Dungeon Noble - Squire

There was a brief moment of excitement as they went to draw the Wyrdgeld from the monsters, but nothing happened.

“These must be at the Beast tier of monsters, which would explain why they were so easy to kill,” Alan said, frowning down at one of the disanimated clumps of roots.

“True, but they still drew blood, so we need to be careful. Neither of them is going to stop us from getting injured,” Jake said, gesturing back to where Ari and Felix were watching them with neutral expressions.

“I’m already going to have nightmares about those root tendrils getting under my skin, so let’s deal with this fast, okay?” Karl shuddered and hefted his hammer as he urged them on.

They continued on into the thicker section of woods that Alan had spotted, though this time with more care and attention to their surroundings.

Jake had thought he was doing it right the first time, but now he realised he’d been just looking for the spots the rats liked to hide in.

These root creatures, whatever they were, instead liked to hide amongst the trees and undergrowth in small clusters. Often enough, they were hidden in plain sight.

Now that they were past the initial surprise, Alan was using his Skill to spot any hidden creatures, rendering their camouflage ineffective.

Six more of the creatures were spotted and killed by the time they entered the thicker woods and saw the tree that Alan had spotted earlier.

All the trees around them were big, but this one was twice as wide and half again as tall, making it loom over the others and spread its canopy far and wide.

The base of the tree was a thick network of exposed roots with a dark nook at their core.

“That’s got to be it, right?” Karl asked in a hushed tone as they all took in the large tree.

“It is,” Jake said, knowing with surprising confidence that he was right. There was something about this tree now that he was looking at it, something familiar.

It reminded Jake of the sensation of when he first saw the Dungeon and his Sense Dungeon Skill activated. After spending some time around the Dungeon, the Skill had faded, but it was flaring up again now.

Calling up the Skill, Jake read the description again.

Passive - Sense Dungeon (I) - Rare - As an agent of the Great Dungeon, you are able to passively sense the location of nearby Dungeons in a meagre range.

There was nothing about Hollows in there, which meant that either the System classed them as Dungeons or the System descriptions of their Skills weren’t complete.

Either answer was interesting, but Jake pushed it all aside as he saw a cluster of the root creatures emerge from the base of the tree. Jake counted five of them as they spread out from the tree.

Alan wasted no time in firing at them, catching one of the creatures in its shoulder.

Seemingly, in response to the attack, the large root system visibly shifted to one side as a larger monster emerged.

Humanoid in form but standing at about five feet, the new monster was made of the same framework of roots but with stems and leaves intertwined throughout. The leaves hung vertically on its body like some sort of armour, but Jake was far more concerned about the amount of roots in its arms.

The smaller creatures had only a limited reach, but with its larger size and dense build, this new creature could be a problem.

“Focus on the Guardian. We’ll take care of the smaller monsters!” Jake shouted as the five root creatures charged their lines. The new type of monster had to be the Guardian, from what Ari had said, making it the biggest threat by far.

If the scale of difficulty from murk rat to murk hound was anything to go by, this new enemy would be a lot stronger.

Arrows and ice magic flew past Jake to hit the Guardian as he moved to intercept the smaller creatures.

Nepthys conjured two shields in quick succession in front of a pair of the creatures, knocking them off their feet and leaving them easy prey for her blades.

The Guardian’s right arm unfurled into a long spike that it used to stab at Nepthys, forcing her to conjure a third shield.

The three remaining root creatures dashed around Karl and tried to run for Alan and Rhew, but Jake was able to smash one aside with a backhand from his shield.

Karl slammed his hammer down onto the fallen monster, crushing it easily before rushing to help Nepthys.

Alan managed to get a shot off that slipped straight through the roots to pierce the heart of one of the two remaining root monsters, but the other slammed into him a moment later.

Jake dropped his shield as he rushed over to grab the creature and tear it off of Alan, who was screaming in pain.

Blood sprayed up out of the Scholar as the root monster came free. The creature had stabbed Alan with one hand while the other had turned into tendrils that had started to burrow through his skin.

The wounds all seemed superficial, if painful, so Jake focused on destroying the creature before rushing to help Karl and Nepthys.

