The effects of teleporting had me dry heaving for a few seconds. Looking around I found the party looking at me. With a weak smile, I said, “Hate teleportation, always makes me feel sick.”

“Okay, use that repair stone. Do you know where we are?” Ed asked.

“One of the teleport rooms,” I said and found the right repair stone.

“How do you know that? I don’t see a teleport gate, like they showed in the videos,” Blaze asked in a challenging tone.

“Because only the teleport rooms and nodes of the outpost are shielded. Maybe a few other rooms. And these teleports are short range for use in the outpost. Look up, you see those circles in the ceiling?” I said and pointed to some faint circles. “Those are short range teleport rings.”

“I thought you said it was a city beneath the sewers,” Robin pointed out.

“True, but the city is further down, and stretches even further down. The dwarves love to build down. They always placed an outpost near the surface, for handling waste disposal and cargo imports and exports. So the sewer is above us, not beneath us.”

“Okay, only one exit, we’ll take a look around,” Ed said before they went to the heavy looking double stone doors. They tried to push them, but nothing came of it.

“You need a manastone to open it,” I said, while concentrating on the repair stone in my hand. Pushing as much mana as possible into it, I managed to Imbue seven mana with it. With my Meditation at level 5 I would regenerate 30 mana in 5 minutes, enough to Imbue the last three mana needed. Only possible because last time I levelled up, I had invested a single Attribute point in Spirit for a total of 60 mana total, and Imbue had hit level 3 some time ago

Imbue - Level 3 (Beginner)

Using this spell ability allows the user to imbue manastones with mana.

Current Effects

Imbue 1 points of mana for every 8 mana channelled

XP Gain: 5 XP per mana imbued

Progress: 1126/4000 xp

“Then hand us one,” Ed commanded.

“Nope, not going to use the one time I can trade on that. You can wait five minutes, until the room is repaired,” I said, already sitting down and meditating. I could hear Blaze mutter complaints about me, but I paid it no mind for the moment. At least Ed had stopped challenging me openly, now it was just Blaze instead.

Kira was the only one who might believe me, and while the others clearly did not believe me, Blaze was the only one to openly calling me out on it. Taking the time to look around the room while meditating, I saw that it was pretty bare. Besides a few glowing stones in the ceiling, there were only a few decorative carvings on the walls. Otherwise there was only dust in the fairly large room. Large enough to host twenty five people or so without it being cramped.

Looking at the decorative engravings sparked another memory, one that made me feel a bit giddy. Outloud I said, “Take a look at the borders of the wall decorations. They should be a shield with a crossed pickaxe and hammer above it. The pickaxe will be lying beneath the hammer.”

“Yeah, what about them? There are hundreds of them,” One-Eye grumbled.

“If you find one where the pickaxe is lying on top of the hammer, you’ll know that the wall have a hidden door. A good thing about searching through old dwarven ruins is that they love their secret rooms, and like to squirrel away small caches of wealth.”

“More information you could’ve found because—” Blaze started, interrupted by Ed’s headslap.

“Enough,” Ed commanded.

“But you kept needling him earlier,” Blaze protested. “You can’t believe his bullshit story.”

“While it’s unbelievable, I think he believes that he’s telling the truth. The reason why I kept challenging him was because I felt he hid something from me. He might be delusional, but at least he’s not trying to hide anything now,” Ed said.

“You guys know I’m sitting right here?” I said quietly.

“I don’t like when things are being hidden, and that includes how I feel about your explanation,” Ed countered.

“Enough already. We’ll think up a way for him to prove his story,” Kira said, staring challenging at the others. Grumbling, One-Eye and Blaze started looking over the engravings on the wall. Robin had already hopped to it.

When I imbued the last mana into the stone, the runes on it lit up. A concentrated beam of yellow light shot out from the repair stone in my hand towards the door. Above the door was a small engraving, which the beam of light hit. Meaning that the small engraving was the Runesmith’s mark. After providing a light show for around ten seconds, the beam of light cut off and the stone in my hand turned to dust.

“There, all done,” I said as I stood up.

“About time, there’s nothing on the walls. You’re just full o—” Blaze started complaining.

One-Eye cut him off with an excited shout, “Found it!”

