Chapter 14: Chapter 14. Keep Hangin’ in there.

Rik was ranting. “This is total Bullshit!” he said. “I thought this was supposed to be fair. All the other lesser kobolds have been ranked 1-5. These guys have got to be rank 15 at least!”

Shiana had died quickly. She’d hit a trap in the mushroom grove while she was maneuvering for a good place to snipe, and had been hit with 3 javelins made of barely-formed iron ore.

Cassie shrugged, sitting on her helmet outside of the entrance where the river went underground, where they had been forced to retreat. Sheer rock walls were on either side of the campsite, but the kobolds hadn’t pursued them this far. Mae Bei-Ling had a heavy bandage around her thigh, where a copper bead from a sling had slashed right through her Kimono.

“If you hadn’t jumped that pack of little ones we might have been able to negotiate. The bigger ones were speaking undercommon, which I can understand just fine.” Cassie remarked.

Rik grumbled, “Yeah, but that first one was an elite. I got halfway to my next level just hitting him. You could tell he was an elite even outside of inspection range. I was supposed to leave an elite monster alone so we could talk to him? And where the hell is the elf?”

Pellegrine appeared inside the ring of stones that, in combination with the camping skill and a campfire, created an overnight safe zone. “I am here. I am not going to get myself killed fighting a bunch of elites because you cannot keep your sword in its sheath.” he sneered the words. “Not to mention, I could smell the dungeon entrance, and the kobolds weren’t acting like Chaos spawn. They had tools, were farming, and were using well-crafted kobold-specific gear.”

Rik looked a bit excited, “Wait, seriously? There’s an undiscovered dungeon down here? That might be worth more in finder’s fees than the rich copper deposit. Plus, we could get first clear.”

Pellegrine shrugged, “Unlike Professor Gaslightopper’s suggestion, there’s no such thing as a ‘naturally occurring magical node.’ The fact that there’s a pool of mana that the guild can draw from means there is a dungeon there that’s been creating it for an absurdly long time. I suspect that’s why there are kobold elites there… if they can fight in the dungeon and gain evolutions, they have probably been protecting it for a very long time.”

“So that means that it’s been protected by monsters the whole time, which means it’s never been explored. The first clear bonus should be enormous! Plus, the quest marker leads inside the dungeon. Antowyn Crypto is already blowing up, and they are starting to sell gold on the marketplace for real crypto. With a first clear bonus, finder’s fee, and mine setup, I could afford not only to finish my degree but have more than enough money in the real…. In the land I came from to buy myself a class B citizenship even without my mom’s help!”

Pellegrine sighed and understood. The fool clearly intended to say ‘the real world', but a number of terms were blocked by Antowyn Online to avoid confusing or alarming the locals, with harsh penalties if someone wiggled a way around them. What the idiot didn’t realize was that here he was barely even a ghost, and his world was the true land of the fake without a hint of power other than what humans could create over each other. If the beasts managed to rip open a portal, Earth would be theirs for the taking.

When he visited for his little missions, he couldn’t stay for long unless loaded down with mana potions… His mana simply couldn’t recover naturally on a dead world, and if he ever became visible and interacted with the time period he raided, Paradox would hit him like a ton of bricks.

Technically, he might be able to visit there 'at the current time’, but who would want to? Some places were still tolerable, but the place where this kid came from, The United States, became a hellhole after they started a proxy war with the wrong country, and had half their country turned into a poisonous wasteland for their stupidity. Now they had giant cities full of the wealthy hundreds of thousands of ‘citizens’, and a hundred times their number lived in the few non-toxic shipping-crate suburbs surrounding the city bubbles. Relatively non-toxic that is, any chunk of land that was truly non-toxic was immediately seized by the government, traded off to one of the corporations, and put to work producing what these people laughably called food.

The cities were worse than Sindaenaway, with the cities requiring constant identity checks to try and prevent anyone from ‘the crates’, the huge fields of shipping crates where the less wealthy lived around the cities and struggled to survive, from infecting uptown and maybe taking advantage of the wealth they were not born with.

Across the oceans were slightly better, but there was no way he could afford the mana to look like a native, and they were very picky about who they allowed living in their lands. A pale-skinned giant with pointed ears would stick out like a sore thumb, and the other lands where he might have to only hide his ears were only slightly better.

Their world had advanced technology that allowed them to simulate magic, but in the end, their wealthy were even stingier than the temples and guilds of Antowyn sharing it.

He had a sneaking suspicion that one of the ‘experiments’ had survived extermination after it failed to bond. The fact that it had gotten past the kobold clan protecting the dungeon was damned near proof. Frost kobolds were savages, but the spirits Bart had loaded in them came from a time when a lot of Earth’s inhabitants weren’t. Many monster races wouldn’t tolerate undead even of their own species, and kobolds, in particular, would destroy them on sight. The Nektuso goblins in the sewers probably would have, considering their deity, but not even the most powerful goblin shaman would have set off Bart’s mana alarms.

