Chapter 10: Nine – Dungeon Dive

RavensDagger

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Bing Bong! Congratulations, your Cinnamon Bun class has reached level 2!

Health + 5

Resilience +5

You have gained: One Class Point

You have unlocked: One Class Skill Slot

“A skill slot?” I wondered aloud even as a rush of giddiness washed through me. It was like a faint tingling, first in my skin, then my muscles and the insides of my chest, as if someone had placed me in a microwave on high for a few seconds, but without the exploding.

I grinned. I was level two!

Normally, that would have been a time of celebration and dancing and such, but I was right next to a giant evil hole in the ground and it kind of felt unwise to make lots of noise while so close to the scary pit.

Instead, I looked around, took in the bright sunlight streaming down on the sight of the battlefield where I had fought the wraith and soaked in the sun.

The hole didn’t drop straight down, not for more than a meter and a half or so. The passage went on into the dark as some sort of tunnel that I couldn’t see the end of. I was going to need a ladder or else getting out of there would be complicated.

Fortunately, I had seen one next to the gardening shed of one of the houses I’d explored. Unfortunately it was all the way across town.

There weren’t any other options, so I took a leisurely stroll across town, found the ladder where it had been left, tested the rungs a few times to make sure they could hold my weight, then dragged it all the way back.

The moment my foot touched the ground within the hole a prompt appeared before me.

You are Entering the Wonderland Dungeon

Dungeon Level 2-4

Your entire party has entered the Dungeon

Seal Dungeon until exit?

“That sounds like an awful idea,” I said.

Dungeon left Unsealed

Any Person can Enter Dungeon Instance

Any Person can Exit Dungeon Instance

Quest Updated!

The Hole Down Under

An evil root has plunged into the world.

You have entered the Wonderland Dungeon. Explore it. Find the root. Destroy it.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and counted myself lucky. It felt as if I had dodged a bullet there. Still, level two to four monsters would probably be really tricky to fight. But maybe I didn’t need to fight them?

Dropping my backpack, I searched within until I found the silvery candlestick I had looted and a fresh candle. Then I lost a minute or two with the firestarter until the candle lit up with a spark. I replaced the firestarter and stood back up, the candle holder held before me so that the mirror shield it had illuminated the path ahead.

The passage was like a borehole, the walls smooth dirt except where the occasional root poked through and the ground tilted down at a slight angle. I tread carefully, always watching where I set my feet in case of traps or pitfalls or anything of the sort. I had read enough about dungeons to know that being careful was the best way to survive them.

The path curved a little, then opened up to a large-ish room with a wooden door at one end and a monster in the middle. A torch high up on the wall near the door lit everything up with a warm, orange glow.

I froze, taking in the form of a dog-sized rabbit standing on its haunches, milky-white eyes staring at a pocket watch that it, he, held out before him in a big fluffy paw. The rabbit wasn’t normal, not just on account of its size and the fact that it was wearing a tattered waistcoat. Its fur was missing in places and its teeth were showing where the flesh around its mouth was rotted off.

I fired off a quick insight as I stood still and wondered what to do.

A zombie time rabbit, level 2.

I realized that I might be in something of a pickle. Still, I was Broccoli Bunch and Broccoli Bunch was nothing if not polite. “Ah, hello,” I said.

The rabbit’s head looked up. Its white eyes locked onto me. The timepiece clicked.

Then the rabbit reappeared in the air right before me, both legs already kicking out into my chest.

I stumbled back, breath whooshing out of me in gasp as I fell onto my backpack and laid down to stare at the dirt ceiling for a moment. “Ouch,” I said as soon as I had air in my lungs.

The timepiece clicked. The rabbit appeared above me.

I swept an arm out, hitting the zombie rabbit just hard enough to shove it off to the side and avoid another thumping. Then there was a mad scramble as I slid my arms out of the loops of my backpack and rolled off to the side. I didn’t have any weapons except my cleaning magic, and the rabbit could teleport.

It wasn’t looking too good. “Mister rabbit, please stop!” I said.

The rabbit turned its white eyes towards me, then pressed on the button next to the timepiece again.

This time I rolled out of the way before it even appeared to kick me again. “Okay, okay, Broc, it’s a time travelling zombie bunny rabbit,” I said as I shuffled around the room, constantly moving as I kept an eye on the rabbit. “It’s an evil time travelling zombie bunny rabbit. K-killing it is okay.”

The rabbit’s head snapped around to face me, turning way more than its neck should have allowed.

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The pocket watch clicked. My hand shot out and wrapped around its furry chest a moment after it appeared before me.

It was heavy, heavy enough that I ended up backing up and bumping into the wall, but I managed to hang on to it long enough to use my one spell.

A wave of cleaning magic tore through the rabbit, its white eyes went glossy and a faint ghostly form shifted out of the body.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I said as I let it drop and moved away. That had taken more than a third of my mana, more than a ghost did. But still, it was over. I waited for the ‘ding’ and the experience points to come in.