In the short time that Jake had taken his eyes off the other two, Karl and Nepthys had split up to flank the guardian. Blasts of ice magic from Rhew still periodically struck the creature but seemed to have little to no effect on it.

Seeing what needed to be done, Jake drew the Hidden Fang and circled the creature warily, waiting for an opportunity.

“This thing hits hard. I can only keep blocking it for so long,” Nepthys called out in a strained voice as she harried the Guardian.

“Give me an opening, and I can do some real damage,” Jake called back, infusing his sword with Wyrd as he spoke to maximise the potential damage he could cause.

“There’s a weak spot on its side where Karl hit it!” Alan shouted from where he was getting to his feet and nocking an arrow once more.

“Okay, Karl, we attack on three, ready?”

“Ready.”

Jake watched as Karl and Nepthys attacked as one, leaping forward to strike at the Guardian. Karl’s hammer glowed with a grey light as it swung down at the creature’s head while Nepthys focused on hitting the already weakened spot on its side.

Both of the Guardian’s arms exploded into masses of tendrils as Jake’s companions sprang forward. Unlike the smaller creatures, however, the Guardian reformed its arms into something akin to a pair of shields that blocked both attacks.

Nepthys’s sword skittered off the tough roots with little impact, but Karl’s hammer shattered a good portion of the shield on his side.

Despite blocking both attacks, the Guardian seized up as Jake slipped in behind it and rammed the Hidden Fang into its back.

Black necrosis rippled out from where Jake had plunged the dagger, turning nearby leaves into shrivelled grey pieces of rot that quickly fell to the ground.

The remaining power in that Manifestation was quickly depleted, causing the dagger to swiftly break down, but leaving a hole in the leaf armour that let Jake see a glowing green sphere in the core of the Guardian’s chest cavity.

Multiple healthy stems linked the sphere to the Guardian’s body, but without the outer layer of tough leaves, it was surprisingly exposed.

The brief paralysis the dagger had caused was already beginning to fade, the roots that made up the creature’s arms changing shape as it began to turn to Jake.

Jake’s sword plunged toward the opening in its back, but the slight movement was just enough to throw the attack off. The Wyrd infusing the blade let him cut through some of the roots that made up its frame, but it was far from a lethal blow.

Scrambling back from the creature as tendrils of roots entwined together to shoot out at him like spears, Jake was forced entirely on the back foot.

A pale grey barrier shimmered into existence in front of Jake’s face in time to catch a root spear before it went through his eye, giving Jake just enough time to get far enough away to be safe.

The Guardian made it another two steps after him, its roots angrily trying to reach out and seize him, when it staggered and crashed to one knee.

A shudder went through the terrifying monster’s body before it collapsed to the ground, revealing an arrow that had threaded the path through the roots of its back to pierce the sphere within.

Jake let out a heavy sigh of relief and looked up to lock eyes with Alan in the distance before giving him a nod.

That had been close.

Turning back to the fallen Guardian, Jake waited just long enough to make sure it was dead before approaching it alongside his companions.

Every bit of greenery on the body was rapidly decomposing, revealing the green orb in its interior more clearly. As with the smaller root creatures, the orb looked more like a strange sort of fruit than anything.

“Should we draw the Wyrdgeld?” Karl asked, eyeing the dead Guardian warily as he rubbed at his ribs.

“Yeah, and then we split it best we can,” Jake said before nodding to Karl’s ribs. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine, it just packed a big hit, is all.” Karl grimaced and rolled his shoulder before waving away Jake’s concern. “I’ll be fine.”

“Here, four Wyrdgeld from the Guardian,” Nepthys said, passing Jake four Wyrdgeld before heading over to the tree. “Looks like we’re in luck. There’s one of those infused branches here as well.”

“So, that’s about twenty-four Wyrdgeld total, not bad for such a short fight,” Jake muttered to himself, taking the branch as Nepthys passed it over.

“I’ll take four, and then you four can split the twenty,” Nepthys said, gesturing to the coins in Jake’s hand.

“Works for me,” Karl said from over by the rapidly decomposing body of the Guardian. “Let’s get out of here as well. This thing unnerves me.”