Chapter 19

Area of Effect

“It sure takes a while to absorb all those mana crystals, doesn’t it?” Pelle said.

She’d left early in the morning when I’d started the process of cultivating my mana pool. She’d been gone for a few hours, and by the time she returned, I was just finishing the last of my task.

“Yea, since I got this spellbook, it’s taken up a lot of my time.”

“What happens if you go a day without absorbing mana? What happens if you just leave the crystals?”

“Nothing, I think. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to find out. I’ve always been good about doing it every day.”

“So you’re all done for today?”

“Yea, what’s everyone else up to?”

“We’re all ready. Waiting on you now, so I came to see if you were ready.”

“Good timing,” I said. “I’m more than prepared, I think. I took the time to level up Burning Flare yesterday. I learned a new rune to add to the spell. Area of Effect. So now the spell has a level 1 Durability, level 50 Power, and level 50 Area of Effect.”

“Is that the highest level item you own?”

“Yea, but I haven’t tried the spell yet since I’d leveled it up. I’m a little nervous.”

“What is it supposed to do now that you’ve added Area of Effect?”

“Instead of one Burning Flare, it will be several flares at one time over a wider area.”

“Interesting,” Pelle said. “Will the damage be distributed or will each flare deal max damage?”

“Each flare will deal fifty damage. Next time we run into a horde of frog imps or something similar, I’ll be much more prepared. I think I’m still a bit in shock from seeing you and the others get slammed by those frogs. That’s why I wanted to level up some offensive stuff.”

“Makes sense,” Pelle said. “With a spell like that, I think you’re officially our most powerful member so far. You’re lucky you have the mana to level everything up so fast.”

I gave a sheepish shrug before we made our way down to the guild grounds. She was right. I had the resources which allowed me to level things up to a much greater degree than anyone else. Which got me thinking. Could I begin to dungeon crawl by myself? Would that be risky?

I'm pretty sure I could take on level 1 dungeons entirely on my own now. I had healing, shield, and ranged capabilities. With physical training, I was becoming quite proficient in wielding my flagstaff in close combat. In fact, I’m sure my parents might not recognize me the next time I visit them. I’d bulked up considerably.

“What’s so funny?” Pelle said. “You're smiling. I wanna know!”

“I was imagining my parents' faces when I saw them next. All of us have been training a lot more since the beginning of winter. We’ve all bulked up in the muscle department. Even you Pelle.”

She laughed and flexed her arm. Then she paused to strike a muscular pose.

“You think so?” she said.

“I’m not joking, we used to be much scrawnier.”

We mused over our time at Magic & Lance while we made our way across the grounds between walls of snow. The guild post was a warm welcome from the bitter winter wind.

Inside, our party was just making their final purchases. We had bedrolls, a ton of food, about forty waterskins, and just as many torches. My inventory pouch was beginning to get quite heavy.

“I guess we’re all set?” Robern said.

“It’s the middle of the day,” Arris said. “If we leave now, we’ll make it by morning two days from now. Thoughts?”

“Lead the way,” Vynk said.

We took the main road towards Verglade city. Then we turned off from the road and headed parallel to the valley. We traveled with the ridges of mountains in our sight. Mountains that rolled into the horizon, half veiled by distant winter storms. It was my hope that we would miss the storms and only have to deal with an intermittent wind. Despite the wind, It was warmer than the last time we’d traveled. For that I was thankful.

It felt good to be prepared. We didn’t need to worry so much about food and light since we’d really stocked up. The bedrolls were a nice touch and kept us fairly warm our first night out. We’d again dug a small cave into the snow and made ourselves cozy.

Our sleep was interrupted first by the sounds of howling winds and pelting ice. Since we had dug a long enough tunnel from the entrance, we only felt the barest of breezes, though the storm was loud. We’d all fallen back to sleep in no time.

Our second interruption was a bit of a nightmare. The storm had been raging with intense ferocity. None of us could return to sleep.

“It sounds like the storm is right above us,” Pelle said. “We’re right under the heart of it.”

Before any of us could say another word, our snow cave collapsed. The following minutes were utter chaos. Luckily, we had only been about a meter below the surface so it wasn’t hard to exhume ourselves.

Once we had made a headcount, we huddled against the driving needles of ice that wore our skin raw.

“It’s the ice,” Filo said, clutching her cloak tight around her. “The weight of it was too heavy. We should have considered that!”

“Well it’s too late for that now,” Robern said. “What do we do? Burrow even deeper?”

“It’s either that or travel in the storm for the rest of the night,” Lep said. “I can use fire spells to carve a path down a bit deeper. It’s the fastest way. Like last time.”

