Chapter 25

They decided to take Jack’s car to the dungeon. It was a walkable distance but they hoped that they would be laden down with loot and need a car to carry it back to the guild.

They parked in the nearby car park and walked over to the dungeon entrance. Just outside, within the restricted area, they saw a bunch of people wearing outdoor gear all gathered around strange equipment and instruments.

The group ignored them and went straight up the dungeon entrance.

As usual several members of the dungeon security team were there, standing guard. Jack went up to the one with a clipboard. The man turned to look at him through his riot gear helmet.

“Hey there, we’re the hunter team that's taken the dungeon clearance job this week,” Jack told him with a smile.

“Jack? Is that you?” the guard asked.

“Huh?” Jack eloquently replied.

“Jack, it's me Dave, you remember?” the guard said, taking off his helmet.

After a moment of staring Jack remembered. “Oh! Dave! I remember now, yeah.” Jack turned around to the others. “This is Dave, he sort of showed me the ropes when I did that dungeon tour escort thingy,” he told them.

“Yeah, sorry about that, you really shouldn’t have been fired.” Dave sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

“No worries, I found other stuff to do,” Jack reassured him with a shrug.

“Dungeon tours, I’ve heard about those, I’m surprised this is still up and running. Giving guided tours to hapless tourists in dungeons, I’m still kinda leery about the whole endeavour to be honest. Has no one gotten themselves killed yet?” Zack asked in scepticism.

Dave laughed awkwardly and a little nervously. “Ah ha ha, no no, there's er…..been a few close calls, but no ones died yet.” He laughed nervously again.

“No one's died yet? Wow, that's actually surprising,” Jack said before telling the others, “When I was here I had to kill a couple of dungeon goblins as they were stalking some people on the fifth level, I just about made it on time,” he said to a few raised eyebrows from the group.

“Er yeah, thanks again for that. Yeah, erm….” Dave leaned in close to Jack and began to whisper. “To be honest, the company’s being sued left, right and centre for accidents and…..near misses. I think this can only go on for so long. What's working for the hunters guild like?” he asked nervously.

“Oh? Erm….” Jack leaned in as well, feeling a little silly. “It's good, I think the lower ranked hunts and jobs are easier and even less dangerous than this, so you could easily join up and probably get paid better too,” he whispered. He heard Stacey and Rachael snigger behind him.

“Really? Well, I think I’ll look into it. It's gotta be better than this. I hate dealing with tourists, sometimes I’m actually tempted to let one of them die. The only good thing about this job is that when one of them vomits, the dungeon actually absorbs it, so we don’t have to clean it up,” Dave said in exasperation. Jack actually couldn’t help but laugh at that.

“Anyway, nevermind that. You guys are here for the weekly delve right? Ok, let me check you in,” Dave looked down at his clipboard and wrote a few things before getting Jack to sign his name. “Ok, you’re all set, have a good one.” Dave nodded and stepped aside.

“Thanks Dave, see ya later.” Jack thanked him and stepped into the dungeon with the others.

The unnatural inky blackness of the dungeon entrance consumed him and completely neutralised his eyesight, hearing and sense of smell momentarily before he emerged onto the first floor.

He looked around at the others and saw that they were all ready, in fact Nate and Rachael had already cheerfully marched onwards. Jack, Stacey and Zack followed them and they were off.

The first three floors were easy, they were occasionally ambushed by a few dungeon goblins but the team all dealt with the ambushes without any trouble.

When they reached the third floor, or the arena floor as it was known, Jack, Stacey and Zack were content to step back and watch Rachael and Nate enthusiastically deal with the band of goblins that attacked them.

Within twenty minutes they had already made it to the fourth floor, the underground lake.

Jack stepped over to the edge and leaned on the wooden railing, looking down into the dark waters and the faint blue glow at the bottom.

“Keep dreaming Jacky,” Rachael nudged him in the ribs. “There’s no way we’ll get what's down there.” She smirked.

“Oh yeah? Wanna bet?” he smirked back.

She became nervous. “Er no, seriously, please don’t try it. You will die,” she told him worriedly. “Do you even know what's down there?”

“Sure I do, a Cerulean Vitae flower and a bunch of fish like monsters guarding it, I am quite familiar with what's down there, trust me.”

“What's up?” Stacey asked as she walked down the stairs from the previous floor, followed by Zack and Nate.

“I think Jack wants to go down there,” Rachael told her worriedly, pointing at the water.

“Oh no no no no no no no, absolutely not. You are so not going down there. Pretty much everyone who’s ever gone down there has died. You want the flower right? You’ll never reach it, it's a trap,” Stacey told him firmly.

“I can reach it and I have reached it. What do you think the whole Barry incident was all about huh?” he asked her.

“Barry? What's he got to do with….oh. He took you down here for the Cerulean Vitae?” she asked.

“Yep, he and his goons dragged me down here, threw me into the lake and then Barry told me to….light it up I think he said? Anyway, I’ve found that dealing with monsters whilst in the water is pretty easy, all I need to do is get close to them and discharge some lightning,” Jack explained.

