Earth

Spectre Base, Canadian Rockies

August 12, 2019

18:56 PDT (15:56 EDT)

There was now quite a crowd watching in amusement as Jonathan and his friends walked in circles without realizing it. They were now on the fifth floor of the dungeon, which seems to employ a minor disorienting aura, affecting the mind. Around the room, bets were being made on how long it would take before one of them realized what was happening, and who it would be. The room was divided. Many of them thought their King would be the one to figure it out, while others thought it would be one of the twins.

Looking at the clock, Alexandra noted that Jonathan and his team were coming up on forty-five minutes on the fifth floor. It had taken them almost ninety minutes to clear the fourth floor, after which they decided to take a break to eat the food that she prepared for them. She too, had a bet on how long it would take them to finally figure out what was going on with this floor.

She remembered back to when she first started delving into dungeons with her own friends. They wandered around the same floor for an hour before her best friend, Illia, had realized what was happening. Luckily they came prepared, and used chalk to mark which passages they had already been through. If they came up to an intersection and saw one of their chalk marks, they would take a different passage. It still took them another hour to finally leave the floor, since it was a maze.

One of the screens showed the layout of the Gatineau Park dungeon, and it looks pretty similar to the one she and her friends got stuck on for a while. There is a slight difference between this floor and the one she had experienced when she was young, however. At the end of the floor Jonathan and his team are in, is their first dungeon boss, as well as a few surprises, should they find them.

Her phone vibrated, signaling a text, so she took it out and read it.

[I’ll be back down in a little while. It seems the Stewarts made good time and are here early. I need to go up and meet them,] she sent to Gabriel through Mindspeak, already turning to go back through the portal they arrived from.

[Okay. I’ll let you know whether or not you won the bet when you come back down.]

Walking back through the portal, she nodded to Yuki and Omar and stepped into the elevator to take her back to the surface. It took just as long to ascend as it did to descend, so it took a few minutes. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, she went to the back of the building where she and Gabriel had parked hours earlier. While the Stewarts had access to the employee parking, they did not yet have access to the elevator.

She arrived just in time for a black SUV to pull up and park near the door. The man that was sitting in the front passenger seat got out, scanned the area, and then opened one of the back doors. A man in his late thirties or early forties exited the vehicle followed by a young woman, and then an older woman. The bodyguard pointed towards the door that Alexandra was holding open, and they walked over.

“It’s good to see you again, Alexandra,” the man greeted, offering his hand.

“You as well, Thomas. You’re earlier than expected,” she said, accepted his handshake.

“There was less traffic than we thought there would be. You’ve met my wife, Claire, and my daughter, Tessa,” he said, gesturing to each.

Alexandra nodded. “It’s good to see you both again. If you all would come inside, we’ll get your identification set up, so you can enter whenever you like.”

The Stewarts, as well as their bodyguard and driver all entered the building. Alexandra was about to close the door when she felt something familiar. She looked up in the air where the feeling was coming from. Not seeing anything, she shifted her eyes to that of an eagle to greatly improve her vision, and scanned the air. She saw the glint of a small object moving quickly through the air towards the building. As the object got closer, she recognized what it was and grinned, waiting for her.

She didn’t take long to arrive. At the speed she was going at, you would think that she wouldn’t have any time to slow down before impacting the ground. You would be wrong. She went from a very high speed to a full stop almost instantly.

[Hello, Abi. I thought you weren’t going to be here until later tonight?] she asked the small white crystal.

[Greetings, Alexandra. I wanted to get here earlier, so I pushed a bit harder.]

[Well, come on in. You’ll have to wait for Jonathan, though. He’s not here yet, though he should be in under four hours.]

[That is fine, I’m very experienced with being patient. I do have some news for you. A Scythe II class ship named The Fang of Khigil has been dispatched to Earth. It will arrive in approximately 5 months, 29 days, 4 hours, 41 minutes and 22 seconds, barring any delays. If it stays on schedule, it will be here by February 10, 2020 at 20:34:44.]