We were all suddenly encased in Pelle’s Star Armor. Each armor was a translucent bubble that was galaxy colored. Pelting ice beat against the bubble walls. Not a single glimmering light could match the shine in Pelle’s smile. She was proud of herself for keeping us protected from the weather.

“When it wears off, Tosin can help recast it, because I’ll be out of mana if I cast it a few more times.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “This kind of changes things now. Do we travel onward or try to burrow and go back to sleep?”

“To be honest,” Robern said, “I’m not remotely tired anymore. What about you guys?”

Not one of us was tired. Being buried beneath snow had woken each one of us for good. So there wasn’t really anything to deliberate. We made sure that we had all our gear, then marched through the storm. Though it was cold, we were thankfully protected from pelting ice and wind.

A day and a half later, we finally reached the dungeon mouth. Winter storms had since passed and left us with a sunny sky. It was just after breakfast and eerily quiet.

The silence was more than from the lack of life around us. Something about the dungeon mouth itself was harsh enough to command silence in its vicinity.

Amid the upheaval of mountainous terrain that sloped upward to dizzying heights was the dungeon mouth at the base. There were double doors made from wood that had been thoroughly burned. Before the doors were several campfires where previous adventurers must have paused for respite. It seemed that past fires must have licked at the doors until the whole thing had caught fire, several times over. Large metal knockers with lion faces holding rings adorned the center of each door. They were much higher than we could reach and seemed only to be decorative.

“Keepers,” Arris said.

“What’s that?” I said.

Arris pointed to the dungeon plaque embedded in rock at its base on the right.

“It says, ‘Keepers. Level Four,’” he said.

“Level four,” Pelle said, chewing her bottom lip. “Guys, we have to be extra careful.”

“Agreed,” Lep said. “It’s imperative that as we move forward in the dungeon, we do so as a group and very carefully.”

Vynk approached the doors and pushed open the door on the right. The hinges protested, snapped and sent a few puffs of rust out into the air. Beyond the door it was pitch black. One of the darkest dungeon entrances I’d ever seen.

“Good thing we have torches hunh?” Filo said, approaching the dungeon and peeking inside. “Look at the stone floor. It’s perfect, almost like textbook dungeon tunnels.”

“Naturally, I’ll go first and scan for traps and the like. Just give me a second to level up Sense Trap to level five at least.”

In the meantime, I passed around torches and we all gathered on the threshold. Still there was no sound. Not a breath of wind. Not a drop of water. Not a scurry of rat’s feet.

With just a bit of mana, we lit our torches and the flames leapt meters high.

“You can barely see the ceiling,” I said. “If that’s even what I’m seeing.”

Both the walls and floor were made with large square stones with weathered edges. Each one had been perfectly set beside the other. The geometry of it all was perfect, making this dungeon seem less wild and more designed.

“Level four,” Pelle said. “Guys, I’m telling you—I’m worried. Every dungeon I’ve been in so far seemed much more natural than this one.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “There’s an architecture to this. Someone—or something—went to the lengths of building this with care.”

“Actually,” Filo said. “It should have looked more unkempt and natural at level three and four. Being so neat is probably an evolutionary byproduct. However, I don’t think you see it on every higher level dungeon. Only some of them. It shouldn’t mean much, really.”

“Come on. We haven’t seen anything yet,” Vynk said.

With nothing else to be said, we all stepped fully inside. Each of our torches blazed quietly, illuminating the stone at our feet, stone walls, and worried faces. The tunnel stretched ahead of us. We went pace by pace, crouched and ready to engage in battle at a moment’s notice.

“Hold up,” Robern said.

“Trap?” Arris said.

“Yea. Already. Right there.”

Only a couple of meters in front of him was a change in the stonework. There was a large rectangular stone in place of where about twelve smaller stones would have been. The large stone was slightly depressed into the floor. A yellow glow from Robern’s spell illuminated the boundary of the stone patch. The color of stone was the same as those around it, and even without the yellow glow, it would have been easy to spot. Might have been easy to miss too if we hadn't been paying attention.

Robern approached the trap and crouched before it. He pressed his hand upon the stone but his hand went right through it.

“Careful!” Pelle said.

As soon as Robern’s hand went through the stone, the whole patch of it dissolved like a static mirage. We gathered near the edge to look down.

“Ouch,” Vynk said. “Nothing but spikes.”

“That’s a far drop,” Lep said in a small voice.

“Good eye, Robern,” I said. “This is a warning that we have to be on our toes.”

With enough room to pass around the trap, we went deeper into “Keepers. Level Four.”