“And you actually got the flower the last time?” Zack asked with surprise.

“Sort of, I got it but it turned out I stood too close to the thing when I let rip in a final attack, it damaged the flower and it fell apart in my hands. I nearly cried, I'm not gonna lie.” Jack winced at the memory.

“Do you really feel confident you can get it again with no issue?” Zack asked with interest, Nate simply looked on before speaking up.

“Oh hey! I remember! Back in Skipwith nature reserve, you channelled a massive lightning blast into that big pond. Yeah, it killed everything that was in the water, even that big thing with the tentacle on the bottom. Good times.”

Stacey narrowed her eyes in suspicion at Jack. “You went to one of the old nature reserves? Those places are really dangerous. When was this?”

“Err….it was a little while ago. Don’t worry, I had Nate with me the entire time,” Jack tried to assuage her before giving a surreptitious nod to Nate who nodded back in solidarity.

“That's not necessarily a good thing,” Stacey muttered before sighing. “Do you really think you can get in and get out of there without getting killed?”

“I’m like…..ninety percent certain,” he nodded to her with a happy smile, sensing he was wearing her down.

“Hmph, well, I won't stop you. But if things go wrong we won't be able to help you. You know that right?” she told him, hoping Jack would reconsider.

“I know, don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” he reassured her.

“How about we wait for now huh? Let's get to the bottom of the dungeon and clear it out, then on the way back, if Jack feels up to it he can go for a swim,” Zack suggested. Rachael simply nodded as she was chewing her fingernails with a worried look on her face.

Before Jack could answer Stacey interjected. “That sounds like a good idea. Let's do what we came here for first. Then we’ll come back to this.” She gave an expectant look to Jack who simply shrugged in silent acceptance.

With that the group moved on to the fifth floor, the large cave-like level with the large natural stone columns reaching the ceiling, stalactites and fireflies lighting the entire cave.

They made their way through, each of them was familiar with this floor and knew not to be distracted by the fireflies. Occasionally a goblin or two would jump out at them but again, it was easily dealt with. Unfortunately the loot so far wasn’t great, just the occasional dropped weapon that no one wanted. Apparently the loot was supposed to become more valuable on the last few floors, nine, ten, eleven and twelve.

When they reached the pitch black sixth floor, which was a mirror image of the fifth, Stacey turned to Jack.

“Have you ever made it this far before?” she asked.

“Yup, got chased down here by Barry’s goons, I stumbled through it for ages before I accidentally found the way down to the next floor. I suppose I was lucky not to get shanked by a goblin or whatever’s lurking down here,” he answered.

“There are no monsters on this floor,” she told him as the group set off. Nate and Zack led the way, each had an arm raised and a ball of fire blazing in their hands, throwing off a warm orange glow.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, people say this dungeon is low levelled and weak. But I think it's just sneaky. A lot of dungeons are more straightforward, you go in and you fight monsters, some hunters die and some don’t. But with this dungeon, it has floors that are designed to be distracting or to lull you into a false sense of security. Take this floor for example, I think the dungeon made it so that you have to wander around in the dark for ages, I bet it's supposed to tire you out and give the dungeon more time to sap your energy. Or that's my theory anyway.” She shrugged.

“Hmm, you could be right. People say the dungeons are like monsters or semi sentient, so it wouldn’t surprise me if that were true,” Jack said.

The group continued on, they made sure to grab handfuls of Everburn coal from the braziers they passed by and stuff them in bags. Nate as usual seemed to know exactly where he was going, even in a pitch black dungeon, he led them directly to the stairs and the entrance to the seventh floor.

At the bottom of the stairs they emerged into a weak grey light and the small misty forest.

“We should just let the goblins on this floor ambush us then move straight to the eighth floor, that's where all the valuable stuff starts,” Stacey stated, everyone agreed.

They walked cautiously through the forest, Jack could faintly hear the sound of running water and remembered the river he’d found during his earlier involuntary jaunt through the dungeon.

They didn’t have to wait long for the goblins on this floor to ambush them. The first Jack knew of them was when he felt something impact the raised collar of his flak jacket. He brought a hand up and picked out what appeared to be a feathered dart stuck in his collar, he looked at it for a second before another dart pinged off his helmet.

“Ambush!” Stacey cried as she brought up her giant sabre.

“Lets get ‘em!” Nate cried with a grin as he plunged into the surrounding bushes, the sounds of pained shrieks from goblins swiftly emanated from his location.

The others wasted no time and followed his lead. The camouflaged guerilla goblins were swiftly dealt with in no time at all. Jack was severely tempted to drain the last goblin he fought, using it as a live cultivation source like he knew he could. But he didn’t like the thought of what everyone might think of something like that.

He discreetly put the struggling goblin down and put a spear through its chest, watching the multicoloured light seep out of it, surrounding him before it dissipated.

With that done, the group of hunters made their way through the forest and the scattered ruins before they found the stairs down to the eighth floor.