He was standing by the wall opposite the door. Turning expectantly to me, he asked eagerly, “So how do we open the secret door?”

“First we need to find it, use your Observe. It’ll take time, but focus somewhere on the wall, if you got nothing, shift your focus about five centimeters and try again. The higher your Observe skill is, the larger an area it covers,” I explained.

“Is it going to be near the marker?” Robin asked.

“Maybe, but it could be anywhere along the wall.” My answer elicited groans.

We spent nearly twenty minutes before Kira excitedly exclaimed, “I can see a faint purple outline that looks like the edges of a door.”

Looking where she pointed, I used Observe. Unfortunately I only got the usual 5 XP, because she had already found it. She would have gotten at least fifty, or maybe a hundred, I could not remember which. I gave her instructions on how to open it, “Good, try and press the four corners, the opening mechanism should be in one of those. The rest of you should be ready to fight. They often contain monsters, traps or some other form of guardians.”

On pressing the third corner there was a quiet click, and the stone started to slide into the floor, revealing the dark chamber it had hidden. Before it was halfway down, there was a twang and something whooshed past One-Eye’s head.

Another twang resounded from the dark chamber, followed by a solid thud as something hit One-Eye’s shield. Ed called out, “Everyone step aside from the opening.”

One-Eye caught another projectile with his shield, before we all had stepped out of sight. The twangs continued, one every second for the next half minute. Looking at the projectiles sticking out of One-Eye’s shield, I saw that is short thick bolts.

While we waited for the bolt firing to stop, Ed summoned an earth elemental. When the suppressive fire died out, the elemental marched into the opening. No new bolts hit it. Next Ed pulled out a torch and threw it into the dark chamber after lighting it. A few seconds later, he said, “It’s empty. Can see a bunch of holes in the wall opposite the door, must have been a trap.”

“Any treasurers in there,” One-Eye excitedly asked.

“Nope, it’s just a short corridor.”

“Darn it,” One-Eye muttered.

Ed turned to me, “Let’s get this over with, since we’re doing the fighting, can you keep count on how far we’ve travelled?”

“Sure,” I said and went to the normal door. On the right side of the frame, there was a small indentation, meant for manastones. Pulling one out I used a single mana to open the door. Even after tens of thousands of years, it opened with nary a sound. It opened wide to reveal a dark corridor wide enough for three of my carts. The floor was even, but with a rough surface making sure people did not slip. The ceiling was almost four meters above us, while the walls continued to be smooth with engravings all along it.

One-Eye flanked by the earth elemental, who carried the torch, was the first to step through the door. They were followed by Kira and Blaze. I followed them, also with a torch in my hand, while Robin and Ed followed me. Halfway through the door Kira stopped, “Guys, check the time. I think we’re in a four to one time dilation.”

Checking the clock myself, her guess turned out to be right. For every four minute we spent in here, only one minute would pass inside the game. Ed said, “Good, then we can take our time, maybe get some extra loot. I can see there’s a lot of wall decorations, keep an eye on them, see if we can spot another marker for a secret chamber.”

“We’re not going to go over every damn centimeter, are we?” Blaze asked with a groan.

“No, just a cursory look, you might be able to spot them easily. Damian that’ll be your main job.”

“Okay,” I said and walked a little closer to the right side of the corridor. Besides seeing if I could spot any marker of a secret door, I also focused on keeping my steps equidistant, so I could more easily say how far off course we were. At the moment we were travelling west. After a seventy meters we spotted a few glowstones up ahead, and underneath the light provided by them we could see a few squat shadowy figures.

“Okay, four of them. One-Eye and the elemental will rush in and grab aggro. Kira and I will make sure to off-tank if necessary. Robin and Blaze concentrate on the one I’m attacking,” Ed ordered.

“Just like we usually do, got it,” Blaze said.

Just before they were about to rush ahead, I stopped them. “Don’t loot them, since they’re manifestations and not real people, they are counted as Tier 1 mobs, which got a chance of dropping a monster cores.”

“So, why shouldn’t we loot them? You got just as big a chance of getting one as we do,” Blaze asked with a sniff.

“Because of this,” I said and pulled out my Lucky Charm, letting them Inspect it.

“Is this the magic item you made for your latest title?” Robin asked.

Upon hearing that, Kira asked, “You got a new title?”

