Dungeon Noble - Squire

The smell of sap and wet earth hit Jake like a wall as he stepped into the Dungeon. It reminded him of the Dungeon back in Casthorpe, the one which gave him the dozens of apples that he had stored away.

It wasn’t quite the same, though. This Dungeon felt more like a wilderness, whereas that had felt like a well-travelled woodland.

Looking around, Jake saw that they were standing on a slightly overgrown trail, with the door behind them forming a tunnel of arched trees. Overhead, the canopy was thick and blocked a lot of the sky, but there were gaps over the trail, letting spots of sunlight through, almost acting as a guide for where to walk.

“Well, this is quite tight,” Aspen said, eyeing the narrow trail that lay ahead with borderline suspicion.

Jake nodded, giving the undergrowth around them a closer look. After a moment, he realised that while at first glance, it all looked the same, there was a difference.

“The actual border is further back,” Jake said, pointing out what he’d seen. There were several rows of trees to either side of the trail before it got to the dense treeline that formed the border.

“Nope, don’t like that, not one bit,” Aspen said, seeing what Jake meant and shaking his head. “Why do I feel that we’ll be getting ambushed in here.”

“Yeah, I’m getting that vibe as well,” Jake said, glancing over to Alan, who was updating Nepthys on the changes to his Class now he’d tiered up. “Alan will have his work cut out for him.”

The Scholar heard him and gave Jake an encouraging smile, seemingly confident about his abilities. It was a good look on him; Jake often thought that Alan didn’t give himself the credit he deserved.

“I’ll take the lead with Alan then,” Aspen said with an idle twirl of his spear.

“Agreed, I’ll take the rear with Gargan then,” Jake said, glancing over to Nepthys. “That leaves you the centre.”

“As usual,” Nepthys said, her smile fading a little as she remembered that while the formation was the same, the people weren’t.

“Yeah,” Jake said, his own smile strained. “As usual.”

Aspen led the way into the forest, watching carefully for whatever monsters would show themselves. None of them really knew what the Crandyn looked like, but they were all familiar with how annoyingly hard to spot Rootlings were.

After only a minute or two, the trail curved to the side, and Aspen caught sight of a clearing through the thicket on the side of the trail. “Clearing ahead!”

Alan nodded and slowed down as they rounded the bend, taking a few extra moments to look over the clearing.

“Two Rootlings, right in there,” Alan said, pointing at a dead tree that stood in the centre of the clearing and was its only feature.

“Dungeons do seem to follow some rules, don’t they,” Jake murmured, thinking about how similar in design this was to others he’d seen.

“They do, and let it guide you, but don’t rely on it,” Gargan said, making Jake start in surprise. It was the first thing the caster had said since they’d entered the Dungeon.

“Yeah, I will,” Jake said, knowing that Gargan was right. The moment he began to rely on Dungeons always being the same, they’d change, and he’d be caught out.

Looking back, Jake saw that Aspen had advanced toward the dead tree, and was engaging a pair of Rootlings that had scampered up out of the hollow interior and flung themselves at him.

The small, twisted roots that made up the monsters were no challenge for the force behind Aspen’s spear, and he was able to cut through their chest and puncture the pulsating mass in their core, killing them with a single blow each.

“Right, now we know what we’re dealing with, let’s pick up the pace,” Jake said as Aspen drew out the Wyrdgeld from the creatures.

“You know,” Aspen said as he moved back to the front of the group and led the way on to the next clearing. “This is going to be a right pain in the ass, but I've got a good feeling about our chances with this Dungeon.”

-**-

The rest of the first floor and the second swept by with little issue. Alan was able to pick out the Rootlings with quite a good success rate, and Aspen was quick enough to deal with any that he missed.

The third floor, as usual, was a change of pace.

The floor began the same as the others, a narrow trail snaking away through the thick forest. The difference came when they reached the first equivalent of a clearing.

In the previous floors, the clearings had been covered with patchy sections of grass, with a dead tree in the centre. Here, however, the clearing was filled with tight groupings of saplings.

The saplings rose up above them but stopped well short of the canopy, making them clearly part of something else.

“Alan?” Aspen asked, glancing over to the Scholar, who was looking out over the area, his eyes glinting with grey Wyrd.