Jack’s first step onto the eighth floor was into ankle deep water. He momentarily withdrew his foot and looked at it in disgust, he looked around for a dry spot of ground before he realised the entire floor was covered in water.

“Welcome to the sewers Jacky!” Rachael announced as she trudged past him into the water. The others all stepped past him, he sighed before stepping back into the ankle deep water.

The eighth floor was known as the sewer floor, consisting of narrow stone dark passageways filled with ankle deep and waist deep water. This was one of the floors that dungeon delvers often spent the most amount of time in. Sometimes they got lost because the passageways would alter their configuration day by day so it was impossible to map them out, though as far as mazes go it was pretty simple. Mainly however, people spent their time down in the sewers because medium grade water crystals would sometimes form on this level. Even if a hunter didn’t manage to come out with anything else, a medium grade water crystal could fetch a hefty price on the market and make the entire dungeon delving endeavour worth it.

Jack followed the rest of the group but Zack turned around as they walked.

“Er hey Jack?” Zack called back to him.

“Hm?”

“Can you not use any lightning abilities while we’re on this floor please?” he asked with a nervous smile.

“Huh why? Wait….oh! Oh right! Yeah that could've been bad couldn’t it? Ha! Thanks! Haha!” Jack had been confused for a moment until he remembered where they were and what everyone was standing in. Water, nothing but ankle deep, electrically conductive water. All he would’ve needed to do was run a relatively strong electrical charge through his body and he’d have fried his team.

The others shared a laugh which echoed through the narrow corridors.

Jack followed behind the rest of the group and made a conscious effort not to dip into his lightning core. As usual Nate and Zack led the group with balls of fire in their hands lighting the way.

They made a note of which direction the water was sluggishly flowing, apparently the only way to find the next set of stairs to the next level was to follow the water. After they had established the direction of the water flow they began exploring.

Stacey was determined to find a water crystal, she’d been in the dungeon twice before but never found one. As luck would have it, another hunter with the water element had told her a trick for finding water crystals in shallow water. You simply have to look for eddys, small patches of turbulence or little whirlpools. It turned out to be trickier than it actually sounded and the group had to slog through ankle and waist deep water for thirty minutes before Stacey let out a triumphant cry at having finally found one.

The sewers didn’t only contain water however, which was mercifully clean despite being called a sewer, there were also enemies to fight. Slimes, low ranked water slimes could be found in relative abundance in the sewers. The slimes could move extremely fast and fluidly within the water and if a hunter wasn’t careful they could be deadly opponents. However despite their speed they were still relatively weak, a burst of elemental energy was normally enough to finish them off.

After Stacey had found the water crystal they made their way out of the sewers. They found the stairs going down without trouble, the ankle deep water gradually lessened and by the time they set foot on the stairs the water was being drained either side running off through some gutters to who knows where.

When they reached the bottom they emerged into a graveyard. A wide expanse of flat grassy terrain and gentle sloping hills stretched out before them. The scene might've been idyllic if not for all the gravestones everywhere and the pitch black sky or whatever passed for a sky in the dungeon. The light source was an old favourite, dungeon fireflies, they flew around all over the level and concentrated most around the gravestones.

“Let's get to it then,” Zack said before forward.

“What are we looking for here? Anything good?” Jack asked the group.

“Black Loam, that's the stuff people tend to harvest here,” Stacey informed him.

“Ok, and what's Black Loam?”

“Basically it's a type of soil that pretty much anything will grow in, it’ll even revitalise dead plant matter, it's used in high end compost,” she informed him.

“Oh ok, that does sound like it might be valuable,” Jack admitted, impressed.

“Yeah, I think it's about one hundred and fifty pounds per kilogram in today's market, so we’ll all want to fill a sack,” she spoke up to the rest of the group.

Everyone murmured an affirmative back to her.

“Anyway, just watch out for the stuff that crawls out of the graves, Jack,” she said.

“What crawls out of the graves?” he asked suspiciously.

“Whaddaya think?” she smirked at him, everybody else let out a snigger.

They approached the first cluster of graves. They seemed to be an odd mixture of small and large gravestones, some were old and weatherbeaten, others were brand new and shiny, some looked freshly filled in and others were empty.

Stacey nudged him. “The Black Loam is the mounds of fresh looking black soil, get at least a sackful, Jack,” she told him as she and the others all split up, going to different graves. He nodded.

He approached one of the graves and the small mounds of black soil around it, he reached into his premium harvesting kit on his belt and brought out a strong refuse sack from a roll.

Before he could get to harvesting however, the grave by his feet began to shift.

He watched as the rough patchy soil under the headstone slowly parted and a skeletal hand scrambled its way out of the ground.

“Huh, skeletons? Undead?” The skeletal hand was followed by an arm and a skull, the skeleton turned its head and empty eye sockets towards Jack and gave out a snarl as it struggled to free itself from the ground.

He watched it impassively for a moment before stepping closer and stamping down hard on its skull. The skull caved in and the skeleton ceased its struggles to get out of the ground.

