We arrived quickly to the dungeon's supposed location, an area roughly ten miles outside town. We decided to avoid any monsters on the way, which thankfully there seemed to be few of, this close to town. Surprisingly, riding the ravor beast was rather easy and even with my piss poor skill at riding, we made a decent time. Eventually, I got the rhythm of riding my mount down, It was much easier than riding a horse. I just had to adjust to the more upright position the beast ran in. The best part, I didn't feel like I had been beaten up during the ride, like the one time I rode a horse as a teenager.

"Well, we're where the map said the dungeon is supposed to be, but I don't see anything," I said, slightly annoyed, "I guess we should split up and look around. You go right and I will go left. Meet back here at the stump in an hour."

"Sounds, good."

Fiona agreed with me and we rode off at a slow pace, to try and find this entrance. After half an hour of searching, I finally located it. Hidden from view at the bottom of a short drop off was a small opening, surrounded by broken blocks. I made an improvised flag to mark the location, out of a shirt and a stick I picked up from the ground. Bella kept an eagle-eyed watch while I set the flag, letting out soft clicking and mewling noises occasionally.

After I marked the top of the hill, I mounted back up on Bella and rode back towards the stump we had designated as our meeting point. It wasn't hard to find the stump, the tree that had stood there must have been immense, the base a good five feet wide.

As I waited for Fiona to return I tossed Bella some food, that she easily snatched out of the air. With three bites she was able to swallow the large chunk of meat.

I also took this time to go through the practice movements Trumbo taught me. I wasn't like I was any faster or more powerful than before. It was more like I could see an improvement in my ability to control exactly what I wanted my staff to do. My strikes felt more purposeful, more accurate, almost like the staff was an extension of my body. I only noticed this change due to my increased perception. I continued this practice until Fiona rode up.

"No chance of being unable to find this place, I could hear your grunting from a mile off," she said trying her hand at sarcasm.

I just mimed an over-exaggerated laugh while grabbing my belly, which caused the severe woman to snort in humor. We had both grown a little closer after the attack at my house. We had essentially saved each other lives now. 'Although, I was up 2 to 1,' I thought triumphantly.

"What is this I hear? Has thou icy facade finally cracked?" I replied in my best Shakespearean accent, which was honestly awful. But it got an eye roll and a slight smirk from the woman, so I considered that a success.

"Did you find the dungeon?" she asked, trying to keep the humor from her voice.

"Yup, you ready to slay some beasts?"

She nodded once, seriousness returning to her face. I mounted back up onto Bella, leading the way to the cave. At the entrance, we stored our mounts, they would do us no good inside a dungeon, despite their supposed prowess in battle. I could tell this dungeon was slightly different than the previous two already. For one, no monsters were crawling around the entrance, which seemed to have man-made stone blocks littered around it. The second was the smell of death that seemed to emanate from the entrance.

"Ugg, that smells foul," Fiona said, trying to wave away the foul air.

Of course, I had to reply, "She who smelt it dealt it."

It took her a few seconds to parse out what I said before she gave me a dirty look. I just shrugged and grinned as we entered the cave.

You have entered The Burial Mound: Level 9 dungeon. Recommended team size: 4 people of level 10 or higher, Good Luck

Well, that explained the smell, damn undead dungeon, the thought of undead gave me the chills. I had always been creeped out by undead in movies.

"You sure we can handle this ourselves?" Fiona asked after she read over the message.

"Yup, heck I could probably solo this dungeon if I wanted to, but it always helps to have backup."

She just stared at me trying to see if I was being my usual flippant self, but I had answered her honestly. Of course, I was basing this on my previous dungeon experience. With my ability to heal and new skills, I probably didn't have much to fear from this undead dungeon. I also wanted to try something that I had wondered about since level one.

As we entered the first room, a rough dirt wall lay on the entrance side slowly transforming into roughly hewn blocks of some grey stone, farther from the entrance. I could see scattered bones in the room along with a doorway on the far side. A bit of torchlight came from the hallway the door led into.

"Well this is definitely different from the last two dungeons," I said quietly to Fiona, somehow not wanting to disturb the strange atmosphere of the place.

