The four of us started fiddling with the door, trying the knob, hitting it with their sword, or in Cierin’s case, ramming against it, full force. Not that we made much of a difference.
Cierin groaned, rubbing one shoulder. “It’s solid. Really freakishly solid.” he huffed. “It’s probably invincible.”
Knots of unease wound around my stomach.
“But why?” Mall asked, pacing in a circle. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
Admittedly, I don’t know much about actual dungeons, and I knew considerably less about magical video game dungeons, but even then the underlying principle was the same. “The whole point of a dungeon is to keep the insiders in and everyone else out.”
Mall shivered. “Does this feel unnatural to anybody? Dexten?”
Dexten sat hunched over on the ground, running his hand along the stone brick path, and velvet carpet, as he’d been during for the past half-hour.
“Dexten,” Mall sighed. “Please take this seriously.”
“The dungeon is alive,” Dexten whispered.
Cierin shuddered. “Don’t say things like that. We don’t need to make this place any more terrifying than it already is.”
Dexten sighed. “Put a hand against the rock.”
I dropped to the ground, mimicking his movements. One hand on the carpet, and the other on the cold stone.
Only it wasn’t cold.
Occasionally, the rock shifted, and there was a faint tremor of heat, followed by another in rapid succession. Almost like…
“It’s a heartbeat,” I whispered. “The dungeon has a heartbeat.”
Dexten stood, brushing dust off his clothes. “Look alive. This might get dangerous.”
We started down one hallway, braced for even the hint of danger.
So far, there was nothing.
“TREASURE!” Cierin shouted, startling Mall, and she screamed. He snickered, patting her on the shoulder. “Oh calm down—”
Mall promptly slapped him across the face. “Quiet! Are you trying to get us killed? Who knows what horrible things might be listening?”
“Sheesh, sorry,” he grumbled, rubbing a stinging red cheek.
“Was this what you were talking about?” I asked, pointing to a massive vault-type chest sitting rather conveniently in the middle of a large room. “Looks pretty valuable.”
“Too valuable,” Mall said, frowning. “We need to look out for traps. Got that, Cierin? Dexten?”
They bristled. “You can’t be serious…”
“My gut says otherwise,” Mall snapped.
“Why are you even on our team,” Cierin groaned. “You’re no fun at all.”
“More for me I guess,” I said, popping the lid open.
Mall shrieked. “Are you insane—?!”
I dangled a massive green orb. “It’s perfectly safe. C’mon.”
I clenched my hand, and the orb shattered, spilling over my arms and—with a fizzle of light—soaking through my skin, muscle and bone.
[+5 Hp]
“I knew it!” Cierin laughed, bolting over, with Dexten soon behind.
I grinned, flexing. “These are way more potent than the stats from the tutorial.”
White, Black, and all manner of colored orbs littered the chest, twinkling and sparkling a thousand shades of a thousand different colors, along with a bunch of metal rings.
“Guys, we need to focus, we don’t know if this kind of loot…if this…” Mall trailed off, finding herself nonetheless at the open chest, running her fingers along the length of a long black bow. She suddenly yelped, snapping a smoking hand back. “It bit me!”
Dexten smiled, plucking the bow from her fingers. “You can only use items of equal or lower rank than yourself. I’m uncommon myself, so…” he mimicked firing the bow, grinning madly. “I think I’m starting to like this dungeon.”
Mall clenched her teeth, glaring in my direction. “BUT HE ALREADY HAS A LEGENDARY….!” She pulled her sweater over her face and started screaming.
Cierin nudged me in the side, whispering. “Mall has anger issues.”
“Yeah figured it was something like that?” I muttered, blowing dust and iron and silver rings off a massive gold encrusted dagger. “This looks pretty good.”
Cierin snatched it out of my hands, cackling incoherently. “GRIND! This does seventeen damage! Seventeen! That’s double my base damage! You go take something else."