[Well, that is some fairly good news. That should be enough time for you, right?]

[Yes, assuming Jonathan follows my instructions. That is not all the news I bring, however. I intercepted another signal as I was on my way here. Kaldrus Dhir has also dispatched Xorin Nydror to Earth. He will be here in 6 months, 2 days, 19 hours, 13 minutes and 51 seconds, which is February 15, 2020 at 11:23:30.]

Alexandra sighed when she heard Xorin’s name. [Is he still doing everything Kaldrus says to try to get his family back?]

[Yes. Things are different this time, though. Kaldrus has released his wife to him, but is holding his daughter until he completes his objective.]

[Really? That is interesting. Either way, we’ll be ready for him. Let’s go inside, the Stewarts are waiting to get their ID sorted.]

Alexandra led Abi inside, where the Stewarts were waiting. They were shocked to see Abi floating behind me. They knew who she was, but had never met. [Abi, his is Thomas, Claire and Tessa. Everyone, this is Abi.]

Alexandra waited until they finished greeting each other and then spoke to the Stewarts, “If you will follow me, we’ll get you added to the system.”

She led them through a door marked ‘Employees Only.’ The inside of the room they entered was pretty bare. It consists of a computer terminal on the left-hand side of the room, and a keypad and retinal scanner on the right-hand side of the room.

After seeing everyone was in the room, Alexandra walked over to the computer terminal and started typing. When she was done, she looked up. “Alright, Thomas, you’ll be going first. Stand in the center of the room, please. Everyone else, come stand by me.

When Thomas did as she asked, and his wife and daughter were standing beside her, she pressed a button to start a scan. Thomas was bathed in light from multiple directions, each gathering exact measurements of his body from all angles, as well as scanning his DNA. The scan only took 30 seconds, and then they continued on.

“Okay, Thomas, go over to the retinal scanner. You will need to scan your Scyftan eyes, human eyes, and then the eyes of three different animals. When you are ready, just look at the scanner and hit the Scan button. When you are done with each scan, hit the Save button.”

It took him two minutes to do all five scans. When they all showed up, she spoke again, “Next, you’ll need to input a twenty character alphanumeric password. Input your password and then hit the Save button.”

This took him a lot less time. Alexandra confirmed it was saved, and then there was only one step left. “Last step, Thomas. Send a pulse of mana at the machine, and that will complete the process.”

After he sent a pulse of mana at the machine, Alexandra confirmed everything and then saved and saved his information. “Now that you’re in the system, if you want to go somewhere restricted in this building or others, you will be asked for varying amounts of information. Some could just ask for a pulse of mana, while others will want all of the scans and passwords that I just had you input. Any questions?”

“No, thank you,” he replied.

“Okay, Claire. You’re next.”

It only took roughly fifteen minutes to complete Claire’s and Tessa’s registration as well. When they were done, Alexandra led them to the elevator. When the doors closed, she turned to Tessa. “Tessa, would you like to do the honors? Send a pulse of your mana at the panel there, and then you will be asked for three retinal scans and your password,” she said, gesturing at the panel.

“Sure!”

Tessa got it on her first try and the elevator started descending. Alexandra introduced Yuki and Omar to the Stewarts and then continued on through the portal to the base. The first thing Alexandra did when she walked through the portal was look at the monitors to see how Jonathan was doing. She was happy to see that they were no longer walking in circles, and they were now in the room containing one of the surprises.

In the middle of the room, there was a large wooden chest. It was closed, and didn’t appear to be locked. Mason went to go investigate it, but as he was halfway there, an arrow whizzed past him and struck the chest. Nothing happened, however, and everyone turned back to stare at Sonja.

“What!?! I thought it might be a Mimic! You don’t go trying to open a chest in the middle of a room without at least checking that!”

Everyone laughed at that, both in the dungeon and in the base. Alexandra turned to the Stewarts. “Before I introduce you to Jonathan’s sisters, would you like anything to eat or drink? We have a 24/7 kitchen here.”

