Chapter 52: Chapter 48 – Things that go Bump in the Night

Just a heads up there is a minor 'not for workplace'  thing included... you may not want to crank the volume  

 

The notification surprised me. It was something I was not expecting and, looking around I either was the only one that got it, or everybody was used to it so I did not say anything. I mean what was I supposed to say? That the dungeon knew it had intruders? It was kind of obvious so saying it would seem silly. Instead, I glanced around at the cavern before me. We were told when we got here what the first floor consisted of and most of the second but, hearing about it and seeing it were completely different.

The first groups had spent weeks mapping out the first floor and we were told that it was a giant cavern the size of several soccer fields long and wide. It had over a hundred columns going from floor to ceiling that created blind spots and hidden areas for monsters. The lack of light would also create shadows that played on people’s nerves. That was the description we were given; but it failed to say anything about the blue veins that intertwined through the ceiling, walls, columns, and floor. They lit up the cavern in a dazing display as they pulsed as if we were in something alive. That on top of the blue wisps that looked like cotton candy floating around, made a very pretty picture.

“This is amazing and the description we got completely failed to grasp the splendor of it.” I said to nobody in particular. I expected somebody to at least comment. Maybe not Janet who treasured her words like gold but the others were usually very chatty. Silence was my only answer though.

I quickly looked around cursing myself for getting distracted. I was told many times how deadly dungeons were. I checked my displays while trying to take in everybody’s positions only to see that they stood a little to my right and they were completely fine. Twist was pulling things from gods know where and assembling something but the others shot me a baffled look before turning back to what they were doing. Only Janet didn’t look away and gave a quick comment of, “So you have a thing for deep dark caves” before going back to assembling and attaching a miniature crossbow to her left arm. She seemed to be using that as a backup weapon because she pulled out her bow shortly after she was happy with the crossbow’s strapping.

Tom was busy attaching leg armor, over top of the light leather he was already wearing, that had tiny spikes running down the middle of them ending at a slightly bigger one that was attached on the knee joint. Once he had them placed and fastened to where he liked them, he pulled on a pair of metal gauntlets that had a few short blades that protruded, around three inches, when he made a fist. Jack only put on a skull cap and then pulled out a rapier that looked super tiny in his meaty hand.

Once they were ready, Jack lit a torch, though I did not think one was needed. Both Jack and Tom took the lead while Twist and Janet fell back to the rear leaving me in the middle. This formation left our flanks weak but with all the twists and turns caused by the columns there was not much we could do about it. All this took about twenty minutes and in that time I got three messages of ‘+1 DP Acquired’ but I did not see anything on my character sheet showing DP or, dungeon points. I chalked it up to yet another weird thing to either look up or ask about later. My current group was probably too new to know too much and James and Bill had already wandered off somewhere, muttering an instruction to ignore them.

For my part, I already had all my equipment on. I simply pulled out my mace, let out my aura and I was ready to go. The only real choice was which aura I should use. My default was the holy aura which helped reduce pain, and adds a multiplying boost to all healing spells. Not to mention it’s bright and could act as a light source. But now, I had one called ‘Consecrated’ that penalized evil forces within it causing their attacks and defenses to be reduced.

The bright aura went out sixteen feet before I switched it and the bright golden aura faded to a dull white. I was about to cast ‘Sense Evil’ when I heard Tom ask, “Hey girl, can your aura become bright again? It could free up our hands and make it easier to spot the critters.”

I shrugged and changed it back. “You sure? It isn’t that dark and that last one kind of slows monsters down. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Ya, leave up the bright one. We all don’t got no glowy eyes like you do and there is no reason to tire yourself pushing your aura out. We are going to be in here a week before we have to decide to either go out and resupply or go deeper.”