It really looked like one of the channels might have survived. It would have had to be recent since only the last 5 or so were even capable of surviving and setting their soul cord in their new bodies, and he really hoped it was either the little girl or the sailor, based on when they were detected.

He doubted it was the girl, though, she was a child and based on the slaughtered goblin bones they had found with weapon marks on his sternum and spine, it was someone who knew how to take care of themselves and fight.

There had also been the marks of some kind of trap, which even more strongly hinted that it was one of Bart’s kobolds. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “That based on its age, it’s probably going to take a full raid to get a first clear.”

Rik nodded, scowling. “Yes, but even if we don’t get a first clear, I bet there is tons of loot in there after all this time. The kobolds were wearing silver and copper, and I bet they don’t have any use at all for all the gold they collect. I mean, nobody knows about it, and the kobolds weren’t even using bronze weaponry. I bet they hang out in the entrance and just fight the breakouts.”

That was… surprisingly astute, Pellegrine thought. Perhaps the boy in a man’s body was not a complete idiot. “That sounds like a good working hypothesis. Most dungeons have a safe room, which would only get hit by breakouts. The tribe could be living there and out here, and never, or rarely, go very deep.”

Rik nodded, and the little Mentheen girl’s almond-shaped eyes narrowed. Her skin was almost as pale as Rik and Cassie’s, but underneath that was a tinge of bronze rather than pink and a few spare brown freckles that marked her as a southerner as surely as Pellegrine’s ears marked him as elven. “We are too big to disguise ourselves as normal kobolds, but I could cast an illusion, temporarily, that disguises our appearance and smells as greater kobolds?”

Pellegrine smiled. He was high enough level that even a whole tribe of elite normal kobolds wouldn’t give him experience, but he hadn’t polished his acting skills in a while. If he could get a few skill breaks from social skills in a threatening situation, like sneaking into a dungeon right under its protectors' noses, the experience bonuses might help make up for all the time he wasn’t leveling working for Bart.

“We are level 12, almost 13. Even if the dungeon is fairly powerful, we should be able to clear the first few levels. If we get in, we could get first clear bonuses for at least a couple of floors, get to a safe room, and take an exit out. It has protectors, so I am pretty sure it’s not a killer dungeon.”

Rik smiled greedily. “Maybe even more than a few floors. Dungeon experience is pretty hefty, and if we can find the quest target we might get deep enough to break the current leaderboard, which is eighteen.” he grinned, “I knew having my own instant party would give me an edge, but it’s a lot more of an edge than I thought. Right now I am ranked 27. If I can break the lead, I’d have a sponsor before I could blink.” He rubbed his hands together, and Pellegrine couldn’t help but think of a rainbow fly getting ready to dive into a piece of feces.

“For right now, though, we have about six hours until Shiana respawns. You guys should catch some sleep, I am going to disco and grab a sandwich.” Rik crawled into one of the green canvas pavilions still fully dressed in his armor, and in a moment the sides of the tent puffed inwards slightly as he vanished.

Pellegrine knew what disco was, a sort of dance hall that went out of style in the eighties, and a sandwich was an earth version of a hand meal, but Rik’s comment still confused him a little.

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I was dangling over that damned elite dire rat by my fingernails, frantically scrabbling away from my own shelter as the thing tried to climb the toeholds I had made and jump at me.

Interesting fact. Dungeon monsters, even if they looked a lot like animals, were not. A normal animal cares about its own survival. You can hurt it or scare it off pretty easily if you are a serious threat. A cat that gets injured hunting is a cat that cannot hunt, so when the threat is serious, or if it gets hurt and has a chance to escape, it will.

Dungeon monsters, though, just… attack. If you hurt them, they go a little crazy trying to kill you. They seem to care little about survival compared to killing you, which made sense if they respawned or were healed by whatever energy in the dungeon created them. There were four big, empty passageways that it could use to get away, and it had chosen none of them.

This big bastard had woken me when he got his hind paw stuck in one of my traps. I came out, had hit it a couple of times with my knife while its movement was restricted to scrabbling around and trying to escape its pinned paw, and it had just… ripped the paw out, which was now a shredded mess from the spikes that had been pinning it.

I even got a good hit with a tail whip, but rat bones were a lot more flexible than I had expected. I think I might have damaged some of its internal organs with the hit, and one of its eyes was closed and sightless, but it was either ignoring the pain or using it to go berzerk, jumping at me and trying to climb the walls when I fled back toward my hidey-hole.

