- Rufus Veres, Level 37 Verbose Historian, A Brief History of the System
“Fuuuck,” I groaned, feeling the adrenaline still coursing through my body. Even though the golem hadn’t hit me, the intensity of the encounter felt just as high as the battle with the orcs before it. Hells, I’m really sweating…
“Haha, I can’t believe that worked!” Elin laughed, continuing, “and I hit Level 3!”
“Level 4 over here now,” Raylan added.
Zaire stuck to the protocol of using Squad Comms despite his elation.
Before I could ask, PAST chimed in as well.
[Well done, Gunner! You have learned the Class Skill Recoil Management! You have also accumulated enough Essence for an item!]
I definitely didn’t pout at the news that I was still Level 4. Everyone is catching up to me! I guess… that’s actually a good thing, right? I sighed mentally and checked my resources.
That got everyone’s attention, but no one had any real ideas other than it had obviously been caused by the mana potion. The fact that I was still sweating like I was training in the middle of a Sunland summer day, not to mention my trembling hands, indicated that this wasn’t a good thing.
“PAST, what happens if my current mana exceeds my maximum mana?”
[That is a possible side effect of over-use of mana potions, Gunner! You should immediately use the excess mana up before it damages your body!]
Shit! I quickly gathered the expended slugs I’d fired. Restoring each of them used up quite a bit of mana - I had to pause partway through as my focus bottomed out. As it recovered, I reloaded with my standard ammo, also conjuring three fresh shells for another nine mana. I felt my symptoms ease slightly as I dropped below my normal mana limit. It felt like my body was finally coming down from a massive adrenaline rush. Strangely, my mana kept dropping even after I’d finished reloading, finally leveling out at 41 points.
“Why did my mana just keep dropping?” I asked PAST.
[Mana potions can cause unpredictable side-effects!]
By this point, Elin had Leveled up and Zaire was in the process of allocating his points. I asked PAST for my item while I waited for Zaire and Raylan to both finish the process. This time I received a health injector, which I kept to replace the one I’d applied to Elin.
She crossed her arms and looked away as if she could avoid my question somehow.
She shook her head silently. Only after Raylan and Zaire turned forcefully inquisitive gazes on her as well did she finally relent.
She suddenly smiled brightly and I felt a chill. This girl is creeping me out right now…
Before I could gather my thoughts to object, she placed a hand on Raylan’s shoulder and then grabbed my hand. I cried out in surprise at the sudden searing pain in my left forearm. It wasn't bleeding, but it felt… Well, I guess it feels like an orc Chieftain sliced a strip of flesh off of it. Fuck, Raylan is tougher than I thought if he’s been running around like this. And also, fuck Elin. Raylan held his arm up, marveling at what I assumed was a sudden lack of pain.
She flipped me off and I lost it. Before I realized what was happening, I had ripped her scepter out of her hands and had her pinned on the ground as I punched her repeatedly, her barrier flaring and then shattering beneath my blows. She was thrashing underneath me, but it was obvious she had little experience brawling and I kept her in place easily.
Seeing red, I raised my hand for another blow, but Raylan grabbed it and held me back. It wasn’t until then that I realized the Spell had already ended and the phantom pain was gone.
Stolen novel; please report.
“That’s enough, Az!” he shouted. I growled again and, ignoring the fact he still had my hand in a tight grip, leaned forward and stared into Elin’s green eyes as she went still under me.
“Listen closely, Elin, because I’m only gonna say this once. I don’t know what the fuck I did that pissed you off, but whatever, I don’t really give a fuck! But that doesn’t excuse you casting a potentially dangerous Spell on me - and Raylan - without asking, and then disrespecting me on top of it!
“Not only did Hassan put me in charge while we’re in here, but you specifically promised to follow my orders in the dungeon. And, you’ve gotten by far the most valuable thing we’ve found in here so far, so you can’t even complain about that!
“So, there’s two places we can go from here. First option, you get your Wasted head on straight and do what you promised and keep your shit together in the dungeon and anytime else that we’re in a fight. If that happens, we can forget all about this. No one will talk about it to anyone, understood?” I paused to look seriously at Zaire, who nodded immediately, and Raylan, who hesitated and then finally copied him.
“The other place is where we end up if you keep acting like a shit. In that scenario, I will make a full report to Mason and Hassan and we’ll see what they think about it.”
She laughed at that, but I could tell that I was getting to her. There was a nervous edge to it.