They conferred before asking for two coffees and a tea. [Michelle, can you please bring three coffees and one tea, please?]

[Sure thing! It’ll be out in a couple of minutes.]

[Perfect, thank you.]

[Gabe, who won the bet?] Alexandra asked.

[Lexi did. She guessed correctly on who would figure it out, and was closest to the amount of time it took. She guessed it would be Ben, and it would take them 75 minutes. It was Ben, but it took 73 minutes.]

[Damn. Thanks anyways.]

[No problem.]

“Your drinks will be out in a couple of minutes, follow me,” she said, leading them over to the triplets.

[Lena, Lucy, Lexi. Guests have arrived, if you can pull yourselves from the monitors for a few minutes.]

The three of them turned and saw Alexandra leading three people they had never met before. They got up from the couch they were sitting on and met them halfway.

“Girls, meet Thomas, Claire and Tessa Stewart,” she said, gesturing to each one in turn. Thomas, Claire, Tessa, meet Aleena, Lucille and Alexis. Or as they like to be called, Lena, Lucy and Lexi.” she continued, gesturing to each one as she said their names. Being identical triplets, it is almost impossible to tell them apart with the eye. Luckily each of their minds feels different, so any Scyftan will be able to tell them apart.

“Nice to meet you!” the triplets chorused, earning a chuckle from Alexandra.

Everyone took a few minutes to greet each other and then Michelle showed up with the drinks. The girls dragged Tessa away, and Alexandra led Thomas and Claire over to meet Gabriel.

Unnoticed in all of this, was Abi. When they had entered the base via the portal, she stopped moving and hovered in place, just watching Jonathan. As she laid her figurative eyes on him for the first time in over fourteen hundred years, she vowed she would not fail him, as she failed his father.

-----

Earth

Gatineau Park Dungeon

August 12, 2019

16:39 EDT

We laughed about Sonja shooting at the chest, and then Mason walked up to it and opened it. We gathered around it and peered inside. In the bottom, were two lone Skill Gems.

“That’s it? This huge chest for two Skill Gems?”

Anja laughed, “What do you expect, Mace? This is a low level dungeon. It’s not going to be filled to the brim with gold or something else.”

“I dunno, but only two Skill Gems?” He picked them both up and turned them so he could read the number and tier of each. “Hey Ben, what are gems 859E and 685E?”

“Lemme check,” he replied as he took his phone out of his storage. Opening up the Adventurer’s Guild app, he tapped on Skill Gems, When the page loaded, typed 685E in the search bar. It popped up right away. “685E. Scorch: Deals a small percentage spell damage as Fire. 1.5 second cast time, costs 3% mana.”

“Looks like this one is yours, then. Congrats,” he said, handing it to him. “What about the other one?”

“Thank you! One second.” He tapped back and then typed in 859E, proceeding to read it off when it loaded. “859E. Multistrike(Minor): You have a 4% chance whenever you attack to strike an enemy with a blade or bolt of wind, dealing 150% weapon damage.”

Mason looked to the girls, “Looks like this one is up to you two to decide. You’ll both get a bigger benefit than Jonathan or I will.”

“Let Sonja have it. She attacks more often than I will, and it will probably activate off her Triple Shot.”

“Are you sure, Anja?” her twin asked. “It may benefit you more in the long run if you start using your butterfly swords or stilettos.”

“I’m sure. It will benefit us a lot more in the short term for you to have it now. There is a dungeon boss at the end of this level, right? You’ll do more damage than I will. Besides, we might get a higher tier version later on. If we do, I call dibs!”

Sonja laughed. “Alright, I’ll take it.”

Ben and Sonja closed their fists around the Skill Gems they received and channeled mana into them. After a couple of seconds, the Skill Gems were gone, and they learned their skills.”

“Hey, Ben. How about trying out Scorch on the wall over there?” I said, gesturing at wall to the left of the door we came in from.

“Sure.”