“Ok, but it’s not tiring.” I said and thought I heard Janet say amateur but it was too soft to be sure, not that it mattered. I was, after all, an amateur. They took me at my word, or at least assumed that I would just reduce my aura when got tired. Tom led our group in a wobbly line that would take us to the slope leading down to the next level. I tried using ‘Sense Evil’ during our march but it did not register any slimes or skeletons. My guess was because they were mindless or close to it. I knew the spell was working because once it went up I felt two evil beings on the floor below me until they moved out of range.

My party killed pretty much anything they saw. They worked extremely well together. The only thing that I found odd was Jack’s fighting style. It was like watching a dancing bear; oddly graceful but it did not fit the body’s shape. I … well I collected fifty XP from their kills and some bits from the slimes and skeletons. Pumpkin shot out a hair and lassoed a finger bone from a skeleton that she rubbed affectionately for over an hour.

I was mostly thinking of ways to tweak my display as I followed them. The slimes and skeletons on this level really posed no threat to us since they only came in groups of ones and twos. Their greatest strength on this floor being the ability to ambush from the shadows but with my aura providing light they lost that one advantage. Why the core did not just have the hundreds, if not thousands, of low level monsters surround and kill us I had no idea.

Even so it took us most of a day to transverse the cavern while killing the small groups. During that time, other than the normal ‘+1’ notifications, I got a few more like ‘Summon Ghoul for 100 DP (Yes/No)’, ‘Summon Ghast for 300 DP (Yes/No)’, ‘Move Spector to chapel [Confirm]’ or ‘Reset Trap on floor two for 50DP (Yes/No)’. Every time the “Yes” or “Confirm” would flash and the message would vanish. I did not know what was more disconcerting the fact that I could see what the dungeon was doing or that nobody else seemed to be getting these messages. I had tested them after the trap message with a simple question of “Do we know what type of traps are on floor two?” only to get “so far no traps have been found on it” which lead me to come to that conclusion.

We decided to set up camp a little bit away from the slope because of the time. This was to give us a few moments to scramble if something more powerful came up while we were camping. The “camp” was really just a fire in the center and a shallow hole set off to the side for a bathroom that I surrounded with two foot high cloth with a few stakes so our bottom halves could at least be covered. It was too dangerous to be out of sight completely or I would have made it bigger. I was taught that most groups were very open with their bodies but considering that over ninety percent were male, I could see why.

They were discussing our watches while I cast ‘Sanctuary’. It was the first time I ever cast it outside of the spell training room so I was a bit unsure if the environment would affect it. It could. Places like volcanos increased fire while hurting water type spells so it was not out of the question that monster dungeons might reduce the area of things protecting against such things. Ten minutes later a golden shaft of light engulfed us. When it faded there was a golden line that formed a circle with a sixteen foot circumference surrounding us.

A message popped up shortly after saying, ‘Group three on floor one vanished’ followed by ‘Deploy scouts (Yes/No)’ While I was watching the messages my group decided that I was on first watch which was considered the easiest but with my invigorate spell probably not the one I should be on. Still, they were trying to be nice so I just accepted it. I was paired with Twist who placed hand sized balls in a square around us and inserted a crystal into each. A couple of seconds later, dozens of tiny lights shot out onto the columns around us. “Sensors,” he said with a look that said, you won’t understand, before moving to face the other side of the camp. During the three hours I saw many skeletons moving around. They would occasionally bump into the golden line but failed to pass it.

We woke up Janet and Jack for the next watch and cast invigorate on each of them before settling down near the fire. I had made myself a slightly padded blanket to lay on and had a regular blanket for warmth. After removing my armor and using my long shirt as a nightie, I held my mace like a stuffed animal, taking comfort in its solid metal texture. The sanctuary spell would remain up as long as I had magical energy, I just had to set it to auto-deduct, so I was not worried. The only real issue was I felt a light pressure whenever a monster bumped into my spell. It took some getting used to so I was worried it would wake me up.

