Astoria awoke to Garland's voice telling her softly that it was time to get up. For a moment, she forgot that she had been trapped in Phoenix Online, and jumped at the sound of a strange man’s voice talking to her in her room.

She looked at her surroundings and recognized the cold hard floor of the catacombs and reality crashed back into her. She wasn’t at home in bed, and she never would be again. "Monsters? How long have I been asleep?"

"No monsters. It's hard to say for sure how long has passed since we’re underground, but I’d say maybe six hours. The others are already awake and waiting for us in the other room.”

She got to her feet and yawned while stretching her arms. She had slept surprisingly well considering it had been on stone. She really must have been exhausted.

The two of them headed out to where the others were and she was surprised to see the others were standing around near the center of the room.

“Good morning, or whatever time it is,” Tilly said as Astoria and Garland approached.

“Morning.”

“We should eat something before we go to the deeper levels. Just a second, I have some stuff that we can eat while we walk,” Tilly said as she started digging through the pack on the ground next to her.

“Good idea, I’m starving!” Astoria said.

“Tilly told us you found a spellbook and another of the bronze coins. That’s great. I cannot wait to get out of this tomb.” Ladriel rubbed her arms as if she was trying to scrub away some sort of taint.

Tilly was rummaging through her pack and pulled out a few things for her and handed them over. The group ate as they walked and Astoria filled the others in on everything she had discovered in the other rooms.

“Sounds like your rapidly leveling those trap related skills of yours. That’s really impressive, Astoria,” Ladriel said.

“Thanks. I’d be lying if I said that my heart didn’t jump up into my throat every time I went to disable one of the traps I found, but it definitely got easier as I leveled.

The group passed around a water skin and finally they reached the stairs leading deeper into the catacombs. No matter what she did, Astoria could not shake the feeling in her gut that something very nasty was waiting for them down there.

“I’ll stay out front again since I can detect traps. I have a feeling that we’re going to have a fight ahead of us soon."

“What makes you say that?” Garland asked curiously.

“Let’s just call it… intuition.”

He shrugged and then the group began creeping down the side passage that led deep into the ground. Astoria’s heart pounded and soon the tunnel flattened out and she could see a doorway just ahead of them.

Astoria knew that if the area ahead was a dead end, then they would most definitely be fighting some sort of boss. She only hoped that they would be strong enough to handle the situation, at least they had Garland with them.

No more wraiths. That's all I ask. I just want an enemy that I can actually hit.

Astoria activated stealth and motioned for the others to hang back while she checked out the situation. She crept forward ever so carefully and kept an eye out for traps on the floor as she went.

The room ahead was blocked by tons of spiderwebs and she said a little prayer hoping that there wouldn’t be monster spiders down here as she took out one of her daggers and carefully cut her way through the sticky substance.

There's no save point, so that means there' s no boss in this room, right? She joked to herself as she poked her head into the next room. She didn’t see any signs of traps, but the walls of the narrow room were covered from wall to wall with standing sarcophagi.

If she were a betting woman, she would say that there were a lot of undead ready to charge at them in an instant inside each and every one of those sarcophagi.

What I wouldn't give for this game to have save points and respawns. Seriously, what the hell is the matter with the creators of this place?

Seeing as nothing was popping out at her, she continued through the narrow room to the next doorway. The room beyond was humongous and she saw large stone pillars all over the place, obscuring her view at every turn.

It screamed boss room to her and she backed out of the doorway slowly before turning and going back to the others.

"This doesn't look good," she whispered.

"What did you see?” Garland asked.

Astoria told them her theory about what lie in store for them when they continued forward.

“The passageway is too narrow for a fight and it's a long run to the top. At least the second room sounds to be large enough for us to maneuver," Ladriel said.

"So we should charge in head on? I know that we don’t exactly have a lot of choices here, but I seriously have a bad feeling about what we’re going to find in that room."

"Do you see any traps?" Tilly asked.

"No. But that doesn't mean there aren't any."

The others looked at each other thoughtfully and Garland spoke up, "Since we don’t have any other options, we must press forward.

"Okay. Stay close, everyone. I really don't want to get shut in here alone with these things if a trap wall falls down again."