He turned to the wall and made a short motion with the hand not holding his bo staff. As he made the motion, a small ball of fire appeared in his hand. When it was fully formed, he pushed his hand towards the wall and the ball of fire shot forwards, colliding with the wall. It didn’t do much, since the walls of dungeons were nigh indestructible, but it was cool to see.

“Awesome! Now you’ll be able to help out a bit while regenerating mana after using one of your auras.”

He nodded. “With it having a 1.5 second cast time, I’ll regenerate about 28 mana in the time it takes me to cast it. 3% of my mana is about 19 right now, so even if I constantly cast it, I’ll gain 9 mana per cast. Damage is pretty low though, so it may not be worth using. We’ll see.”

“That we will. Alright, let’s keep moving. We’ve been on this floor for almost an hour and a half now and still don’t know where the boss room is, thanks to that damn trap.”

“I’m going to keep marking which way we go whenever we come up to an intersection, just incase we walk into the radius of another one of those,” Ben said.

We kept moving through the floor. We would often have to backtrack to find the proper way forward. We had been walking for almost 15 minutes when Sonja called for us to stop.

“I think there is a trap in front of us. Move back and let me check.”

We did as she asked, and she stepped forward. She investigated the floor and the walls and then stepped back again. She lifted her bow out infront of her, nocked an arrow and then fired it at one of the bricks on the floor. The brick depressed slightly, and a series of darts launched from each wall, directly over the brick.

Mason whistled and then looked at Sonja. “How the hell did you know that was there?”

“One of my perks is Detect Trap(Minor). There was a very soft glow coming from the brick and the walls.”

“Well, that’s cool. How about you lead for this level so you can spot any more traps we might come across?” I asked.

“Sure.”

Ben had walked forward and picked one of the darts. He inspected it to see what kind of damage it could do. The dart was made out of wood and was coated with a viscous green liquid. He took one of the vials out of his bandolier and uncorked it. He poured a small amount over the liquid on the dart and it turned from green to a clear liquid, void of color. He nodded and closed the vial, putting it back in his bandolier. Then he turned back to the group, holding up the dart.

“It was coated with a paralytic poison. If one of us was hit, we’d be out for hours without an antitoxin. It wouldn’t kill us, but would be very annoying.”

“You’re definitely out in front if you can easily spot traps then, Sonja. I’d rather not have to cut our delve short if someone gets hit by one of those,” I said.

“No problem, let's continue. The trap isn’t glowing anymore, so I’m assuming it’s disarmed. Step over the brick just in case, though.”

Continuing on, Sonja stopped us periodically whenever she found more traps. She spotted three more and all of them were different, if non-lethal. It was like they were a teaching instrument so people knew what to look for when in a dungeon. With Sonja it was a cakewalk, but I can imagine other adventurer’s trips being cut short because one of their party members gets incapacitated by one of those darts.

When she fired one of her arrows to disarm a trap, it actually disappeared, leading us to believe it was teleported. Keeping up with the theme of the traps being non-lethal, we thought it probably teleported the person to the beginning of this floor or to the room with the chest. None of us wanted to test that, however, so we stepped around it.

Another trap, when activated, caused the trigger brick, and the ones around it to disappear, leading to a 10 foot drop into some water. It was clear, and not that deep from what we could see, but you would definitely need help getting out of it.

Finally, the most recent trap caused the bricks to again disappear, but this time there was a couple feet of mud. If you fell in there, you would have a hard time lifting your feet out by yourself. Sonja stuck one of her arrows in it to get a measure of how deep it was, but it was deeper than the length of the arrow. None of us wanted to get our weapons all muddy by checking the depth, so we just jumped over it.

Ten minutes after the last trap, we came up to another room that was identical to the room that had the chest in it. Chest included.

“Hah! Get ready,” Sonja said.

She nocked and fired an arrow at the chest. This time, however, rather than nothing happening, the chest jumped up in the air and began looking for whoever had disturbed it. Eyes had appeared on the lid and it opened up, displaying some vicious teeth and a long red tongue. It spotted Sonja and rushed forward with surprising speed.