The timepiece clicked.

Spinning around, I found the rabbit back in the middle of the room, its head turned towards me with its white eyes set in a glare. “Oh no.”

The rabbit bounced across the floor in a straight path for me. I tried to move away, but the room was far too small, so I did the only thing I could think of. I jumped over the rabbit.

Ding! For doing a Special Action in line with your Class, you have unlocked the skill: Jumping!

“Not now!” I told the infobox.

The rabbit was slow to turn around, which was just what I needed. My hand locked around the timepiece and tore it out of its grip to send it flying against the nearest wall where it burst apart. Then came another wave of cleaning magic.

Ding! Congratulations, you have stuffed a ‘Undead White Rabbit Time Mage’ Level 2!

I shuffled away from the body of the rabbit as it started to dissolve into motes of whitish light that left nothing behind, even the bits of its timepiece fading away. “I’m sorry,” I said before using a bit of mana to clean off my hands. A clink sounded and a key appeared on the ground where the rabbit had been.

Mana 19/105

That wasn’t very good. I hoped that Dungeon monsters didn’t respawn, then I felt bad for calling the rabbit a monster. Sure, it was a time travelling zombie rabbit, but I was the one invading its house. I bet that it used to be a very nice rabbit before it went all zombie and mean.

Maybe that’s what the quest was about: Destroy the root of evil in this dungeon and allow it to become a less evil place? It made a sort of sense.

I stared down at my hands, my perfectly clean hands, made that way thanks to some magic and not any effort of my own. Hands that I felt should have been at least a little dirty.

I wasn’t some crusader, or the person who got to decide what was right and wrong. I had been asked, by something, to come rid the world of something evil, and that’s what I was trying to do, but I didn’t want to compromise my morality to do it.

My hands clenched into fists. “So I won’t,” I decided. I had made friends with all sorts of people already. And maybe I could make even more in this dungeon. Maybe it was an evil place and I couldn’t. I didn’t know yet, but I would learn and I would ask the people I met to be friends first before I ever raised a fist against them.

I nodded. “Right!” My choice was... not made, because that had been my path already, but reaffirmed.

Jumping

Rank F - 00%

The ability to jump. As this skill rises in level your ability to jump will improve!

A glance at my new skill didn’t reveal all that much. It wasn’t... well, it wasn’t Fireball. Jumping could be useful... maybe? For getting to high places?

“My skills are really lame,” I whined.

Still, it was a skill, and at rank F it wasn’t that handy. I skipped over to the door, then looked at the experience change. It had gone up a full percent. Maybe I could grind it here before moving on, then. I had another skill that was nearly at the next level too.

The door to the next area had a large lock on it. It didn’t take a genius to see that it was the key that had dropped from the rabbit. Next to the door was a little table with a potion bottle and a cake on it. The cake had ‘EAT ME’ written on it in big letters, the bottle had a small tag with ‘DRINK THIS’ scribbled on it. I fired off two quick Insights.

“Is that... is that an Alice in Wonderland reference?” I asked aloud. “Insight.”

A poisoned cake

A poisoned shrinking potion

I eyed the cake and the potion, then carefully took the potion and brought it back to my backpack to tuck it away. There was a chance it would come in handy later. Then I checked my notifications.

Congratulations! Through repeated actions your Insight skill has improved and is now eligible for rank up!

Rank D is a free rank!

That was an easy choice to make.

Insight

Rank D - 00%

The Ability to know something. The knowledge you gain is further increased.

I stretched, jumped on the spot a few times, then looked to the door as I slid my backpack back on. I didn’t know how ready I was to face off the rest of the dungeon, but I wouldn’t learn that until I tried. I got my makeshift flail ready, just in case I ran into more zombies or ghosts, then unlocked the door to step out into the rest of the dungeon.

My breath caught.

The passageway continued for a few feet, then opened up onto a railless balcony overlooking a large hole. It was maybe ten or twenty meters wide, with an opened top that revealed the bright green sky above. There were other platforms at different levels, with huge, bulbous mushrooms growing in a spiraling ring all around the sides of the shaft. It seemed as if the level I was on was the highest one around.

It was pretty, with glowing moss along the walls, little trees sticking out here and there with huge caterpillars on them and pretty pink clouds floating above. Pretty, surreal, and nothing like the world I had left when I entered the dungeon.

“Whoa,” I said as I moved to the edge of the ledge and looked down. Every quarter turn of the shaft had a hole drilled into the wall, some with elaborate arches, others quite plain. All the way down to the bottom where a field of grass was waiting and a large vine-covered archway. It would have looked idyllic if the pervasive sense of wrong wasn’t so strong whenever I looked at the tunnel behind that arch.

That had to be my objective then.

And the only way to reach it was to jump from mushroom to mushroom. Maybe Jumping wasn’t a waste of skill after all.

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