Chapter 43: 43. Against the Clock

 

"It's the only fair solution," Astra says.

Bronte responds in a pouting tone, "You say that, but I really don't want to touch that stone, and I don't think anyone else should either."

"People. People." Morgan says in a calming way. "I really don't mind using it again."

Bronte throws her arms up. "If you keep using it, you won't even be recognizable as a human being anymore!"

"I don't think it will be that bad."

Lynesse says, "And it isn't really a fair method, is it? If Triste selects the short straw, she can't use it, so we have to keep drawing until it's one of us."

"If Triste draws it," Vladimir says. "I'll take her place." He looks up at me with adoring eyes. I take a covert step away from him. Ever since Astra and I emerged from the crypt we'd slept in, Vladimir has kept trying to position himself beside me. And his flushed face and damp fingers when I first saw him suggested he'd been thinking about me during his alone time—a lot. Not to mention. he'd probably had dreams too.

Come to think of it, the front of Bronte's kilt is a sticky mess, the wool is white and crusting over. And she looked all guilty when I said hi to her. But she'd been uncursed. It must just be a coincidence.

"If it comes down to Triste, I'll take it," Astra says. Then, when Vladimir looks at her hurt, "What I mean is Lynn and Bronte won't have to worry about a re-draw. Let's just do this before we die of old age down here."

They weren't actually going to draw straws. I don't know where we'd find straws even if we wanted to. Astra had found a function in the system that would choose a party member at random. She activates it.

 

"No fair! That wasn't done properly! Redo! Redo!" Lynesse squeals.

 

"Ghaa! Now, Katie is just going to keep picking me out of spite. We need to find another way to chose someone."

But Morgan says, "Hey, you wanted to join our party. Now, you have to take the good with the bad."

"When do we get to the good!"

Morgan presses a finger to their temple. "There! I transferred the Testicle." 

Lynesse grumbles as we get on our way and climb the stairs to level 6. To all of our surprise, there's no Lich waiting for us. In fact, the hub room is completely deserted.

"Yes!" Lynesse says. "I won't have to use that stupid thing."

My first thought is that it's another temple floor, but the wall is an unbroken circle with six crypt doors. Five of which are iron and whole, shutting the graves up tight. The sixth has suffered a cave-in. The door has been blown off it's hinges and rubble chokes the opening.

Astra says, "The scepter is here! I can feel it."

"Feel it how?" I ask.

"My intuition, I think."

Morgan says, "Didn't you say we had two or three more levels. Are you sure that intuition power is still working?"

"Yes, I've been tracking it. It expires in a couple of hours, actually. Along with your fearlessness. And I said there was two or three more levels to the dungeon. And I stand by that. But the scepter is on this floor."

"So, where?"

"That I don't know. We should do this systematically."

We pick the door to the right of the caved-in crypt and plan to work our way around clockwise. It opens up onto the typical pie-shaped crypt with a large sarcophagus in the center and four smaller, less ornate ones arranged around it. We've barely entered, when they all burst open and undead figures rise from them.

They are fully armored and hold various weapons. Their skin looks like it has been petrified and become gray stone with a shriveled texture. They don't look like Lich's or zombies, so I pull up Detect.

Well, at leas they can't control us or cast spells. But dang, a level 9 and two sevens aren't going to be easy. 

Although, I think I've underestimated my team, because although these revenants put up a good fight, we're never really challenged by them. With everyone at higher levels and no debilitating spells being thrown at us or hordes of undead, we eliminate them rather efficiently.

We search the crypt and there's no scepter. We even have Vladimir check for secret rooms or compartments twice. So, we grab the treasure and hit the next room not wasting any time. Astra guesses the "hive area" is the level, so we have to kill every last one of them in less then 60 minutes or the ones we already killed will join the fight.

Like most dungeon setups in Feronia, the next room is very rinse and repeat. Only this time, the head revenant is level 10, and she's backed up by five more with levels between 4 and 8. So, the same again but harder. This seems to be the pattern with the following rooms as well.

Because we're in close quarter combat, I typically catch most of the revenants in my Dance of Death range and since they tend to be of higher levels, I quickly gain enough experience going from one crypt to the next to reach 11 and soon after 12. And I'm not the only one getting stronger. Everyone else levels up at least once too. At some point, Bronte hits her evolution. We don't take the time to ask her all the details, but I can't help but note the differences.

Her ears have become crazy long and have entered World of Warcraft elf territory. That's not the only bit of anatomy to have lengthened either. Unerect the tip of her penis now hangs below the hem of her mini-skirt kilt. It looks like her breasts have gotten bigger too. Otherwise, her skin has deepened from a smurfy blue to a duskier gray-blue. Her hair has remained its lighter shade of sky-blue but is now done in multiple braids. Some of them tie the others into a bundle at the back. Also, her face seems even more angular than before. You could cut your finger on her cheek bones, but it doesn't make her any less attractive.

When we hit the fifth and final chamber, we still haven't found the Scepter. We're doing good on time and have at least twenty minutes before the undead in the first room start to rise again. But this last room is led by a level 12 revenant and seven companions. Three of which are level 8. This is by far the hardest group we've met. 

The high-level foe is an ogre of a man, standing nearly seven feet tall and broad like an ox. He wields a two-handed great sword that has to be as long as I am. Otherwise, he resembles all the other male revenants, except for the mustache he sports that looks like it came straight from a '70s porno. Not that I've ever seen one of those, but this is how I've heard this style of mustache referred to before.