Skeletons? Really? He shook his head in mild exasperation. It's said that dungeons modelled themselves after their surroundings and whatever they happened to take in, someone must’ve thrown in an old video tape with a B horror movie in it.

After his epic duel with the unholy undead abomination, Jack squatted down and proceeded to scrabble through the dirt, gathering as much Black Loam as possible. When he stood back up he looked for more grave clusters to harvest from, that was when he noticed numerous skeletons had managed to free themselves from various graves and were beginning to surround him.

He dropped the bag of dirt and unhooked his axe, the approaching skeletons all let out a strange hissing noise accompanied by a grating clatter of bones. They all wore filthy torn rags, the remnants of whatever clothing the dungeon thought appropriate for a corpse to wear for a funeral.

They wielded no weapons and so Jack stepped forward with a smile, he ran a lightning current through his axe and swept it before him. A white mist and crackles of lightning travelled several metres in front of him in a wide arc, enveloping the first few skeletons. They juddered and spasmed, the clinking and clanking of bones became louder and the first rank fell into a pile of bones.

After that he proceeded to move amongst the rest of the skeletal rabble and lash out at everything within reach of his axe. His opponents were slow and clumsy but much stronger than they looked, a few managed to grab him and he learnt that though they didn’t use weapons, their bony fleshless fingers could double as claws.

After several minutes of fighting, Jack was surrounded by mounds of bones and rags. He thought the enemy seemed endless and wondered how the others were doing when suddenly a large flaming sword carved through the skeleton in front of him. The skeleton was sent flying away in flaming fragments revealing a grinning Nate, the others were also behind him, finishing off their own kills.

“You good Jack? Having fun?” Nate asked with a somewhat manic grin.

“Yeah, all good here, skeletons huh?” Jack gestured around them.

“Skeletons! Ha! They go down easy don’t they?” Nate leaned on his sword and kicked a loose bone across the ground, it trailed multicoloured light as it tumbled away.

“Mm,” Jack watched as everyone finished up. “Everyone ready to go?” he asked and they nodded.

They walked up to a small mausoleum on top of a hill and headed inside, there was a set of stairs leading down, the way was lit by a trail of candles on either side on the walls.

When they got to the bottom they emerged into what appeared to be bright sunlight. In front of them was a wide stretch of bare, rocky, flat earth for several hundred metres ending at a large stone wall. The wall seemed to be about a couple of hundred metres long and on either side the walls were cut off by natural cliff faces rising above and behind the wall.

Before he could move forward, Stacey stopped him with a hand.

“So this bits gonna be a bit hectic,” she told him.

“Yep, gonna need to zigzag,” Rachael chimed in.

“Zigzag? Hectic?” He cocked his head in confusion.

“Mm, you see those walls over there? Those are battlements, they’ve got siege weapons and a couple dozen goblins with crossbows up there. They’re not very good shots to be honest but we still need to be careful,” Stacey explained.

“Okay.” He nodded. And then Zack spoke up.

“Generally, the way dungeon teams who come here do it, is to have one hunter run to the battlements first, they go off at an angle and zigzag, that way they draw the fire of the goblins up on the wall. Then when they get about a third of the way, the rest of the team makes the run, most of the goblins should still be reloading by that point,” Zack explained.

“Okay, but how do we get over the walls when we get there? I don’t see any ladders or siege towers,” Jack asked.

“Oh, yeah. You’ll see when you reach ‘em. The walls are crap, they look imposing from a distance but when you get close you’ll see they're just a loose collection of brick and rocks. They’re only about twenty metres high so you can just climb up by hand, easy peasy,” Zack told him.

“Ah right, well I’m ready if everyone else is,” Jack said and they all nodded.

“Great! I’ll go first!” Nate said happily before Rachael shoved him out of the way.

“Oh no you won’t! I am! Hahahaha!” She laughed as she ran forward, leaving an indignant Nate in her wake.

Zack rolled his eyes and Stacey giggled, everyone watched Rachael zip forward towards the wall in the distance before she started zigzagging. Jack began to hear quiet clacking noises from the wall and saw projectiles flying towards Rachael, crossbow bolts. A second later a louder clacking noise was heard and something much larger flew its way over from the wall towards Rachael. He looked at Stacey with a questioning glance.

“Ballistae bolts,” she told him. “I told you the goblins have siege weapons up there.”

Despite the numerous projectiles flying from the wall, there didn’t appear to be any need to worry, the goblins were terrible shots. Rachael avoided everything with ease as she gracefully flowed around enemy projectiles and turned in different directions with incredible agility and speed that would have an olympic sprinter apoplectic with envy.

When she was about a third of the way to the walls Stacey spoke up.

“Okay time to go.” Everyone began running forward separately, zigzagging, running through a desultory hail of inaccurate crossbow bolts.

When he got halfway to the walls Jack saw a large ballista bolt impact about ten metres to his left but that was the closest he came to death. He turned on his time dilation perception and watched crossbow bolts fly by him in slow motion. He made it the rest of the way without issue before Stacey, Nate and Zack and then began climbing up the wall just behind Rachael.