“Does Luck increase your chance?” was Ed’s question.

“Yes, yes and yes,” was my answer.

“Can you make more of these?” Ed asked with a thoughtful look. “Or can you make some with more combat oriented stats?”

“Yes I can, but the first two I manage to make goes to our crafters. And for more combat oriented magic items, it’ll have to wait until we get further away from Blackport, or nine days.”

“Why nine days?” Ed asked.

“Because I just won over five hundred trophies in an auction. Of course with my new title and the fact that trophies are now worth money because of that, it won’t be easy to get another shipment like that,” I explained.

“Okay, so no trying to loot them, what about their equipment?”

“You can pick it up, if it doesn’t dissipate when they die. Each manifestation only has one percent chance of leaving behind a piece of loot,” I said, answering his last question. Not wanting to waste more time, they sprung into action and charged at the squat figures thirty meters away. The ensuing fight showed how well the party worked together. It was a shame it would be breaking up eventually. Kira wanted a PvP party, Robin and Marion wanted a PvE team with a focus on exploration and Ed felt most at home running dungeons.

Despite the fact that the enemies was fairly high level, ten to fourteen, had higher attributes because they counted as tier one creatures and had weapons, the fight went smoothly and seemed fairly one sided. When the last one fell, Ed called back, “Clear.”

Moving up to join them, I saw the four squat figures were dwarves. It had been my first guess, but it could have been other things as well, depending on what time in history it linked to. They were all dressed only in loincloths.

“Their equipment dissipated, just like you said it would,” Kira said. “Are there many dungeons with humanoid opponents? So much more fun to fight than rabbits. Even the wolves were kind of yawn, different but I prefer to fight things with weapons.”

“There are some, but all of them will be echoes like this. Well, there’s the Invaders as well,” I said. Kneeling down next to the first one, I touched the corpse and thought ‘Loot.’

Of course, none of them gave a monster core that would have been too much to realistically hope for. Looking around I found we were in a t-junction, with the option to continue west or head south. While the other was regenerating stamina and mana, I reckoned I might as well use the time effectively. So I checked the north wall for any markings. After five minutes I found one, which I immediately informed the others about.

“Great, another waste of time,” Blaze muttered.

“I got one hundred XP to Observe for finding the door,” Kira said with a scowl directed at him.

“Well the rest of us only got ten. Five for examining the wall over and over again, and five when you pointed out where the hidden door was,” Blaze continued to complain.

“Just shut up, and look around,” Ed ordered.

“Fine,” Blaze said with a pout. The way he was moving his head around wildly between each cast of Observe, I knew we would have to look over his section of the wall. This time it was Robin who found it after only a few minutes.

When we opened the door this time, we were not fired upon immediately, but when Ed’s new air elemental went in first, it was attacked by something I could not see. Barking orders, Ed sent One-Eye and Kira in, himself following right behind them with the torch. Robin and Blaze waited a few seconds, before moving in to get clear lines of fire.

For the next minute I listened to the scuffle, before I heard Ed call out, “Clear.”

Stepping into the secret room myself, I found another two dead dwarves, as well as a small stone chest. Neither of the dwarves provided a monster core, but when One-Eye carefully opened the stone chest, we were all pleasantly surprised. It contained twenty two gold coins, as well as two poor gemstones. They were both small and of uncommon rarity. Worth five silvers a piece.

“I can take those two gems in lieu of a share of the coins,” I offered, “Might make for some good manastones. And let’s be honest, I’m not providing a lot of bonuses by being here.”

“Sounds good to me,” Blaze quickly said.

“No, we’ll do it like we usually do. Everything goes into a pot that we divide shares from,” Ed stated. “Without you, we would not know to look for these rooms.”

With that settled, we next had to decide which direction to head. The majority, including me, voted to continue west.

Four hours later, we were finally standing in front of a set of double doors that should lead to our destination. West had turned out to be a bad choice. It had led to a dead end, with a few empty houses. Houses that was mined out of the stone around them.. South led down a corridor that started sloping down and turning slowly north. A few other dead ends followed, before we arrived in front of the double doors. We had managed to find another five secret chambers, well the others had. Despite being the one that found most of the markings we discovered, I had not discovered a single one of the hidden doors.