The others nodded and Astoria breathed a sigh of relief when they all entered the large room and nothing had happened yet. There was definitely something eerie about the place though. Astoria noticed the similarity in the lighting between this room and the one with the pedestals. She wondered if they were directly below that room. The light felt so unnatural, and after glancing around a bit, she saw several torches poking out here and there from the large stone pillars that filled the room. Each torch burned with bright azure colored flames.

This is definitely not good.

She turned back to the others and saw that they were right behind her huddled in a tight cluster. "I'm telling you guys. This isn't going to be good. Get ready. If there isn't some horrible monster in here, I'll eat my bag for breakfast."

"We're right behind you. Whatever it is, we can handle it if we work together." Tilly answered.

"All right. Let's go."

There were still no signs of traps, but as far as Astoria was concerned that just meant that she was too low to detect them. Idly, she wondered if her detect trap spell worked on magical traps or just the regular kind.

She got her answer when after taking just a few more steps into the enormous room. A heavy stone door slammed shut back at the entrance to the passageway leading up.

She gripped her daggers in anticipation of all those sarcophagi flopping open to reveal a host of undead enemies. She held her breath and waited for a few seconds, but nothing happened.

Okay, so if not that, then what are we trapped in here with?

Whatever it was, she was going to give it a taste of her new magic. She sheathed one dagger so she had a free hand to cast with and looked around. If there was a boss here, wouldn’t it have heard the noise of the door closing?

Since they were stuck, there was no choice but to proceed cautiously. She huddled up with the others and whispered to Garland, "Can you keep watch from the rear? There’s no way that those sarcophagi are not full of undead. We don’t want to be caught from behind. I'm going to sneak around using the pillars for cover to see what we're dealing with here."

"All right."

"What about us?" Tilly whispered.

"Keep an eye on my blind spots and if you see something coming after me, then give a shout, okay?”

Tilly and Ladriel agreed to the plan and Astoria took a deep breath before activating stealth again and creeping forward. nodded and it was time for Astoria to delve deeper into the room.

Her palms felt sweaty on the hilt of her dagger and she couldn’t get rid of the sinking feeling in her stomach that screamed this was a boss room. Keeping a close eye on her stealth icon, she inched her way towards the center of the room, always careful to peek around the pillars before she moved.

Once she was about 50 feet away from her companions, the pillars stopped and there was a large open area with some more pillars on the far end of the space.

Right in the center of the open area she saw a pedestal with a bronze coin sitting atop it. The pedestal was exactly like the ones above, but she didn’t see a recess for the coin. She figured it must be a coincidence.

There it is. This is too easy so far. That is definitely a trap, even if I can’t see the red light.

She contemplated dashing over to grab the coin, but that just seemed stupid. Her stealth icon still showed that she was still hidden, so she felt safe where she was. There wouldn't be anything to hide behind out there and that was a problem she wasn’t ready to face alone.

I'm going to wait and see what happens. If there’s a boss, maybe it’s patrolling the other side of the room or something.

She ducked back behind the pillar and poked her head out once in a while for the next several minutes. Just as she was about to give up and go back to the others a monstrosity slogged its way out of the far pillared area and stomped around.

It hadn’t seen her, thankfully and she only stayed out long enough to get a good look at the thing. It was something that looked as though it belonged in a Resident Evil game.

The creature had to be over sixteen feet tall and was a mass of undulating muscles. There was no skin on the thing and its arms and legs had spikes sticking out of them that were a good 10 inches long.

The creature's face was the stuff of nightmares. Dark, bloodshot eyes were sunken deeply into the skull and the thing sported a large mouth that hung open with an impressive amount of long, jagged teeth.

Another terrifying thing about this creature was that it had another large mouth on its stomach. The mouth, if you could call it that, was a huge maw that sported interlocked teeth resembling that of a shark.

The mouth was big enough that it could probably fit her entire head and shoulders inside. The mouth was closed tight and rows of shark-like teeth locked together.

This thing is bad news. It hasn't seen me, though. I need to go back to the others and come up with a plan to take it down. Thank god we have a high level warrior with us. I doubt that we would have any chance without his help.

She slowly backed away as quiet as a mouse and headed towards the others. After getting two pillars away, she picked up the pace, but all of a sudden the stealth icon opened up completely.