He could hear some high pitched garbled voices gabbering unintelligibly from the top of the wall before someone started throwing rocks and stones at them from the top. Some missed but a few stones and bricks hit his helmet, he put more effort into his climb. When he got to the top Rachael was already there, terrorising the mass of goblins gathered to face her.

She sent strong blasts of concentrated wind into their ranks to stop them from using their crossbows and all they could do was crouch down and shield their faces from the strong buffeting winds.

Jack stepped to her side and brought out his axe. He ran a charge through it and swung an arc of lightning into the massed cowering ranks of goblins. The other three reached the top of the wall a moment later and with their help the fight was soon over.

After that they split up and walked along the battlements, making sure they’d got all the goblins. The goblins manning the battlements seemed to be better equipped than other dungeon goblins Jack had seen. They wore chainmail and tabards, with plate helmets and various pieces of leather armour, they were still filthy and ragged but they looked much better than other goblins in the dungeon. They also wielded decent looking steel shortswords, axes and crossbows that sometimes dropped as loot.

The top of the ramparts themselves were fairly basic, it was a rough uneven walkway of bare brick about two metres wide with the parapet rising up another three feet. It seemed like everything that involved goblins was done on a budget and shabby as a rule.

On the inner side of the walls was a small courtyard and a mediaeval looking fortress built into the cliff face, the fort was only slightly taller than the walls and seemed to be made of the same rough stone and brickwork as the wall.

The group clambered down what passed for stairs into the courtyard and walked up to the large rickety wooden double doors leading into the castle.

Nate pressed a hand to the doors and pushed them open, the doors gave ways with a painful screech and everyone stepped through.

The interior of the fort was lit by flaming braziers on either side of the gate and burning wall sconces. They began exploring the small castle which was counted as the eleventh floor of the dungeon overall.

The fortress was filled to the brim with dungeon goblins, Nate and Rachael were having the time of their lives as they ran amok throughout the fort. Many of the goblins were actually garbed in full plate mail and wielded relatively high quality steel weapons. The armour and weapons the goblins dropped as loot could be sold for decent prices outside the dungeon, but the main draw of this floor for many hunters were the treasure chests.

Well, they weren’t exactly treasure chests, more like pieces of furniture that sometimes held valuable items inside. The dungeon was a little strange when it came to furniture. The vast majority of the interior of the fortress was rather shabby and bare, but it was filled with many rooms that occasionally held the odd rather nice piece of furniture in comparison. You could enter a decrepit dusty room filled with garbage and broken pieces of detritus, but in the middle of the room there might be a beautiful armoire or chest of draws that looked brand new, heavily gilded and should probably be in a museum or a seventeenth century european noble’s country manor.

Obviously, in the early days when the dungeon had first been discovered and dungeons were still a new thing, hunters had rushed up to these wonderful containers and immediately opened them. The results of opening them were mixed, sometimes a dungeon delver would find a genuinely valuable item like a piece of jewellery or precious stone, other times they might find something a past hunter had dropped and for some reason the dungeon perhaps thought it might appeal to another delver.

Other times the results were more interesting, some pieces of furniture were more than they appeared. They were actually monsters, known as mimics, they would lure a delver in close, appearing to be nothing more than an innocuous piece of furniture before opening up into a bewildering array of teeth and tentacles.

That actually seemed to be what Nate and Rachael were currently looking for. They dragged Jack, Stacey and Zack from room to room, opening a variety of fancy looking containers, finding one item after another. First they found a pearl necklace, then a mobile phone, a full bag of crisps, a gold watch, a full magazine of bullets then a tv remote control oddly enough.

In the last room however they found a large king size four poster bed with velvet curtains, it seemed highly misplaced in a room which had a small chair sized port-a-potty in the corner.

Rachael walked up to the bed and jabbed it with her spear, Nate got down onto all fours and looked underneath. When nothing happened they looked at each other in confusion.

“Maybe someones supposed to lie in it?” Jack suggested.

They both looked unsure about that, opening a door or a drawer was one thing, laying down in a bed that was possibly a mimic was like a fly knowingly flying into a Venus fly trap. After a minute of watching Nate and Rachael try to decide who would lay down by playing rock paper scissors, Jack got bored and simply flopped backwards into the bed.

For a moment nothing happened and everyone stared, transfixed in horror. When nothing continued to happen, Jack allowed himself to relax into the rather soft plush bed, but then he felt the covers of the bed start to shift and writhe. He felt himself getting wrapped up by the covers and the mattress started to fold in half, trying to envelop him, the wooden posts of the bed began to creak and shift and everyone let out cries of alarm as the entire bed came alive. Tentacles emerged from underneath the mattress and lashed out at them.

Having been in a similar situation before Jack knew just what to do, he ran a strong current of electricity through his body and let it pour into the bed. Something shrieked and the entire beg seemed to spasm and convulse, the covers loosened their grip allowing Jack to squirm out of them. He did so but was in no hurry, he upped the charge and casually rolled out of bed, taking his time.