This was why I was almost ten feet away from the hide, dangling from all four paws from the rocky roof of the cross-passage, desperately hoping I didn’t lose my grip. Part of the carapace on my left thigh was missing a big chunk, while my thigh itself was missing a smaller chunk, and each time a drop of blood spattered down onto the rat-thing’s face it just seemed to go crazier.

“Note to self 14. Carapace armor is useful against impact, but a dire rat’s piercing bite can eat through it just like any other bug.” I thought.

Note stored until you can sleep again and add it to long-term memory. You know, if you can keep memorizing facts using mnemonics, You might be able to develop a memorization ability that many mages would trade their firstborn for. Of course, most mages have lots of things they would trade their firstborn for, so that might not be significant.

By the way, your bleeding debuff has expired. You are still injured, but holding still, even under stress, allowed it to heal.

“Great,” I thought, “But I can already do that. I may not have an eidetic memory, but I have been memorizing textbooks since I was twelve years old. I cannot do tricks like reciting the exact line when someone gives me a page number and book title, but if you tell me the title and ask me a question about it I will probably be able to tell you the answer.”

I could certainly do the full drawer ‘cheat’, especially using the zone, to use a mnemonic device to store, say, the details in my field of view for recall when someone asked me, but it wasn’t anything like the ‘eidetic memory’ some children had where they could literally see a view for a few minutes after it was altered.

True photographic memory? Where you could recall perfectly a page of text after you read it without a mnemonic device, years after you had seen it? Total Hollywood hogwash. Just like sparkling vampires and a hooker with a heart of gold.

Not necessarily. I am trying to decode the undercommon that was linked to your language centers by the system, and it seems to be a possible ability. I am trying to link the language to your memories while you sleep and your language centers aren’t calling on them, that’s why you kept dreaming about goblins talking. Apparently, they were a lot more civilized in the past and created the language.

I dropped a little out of my zone, feeling the strain in my arms and legs as I clung to the ceiling. “That’s great and all, and I look forward to hearing more about it, but right now, I am just worried about making sure that the last mental image I have isn’t of a gigantic sabretooth rat ripping my head off. Do you have any ideas?”

No, but you do.

I thought about it for a second, looked up at the rocks I was clinging to, and then just thought “Oh!” Durr. As my thigh healed I gained better purchase on the ceiling with my toe-claws and started carefully climbing towards the oversize pit trap in the middle of the area.

Fight or flight was becoming my enemy. It narrowed my options and shut down my ability to think, which, with my tiny body, was really my only asset right now. I couldn’t outrun the thing, it was much faster than me, and I couldn’t out-muscle it, but it was jumping around and glaring at me… it was not using its own brain for anything but hating.

Since my imbue had gotten to two, my ability to cling to and cut rock with my claws had improved. As I moved along the ceiling, not exactly spider-like, the rabid beast below me started jumping on the plate trying to get at me.

It was still not heavy enough to trigger the thing, which was a shame, but when I started cutting chunks out of the ceiling and dropping it on the thing’s head it just got more and more enraged. I finally managed to hollow an area big enough for me to sort of sit without clinging with my claws, and then started cutting.

The chunks I had dropped on it had little effect. It was a good drop with the assistance of gravity, but it was tough, and fast enough to avoid getting hit by most of them. The damned thing was making noises at me, but it didn’t squeal, it roared. Its voice was very deep, I guess because of its size, and I doubted even a great hit with my knife would penetrate very far, even if I dropped onto it knife-first.

I didn’t have a rapier like Wesley, so after I finished cutting, I leaned out and dangled myself for a moment, hanging on by my foreclaws alone, my feet wiggling barely out of its leaping range.

It seemed to gain extra strength in its berzerk state from my taunting bait, and I barely managed to drag myself up as it leaped high enough to take off a foot if I hadn’t been fast enough. I cut the last bit of stone with one claw, and it dropped on the thing’s head, just as it descended from its leap and hit the pit’s overly-reinforced plate.

With a wrenching groan of metal and the sound of stone hitting copper, the overstressed plate finally broke its clasps and tilted around its fulcrum, dropping the gigantic thing into a much deeper pit than I had expected, with lots of big spears at the bottom pointing upwards. The rat landed on the spears, and a moment later the rock far too heavy for me to pick up landed on top of it, cutting off the roars abruptly.

I felt… weird. Not guilty, obviously, although the relief was certainly making itself felt, but I felt an almost pressure under my zone… like I was enraged and holding it back, but without the actual emotion. I finally skittered along the roof back to my hidey-hole, and curled up, exhausted. The Pit looked like the walls were made of stone, so I should be able to creep down into it after I rested and see if the monster was worth dressing.

 

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