I moved in front of Sonja and waited for the mimic to get close. When it was within ten feet, I cocked my shield arm back, and then used Shield Bash on the mimic, stunning it, and then moving to the side, giving Mason an opportunity to hit it with an overhead chop, and Sonja to fire another arrow at it. Because of the narrow corridor, Anja couldn’t attack it. We still made quick work of it between the three of us, with help from Ben’s aura.

“Nice job, Sonja.”

“Thanks.” She looked at Mason. “Now imagine if that first chest had been a mimic when you tried to open it. You’d have probably had your hand bitten off.”

“Yeah, thanks for checking, I never would’ve thought to check for a mimic in a low level dungeon,” Mason replied, looking chagrined.

Sonja nodded, looking satisfied.

The mimic disappeared, leaving behind a mana gem as well as another Skill Gem. I picked them up and turned the Skill Gem so I could see the numbering. “Ben, what is 521E?”

“Gimme a moment,” he replied. A few seconds later he answered, “521E. Gash: Deals damage equal to your melee damage. If your target is bleeding, deal that amount of damage again. It has a cooldown of 10 seconds.”

“Thanks!” I turned to Mason and held out my hand. “All yours, Mason. You probably hit the hardest out of any of us. This will give you a pretty powerful attack when I use Barbed Spear.”

“Cool. Thanks, man,” he said, accepting the gem. He closed his hand and channeled his mana into it, learning the skill.

I put the mana gem into my storage and then turned to the group. “Ok, let’s continue. Mind leading us out, Sonja?”

She nodded once again and started walking to the next corridor. There were a few traps along the way. None of them were new, and Sonja easily triggered them with an arrow. Before long, we were standing in front of a set of large wooden doors. There was an ornate carving, with the name ‘Jihm’ inscribed in the middle.

“Are we all ready?” I asked.

I got some confirmations and some nods, so I opened the door and we walked through. The inside of the room was pitch black. I was about to take out one of my light globes and charge it up when the door closed behind us and torches all around the room lit up. We were in a large room that was filled with sand. We didn’t see the boss anywhere, but then the sand in the middle of the room started moving. Out of it, moved a large sand colored worm with a gaping maw of what looked like razor sharp teeth. It let out a loud roar that had us all cupping our ears to try to block out the noise. When it was done, it dove back underground.

I had an inkling of what it was doing. “Everyone spread out!” I called. “Anja, it’s going to try to swallow one of us. Do the same thing you did against the snake. Give me a one second pulse every two seconds and call out who it’s after.”

She nodded and we all spread out, waiting for the worm to make its move. We didn’t have to wait long.

“Johnny!” Anja called out.

I immediately started moving but immediately knew I was going to be too slow. My first push off with my left foot slipped in the sand. I tried to position my shield to take the brunt of the hit. The worm barreled out of the ground and impacted my shield, hard, with the side of its head. I felt a familiar pain in my left arm and was flung over 20 feet away, landing in the sand. My arm felt broken, and the worm wasn’t going to give me any time to rest. It pulled its head back and then shot forward, trying to swallow me again. I was already up and moving, and the strike barely missed me. I used Barbed Spear to lower its health regeneration, as well as increase Mason’s damage and then started running closer to Ben, leaving my spear sticking out of the worm.

“Ben, Health Regen, and throw me a healing potion!”

Luckily it wasn’t my dominant arm that was broken. I had to slow down a bit to catch the potion but managed it and continued running. I looked back at the worm and saw that I was no longer its focus. “Move, Ben!”

Credit to Ben, he didn’t look at the worm, he just ran, narrowly dodging the strike. I chugged the potion and felt my bone knitting itself back together. It hurt like hell, and it would still be a few minutes before I had full use of it, but at least now it wasn’t useless.

Besides the worm’s head moving around, the rest of its body was stationary where it was sticking out of the ground, seeing as most of its body was still underground. This gave Anja, Mason and Sonja a lot of time to do damage. Unfortunately, I saw what they couldn’t since they were behind the boss, unable to see its head.