“Since this is most likely the final location, we should expect a boss,” Ed said while staring at the door. Turning back to me, he asked, “What can we expect?”

“Most likely just a Special tier mob, at the most it’ll be a Superior tier,” I immediately answered.

“Special tier? Superior tier?” Ed asked.

“Sorry, tier two and tier three respectively. Special tier receives three times the amount of attributes points on level up as you do, while Superior receives five times that.”

“Okay, so they’re going to be tougher than those we’ve fough—” Ed started to explain to the party.

Interrupting him, I said, “Not by much. Just by the fact that they’re human, er, well, dwarves, means that they’re Enhanced tier, or tier one. Meaning they got twice your attributes points per level, so if they’re Special tier, they’re only slightly stronger.”

He shot me an irate glare, before continuing to explain, “They’ll be from slightly tougher to much tougher than what we’ve fought. So we need to keep on our toes. One-Eye you tank the largest and meanest threat in there, while the rest of us pile on the DPS on the small fries. Remember to save mana enough for at least two Lay on Hands. Understood?”

When he got a round of affirmatives, he turned to me. “Open the door, and step away from the door opening.”

“Sure thing,” I said, resisting the urge to throw a sarcastic salute in his direction. Using a manastone to open the door, I stepped aside and waited for them to rush in, but they just stood there looking confused. Poking my head around the corner, I saw that the room was empty. Well empty for mobs. There was a mini obelisk in the middle of the room, with a lot of different Runesmiths’ marks on it. I also noticed there were three other doors, each one leading in one of the remaining cardinal directions.

“That’s weird,” Ed finally commented, “We’ll enter slowly and carefully, it might not spawn until we’re all in there.”

Following his advice, we stepped in carefully and in formation, but nothing happened. Keeping an eye over our shoulders, I half expected the doors to swing shut and the room would flood with enemies. It did not happen.

“Okay, this is wrong, there should be enemies here,” Blaze complained. With thick sarcasm he asked, “Since you’re from the future, and know everything, why isn’t there any enemies here?”

Giving him a dirty look, I said, “I don’t know everything, but the accounts I recall there were either a big monstrous guardian or a platoon of dwarven warriors. Or kobolds, depending on what time in the game’s timeline it depicted.”

“Enough arguing, let’s get this over with,” Ed growled. Nodding I took out the second repair stone and started to imbue it with mana. Immediately there was an effect. The other doors slammed open and staring through one of them, I saw a staff wielding dwarf arriving by teleport. Casting a quick glance at each of the three other corridors I saw the same thing there, even the corridor we arrived from.

There was only one difference in the four dwarves that I could perceive, and that was the colour of the gem in their staff. The one to the north glowed with a brown colour, the one to the east glowed red. South was a silvery light, while the west had a blue glow. One for each of the base elements.

“Fuck, just what we need, how long till you can finish charging?” Ed demanded an answer from me.

“I can’t imbue the last mana for another five minutes,” I answered, immediately sitting down in a lotus position to regenerate mana.

“Trade me the repair stone,” he growled while fishing the scroll out of his inventory. I had not traded anything yet, so I was able to trade him the stone.

Just as the scroll started to dissipate from Ed learning Imbue, One-Eye shouted, “Incoming!”

Glancing at the corridor closest to the direction I was facing, I saw the dwarf with the blue gemmed staff was in the process of casting a spell. I managed to drop down flat on the ground before a jet of water shot out from his hand, tearing through the spot I had been in moments earlier. From the south came a gush of wind which sent Ed’s elemental flying through the air, straight into the large boulder flying through the air from the north. A flash of heat came from the east, where One-Eye blocked a fireball. Luckily not one of the really explody kind, or we would all have been dead.

Looking up, I saw that the dwarves had reached the doors, and had taken a single step inside the room, but had stopped there. A flash of light behind me made me turn around to look at Ed. He had filled the repair stone, and it was shooting its beam of light at the obelisk. Each runemark on the obelisk started lighting up one by one.

“What the hell are they doing now?” I heard One-Eye ask. Looking to the dwarves I saw that each of them was channelling two streams of energy. One stream to each side, where it met with another stream of energy from one of the other elements. Earth and fire to the northeast. Southeast was fire and air, while southwest was air and water. The last was northwest with water and earth. It was then that I realized what was going on. This was normally the boss for the central node, but there had been instances of them roaming.