"From what I can remember, dungeons can vary depending on monster or beast type," she replied, hand on sword ready for anything to attack.

"I mean that makes sense for the centipede dungeon, but not the goblin one."

She just snorted, "That's because they were goblins, they will live anywhere they can and breed worse than rabbits once established. They likely defeated the previous dungeon inhabitants, making them the new dungeon monsters."

That might explain the weirdness I experienced in my first dungeon, with only the final room being declared a dungeon. I was glad to have that inconsistency resolved, at least in part. A world with rules that didn't follow them would be hard to navigate.

"We should check for traps," Fiona said, breaking me from my musings.

"Traps?"

"Yes, more established dungeons like this, with structure and possibly more intelligent monsters, tend to also include traps of some sort. I don't have any dedicated skills for locating them so unless you do, it is going to be slow going."

I shook my head, letting her know I didn't have any trap detection skills. While neither of us had dedicated skills we both had a rather high perception and the first trap was pretty obvious. A thin wire strung across the doorway led up to a spiked log, hidden in the darkness of the ceiling.

"Step back, I'll trigger it with my staff."

Fiona stepped back and I pushed the string down with my staff. A soft click was followed by the log swinging down from the ceiling. Anyone standing in the narrow doorway would have been impaled. As I let up the trap began to reset so I cut the string with the other end of my staff. The log flopped back into the doorway and didn't move.

We were able to push past the deactivated trap easily enough and once past we could hear the clack of bones, coming from down the hallway. A few seconds later a skeleton holding a rusty sword shambled into the hall. I froze up for a few seconds, fears from my youth bubbling up at the sight of the creature before I came back to myself I berated myself internally. I couldn't afford indecision like this, it didn't matter what I came across. I firmed up my resolve pushing those old fears down.

"Hold up, let me try something," I said to the Sword Dancer, using Identify on the monster.

Lesser Skeleton | Soldier | Level 7

She acquiesced to my request, holding back while I cast Rejuvenate on the skeleton. I could see smoke rising from the body as my spell took effect but I didn't want to wait the 30 seconds for all the damage to tick off on the creature. Next, I tried using Healing Touch. As soon as the spell landed the skeleton seemed to glow brightly before disintegrating into a pile of dust.

"Well that was quite effective; Kind of wish I had taken the Healing Aura spell now, it would have made this dungeon a cakewalk."

"Not sure what walking on cake has to do with having an easy time clearing a dungeon but I agree," Fiona replied, toeing the pile of ash that used to be a skeleton. She backed up as more skeletons started to enter the corridor.

"All yours my lady," I said, with a bow.

She grinned and sprinted forward using her shackle spell to catch three skeletons in the doorway, preventing more from entering. It was easy to see she had never fought undead before, I mean, I guess I had never fought them before either but I had a general understanding of how to defeat them from my gamer days and so far that was proving true.

First, she tried stabbing them in the head. Specifically, through the eye sockets, that seemed to glow with a green hue.

This only managed to twist their heads and stumbled them back a bit. Next, she tried slashing the heads off. While this worked, sort of, it took multiple blows from her sword to accomplish the task. She took a few hits during this time, having to get in close to deal damage. I easily healed her of any injuries. Her next tactic was to lop the arms off at the joints. This was effective at making the skeletons easy pickings for her to hack apart. After she killed the first three, she retreated to where I stood, panting slightly.

"This... is much harder... than it looks," she said, breathing heavily.

"Yea, it's mostly because you don't have the right weapon for the situation, let me show you."

I cast Blink Step and rushed the three trapped skeletons. In a few seconds, they all lay scattered about the ground, in shattered bits of bone. I didn't even have to use any other abilities, just raw kinetic force from my strikes was enough to deal with the undead.

"That's not fair," I heard Fiona say.

I scoffed, "Says the woman who can still beat me 9 out of every 10 duels."

I continued my onslaught, clearing out the remaining six skeletons. As the dust and bones settled we looted the bodies. Turns out bone dust was a crafting material, who knew. I tossed it into the storage bag. Fiona agreed to store the weapons, although, they were quite rusty, perhaps they would have some material value.