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I then spent twenty minutes altering the figures in my display. I had spent hours thinking about what I wanted so each decision was decisive. Fortunately, it was mostly cosmetic changes so it did not take long and soon the figures in my display no longer appeared like mannequins. Instead they looked more like animated 3D scans of the human body. The skin was a transparent blue, the bones were a solid white, and the veins and organs were a variety of colors that were only slightly transparent. Each one was now layered so I could see more than just basic information. I wanted to add a chemical display for poisons off to the side of each but that would take too much time. Sighing with regret, I let myself finally fell asleep.

An alarm blared in my head waking me up. Somebody was under attack! I looked at my display that was already up while grabbing for my mace. I saw Janet’s display showing red around her pelvic and breast area. ‘Minor blunt force trauma’ was displayed next to each area. I heard her moan, as I opened my eyes, only to see her leaning against a pillar with Jack standing behind her. His hands squeezing her nipples while his hips moved back and forth. His leather pants were around his ankles. Not wanting to see his hairy ass, I closed my eyes. Even so I saw Janet look at me before I did. With my eyes closed all I could see was Janet’s display being penetrated while hearing her muffled moans. I could not even shut it off because it was registering as an attack. Both were doing their best to stay quiet so I did not interfere. The only thing I could do was endure or cut the connections. I endured while regretting my decision to make my displays transparent.

I kept telling myself that it was too dangerous to cut the link. This was reinforced as I looked through the notifications I received while I was sleeping. The dungeon had launched an attack on one of the groups below us. They read as;

‘Assign Ghast as leader to ghouls (Yes/No)’

‘Move Ghouls to attack archer (Yes/No)’

‘Use pinning fire with skeletal archers (Yes/No)’

‘Flank group two with Plague Rats (Yes/No)’

‘Level three Archer killed: reward 3000 DP’

‘Bone Spear trap activated’

‘Prioritize attack on druid (Yes/No)’

‘Level four Cleric killed: Reward 4000DP’

‘Skeletal United destroyed’

‘Pursue (Yes/No) Main target [Assassin] [Berserker] [Mage] [Any]’

That ended the messages and I tried to ignore Janet’s display. Jack took another ten minutes to finish and I finally fell back to sleep. Thankfully, no other ‘Attacks’ happened in the night and I slept until I was shaken awake.

Tom had started breakfast since he was on last watch. It was nothing fancy. Today, we were going to go down to level two so I decided to tell them about the two people that died last night. I also filled them in on possible monsters like rats, ghouls and ghasts. The dungeon was using tactics so I wanted them to be aware of it. When asked how I knew, I reluctantly added that it was from a power that I did not wish to talk about and I didn’t. I did not know what was going on, how accurate it was and more importantly if the dungeon could hear us. Who would I cry to if the dungeon cut off those announcements?

I had been thinking about the use of this floor after I saw how smart the dungeon was last night. I had two theories. One was that it was used to gauge a group at a cheap DP cost. The other was that the dungeon would move all the monsters to block people trying to flee. Either could be true or I could be way off base. Either way, one thing was for sure, it was sentient.

We packed up camp, adjusted our gear and only then did I stop maintaining my sanctuary spell. The message ‘Group three located: floor one section M3’ appeared shortly after that. I gripped my mace tightly. My group was around the same levels as those that died. Most of the group were only level three with only Tom being a level four. It made me nervous that I was the highest level.

We walked down the slope. A wall of white fog greeted us. Dead tree branches poked out of it, periodically swaying to a wind that was not there. Clacking sounds could be heard every now and then as the tree branches collided together. Otherwise it was eerily silent. Because we were going downward, the fog first covered our feet and moved up our bodies as we descended. I shivered and I told myself it was due to chilliness the fog held.

I heard Tom say, “Ok, be ready. Like bright eyes said, they could attack us in groups.” His voice echoed in the mist, distorting and soon the only thing we heard was a creepy voice echoing “Attack, attack, attack …” the voice becoming softer and softer until it faded away. The fog hampered the light of my aura and my vision was reduced to just a few feet in front of me. Tiny particles from the fog shimmered from the aura's light but other than looking a little less creepy my aura didn't help my vision at all.

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