“Yeah right, you just attacked me like a fucking psycho and you expect me to believe that you’re stupid enough to tell them about it? I’ll be the one telling them what happened here, and when that happens we’ll see whose story the boys decide to back, because we all know Mason will throw you out on your ass for this!”
Raylan started laughing, causing Elin to glare at him angrily.
“What the fuck do you think is so funny?”
He adjusted his grip on my wrist and started to pull me up. I let him, rising to my feet and stepping off of Elin with a sniff, wondering where he was going with this, but I trusted him. He squatted down next to Elin as she sat up and tried to brush some of the dirt off her robes.
“Az and I learned something interesting about Mason the other day. Did you know that when he was going through training, his instructors made them fight without barriers, just so that every blow would hurt? You’re talking about a guy who thinks the training he’s giving us is soft, a guy who let us go into this dungeon without even starting official Guild training - because he’s the kind of hardass who would have done the same thing himself!
“You’d better think twice about telling him shit, Elin, because I’m pretty Wasted sure that if you do, the only thing he’s going to be unhappy about is that I stopped her from hitting you a few more times!”
I walked away from Elin to give myself a chance to calm down. Fuck, I hope I got through to her. Getting her in trouble with Mason only works if we all live to make it out of here…
To distract myself, I asked Raylan and Zaire what they’d gotten for their Level-up rewards and what the Level 4 mods they’d had in their Inventories did. Raylan had gotten a pair of leather gauntlets which he’d pulled on to replace his thin gloves. His mod turned out to be pretty interesting.
It was called Basic Camouflage and it seemed like a much more primitive version of what Hassan’s armor did. It let him adjust the color of his armor to match his surroundings, but it would cost him five mana and take thirty seconds to change every time. It made me wonder what Level Hassan’s mod was, or if it was a Skill instead.
Zaire had found an armor mod in his System chest to go with the weapon mod from Mason. Neither proved to be very exciting - the weapon mod made it harder to knock his staff from his grip, while the armor mod was a thermal regulation mod. While it was better than the Level 0 one I’d briefly had, it still wasn’t very powerful, or going to help us in the dungeon.
By the time we’d finished reviewing, Elin had walked over to us and was standing with her arms crossed over her chest and an obviously fake smile on her face. I looked at her with an equally fake neutral expression.
Raylan trotted over to the fallen golem and picked up the axe that he’d used to help sever its knee. It didn’t look usable anymore, as clumps of metal from the golem had cooled and hardened onto the blade like it was covered in dried blood. Still, he insisted on bringing it along and I wasn’t inclined to argue with him after he’d backed me with Elin.
We finally moved out in formation, with Elin in front of me since I was still not at full health. Really, it was because I didn’t trust her at my back right then. I was sure she felt the same, since she’d opened her mouth to argue about it before Raylan glared at her. When we reached the chamber full of orc corpses, I gestured for everyone to stop and be quiet for a moment as I walked over to the entry tunnel. Listening closely, I could hear the faint sounds of water.
I felt exhaustion seeping in as we walked. Sure, I’d had time to rest here and there, but everything was adding up. Maybe Vale’s Spell was finally wearing off… Or it’s just been a lot, even if we’d started with a full night of non-magical sleep.
The wall that had blocked off the tunnel before was absolutely devastated. Heavy blocks of stone had been broken into pieces and lay strewn over the floor dozens of feet away from the massive hole the golem had blasted into the wall. I shivered at the sight. If that thing had been faster, we’d all be dead now. I hope I don’t have to fight another one of those Wasted things anytime soon. Or maybe ever.
The room beyond the wall had natural - whatever that meant in a dungeon - looking sides, floor, and ceiling. But there was another destroyed wall about fifty feet further down, and from the direction the broken bricks had flown, we could tell that the golem had been trapped between the two walls. It must have escaped in that direction first, then returned later and bashed its way through to us.
As we passed carefully through the wreckage, we discovered that beyond the second destroyed wall the entire tunnel was made out of worked stone - floor and ceiling included, everything was made out of perfectly fitted bricks, though many of them had been chipped and scarred by a battle. Including the low ceiling, which looked like it had been just too short for the golem and had suffered for it. The battle had also left corpses scattered around the corridor.
Many of them were wearing the remains of heavy armor, at least what was left of it after a close encounter with the golem. Several of them had been crushed much like the orcs the massive construct had casually stepped on earlier, their armor seemingly providing little resistance to the weight of the golem. Most of their heads were concealed by helmets, but a bit further down the corridor I spotted one wearing robes that looked a lot like what Zaire and Elin had on.
Its - his? - chest had been crushed, but the head was clearly visible. A head that looked very, very human.