Dungeon Noble - Squire

The fourth floor began much the same way as the others, with a dark tunnel stretching beyond the edge of their torchlight.

“I’ll keep watch and shout out if I see anything,” Alan said, holding his torch high to illuminate what he could as they moved deeper into the tunnel.

“What do you think, more bugs or rats again?” Jake muttered to the others, trying to break the tension that was thick in the air.

“Please, not more rats. Two floors of them have been more than enough,” Karl said plaintively.

“At least we know how to deal with them now,” Jake pointed out, trying to see the bright side of the situation.

“Sorry, Karl, it looks like it might be rats,” Alan said, pointing to the side of the tunnel where some of the recessed side passages they’d seen before were coming into view.

“Shit,” Karl muttered with a heavy exhale, his shoulders slumping slightly.

“Only way out is through,” Jake said quietly, bumping Karl with his shoulder to get his attention. “You can do this.”

“I just hate the things, and I don’t like being around them,” Karl said, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders. “I’ll be fine, don’t worry about me.”

“Alright, but if you want to talk about it afterwards, just let me know,” Jake said, not wanting to push Karl on it right this moment.

Jake was fairly sure there was more going on with Karl and the rats than he’d first assumed. Karl didn’t seem scared or nervous; it was more like he was angry at them, though that anger was tinged with what Jake could only call disgust.

Karl grunted noncommittally and started forward, ending the conversation and making Jake hurry to catch up with him.

The floor quickly became more complicated than the last few, with winding tunnels, larger hiding spaces for the rats and even one particularly nasty room with both rats and bugs together.

They left that fight with only minor injuries, thankfully, but it was a clear sign of how the Dungeon was getting tougher.

Thankfully, the bugs were infrequent, and the droning of their wings was a quick giveaway of what was coming, but it added an extra layer to everything that was happening that helped crank up the tension.

To make matters worse, each small injury used up some of their limited stock of bandages, and as they stacked up, they were forced to use potions as well.

By the time they reached the end of the fourth floor, they’d used five of their potions and were dangerously low on bandages.

The damn rats started using the bug attacks as cover to get closer, letting them inflict a few small wounds.

Grimacing at the mistakes he was sure they were making, Jake paused as he noticed something odd.

The tunnel that made up the fourth floor had been consistent throughout, with only slight variations in direction or size.

The final section of the floor was much the same, though the tunnel was wide enough to accommodate two doors, one that lay straight ahead with a familiar design and one that went to their left with a different set of engravings.

Both doors had two torch sconces flanking them, each already filled with a burning torch, giving off enough light to make the small area relatively well-lit for a change.

“What is that?” Alan asked with clear fascination, moving past Jake to study the door more closely.

“Huh, not bad for your first time getting this far,” Ari said, moving out of the shadows to join them properly. “That’s a Challenge door. It leads to a sub-section of the Dungeon where you receive a floor-appropriate Challenge. The engravings tell you what it is if you look closely. I’ll tell you what this is for free to save you some time. It’s a Gauntlet.”

“What’s one of those?” Jake asked, fascinated by the intricate designs on the door. As far as he could tell, the door seemed to show a group of humans fighting against an onslaught of bugs and rats, with the humans standing within a small fortification.

“Simple. All you have to do is survive a series of attacks from Dungeon monsters, each increasing in intensity. Hard to do, but you get the Wyrdgeld from those you kill, and it’s one of the few ways to be awarded a reward from the Dungeon.”

“Wait, a reward?” Jake asked, turning back to face Ari with growing interest. “What does that mean?”

“There are several ways to get items or materials from the Dungeon, but the most straightforward, apart from harvesting Wyrdgeld, is the chests a Dungeon provides when a Guardian or Challenge has been completed.”

Jake’s eyes widened, and he shared an excited look with the others as he realised what Ari was saying. All the stories of legendary Classers involved them emerging from the Dungeon with rare and powerful materials used to forge the items and weapons they used to become famous.

“How many of these Challenges are there?” Rhew asked eagerly, moving closer to examine the door.

“They don’t always show on each run, and there’s always a gap between them, but you can get several per Dungeon if you’re lucky. I’ll say now that if you go in there, I can’t follow as a training guide, and I don’t think the Dungeon will appreciate me basically doing it for you, so you’ll be on your own.”

“Do you think we could make it?” Rhew asked absently, her gaze still on the door.

“I’ve not done it, so I don’t know,” Ari said with a slight shrug. “Challenges are meant to be tough, though, so consider that before making rash decisions.”

“I think we should skip it,” Karl said firmly, shaking his head slightly as he looked at the door. “We don’t even know what the next floor is like, and we’re already low on supplies. Let’s make it through this first before we start trying to add in more fights. Besides, anything we kill and harvest on the next floor will still count, whereas we’ll be alone in there.”

“Karl does have a point,” Alan said, one hand drifting down to rest on a nasty cut across his ribs that they’d bandaged up.

“Fine, but if we see it again, we’re trying it,” Rhew said, reluctantly turning from the Challenge door and joining them at the door to the final floor of the Dungeon.