“Robin, use your silence poison on them, start with fire then water,” I shouted. It was funny in this situation I knew exactly what to do, but then again I had already analysed this battle tens if not hundreds of times before. It was only when up against the unknown I was unable to act decisively.

“What’s going on?” Kira called back.

“Fuck this, I’ll charge one of those fuckers,” One-Eye shouted.

“Don’t!” I shouted, but either I was too late or he just ignored me, because he was already charging ahead, straight towards the fire mage. When he was halfway there, the energies meeting in the southeast corner flared, and shot towards him. A cage of lightning sprung up around him. He tried to stop, but it was too late and he rammed into the bars that seemed to be made from solid lightning bolt, like the old depictions of Zeus. Screaming in pain he crumbled to the floor, not dead, since his body had not dissipated.

An arrow flew through the air, hitting the fire mage squarely in the chest. Immediately the energies channelled by the fire mage cut off, but a wall of fire whooshed to life in front of him. The cut off of the energy meant the cage around One-Eye was also gone.

Ed’s elemental was already moving in the direction, when I heard the twang of Robin’s bow sound, and a moment later the water mage’s energies was also cut off. The two not-silenced dwarves roared in frustration, and sent their energy to meet above us. Looking at Blaze I ordered, “Blast the earth mage with spells. Robin don’t use silence on the two others!”

“What can I do?” Kira called out.

“Heal One-Eye, and be ready to heal the rest of us,” I called back. Looking at the obelisk I saw it was halfway through. The energies crackled above us, and the wind started picking up, and within a second, we were embroiled in a sandstorm, unable to see more than a few centimeters in front of us.

“What the hell is going on?” I heard the muffled voice of Blaze shouting.

“Close your eyes, stop speaking, it’ll increase the damage,” I called back, regretting it when I got sand in my mouth. I could see my health slowly drain ten percent every second. After five seconds, the sandstorm died out, and the repair stone was done. Unfortunately, we were not out of the woods yet.

The repair stone was now hovering in the air, slowly forming a mini teleportation portal. It had opened a tenth of it, from the energy I could see in the air. Like an ancient analogue clock, it slowly drew a circle of energy, like the hands on the clock would move.

“We need to survive roughly half a minute before the portal is open,” I called out.

“Why don’t we kill them?” One-Eye croaked from the ground.

“We’re not strong enough, this is the boss of the central node. They roam sometimes. We just need to survive. Robin silence the earth and wind mage this time,” I ordered, as the mages began channelling their magic again. Looking at the fire and water mage, I saw that both the protective walls were still up.

I felt hands on my shoulder, looking up I saw it was Kira. I gave her a smile I felt the pleasant tingling of healing magic wash over me. Ed was busy healing One-Eye, but he still looked at me. “What can we expect from this combo?”

“Steam, scalding hot steam,” I groaned. However, it was better than the alternatives.

“What will they cast if we don—” he started questioning.

“Not now, later. We only got a second or two more, before they cast the spell,” I snapped a little more harshly than I had intended. Robin had already silenced the two mages I had asked her to. Seeing the earth mage was shielded by an earth wall, I ordered Blaze to stop wasting magic on him. All four mages were behind a wall made of their respective element.

Blaze looked like he wanted to complain, but a moment later, we were enveloped in steam. For five seconds, we lived through a hot as hell sauna, draining me for a total of seventy five percent of my life. Kira immediately started healing both of us again, while the rest of them took care of themselves.

Robin and Ed both cursed, “Stupid Wounds and Exhaustion, why didn’t you warn us about it?”

“Because we’ve not exactly been on speaking terms lately,” I countered. Ed did look sheepish for a second, however we had not time to speak, because a new round started. The fire and water mage’s walls had dropped again, enabling Robin to silence them again. After another round of sandstorm, which had me down to the last ten percent of my life, the portal finally opened. It was barely big enough for one person to go through at the time. One after one, we threw ourselves through the portal.

With the grace of a deer on an ice covered lake, I tumbled to the ground when I exited the portal on the other side. The portal snapped closed behind me as I was the last one out. Chuckling Ilat said, “So you survived a run in with the Dhin Daruhm.”