We continued into the next room keeping an eye out for any traps. It almost wasn't enough, as I nearly stumbled into a pit trap. The only thing that saved me was a quickly cast Earth Fist, that I used to propel myself over the collapsing section of the floor. I took a bit of damage from my spell, as well as from hitting the floor and knocking the wind out of me. Ok well, a bit more damage than I thought.

I had to remember Earth Fist got a damage boost and even though I suffered reduced damage from my spells, I still took damage. I got up, brushing myself off, and used Rejuvenate to top off my health.

Then I had an epiphany, this was probably why I was offered an elemental defense spell as an option to take. So that I could fight without worrying about self-inflicted injuries as much. Then I groaned, it probably also meant my class had a lot more spells that had a chance of injuring me, farther down my progression tree.

Seeing that I was ok, Fiona kept searching the room. We didn't find any more traps in the room or anything special for that matter, so we moved on to the next hallway. This one led to a four-way intersection of moldy bricks and one flickering torch.

"Care to choose?" I asked Fiona and she shook her head, "Ok, right it is," I said, keeping with the always follow the right path philosophy of any maze. Before we left the intersection I took out a piece of chalk from my bag, part of my crafting kit, and marked the wall with an X.

"Just in case," I said, seeing Fiona's curious gaze.

As we walked down the new corridor I used the end of my staff to tap the floor. I did this for two reasons, one to try and set off any other floor traps before we stumbled into them again, and second to try and draw out any undead that might be waiting for us.

I got no reaction from the first use, but the second was a success. Three skeletons carrying shields and swords wandered into the hallway from a side room,20 feet up the hall from us. They clacked their teeth angrily at us and rushed forward, appearing to be steadier on their feet than their counterparts we fought earlier. A quick Identify told me why.

Skeleton |Guard | Level 8

We were no longer dealing with lesser skeletons. I hit the front one with Healing Touch and, although, he glowed and smoked he didn't go down with the one attack. So I hit him with an Earth Fist, forcing him into the two behind him. The second attack seemed to be enough and the lead Skeleton Guard fell apart.

This is where things got weird. RPG's don't prepare you for the fact that bones get stuck in bones. And the dead guard's remains were hindering the movement of the other two, as they got stuck in the rib cage and arm bones of the dead ally.

Fiona used this opportunity to shackle the remaining two. Turns out they didn't like this one bit and I got to see them activate an ability. Both skeletons screamed silently as the shackles held them. They started to glow red from whatever skill they had activated, ripping Fiona's spell apart as they charged at us.

"Looks like they didn't care for that spell," I said hastily, readying my staff with Stunning Gust.

The spell hit the one on the left, staggering him back a step but failing to stun. I wasn't even sure skeletons could be stunned. I would have to try it again and see, just not right now. I Blink Stepped past the other skeleton, that seemed hell-bent on charging Fiona. My staff smashed into my target's sternum, or it would have. The undead was surprisingly quick, managing to get his shield up in time to block my strike. They were only skeletons though and there was no weight behind the defense.

My speed-enhanced blow knocked him flying ten feet back and onto the ground, where he slid another five feet. My blow, even through his shield, had been strong enough to shatter his shield arm. Sending the shield skittering off the wall, splintered and deformed.

A look back showed that Fiona was easily holding her own against the last enraged skeleton. I hit her with Rejuvenate, just in case, and moved to finish off my target. I decided this was a good place to test Eye of the Storm, seeing as I was far enough from Fiona not to catch her in the spell.

I began to spin my staff, imbuing the spell with the chanter words of power. It began slowly at first, a slight breeze, pulling up from the ground. Faster and faster the winds began to circulate, pulling my hair up like a vacuum but otherwise not affecting me. I couldn't say the same for the skeleton.

As the skeleton began to stand I could see the dust and debris start to be picked up by my spell, as it quickly grew in intensity. It appeared to take a full three seconds for the spell to reach its peak power.