“Back off, it's about to spin!” I shouted.

The worm tensed its body and then swung it around the room, sort of like a helicopter. Anyone who got hit would be sent flying with the force of the hit. Both of them quickly moved to the edge of the room where they would have more time. Mason used Dash to get away, while Anja had to run. Anja wasn’t going to make it, but I saw there was room between the sand and the height the worm was spinning at.

“Down, Anja!”

She went into a slide, similar to that you would see at a baseball game, and lay down flat on the ground. A moment later, the worm’s body spun over her. The rest of us were at the edge of the room, which was out of range of the strike. It stopped spinning, and then burrowed back in to the ground. My spear was ripped out of its body, leaving it laying on the surface of the sand. I ran over and picked it up.

“Watch your footing if Anja calls your name! I got hit because my foot slipped, slowing me down. Get ready!” I yelled.

We just needed to wait now. The longer the worm took to resurface, the longer I had for my arm to fully heal.

“Mason!” Anja called.

Mason was probably the worst person the worm could have targeted. He has two different ways of getting away, Whirling Leap, and Dash. The cooldown was already over for Dash, so he used that, immediately moving eight feet from where he was standing. As soon as the worm surfaced, Sonja was firing off arrows as fast as she could, and Anja, along with myself were moving in. It also appeared that Mason wasn’t going to give it any time, either. He used Whirling Leap to close the distance and the worm bellowed when it was struck. I used Barbed Spear to pull me the rest of the way to the boss and reapply the healing regeneration debuff, as well as the bleed. Just in case it had removed them while burrowed. The worm bellowed out in pain again, so I’m guessing that Mason used Gash right after I used Barbed Spear.

The worm targeted Sonja next, launching itself at her and trying to swallow her whole. She was at such a long range that it was easy for her to dodge, however. She moved away a short distance, putting her bow inside her storage and withdrawing her katana. She turned back to the worm and started projecting her attacks with Windblade until she was out of mana, while she continued to back up. When she was out of mana, she put away her katana and withdrew her bow from her inventory, continuing on from where she left off.

The part of the worm’s body that was sticking just a few feet out of the ground was getting pretty shredded at this point. With my spear, Mason’s halberd, and Anja’s katana, there were a lot of gouges and holes in its carapace-like skin. Mason had just ran away a short distance so he could use Whirling Leap since it did so much damage. Anja didn’t have any melee attacks just yet, so she just continued slicing and dicing.

“Get back!” we heard Sonja shout. I looked up at the worm’s body and saw that it was getting ready to spin again. I waited for it to start spinning, and then ran to the wall where its head started, which would give me the most time to get away. Anja followed me and we all managed to get out of the way this time.

It submerged yet again after it stopped spinning, and we spread back out, waiting for it to resurface.

“Ben!” I heard, and he started to move. He got away just in time, and the rest of us started attacking it again. I repeated the same thing from the second time it resurfaced, and used Barbed Spear to pull myself to it. This time, I was able to use Shield Bash. It didn’t end up stunning the worm, but it did a nice bit of damage I heard two loud bellows, one after another, that probably signalled Mason hitting it with another Whirling Leap followed by Gash.

The sand around where the worm had emerged was no longer the yellowish-brown color it had been when we entered the room. Now, it was a dark red. The worm was losing blood at a ridiculous rate, and was still fighting. It was noticeably slower when it struck again, this time at Ben. He was easily able to move to the side and cast a Scorch, hitting it in the side of the head. It looked like it was getting ready to spin again, but instead, it bellowed out in pain and collapsed, sending sand spraying in different directions.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and glad that my injury wasn’t more serious. I was also happy to see that the potions Ben bought were effective. I sat down on the sand that wasn’t covered in blood and took my water bottle out of my inventory, taking a long drink. It seems like everyone was doing the same, and we watched the body slowly disappear. In its place, there was a large wooden chest.

When she was done resting, Sonja stood up, nocked an arrow and fired it at the chest. Nothing happened, but better safe than sorry, I guess.