The bed continued its pained shrieking, tentacles appeared from various places in the bed and flopped around as they convulsed from the electricity. Large teeth had sprouted around the edges of the mattress, ringing it. He carefully picked his way over those and got out of the bed. By now the mimic was in no state to attack anyone, it continued to weakly convulse but the entire set up had collapsed, no longer resembling a bed but instead a loose pile of broken wood, tentacles, teeth and ripped fabric.

Jack poured in more lightning to finish it off. Everyone stared down at it for a few moments, seeing if it had any more fight left but when it didn’t move they allowed themselves to relax. However a strange gurgle from the corner drew their attention.

They looked and saw the port-a-potty in the corner rattling and shaking and spilling a blue fluid from its closed lid. Suddenly the lid opened and a single barbed tentacle shot up through the toilet seat, ejecting blue fluid around it with a burping noise. The port-a-potty menacingly rattled and edged its way over to them, tentacle flailing around.

“Nope,” Jack declared before walking straight out of the room followed swiftly by the others.

“This dungeon is sick!” declared Racahel.

With that they finished their exploration of the small castle and made their way over to the main hall back on the ground floor. The main hall was considered the twelfth floor of the dungeon and was the boss room.

The main hall was separated from the rest of the castle by a long corridor leading up to another set of large double doors.

“Ready guys?” Stacey asked. Everyone nodded with varying degrees of enthusiasm from Nate’s manic smile and rapid nodding to Zack’s indifferent shrug.

She pushed open the doors and everyone stepped into the main hall. It was a large room about fifty metres by fifty, the floor was cold stone and large metal chandeliers hung from the ceiling a few dozen feet above. Also, randomly hanging from the ceiling and walls were dirty, ragged, blank banners of various colours.

At the far end of the hall, waiting for the hunter team was the final fight.

Dozens of well armed and armoured dungeon goblins milled around and amongst them, sat on a large wooden throne was a large humanoid figure. It stood up with a grunt and began moving towards them. As it got closer Jack got a better look.

It was an ogre, upwards of three metres tall, bulging with muscle and brown skinned. A C ranked monster, ogres were classified as being amongst humanoid sentient monsters, capable of wielding weapons and tools as well as working in groups, whenever one was discovered a priority hunt would be immediately issued.

As it approached, followed by its cackling minions, it leered at them menacingly with a growl and hefted a gigantic cleaver. With guttural growl directed at its minions, the dungeon goblins all surged forward with shrill shrieks and charged the hunters.

“Nate! Zack! Pour some fire on them!” Stacey cried out. Nate and Zack obliged and expelled thick plumes of fire from their open palms which washed over the charging goblins.

The goblins immediately let out pained panicked shrieks as they were barbecued in their metal armour. As Nate and Zack were dealing with that, Stacey, Jack and Rachael circled around and attacked the ogre.

The ogre was much faster than its bulk implied, almost immediately it picked Stacey as a target and charged over to her. It raised up its gigantic cleaver which looked larger than a person and brought it down onto her. Jack could only watch in horror as he wasn’t able to get close or act in time, however Stacey managed to get her large sabre up to parry the blow with a terrific clang. She just about managed to avoid being bisected by the strike but the force of it brought her to her knees.

Before the ogre could wind up for another hit, Rachael stepped up with her hands outstretched and with a look of concentration and her tongue out between her lips. She performed a strange twisting motion with her hands and Jack felt his ears pop. The ogre however must have felt something altogether different because it immediately staggered and brought a hand up to cover one of its ears, it grunted with pain and dropped to one knee.

It looked as if it had lost its balance as it dropped to all fours, letting go of its cleaver for a few moments. It unsteadily tried to get to its feet but dropped back down with an angry snarl.

Rachael helped Stacey get up before telling Jack, “That's gonna wear off in a second Jack!”

He nodded and right on cue the ogre snarled again and began to rise, swinging its cleaver through the air several times.

Jack thought now was as good a time as any to test out one of his new toys. He unhooked the new earth crystal infused black chain and began to swing it around. The ogre turned to him with a grunt and lumbered over towards him. It snarled and just as it was about to get in range for a cleaver swing, Jack let fly with his chain. The chain wrapped around the ogre’s midriff and arms, Jack poured some lightning in. Immediately the chain became much heavier but he made sure he was only holding a single strand so he was still able to lift it.

The beast however crumpled to its knees with a strangled and confused grunt, Jack ran around the monster and wrapped more of the chain around it. He poured more lightning down the chain and the monster looked like it was being crushed, wrapped up in nearly fifteen metres of earth crystal reinforced steel tungsten chain. Now that the monster was more or less incapacitated Jack took out another new item.

He unsheathed his new spear and extended it to its full three metre length. He picked a part of the monster's upper torso and charged in, the spear head sunk in deeply and the monster let out another pained grunt. Jack pulled the trigger.

With a muffled explosive crump the upper half and head of the ogre disappeared into a massive eruption of flames, smoke and multicoloured light which reached all the way up to the ceiling high above. The spearhead ripped upwards from the recoil and Jack staggered back with the force.