“But…”
He hugged the massive dagger against his chest, whimpering.
“Oh alright,” I sighed, grabbing armfuls of larger colored orbs as compensation. “I’ll take these.”
[+ 5 Str]
[+5 Hp]
“Hey! Everyone knows I need them more!” Mall snapped. “You’re at least level 2!”
I whimpered, clutching the orbs to my chest. “But I—”
“No excuses,” she snapped, ripping a massive black orb from my grasp and breaking it in her hands.
There was a faint chime.
And then another.
And another.
{LEVEL UP}
{LEVEL UP}
{LEVEL UP}
{LEVEL UP}
{LEVEL UP}
{LEVEL UP}
[new unlocks!]
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Mall started making high-pitched squeaking noises.
“That could’ve been ME!! ”I sobbed, collapsed onto the floor.
She started dancing around. “That makes me the more experienced member in our party, doesn’t it!”
“B-but” Dexten gagged. “I like being the leader.”
“Well, you’re a dunderhead, rookie,” She put her hands over her mouth and started giggling. “I can call anyone whatever I want!”
Cierin smirked. “Well, that’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her. And whose idea was it to stop by this chest?”
Mall sighed, wagging a finger toward her companion. “Okay Cierin, you were right—”
Red blood dribbled to the floor.
Mall staggered, clutching a hole in her side. “What?”
“MALL!” Dexten shouted, dropping a pile of gold rings onto the floor. He grabbed her, kneeling at her side. The wound looked a lot worse than it actually was, and most of the skin had been cauterized by the intense heat.
But what had she even been hit by.
“Mall...” Dexten whispered.
She gritted her teeth, grabbing Dexten by the shirt. “MOVE!”
We froze.
“IT’S A TRAP, IDIOTS!” She shouted. “RUN!”
My shovel shot into my hand, autonomously deflecting a blast of light.
I blinked. “That’s new.”
Mages in red robes flooded the room, each wielding up spears of pure energy.
Dexten lifted Mall off the ground and started running, with the two of us close behind.
“I’m fine!” Mall shouted, pushing herself out of his arms. “Really. It’s not like they hit anything vital.”
Dexten sighed, letting her run on her own feet—though she kept an arm around her, for support. “If it gets worse, tell me. I refuse to let anyone die.”
“Guys—” I hissed, watching the ceiling. “Is this hallway getting smaller for you?”
The walls crunched, splintering stone and metal as the room slowly squeezed itself shut.
We ran as hard as we could, but it wasn’t enough.
Soon the once-spacious halls had shrunk smaller than three meters.
Then two meters.
Then barely one and a half, forcing us to run hunched over, hobbling and stumbling along.
“I see light!” Cierin shouted, pointing ahead.
“We won’t make it,” Mall hissed, clenching her side. “Not like this.”
“Keep running!” Dexten snapped.
This wouldn’t be enough. That much was obvious.
Think, Grind.
Sure, I may not be the brightest bulb in the shed, but I’m still a bulb in the shed, and even a dim bulb can shine if you strike it with a bolt of lightning.
That is to say, I had an idea.
My hand twitched, and on impulse, I rammed my shovel between the floor and the ceiling, like a brace.
The hallway shuddered, groaning as it pressed harder.
But the shovel was a legendary weapons. Maybe not a very good legendary weapon, but a legendary weapon regardless. Subsequently, it effortlessly braced against the hallway, where the rock above and beneath it had already begun cracking.
“GET OUT OF HERE!” I shouted, bracing myself against the shovel. If it moved just an inch to the side, it’d get misaligned, and the hallway would come crashing down. I gritted my teeth. “This can’t possibly hold much longer!”
Dexten opened his mouth to protest, before Mall grabbed him by the arm and ran. He shouted back. “STAY ALIVE!”
Cierin didn’t move.
“Cierin—” I started.