“There’s something there, and another over there, but I’m not sure what,” Alan said, pointing out two different clusters of saplings. “It’s big and bulky, though.”

“Want me to go and give it a poke?” Aspen asked Jake, motioning with his spear.

“Why don’t we try something a bit different,” Jake said, glancing over to Gargan. “Mind giving whatever is out there something to think about?”

The caster chuckled and shook his head as he lifted his wand and took aim at the closer of the two points that Alan had picked out.

A bolt of flame flashed out with a rush of heat to strike the stand, flames licking at the clustered saplings as it struck them.

What Jake could only describe as an angry creaking echoed through the glade, and two large figures pushed out from where they’d been hidden and began to lope towards them.

The Oaken, if Ari had named them correctly, were humanoid creatures that looked like they’d been shaped directly from a tree and stood around six feet tall. Though they were large and lumbering, they also had a solid look to them and were likely hard hitters.

The Oaken’s bodies were rough and bark-like, and the more Jake saw of them, the less humanoid they seemed. In reality, the only crossover, as far as he could tell, was the rough shape they shared.

The Oaken to the right bore a scorch mark on its shoulder where the wood had blackened from the flames. Jake was pretty sure that Gargan hadn’t struck it directly, which boded well for the future.

Even as Jake thought that Gargan struck the creature dead-on with a second bolt of flames, scorching its chest and making it emit an eerie howl that sounded like the wind rushing through a forest.

As the flames faded away, Jake saw that the creature had been badly wounded by the second hit, and its chest cavity was exposed. Rootlings had an almost fruit-like organic mass within them that gave them life, and the Oaken seemed to have something similar.

A network of strands and branches networked out from an organic mass the size of Jake’s head, and the scent of burnt sap washed over him, making his eyes sting.

“Take out its heart, Alan!” Jake shouted, moving between the closing creature and Gargan.

The Oaken were slow, and their gait was ponderous, but the glade wasn’t that large to begin with and the burnt one was on Jake before Alan could take the shot.

A large trunk-like arm came swinging down at Jake, but he had time to raise his shield and brace for the impact.

The Oaken hit like a sledgehammer, sending Jake stumbling back slightly before it swung around and brought the other arm whistling in toward him.

With Jake out of the way, Alan put a shot right into the core of the creature, straight through the gap in its chest. At the same time, Gargan put a third blast into its featureless face, burning it away.

Seeing it up close, Jake saw that the bark of the Oaken was rapidly burnt around the area, though the flames then died away and didn’t spread much beyond the impact area.

Either the arrow to the core or the burnt head had finished the Oaken, as it slowly toppled backwards with a loud thud.

Nepthys stood over the body with her swords drawn, waiting a moment for any sign of life before nodding and moving away.

Looking over to the others, Jake saw that Aspen had impaled the other Oaken on his spear. Flames were still sheathing the spearhead from where it had punched through to the other side of the monster, and a good portion of the bark around the entry and exit wounds had burnt away.

“Well, this is a pleasant surprise,” Aspen said, kicking the dead Oaken off of his spear and dismissing his Skill. “Well, it is for us, not so much for these poor bastards.”

Jake looked at the dead Oaken and shook his head. “It feels almost like we’re cheating by using fire against them. Still, they did catch us by surprise with the charge, I’ve not seen anything like that before.”

“I think it was a reaction to Gargan’s attack,” Alan said thoughtfully, tossing away the bent arrow that he’d retrieved from under the dead Oaken with a sigh. “Perhaps they’ll always charge as soon as we attack them.”

“Only one way to find out,” Aspen said cheerfully, bouncing his spear on his shoulder and starting to walk forward before pausing and giving Alan a serious look. “Nothing else in this part, right?”

Alan activated his Skill and checked before shaking his head. “Nothing I can see, but that doesn’t mean anything.”

“Understood,” Aspen said, his carefree manner long gone as he waited for them to form up to carry on.

The way that the odd man bounced back and forth between being serious and not was strange to see. Jake had initially pegged him as being like Ari, with that ingrained irreverence, but it had been pretty clear that wasn’t the case by this point.

Putting it aside, Jake got back into formation, sparing only a moment’s glance for the dent in his shield before they set off deeper into the floor.