The damaged skeleton tried to force its way through the buffeting winds, only to be picked up and spun around me like the rest of the debris. I channeled the spell for seven seconds, doing over 100 damage to the creature, which seemed to be enough to kill it. My guess was the impacts of it smashing against the stone walls had done it additional damage.

The spell was incredibly draining, while not doing all that much damage to a single target. I could see it would be an effective crowd control device. As the wind died down, I turned to see Fiona, resting with a slight gash on her arm. Her wound was closing as my Rejuvenate spell, still in effect, worked its magic on her. Her skeleton lay on the ground dismembered.

"I think... I'm going to need... Some sort of bludgeoning weapon," she said, between breaths.

"Can you wield a staff?" I said, remembering I still had my old one.

She shook her head, "No, I can only use swords effectively, although, I trained with clubs, maces, mauls, and morning stars."

"Let's hope we run into something you can use."

Fiona nodded and we moved on to check the corpses. The gear got tossed into Fiona's ring, the bones and powder got tossed into the bag. Another bonus, my Eye of the Storm spell revealed a cracked stone on the floor. After prying it up with one of the rusty swords we found a bag of coins. I was going to ask Fiona about them but she beat me to the punch.

"These are pre-credit gold coins. They can be converted into credit but their true value is to collectors. They will fetch much more that way."

"Well, that solves that, we find a collector to sell them to," I said, stuffing the coins into my ring.

After looting we entered the room the guards had come from. It looked like a crypt, with closed coffins lining the wall to either side. It also screamed trap to me.

"Let's remain in the hall, I'm going to try something."

"If you insist," Fiona replied, backing out into the hallway.

After we were both safely in the hall, I used my Earth Fist to lift the side of a casket. As soon as the casket lid came up the door to the room was closed off by a stone partition that dropped from the ceiling. A bit of greenish gas leaked out from under the door, causing us to step back. It wasn't bad enough for the trap to seal you in to starve, it also had to poison you.

We backed away from the mist and continued down the hallway. We cleared away three more groups of guards. Turns out if you don't restrict their movements, they don't go into a berserk rage and are actually easier to kill. We checked each room they came from, with the same Earth Fist trigger. One room even took me three tries to find the one sarcophagus that was trapped. We cleared the last room on this hallway, finishing off the last of the guards. Being mindless undead, they didn't do anything surprising, allowing us to kill them with relative ease.

"Ok last sarcophagus, if this one doesn't trigger a trap I say we try bracing the door with something and take a look inside? Agree?"

"Very well," Fiona said, not sounding entirely enthusiastic about the whole idea.

Can't say I blamed her. This was taking forever, since I decided to wait the full minute for my spell to refresh before using it again, instead of using my multicast. I wanted to avoid raising the mana cost of my spells. 240 would be a hard pill to swallow vs the base 60 if I multicast it twice. Heck, even the 120 mana it would cost if I only did it once. No, with an unknown dungeon I felt it better to try and save that for a boss or something.

I hit the last cover with my spell, causing it to jerk up and over to the side a few inches just like the last seven. We waited for a few minutes and nothing happened.

"Well looks clear," I said, accessing my inventory for something to use to hold the door open, just in case. I didn't have anything that would keep the door open completely but I had my old staff. Wedging it into the door frame as we entered the room. Fiona looked ready to bolt out the door in a heartbeat.

I got the same vibes, this place was creepy. The one torch, barely able to cast light into the room, which reminded me I needed to get my flashlight fixed. The walls of the room were covered in mold and water stains. The corners and undisturbed areas festooned with spider webs and dust. I glanced into the first casket seeing that it was occupied by a corpse, holding something, but there wasn't enough light to see what.

"Help me with this," I said, motioning Fiona over and pointing at the cover.

It took the two of us a solid twenty seconds to haul the massive rock cover away. Damn thing must have weighed over 500 pounds. That just made me more impressed with the strength of my Earth Fist spell. As the cover fell off to the side, making an awful racket, it revealed the remains of a robed man.

I'll be honest, I was on a hair-trigger and as soon as I saw the eyes start to glow I hit him with Healing Touch and Rejuvenate. The figured wailed in torment as the healing energies did their work. Then he cast a spell on himself, cloaking his body in a dark aura.

