoveling mush into his mouth.
Glancing up, Bly studied the curious expression etched across the scruffy face of his party leader, and shrugged, mumbling, “Eh.”
“You look like shit…” Reingard replied, not pulling any punches it seemed. His gaze shifted over to the other side of the chamber momentarily, Bly’s too, where a small commotion garnered their attention.
Skaldan seemed to be discussing something with Tyshili and the other members of her party, or rather he had made them laugh over something. Whatever it was, they sure were entertained.
“So, what’s the deal with you two anyway?” Reingard asked more seriously, glancing back down at Bly. He adjusted one of the blades equipped to his belt, shoving it back across his body, before adding, “Naz told me you were good for your word, and clearly you’ve got the chops for this gig. Even still… I don’t get your angle over this Cynric guy. What’s he to you? Something tells me you don’t care much for bounties.”
“I thought you said the less you knew, the better?” Bly grinned slightly, recalling their conversation from the adventuring hall yesterday.
Reingard grunted, as if amused by the reply. Slowly, he lowered himself down onto the ground, and put his back against the wall, sitting side-by-side with Blychert. He looked ahead at the rest of his party, and said, “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“How much gold is on his head exactly?” Bly thought to ask. He figured it was worth knowing, considering it seemed like half of Frostwall wanted a piece of the action, including the Church of the Divine.
“Last I saw, it was up to ten-thousand crowns.” Reingard groaned, as if just the thought of that amount of money upset him, “What I wouldn’t do for that kind of coin…”
Blychert chuckled to himself. Reingard was right, Bly really had no interest in bounties whatsoever, which made his party’ leader’s displeasure even more amusing. Even still, he replied in a more earnest tone, “Cynric knows something about what’s been happening around here. The dungeon anomaly? It’s not the only one to have occurred in Calveriga in recent months…”
“Yeah, no kidding…” Reingard rubbed his chin. His eyes flashed wide momentarily, and he looked at Blychert more intently, “Wait. You’re Xander’s charge, right? That means you were in Kelvalder with him a few months back, when all that crap in the local dungeon went down.”
Blychert nodded, sighing, “I didn’t realize how much more interconnected everything was until what happened down here.” Slowly, he clutched at the Thundermaw Amulet around his neck. Even the touch of it made him shiver in recollection of that day. Had Sage not intervened on his behalf… there was no telling if any of them would have made it out alive. He looked back at the warrior, and said in a hushed tone, “Let’s just say my interests in Cynric are… personal.”
“Personal, huh? Well, I guess I can live with that.” Reingard nodded, seemingly content with the answer, “And you’re sure you can even find him?”
“Not… exactly.” Bly winced apologetically, “We’re pretty sure he’s on the seventh floor. That’s where Prince Skeggan went missing, and where the Undaunted conducted their investigation, so… it seems like the best heading.”
“Got it—” Reingard groaned, as he hoisted himself up on to his feet. He then extended a hand down to where Bly was sitting and helped him up as well. Turning to address the rest of the rotation party, he said loudly, “Gear up! Heading out in five.”
Blychert exhaled deeply.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
One more haul, and they’d surely be on the seventh floor.
***
[SAGE ---> Winter System Notification]
> Now entering [Floor 7, Halls of Ogrim]
> Party Status: Activated
> Party Bonus: 6%
> Limiter Penalty: -15%
> Core Volatility: 21%
> Daily Bonus Reward: Kill [25] Vault Guardians [incomplete [10/25], +250xp]
***
Bly regarded his sage terminal’s dungeon overview prompt momentarily, as he and the rest of the rotation party entered the wayshrine chamber on the seventh floor. The stairwell joining the eighth and seventh floors opened into a familiar enough looking space. Most of the wayshrine chambers that Bly had seen down in the Silver Vault all looked the same, except perhaps for shape and size. The floor boss’s door remained closed, a massive bulwark of silver and chains, and the entry braziers were completely dead, indicating at least that there were no new spawns lurking inside.
It was still too early to stop for a lengthy rest, and they’d already recovered a lot of their lost strength in a small downtime period only a short while ago. It’d had been roughly four hours since they’d taken lunch, but Blychert was feeling a lot better than he had on their morning route through up through the eighth floor. And it seemed the others felt the same, because Reingard directed the party forward shortly, leading them out of the wayshrine chamber and into the Halls of Ogrim proper.
Bly didn’t know too much about this floor. His brief research into what one might except on the seventh floor produced similar findings to adjacent floors. The halls were inundated with vault guardians, golems, and living armors, as was to be expected of the Silver Vault. Slimes, goblins, and other basic and intermediate spawns seemed more than likely, but nothing really stood out to Bly as unusual or interesting.
Whatever made the seventh floor important in all of this, if anything at all, didn’t seem to have much to do with its spawns, at least.