He watched, dumbstruck as the remnants of the ogres body toppled sideways onto the floor. He sagged with relief when he realised it was dead.

Behind him the short one sided battle between Zack, Nate and the goblins they were immolating finished up. Jack turned to Rachael as she squeaked at him.

“What was that!? That wasn’t a lightning attack surely!” He turned around and saw Rachael staring at him with wide eyes, Stacey was sitting down at her feet, also looking at him, faintly impressed.

“Erm…it's one of the new weapons I got from Gary, my smith. The explosive spear, though I don’t know if that's the name he’s going with.” He showed it to them. “It takes a big explosive shell in the magazine here, all I need to do is stab the enemy then pull the trigger, then boom,” he told them as he ejected the spent casing from the spearhead. Unnoticed by anyone, the casing almost immediately disappeared into multicoloured light and was gone before it hit the ground, greedily absorbed by the dungeon.

“I want one!” Nate and Rachael cried out at the same time.

He turned to Stacey. “You ok?” he asked as he helped her up.

“Yeah,” she grunted and winced as she stiffly got up. “It took everything I had to block that thing, thought I was a gonna. Good thing I invested in a new sword. Remind me to thank Gary when I see him next, will ya?” she asked and Jack nodded with a smile.

Zack walked over to the ogre’s cleaver which had dropped from its corpse and hadn’t been reabsorbed by the dungeon. With some effort he picked it up, it was two metres long and made of a strange black steel.

“I think this thing’s been infused with an earth crystal,” he told the group.

“We’ll be able to sell it for a decent sum then,” Stacey replied happily. “Let's take it with us.”

They decided to leave the various dropped weapons and armour from the goblins as they were just simple steel, instead electing to take the ogre boss’s weapon with them.

With the boss fight over they left the castle and began to make their way upwards and out of the dungeon. Though not before Jack insisted someone take a picture of him sitting on the ogre’s throne holding its cleaver, which prompted everyone else to also have their picture taken in the same way as well.

As they were walking through the graveyard back on the ninth floor Jack turned to Rachael.

“What was that attack you did on the ogre? Where it dropped to its knees, it was like it lost its balance,” he asked her.

“Oh that! That's something I’ve been working on lately. Anyway it actually did lose its balance because I blew out one of its ear drums,” she told him.

“Whoa really? How does that work?”

“Basically I just generate a strong bit of air pressure by one of its ears and that burst its eardrum. There's this liquid in the inner ear for most living things that senses motion and gravity and stuff. But if you fuck around with that then they lose their balance completely,” she told him as they walked.

“Huh, that actually sounds seriously useful in a fight,” he admitted.

“Mm, I’m still working on refining the technique, but I swear one of these days I’m gonna make a monster puke from motion sickness,” she said with determination.

As they were slogging their way back through the sewers, Jack continued conversing with Rachael.

“So, what's using the wind element like Rachael? Everyone seems to have different ideas about different elements,” he asked her.

Rachael didn’t answer for a moment as she pushed her way through the waist deep water that was flowing against them.

“What's it like?.....Well….it's like…when you feel your core, you can also feel the air around you, you know? It's like the air sort of becomes a part of you, like an arm or a leg. Hmm…..” She stopped for a moment to think. “And like, when you move that extra arm, the air moves too? Huh, I suppose it's not the wind element at all, it's more like the air element isn’t it? Haha!”

“Huh, ok so then, what can you do with it? What abilities do people have with the wind or air element?” he asked in curiosity.

“Hmm…..well, just pushing the air around is like, step one, the basics of the basics. Then as you get better at that you can generate gusts of wind. Then you start being able to condense the air, that's sort of where I’m at right now. I heard about this guy who can condense the air into an actual cutting blade, but that's a load of bull if you ask me.” She waved her hand through the air dismissively at the notion. “But I do know about someone else who’s able to create concussive shockwaves which can shatter bones, that's what I’m aiming for,” she told him with savage anticipation.

“Uh huh…”

The team continued to chat as well as gripe and moan at lugging their loot back up through the dungeon. Eventually however they finally reached the fourth floor.

Jack approached the wooden railings and leaned on them, looking down into the water with a growing smile on his face.

“Are you sure about this?” Stacey asked from behind him.

“Oh yeah, definitely!” he replied as he dropped his loot and began taking off his armour. He dumped it all on the floor, kicked off his boots and took off his trousers to reveal the combat wetsuit underneath.

While everyone gathered around and discussed what Jack was about to do, the feelings of the group were still mixed, Jack started to hyperventilate on purpose in order to oxygenate his blood so he could stay underwater longer.

Without any further ado, he gave everyone a cheerful little salute before diving into the dark waters once more. He swam down and just like last time he saw the blue glow at the bottom of the lake and the dark shapes swimming around it.

He swam down and the dark shapes suddenly darted from their positions and raced towards him. This time he felt no fear, but anticipation. He ran a charge through his body and swam down to meet the enemy.