What the—

The monster leapt out of nowhere with a roar and she only just barely avoided having one of those spikes smashed into her face. She rolled to the ground with a squeak and heard the creature’s arm smash into the stone pillar she had been next to. She quickly got back onto her feet and saw that the thing had impacted the stone so hard that it had sent cracks sprawling out from the point of impact in a spiderweb like pattern.

"Help! There's a huge fucking monster over here!" Astoria ran behind another pillar as the thing took another swing at her. The monster was much more nimble than she had originally estimated and it charged after her swinging and roaring.

She wasn’t fast enough and one of its fists smashed into her chest. All of the air exited her lungs and she flew backwards through the air a dozen paces before smashing hard into the ground.

She found that she was unable to move and her health had dropped by a large margin. She was stunned and a little red icon had appeared in the corner of her vision.

No! Come on! Move! Move already!

No matter how hard she tried, she could not overcome the stun effect that was in place on her body from that powerful blow. The creature bellowed and charged towards her helpless body.

It took no time at all for it to close the gap and she looked up at the creature as it raised its arms high above its head knowing that she was about to die. She watched in horror as the things arms began the motion of a downward strike that would end her life, and just as she thought all was lost, Tilly jumped in front of her with her shield raised.

The impact was so powerful that her friend was forced down to one knee, nearly on top of her, but she was successful in blocking the attack. Almost simultaneously, she saw an arrow slam into the head of the monster.

It didn't seem to be bothered too much, but Garland charged in from the side of the creature and stabbed at the creature's middle. It jumped back, avoiding what could have been a fatal blow.

Astoria’s body still wouldn’t move and all she could do was watch as her party fought the thing while she was crumpled on the ground like a rag doll. Tilly and Garland engaged the thing together, circling around it warily.

Whenever it would try swinging for one of them, the other would stab at it with their sword. Meanwhile, Ladriel was pincushioning the thing with arrows. Her skill shots must have failed because none of the arrows managed to stun the creature or pierce it very far.

The monstrosity spun deftly and swung at Tilly, but she blocked it with her shield again. It was amazing that she could hold up against the impact of those blows. Had she been putting every stat point into strength and endurance?

No matter what her companions did during the short battle, the boss appeared to be unfazed. Astoria wondered just how much health the creature had.

Ladriel ran to Astoria and knelt down next to her while the others continued their deadly dance with the creature and poured a health potion into her mouth. She began to feel a lot better and almost instantly her breathing improved.

It occurred to her that it had probably broken some ribs when it hit her. Her stun status icon faded away and she let out a groan of pain before activating Regeneration.

That thing had taken nearly half of her health away in a single blow, but she would be okay enough to fight in a moment. Astoria stood up and was once tried to think of what they could do against that thing.

Ladriel turned away once she knew that Astoria was okay and resumed pelting the thing with arrows. She was nearly out of the several dozen arrows they had at their disposal.

"What is that thing?" Astoria asked. She was waiting for an opening to join the fray or at least roast the thing with a well placed Fire Bolt.

"It's a gloom. A powerful undead creature that has the power to awaken and control corpses," Ladriel replied.

Astoria watched in awe as Tilly and Garland danced around the large creature slashing and stabbing it over and over.

Come on. I just need a small opening.

As Tilly and Garland danced backwards from the thing, she got her opening. Astoria stretched her hand toward her target and focused her aura in the space just above her outstretched palm. "How about a little fire, scarecrow?" she said.

Almost instantaneously she felt the air around her change as the small fireball formed above her hand. The heat it gave off was intense, and she wasn’t sure how she wasn’t being burned herself. Once it formed she directed the roiling ball of flame towards the target and it shot forward at an incredible speed. She watched in amazement as the ball of flame actually grew larger as it traveled the short distance and before it impacted the gloom, it was around 8 inches in diameter.

Her spell bolt struck the beast and exploded with a deafening bang. For the first time, the thing let out a scream of agony instead of rage. The magical flames seemed to stick to the body of her enemy and it continued to burn for several seconds while the beast thrashed around on the ground.

Tilly and Garland moved in again while it was distracted and stabbed deeply into the gloom's chest, just above the mouth on its torso. The gloom screamed in agony once more, but the flames were dying out and it managed to swing its hand out to the side and grabbed Garland by the leg with its monstrous hand.