“Alright, this is it, folks. Good luck in there. Remember, fight hard and die clean,” Ari said cheerfully as they opened the door and walked through.

-**-

With Ari’s ominous words ringing in his head, Jake stepped through the door to the fifth floor and found himself walking straight out into a large cave, which looked much like the final areas on the first few floors.

“Wait, is that the door out?” Alan said, pointing at a distant pair of torches that were flanking a door on the far side of the cave. “Is the entire floor just this one area?”

The light from the torches drove back the darkness around them, but much of the cave was left either shadowed or completely shrouded. The little that they could see, however, was in the same style as the other caves, with a large number of boulders, stalagmites and areas of broken ground.

“I think so,” Jake said, straining his eyes to try and see what was out there. There just wasn’t enough light.

“I’m glad there wasn’t a tunnel to get here, but being thrown straight in isn’t the best feeling,” Karl said slowly, looking around them with a furrowed brow. “I don’t like this layout, not one bit.”

“Alan, what do your enhanced eyes see?” Jake asked, careful not to take his eyes off their surroundings as Alan activated his skill.

“There’s one of those big bug hives in the centre,” Alan said after a moment, shaking his head slightly as he turned back to them. “No sign of anything else that I can see, but even with my Skill, I can only see the first third or so of the cave. Anything could be hiding beyond that, and I wouldn’t even have a chance of seeing it.”

“I agree with Karl. This sort of abrupt change in a pattern is never a good thing,” Rhew said worriedly, lifting her torch as high as she could and peering warily out into the darkness.

“I mean, this is the Guardian floor, right? We should expect it to be different,” Jake spoke as much to himself as anything. “That probably means there’s something nasty in here, though, so let’s be careful and take things slowly.”

“Yeah, maybe that hive is filled with way more bugs than normal, or a really big one,” Karl said in a hopeful tone.

“Only one way to find out,” Jake said, leading the way as they slowly advanced.

“Should we set up and draw them to us as usual?” Karl asked as they began to draw closer to the hive.

“That’s not a bad plan, not at all,” Jake said, nodding along as he glanced over to Alan. “I hate to ask it of you…”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do it,” Alan said, rolling his shoulders and taking a steadying breath before setting off carefully towards the hive.

Everything seemed to happen at once.

As Alan moved past a particularly large stalagmite, they heard the familiar droning once more and readied themselves for a fight.

Alan had turned and begun to rush back to them, but a large dark shape bounded in from one side and pounced onto him, carrying them both out of view.

Alan cried out in surprise but was cut off abruptly, leaving only the crackle of the burning flames and the droning of the bugs emerging from the hive.

“Alan!” Jake cried out, racing toward the stalagmite that Alan had been knocked behind. The creature had been hard to see, but it had been big and four-legged. It had almost looked like a wolf, but the shape was wrong.

Whatever it was, it was significantly bigger than anything else they’d fought.

Rounding the stalagmite with Karl and Rhew only steps behind him, Jake found himself staring down at the bloody mess Alan had become. A series of wounds covered Alan’s left side, but what drew Jake’s eyes was where the creature had ripped Alan’s throat out in what looked like a single large bite.

“What the fuck was that?” Karl all but hissed, eyeing their surroundings with wide eyes.

“That’s for later. Right now, the bugs are coming, and we have to focus. We’ve got to get back to the fire. We can’t fight both things at once out here.” Rhew lifted her wand and fired a pair of blasts at what Jake could now see was five of the bugs they’d previously fought.

“Rhew’s right. We’ve got to go,” Jake said, his heart racing as he pulled his sword free and turned to face the others.

Jake’s gaze made contact with a pair of glinting red eyes, staring at them from the shadows of a nearby rock formation. Freezing in place at how close the creature was to them, Jake realised that it was looking between him and Rhew, seemingly deciding who to attack.

Slowly, the creature inched out of the shadows, revealing itself to be an even larger version of the rats that they’d fought throughout the Dungeon. There was something else to it, though. Its fur was a deep grey and bristly in a way that seemed unnatural in the brief moment that Jake had to study it before it began to charge at them.

“Shit, Rhew, watch out!” Jake pushed Rhew aside and put himself between the vulnerable caster and the beast, sweeping forward with his torch to drive it back.

The creature aborted its charge and tried to get around Jake to attack the others, who had their hands full fighting the bugs from the hive as they tried to latch onto them.

Jake kept his sword at the ready as he focused on keeping the huge rat at bay, though he had a feeling that the waist-high rat would take a lot to put down.

A shocked cry from behind Jake broke his concentration as something attacked Rhew, giving the bugs the chance they needed to swarm Karl and start to drain his blood.

Jake looked around wildly as he backed away from the creature, but he saw no sign of Rhew or the creature.

Cursing, Jake rushed to help Karl, fighting alongside him to take down a trio of bugs.

“Where’s...” Karl turned to ask before gasping with wide eyes as a heavy weight slammed into Jake’s side, and burning pain raked across his back.

Jake’s head hit the floor hard, and his vision swam, but it was clear enough for him to see the descending incisors of the huge rat as it stood over him.