We keep to the strategy that has been working for us. I charge up to the head ghoul, get right in its face, and begin dancing. With how high my defense Rating has gotten, I can hold my own with these near-boss-level baddies. Bronte and Vladimir follow me, trying to herd the lower level minions into my dancing range, while Astra and Lynesse fire at a distance. And Morgan holds back for healing.

Right away, we can tell this will be a different fight. The group scatters and breaks from our forward assault. We manage to keep the boss and three of the others in my range, but four go after our rear lines, viciously lunging at them with swords and pickaxes. Under direct attack, they are forced to switch to melee, which is none of their strong point.

My dance drops two of the revenants quickly, but Porn-stache raises them back up immediately. And when Lynesse drops the undead attacking her, he raises it with a wave of his hand.

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Bronte has moved in to help Morgan, leaving Vlad and me to face the replenished forces alone. I can cope with going toe-to-toe with a powerful enemy but being wailed on by three is a problem. And no matter how many of the revenants we knock down, he keeps bringing them back up, so we make zero progress.

"This isn't working!" Vlad calls out. Because it isn't. We'll never win this way. Soon, it will be us falling, and we have no one to resurrect us.

With Morgan fending off an attack, they're not healing us, and my health steadily runs down. I imagine everyone in the party is having the same problem.

Then luck strikes, and I get a critical-hit on the massive leader, finally knocking his Health down to the point where he won't have long left. Once he's out of the way. The others should stay dead.

Except, he has more tricks up his sleeve and casts a spell on himself.

Now it's my turn to cry out in dismay, "He's healing himself."

Morgan yells, "If you're not going to use the stone, give it back to me!"

"Fuck!" Lynesse curses. Then, I'm hit as if by a blow from behind as the weird black rays fill the room. I almost feel like this has only made things worse, except Porn-stache no longer seems to be able to raise his comrades. He keeps trying, wasting his attacks.

One by one, we knock the lower level revenants down. Morgan starts to cast healing spells again. Astra's free to fire arrows at the leader again. Bronte is mopping up the remaining minions, his charged sword dealing devastating damage now that the undead's magic protection is nullified. Lynesse holds onto the stone, white knuckled, screaming, "Noooooooooo!"

When Porn-stache finally collapse in a mess of ruined petrified flesh, I hit level 13. But there are still one of the others left, so I don't check my character sheet just yet. And even after we've cleared the crypt, there isn't time.

Astra yells, "Quick look for that Scepter and secret doors. If there's another room, there still may be more of those things around and—" She stops suddenly as she scans over the room and spots something wrong.

My eyes follow hers, and a see a strange figure standing by the entrance. My first thought is: who the hell is that!?! But then I notice the familiar white dress.

"Lynesse is that you?" Astra asks.

The woman kicks the large black Testicle across the room. "Stupid cursed piece of shit! Someone else can use it on the next floor."

I want to ask what happened, but it's pretty obvious. She's no longer a Felinoid. She's now green, extremely buxom, and shorter than me. Somehow it changed her species and she's now a Pooka, the game's goblin equivalent. Her dresses has shrank to fit the same as in her previous form. Although it looks far lewder with her butt and boobs bubbling out. 

"Did anything else happen?"

"Isn't this enough?!? But, yes! The stupid thing apparently did something with my memory."

"What did it do?"

"I don't know. I seem to remember everything just fine."

Astra ponders this a second. "Considering how Katie operates, my guess is she messed with your memories of before Feronia."

"Hmmm," Lynesse considers this. "I don't know I seem to have no problem remembering everything. I can go back to my first memories of around age four or five all the way up to the day I entered the game-pod."

"Everyone get looking!" Astra says while she puts a hand on Lynesse's shoulder. "Maybe it's something weirdly specific. Lets start with that day you started the game. What happened?"

"Not much. Pretty regular, really. Got up made some coffee, looked through my social feed, answered a few messages, gave blowjobs to two of my roommates. All pretty regular."

"O-kay," Astra takes her hand away and gives her an assessing look.

"Wait!" I said, looking up from the coffin I was examining for loot. "Didn't you say that in the hallucination you slept with your roommates but didn't in real life?"

"What hallucination?"

"That must be it!" Bronte says. "It made her forget about that weird dream from the spider orb."

Astra groans beginning to put the pieces together. "No. Katie would never remove a disturbing memory she gave. Triste, what did she say about the hallucination?"

"That she was back in the real world, but everything was like Feronia. You know with all the sex and stuff."

Astra asks Lynesse, "What were you wearing when you went to the game center?"

"My work clothes. I have a shift at the Gap after my game session. So, a g-string, stocking, garter, and Gap branded pasties."

Astra groans again. "It's not the hallucination that's been erased. It's reality. Her old reality."

"What the hell are you talking about? Reality wasn't erased." Lynesse looks at her like she's crazy.

Shaking her head, Astra says, "Never mind. How are we doing with the Scepter?"

"It's not here," a bunch of us answer. Vladimir says, "No secret doors either."

"Looks like your intuition is wrong," Morgan says.

"No. I'm sure it's here somewhere. But—" Her eyes suddenly open wide. "The caved in crypt! It must be in there. We have to clear the rubble."

Bronte says, "There's no way were doing that before the revenants start rising again. If it's there, there must be some secret way in."

Astra slaps her thigh. "No. No secret way. But if one of us could become insubstantial, they could walk straight in." She looks at me.

"Oh, hell no!" I say.

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