The grizzled soldier screamed in pain as the gloom squeezed his lower leg with incredible crushing force. Astoria could actually hear his bone snap like a twig.

The monster stood up, and dragged Garland into the air while Tilly slashed at it ineffectually and did its very best Hulk smash impression on the older man.

Garland’s face crunched as he was slammed into the ground and Astoria watched in horror as her spell completely fizzled out.

It wasn’t enough! I need to do something else or Garland is going to die!

The gloom was swinging Garland around like a club at Tilly, who had been forced to back away. Astoria quickly reached into her bag and retrieved the acid trap she had been saving. She quickly retrieved the vial of acid from it and tossed the contraption to the ground.

This had to work, it was their only chance. She didn’t have time to be careful and simply ran straight at the monster who was at the moment preparing to shove the battered lord’s arm into the maw on its stomach which was now open for the first time ever.

She only had one shot and she took it. The vial flew the six feet through the air and right into the mouth on the gloom’s torso. It broke open and acid sprayed all over inside the creature’s body.

It sizzled and smoked filling the room with an awful odor as the gloom literally melted from the inside out. The gloom dropped Garland to the ground and fell backwards, thrashing on the ground as it had earlier.

Pools of gore dripped from the creature’s middle as it continued to melt. The gloom clawed at its torso as it rolled around, but it only served to spread the acid onto its arms, causing them to burn as well.

Tilly hadn't wasted any time while Astoria stood there gawking, she had darted back in and was dragging garland away from the hopefully dying creature.

Tilly was pouring a health potion down his throat, but Astoria didn’t want to take her eyes off the thing. She needed to make sure the thing stayed down this time.

Not leaving anything to chance, she burst into motion and charged towards the gloom. It was still howling and thrashing on the ground, so she was able to easily get around it, to its head.

Once she was in position, she jumped in quickly with both daggers out and stabbed both of them into the gloom’s giant eye sockets before jumping back again.

It continued thrashing wildy and Astoria watched cautiously for a few seconds, all the while gripping her bloody daggers in white knuckled fists, and then the creature finally fell completely still.

The acid continued to eat through the creature even after its demise and the corpse continued to smoke. She was glad that she hadn’t triggered that trap. It looked like an awful way to die.

She stopped staring at the smoking corpse and rushed over to Garland’s side. She had a health potion on her still and popped the cork off, dumping it down the man’s throat just as TIlly had.

He was unconscious, but she and Tilly managed to force the liquid down his throat.

I need to check his status. He looks to be in really, really bad shape. She had a look and was shocked to see that the grizzled soldier had just 96/630 HP remaining even after the two potions. He was seriously on the verge of death.

"He's in a lot of trouble. We're going to need to give him every health potion we have and we'll need to rest here for several hours at least I think."

"I hate being underground any longer than we have to, but we have no choice." Ladriel said.

The elf then reached inside her bag and produced her remaining health potions. Hopefully, they would be enough to save his life and get him stabilized.

They administered the potions to Garland over the next few minutes and once he seemed to be breathing normally again, Astoria checked his status once more and saw that he had regained almost half of his health.

That's the best we can do. I wish that one of us had a real healing spell. I should prioritize buying a healing spell book when we get to a bigger city. Hopefully, we can find one and it won't cost an arm and a leg.

"What about the coin?" Tilly asked.

"I'll go check it out in a minute. Seeing how this place has been so far, I wouldn't doubt it if removing that thing will trigger some sort of trap. We don’t want to do anything rash while we’re down a fighter. Let's play it safe and wait until Garland is a little better off before doing anything hasty."

"Okay. Can we at least move away from that... thing? I don't know about you guys, but the smell is making me feel ill."

"Agreed. That foul creature was bad enough before you decided to cook it. Let's move to a corner?" Ladriel said.

"All right. But let's be careful when we move Garland."

The three of them carried Garland over to the side of the room and didn’t go back into the pillared areas. Astoria saw that the area in the back of the room wasn’t nearly as deep as the front part.

There was only one row of pillars and so if they wanted, they could go to the corner and still be close to where the pedestal was.

Astoria was still worried about the fact that they were probably still locked in here, but at least no zombies had come out of the sarcophagi by the entrance yet.

It had been a long time since Astoria had taken a look at her notifications and since they would be sitting around for a while, now was the perfect time to do so.