The aquatic monsters immediately tried to swarm him, but simply coming into contact with Jack was enough to disable them where he could finish them off at his leisure. One monster after another attacked him until the assault slowed down. He handled most of it with ease, though one jagged toothed monstrosity did pass a little too near his groin than he was comfortable with.

He’d taken care of the first wave of monsters that had attacked and now like last time the remnants were circling him, trying to make sure he didn’t make for the surface and a breath of air.

So just like last time, he headed down towards the Cerulean Vitae, he knew that would provoke an aggressive response. He wasn’t disappointed, the aquatic monsters darted in towards him, in ones and twos they tried to attack him.

However, Jack decided to do something a little different this time. While he’d been fighting in the rest of the dungeon, he’d been with his friends and hadn’t been able to cultivate from a live dungeon goblin or other monster. He didn’t really want to show that sort of thing to the others. But down here, he was free to do as he liked.

This was also the only real opportunity he was going to get for this sort of cultivation; he'd tried to get the same cultivation results from live monsters outside dungeons, but it hadn’t worked. It seemed there was something about dungeon monsters that made them extremely rich cultivation sources.

So now, a large set of teeth with fins swam towards him and Jack got ready. It lunged towards him and Jack grabbed it by the side of its mouth and sent a strong pulse of lightning into it. It wasn’t enough to kill it, but instead it stunned it, leaving Jack to try to cultivate. And he did.

He felt a surge of white hot power hammering into his core. Any fatigue he felt before was now washed away with a tide of pure euphoric energy. Another fish darted towards him, he let some air bubbles escape from his mouth as he grinned.

One fish monster after another, around a dozen in total, he cultivated from them all. They weren’t small monsters either, some were almost as big as he was but he still managed to drain them all. What was strange was he didn’t feel the effects like he normally would, no headache, no sore spasming muscles, no nothing. However towards the end of the fighting the monsters had begun to move a lot slower and he also felt like he was a lot faster.

In anycase, now that the fighting was done it was time to harvest. He’d made certain not to damage the plant this time so it should still be intact. He headed back up to the surface to get a special container he’d bought along with his premium harvesting kit.

As his head broke the surface of the water he heard sighs of relief and one person whooping. He was in the middle of the lake and spotted the others, he waved at them before swimming towards them.

“Jack! Are you ok?! What happened!?” Stacey cried, sounding shocked.

“Huh? Whaddaya mean? I’m fine! I took care of the monsters down there and the flower is up for grabs!” he responded, though he noticed his voice sounded a little off to his ears. In fact Stacey also sounded strange, why was she talking so slowly?

“You’re fine? Have you looked at yourself?” Zack pointed at him in shock.

“Dude you look wicked!” Nate gave him a thumbs.

Jack tilted his head in confusion, everyone sounded off, like they were all talking in slow motion. He looked down at himself and saw that parts of his body appeared to have blue glowing lines or cuts running up and down it, actually shining through his wetsuit. Blue white arcs of electricity also seemed to be trailing up and down his body.

“Oh! What the fuck!? Why am I glowing?” He spun around, trying to look at himself.

“What happened down there Jack?” Stacey asked, seemingly very very slowly. He thought about his answer, he didn’t want to tell her he’d been essentially devouring live monsters down there. He needed to lie.

“Errrrrrrrr, I think I might’ve dipped into my core too much, maybe I overdid it?”

“Has this ever happened before?” Zack asked him. Rachael approached him cautiously and tried to prod him with a finger.

“Yeowch!” She leapt back, furiously shaking her hand.

“Nope never.” He shrugged helplessly. “Always finding out new stuff I guess.”

Rachael looked at him a little resentfully. “Your voice sounds staticky and it's like you’re in fast forward or something.” She sucked the injured finger.

“Erm, I don't suppose anyone knows if this will wear off?” he asked in concern.

“Hmm, I’ve heard of things similar to this happening. Don’t know the cause of it though. But yeah, it should wear off in a while,” Stacey assured, about to pat him on the shoulder but stopping just shy of it.

“Maybe someone else should go down and get the flower?” Zack suggested. “If Jack touches it when he’s like this I think he’ll damage it.”

“Yes yes yes, definitely. Can’t do that again.” Jack nodded rapidly. Nate elected to go down, stating that he’d probably never get the chance to swim down there again.

While Nate was diving down, Jack lay down flat on the wooden walkway for a while. He gradually felt the manic euphoric energy slowly seeping out of him and in its place, bone deep weariness.

“Urgh…” he groaned. The others turned to watch as the blue white glowing lines in his skin slowly faded and the last trailing arcs of electricity running down his body sputtered out.

“Hey, you sound normal again,” Rachael remarked, prodding him several times in revenge. He tiredly tried to swat her away and let out another groan.

“That's what you get for overdoing it Jack.” Stacey stood over him.

“Need to find my limits,” he mumbled tiredly at her. “Find out what I’m capable of.” He yawned.

Just as she was about to retort, they heard a splash from the lake and turned to see Nate bobbing on the surface in the middle, holding up a glowing blue glass container in the air in triumph.