Frankly, he was just eager to begin his search of the seventh.
“G, up ahead.” Merlind’s voice broke through the corridor, “Some kind of magical aura I’m not familiar with.”
Quickly, Bly cast his own aura detection spell. Sure enough, there was a strange energy reading down the hall. It didn’t seem to be explicitly tethered to one kind of magic or another, but neither was it a completely raw strand of magical energy either. Maybe, something in-between.
“What is it?” Skaldan asked in Bly’s ear.
“Not sure…” Blychert mumbled back, “Can’t get a good enough reading from back here.”
A flash of light at the other end of the corridor, followed by the prompt sound of an explosion, caused everyone to flinch. It didn’t sound like any spawn. In fact, it sounded sort of like…
“Friendlies, up ahead! Formation one, at the ready!!” Reingard shouted, and he wasted little time in urging the party forward thereafter.
A bit discombobulated amidst the chaos, Blychert eventually found his footing, and found his place amongst the casters as they trailed the frontline. A series of spells and magic skills fired off in quick succession, as everyone stuck to their roles and bolstered the party with extra buffs and defenses. Hurriedly, Blychert bolstered Reingard and Skaldan with a Hasten spell, before imbibing himself in an Armor of Frost.
However, with his aura detection still active, Blychert immediately began to see strange, trailing wisps of energy flutter past them on both sides, as the party bolted forward towards the commotion. Though his curiosity would have to wait, because not a moment later, they too were into the thick of it.
Up ahead, across a narrow bridge, a wide, hexagonal shaped plaza stood at the center of a cavernous space, which itself was surrounded by a vast void that seemed to descend into a darkness of unknown depths. An identical bridge stood at the other end of the chamber too, from which Bly could see a horde of spawns pouring into the center of the plaza, where another rotation party stood firmly in defense.
“Adelina!” Reingard shouted intently, urging the rest of his party forward into the plaza.
Leaving himself little room to think, Blychert cast a series of Icicle spells, thrusting them forward towards a contingent of goblinoids that had broken off the main horde and were inching around the defensive shape of the other party. Merlind seemed to have a similar idea, because a moment later, an earthen spell also went to work in deterring the spawns.
As the parties joined up in the middle, Blychert heard a woman’s voice rise about the rest.
“Reingard? Aren’t I glad to see you. I thought you were on eight?”
“And I thought you were supposed to have reported back by now?” Reingard insisted, mildly frustrated by the sounds of it, “What’s the status? Don’t tell me you’re breaking rank, Adelina?”
Now that the two parties were together, Blychert got a good look at the armored woman. Her black hair was neatly folded away into her helmet, and she donned both sword and shield.
“We got blocked up by a hyperspawn.” Adelina dismissed the notion entirely, “And we’ve got a big one on our tails too. These things—these white lights… I’m not sure, they’ve popped up around the floor though. Celthos investigated one of them, he got sucked right through damned thing when he touched it. Damned fool…”
Was she talking about those strange wisps of light?
“Trelen?”
“Hm?” Blychert glanced across the score of faces, only to see Bjadir’s sweat-riddled face looking back at him. Furrowing his brow confusedly, he asked, “Bjadir? What are you—?”
Oh, that was right. He had been spending his downtime away from Bold Arrow helping out on the rotation teams. Hadn’t he?
“We need to head for the wayshrine chamber, Reingard.” Adelina insisted adamantly, “There’s an S-ranked, expert level spawn on our asses. My team doesn’t have the resources to deal with it and the rest of these.”
Spells and weapons continued to create a cacophony of sound, as the two parties stood in limbo, fending off the horde before them. Fortunately, and despite its size, it was a relatively low-level horde, which made keeping it at bay somewhat simple. Bly was already starting to feel the drain of the day weighing heavily on him, and clearly both Skaldan and Bjadir were at their limits too.
Hell, everyone seemed to be at their limits.
If what Adelina was saying was true, then someone was bound to get hurt. Could they possibly face a spawn of that difficulty in such a condition?
Suddenly, a low rumbling sound from the far side of the chamber made the stone beneath Bly’s feet quake. The horde of spawns shirked back, and from the darkness of the corridor on the far side, a long, silvery-scaled neck craned its way into the chamber. Two front legs, a looming body, and two hind legs, trailed by a barbed tail, entered the plaza, and towered above them.
***
[SAGE ---> Winter System Notification]
> New spawn type [Silver Dragon] detected.
> Spawn Type: Dragon
> Threat Level: Expert
> Spawn Rank: S
> Spawn Zone: B
***
Blychert gulped, eyes widening. He could see the young prince next to him out of the corner of his eye, visibly recoil at the sight of the massive creature before them. It wasn’t as large as Kubranul, but it might as well have been. This thing had to be every bit as dangerous as it looked.
And no doubt, they were about to find out one way or the other.