"No, no, no, you stop that now," I said, casting Cleanse on the undead mage. He wailed even louder as the spell took effect and his body started to fall apart. Before he disintegrated completely I used my identify spell.

Corrupted Undead | Priest | Level 11

"Well that was horrifying," I said flatly.

I went around to the rest of the sarcophagi, repeating the steps for any that had a Priest within. Turns out they took time to reanimate and I only had issues with the last one, it tried to blast me with some necrotic beam. Luckily the beam was easy enough to dodge as the top of his coffin was still mostly covered, giving the undead an odd angle to try and hit me with its spell.

"Hey look what I found," Fiona said, pointing to the first opened casket.

I walked over to take a look; hanging off the remains of the corpse's belt was a flanged mace. Fiona went to reach for it but I stopped her, "Let me identify it first."

"Oh, um, good point," she said, pulling her arm back.

I used my identify spell for the first time on an item.

Flanged Mace

Quality: Average

Damage: 10-25 bludgeoning x2.5 critical damage

Not a terrible weapon, nothing special of course, but I was more worried about it being cursed or something. I handed it over to Fiona, "It's just a normal mace."

She accepted the weapon gladly, sheathing her sword that was starting to dull from all the blunt combat. I checked the rest of the items finding nothing to be cursed, thank god. There were four more maces, some spell reagents, and surprisingly one silken tunic. The tunic turned out to be slightly magical, with a defensive enchantment on it.

Justicar's Tunic

Quality: Good

Enchantment: Mitigates 5% of damage dealt to the wearer

Fiona stuffed the weapons into her ring and I stuffed the Tunic into mine. At least this explained why I had such an issue dealing with the last Priest.

The item didn't exclude any damage type, so it absorbed 5% of my healing magic. I wanted to study the item before we sold it. It wasn't the type of item either of us could use effectively since it took up our armor slot. I did try to wear it over my armor but it didn't add any effect to my stats. I decided to stick with my armor, this piece of gear seemed more suited to a caster.

We cleared the room, packing the bones in the bag and heading back to the intersection, where we took the next right. The X mark was still on the wall so I had no worries of this being some labyrinth. It was more of the same, three guards per room, each room a trap, with a stairway leading down at the end. We decided to clear the last hall on this floor before continuing down. Again, it was a repeat of the last two hallways.

With more entombed Priests at the end, although, nothing magical on this end. We looted the room, coming away with nothing but bones and headed towards the stairs down. I checked each step before walking onto it for traps, which was a good thing because the fifth step down clicked and three spears shot out of the wall. One even skinned my arm as I wasn't fast enough to pull it back.

You have been poisoned

"You okay?" Fiona asked, worry in her voice after seeing my pained expression.

"Yea, just, damn thing poisoned me. I'll be fine after I cast Cleanse on it," and I did just that. What I didn't expect was to wake up a few seconds later with Fiona holding me.

"W-What happened?"

"You collapsed after you cast your spell. I can see you are still losing health, so it looks like it failed to work."

I checked my icon bar and sure enough, the damn debuff was still there. I concentrated on it to see what exactly I was poisoned with.

Healer's Bane Venom debuff: Using any healing or abilities to rid the body of this toxin causes you to suffer additional damage and resets the timer. Causes 1 damage a second, 4m 39s remaining.

Looks like my trying to heal it caused 20 additional damage and also reset the counter.

'I wonder if the damage was based on the mana cost of the spell?'

Doing some quick math it looks like I would suffer a total of 315 damage, including the initial elapsed time before I tried to Cleanse the poison. As well as the twenty additional damage I caused myself. It was a good thing I tried cleansing it early. Had I waited only a few minutes the debuff would have killed me. It was a good lesson to learn. Always check the debuff before trying to remove it.

"Well, this sucks, looks like I just gotta wait for the poison to work itself out. Any healing causes me to take additional damage and resets the timer. I'll be fine though got plenty of health left," I replied, trying to reassure the worried woman, who looked about ready to burst into tears.