He waved a hand. “I am not the kind to let friends die alone. Besides, you’re not going to be able to hold that in place on your own, will you?” he grabbed my shovel, bracing it alongside me. “Who knows? Maybe we’ll survive.”
I allowed myself a smirk. “All thanks to me.”
“To teamwork, you idiot,” Cierin snapped back, with a laugh.
“Well I’m basically as good as the rest of the team,” I cackled.
He shook his head. “Let’s see what this dungeon has to say about it.”
The floor cracked, jolting Crapshoveler out of place. Before it got horrendously misaligned, Cierin and I worked the blade into another, deeper crevice.
The hall shuddered again, more violently than before.
Cierin perked up, noticing something beneath us. “Grind!”
I followed his gaze, to a widened puncture in the floor, leading into another room below it.
With one last shudder, the hallway exploded, and we plunged into darkness.
I coughed, spitting black fluid. “Cierin? Are you still here?”
“Yeah,” he said, pushing up from a pile of broken stone. Beside him, there were the crushed remains of a large party of Orks. “Are you still in one piece?”
“More or less,” I muttered, feeling a symphony of bruising all over my body. I cracked my back, wincing. “I’ll survive.”
Cierin scanned the room. Evidently, we’d cleared the room below this one, using the weight of the tunnel debris to immediately kill everything here. He grinned. “That’s a lot of exp, just lying about. Finders keepers?”
I grinned.
{LEVEL UP}
[+1 Skill point]
[+1 inventory]
~
[+1 Str]
[+1 Hp]
[+1 Hp]
“Now this is something I could get used to,” I cackled, hefting a broadsword easily my own size. It crashed down onto the floor, gouging through stone. Unfortunately, it sank in a little too well, and subsequently, despite my incredible strength… I couldn't actually get it back out of the floor.
I checked my stats.
{GRIND}
Level 3
Rank “Common”
[ 33 Hp 11 Str]
Eleven strength was a lot better than five, but I still wasn’t strong enough to use much more than a shovel. That just meant I had to get stronger.
Cierin grabbed a claymore from his growing pile of weapons. He practiced swinging it around a couple times, before setting it into his inventory. “Grind, that’s enough hanging around. We need to get moving.”
I looked up. “I thought you said those two would be fine?”
“There're some things that I’d rather not risk,” he muttered. “If we get moving, we should be able to find them, before they reach the second floor.”
I stuffed any rings I saw into my pockets and caught back up to Cierin.
“Keep an eye out for any traps,” he said, clinging to one wall. First floor or not, these dungeons are awfully confusing.”
The hallway opened up, into a vast chamber, with edges stretching far into the distance. I bent down, beside a pillar in the center, reading the inscriptions of a bunch of stones.
“What is this place?” I asked. “All I see is a bit of writing in a bunch of different languages.”
“Runes, probably,” Cierin grumbled. “Magic or whatever. Anything could happen in a room like this. Keep your guard up.”
I nodded, one hand on my shovel. “Hey, don’t you think there’d be a bunch of enemies in a room like this?”
“Sure, unless,” He frowned. “Hey do you hear that—”
Something large and dense tore through the ceiling, ramming a heel into the side of my face, followed by a flare of hot pain as my face rammed into the floor, and I bounced, tumbling to the side.
[(-17) 16 Hp]
“GRIND!” Cierin shouted, waving a hand. “Get out of there! NOW!”
I groaned, cradling my head. “What?...”
In the center of the room, a smoking figure rose, dust, ash, and debris falling off its body. Plates of stone and rock shifted together, forming biceps and abs into all sorts of rather impressive earthy musculature. Bits and pieces of various weapons had been lodged between its shell of rock, along with miscellaneous scraps of metal and the shredded remains of cloth—all I was willing to bet—taken from the adventurers stupid enough to fight it.
Which now included us.
~First Encounter~
{Dungeon Core : Gauntlet of Stairs}
{1/1 Hp}
[25 Str]