Notifications You have gained 1050 EXP for defeating 2 level 15 Wraiths You have gained 300 EXP for defeating level 10 Mimic You have gained 2,350 EXP for defeating a level 31 Gloom. Congratulations! You have completed a hidden quest: Cleanse the Catacombs of Garland Manor

Reward:

• 4500 EXP Congratulations! You have reached levels 10 and 11! You have gained 12 points to distribute.

Awesome! I’ve gotten so much stronger since we came down here! We were extremely lucky to have been able to take down something so powerful.

Astoria wondered if her luck stat had been in play at all with all the things she had found while down here. She wasn’t a superstitious person in real life really, but since luck was a tangible thing in this world, she was glad she had invested in it.

It was time to allocate her new stat points. She thought about what she wanted to accomplish in the near future and decided that being a little more sturdy couldn’t hurt.

She placed three points into endurance, three into strength, and three into luck. Seeing as how powerful her Fire Bolt spell had been, she wanted to become even stronger in that regard, so she placed her final three points into magic.

Okay, that looks good so far. Hopefully the extra vitality and endurance will help me take a hit a little better. Being stunned sucks.

It had been a long time since she had looked at Tilly's or Ladriel's pages, so she was curious as to how they had progressed as well. She started with Ladriel.

Spoiler: Ladriel's Stats Name Ladriel Level 012 (21,134/23,554 EXP to next Level) Class Ranger HP 165/165 MP 180/180 AP 0 Attributes Vitality 11 Magic 17 Endurance 19 Magic Resistance 17 Strength 9 Luck 5 Agility 27 Dexterity 35 Abilities • Wild Instinct

Skills • Archery - Level 15 (3% toward next level)

• Piercing Shot - Level 11 (1% toward next level)

• Stun Shot - Level 8 (78% toward next level)

• Tracking - Level 4 (34% toward next level)

• Stealth - Level 5 (82% toward next level)

• Swords - Level 5 (21% toward next level)

• Daggers - Level 2 (70% toward next level)

Looks like she's continued to put her points into agility and dexterity for the most part. Now for Tilly's...

Spoiler: Tilly's Stats Name Tilly Level 010 (12,074/14,137 EXP to next Level) Class None HP 397/450 MP 120/120 AP 0 Attributes Vitality 30 Magic 8 Endurance 24 Magic Resistance 11 Strength 23 Luck 8 Agility 9 Dexterity 15 Abilities • None

Skills • Cooking - Level 7 (86% towards next level)

• Stealth - Level 5 (14% towards next level)

• Swords - Level 5 (4% towards next level)

• Archery - Level 1 (0% towards next level)

No wonder she was able to block that thing. I was right, she’s been pouring most of her stats into tanky attributes. She sure has come a long way from being a girl who just wanted to cook and not be involved in any of the fighting.

Astoria didn't look at Garland's status, since due to his level she knew he hadn't leveled and most things probably hadn't changed much.

Now we just have to wait for Garland to get better, grab the coin, and get the hell out of here.

"I'm going to try to take a quick nap since we don’t really have anything else to do. Do you guys mind?" Astoria asked.

"Not at all. I'm actually still a bit tired as well. Can you keep first watch, Ladriel?"

"Yes. I'll let you guys get some rest."

Astoria moved into the corner and lay down on the floor using her bag as a lumpy pillow. Surprisingly, even though there was a rotting monster only about 100 feet away, she quickly fell asleep.

Spoiler: Astoria's Stats Name Astoria Level 011 (14,547/18,442 EXP to next Level) Class None HP 210/210 MP 19/165 AP 0 Attributes Vitality 17 Magic 16 Endurance 18 Magic Resistance 12 Strength 16 Luck 18 Agility 22 Dexterity 14 Abilities • Kleptomancy

Skills • Archery - Level 5 (13% toward next level)

• Stealth - Level 6 (22% toward next level)

• Swords - Level 1 (0% toward next level)

• Daggers - Level 6 (36% toward next level)

• Regeneration - Level 1 (25% toward next level)

• Fishing - Level 2 (71% toward next level)

• Detect Traps - Level 3 (58% toward next level)

• Disarm Traps - Level 5 (4% toward next level)

Magic • Fire Bolt - Level 1 (15% toward next level)