DungeonFall – [A Dungeon Creation / Cultivation Story]

The first beast they came across was a giant mole that had briefly come up from its hole. Nina spotted it ahead of them and launched a nasty-looking barbed arrow straight towards its chest. The dirt-covered beast barely had a chance to react to the wind from the fletchings before the arrow punched deep into its belly.

Niall and one of the guards were already running toward it, ready to finish it off. Nate’s father had his bladed tonfas in hand, while the other was wielding a heavy falchion.

There was a hook near the elbow of the tonfa, that Niall used to grab hold of the mole’s stomach and then slice it open with a heave. While he was distracting the thrashing beast in front, the guard had gone around the back and swung his falchion into the fatty tissue around its spinal cord.

Its warbling scream of pain was cut short as the duo finished the grisly job. Niall fished out his wife’s arrow while the guard cut into the mole’s chest near its heart. A second later, he removed a small energy core that dissipated before their very eyes.

He spat on the ground in disgust. “That is what happens when they’re barely more than ‘Mortal’ realm beasts. The core dissipates once they’re dead if they’re below the ‘Core Creation’ realm. It would have taken a minute longer than this, but it would have still vanished. In other words, their cores aren’t actually stable outside their bodies until the third realm.”

The three teenagers nodded, more than a little shocked by the sudden display of violence and blood.

Niall pointed to two of the guards and then to the mole’s corpse. “Can you two bring this back to the trailer? We’ll keep heading in this direction while marking the trees, the same way as we have been so you can find us.”

They were supposed to be guarding the girls, but they were also meant to act as proper members of the party. The entire point of these early expeditions was to educate the young ones on how to properly act and participate. They wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they only kept the girls safe. Knowing the difference was part of why they could charge so much.

They nodded and picked up the stinking beast’s corpse without complaint.

“Now, obviously, with how weak that beast was, any of us could have taken care of it by themselves. Nina didn’t pull the string of her bow even halfway back, so it was a weak shot. My blades could have done far more damage, and that falchion alone could have cleaved it in half. In this instance, we had all three of us playing a part in the fight. One long-range, and two close fighters, which is what you said your party’s setup would be.”

The three teens nodded, understanding dawning for them at last.

“The range of my bow is different than Lindsay’s halberd will be, but this should have given you a decent example for the future,” Nina told them while using some dirt to clean her arrow. When she was done, she inspected the barbed tip and gave a satisfied nod. “During the next fight, I want Niall to hit it first with his throwing knives, and then Lindsay and I will work together to finish it off. Are there any questions?”

Lindsay tightened her grip on the shaft of the spear and axe-headed weapon, the leather grip creaking under her hand.

No one said anything in protest.

“Alright then, you walk up here with us then until we find something.” Nina drew an arrow in a nearby tree with her knife that pointed in the direction they were going, and then they continued walking.

The orange and yellow leaves were sparse in this corner of what had been the States. Pine trees and their incessant needles were everywhere instead. The occasional glimpse of leafy color against the backdrop of needles was more depressing than joyful in Nate’s opinion.

He had always loved the colors of leafy trees during fall. Pine trees were drab in comparison. They were boring, sure they were usually green, but the needles weren’t leaves. To him, leaves had a certain magic to them. They fluttered in the wind, changed colors, and could take your mind away from your troubles.

They were something simple that had been romanticized by countless people, and he was one of them. The lack of them on this fall trip outside the walls of the city was annoying, even if he had been expecting it.

It was another twenty minutes before they ran into the next beast.

Niall pulled out one of his knives and spun it in the palm of his hand. Next to a calm and ready Nina, Lindsay shakily pointed her halberd at the charging boar that was the size of a car.

A throwing knife pierced through the air and took out the leading leg of the boar. The sharp blade wedged itself deep into the bone just above the ankle.

The leg crumpled beneath the boar and sent it sprawling to the ground in front of Lindsay and his wife, Nina.

Lindsay swung the reverse side of her halberd down on its head with all her might. The spike that was opposite the axe head plunged into the beast’s skull and put a nice hole in its brain. The shaft of the weapon was ripped from her hands as the boar continued to slide for another foot before coming to a stop at Nina’s feet.

“Its neck is broken, but even if that hadn’t been the case, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have survived with a hole in its brain.” She told the girl.

Lindsay ran to the side and deposited what was left of her breakfast onto the gnarled roots of a tree. Everyone looked away, giving her some privacy during the moment of weakness.

When she was finished, she washed out her mouth and wiped away any traces that might have remained. Standing up straight, she retrieved her halberd, the sucking sound as she tore it free, causing her to go a little pale around the edges again.

Nina patted her on the back, while Niall went to work taking out the beast's core. This time, the core stayed together for a little longer before it too dissipated into the wind.

“Still in the ‘Mortal’ realm, same as the first one we ran into, but slightly stronger. I’d say it was maybe halfway to three-quarters of the way through the realm.” He looked back at everyone in thought. “Peter, I want you and Lindsay to drag this one back to the trailer. Alright?”

The guard that had been assigned to her nodded. He was a big fellow with large muscles that had a nasty-looking mace strapped to his back. If he wanted to, he could have carried the boar back himself.

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“That’s fine with me, as long as the little lady is alright with leaving the group.” He rumbled.

Lindsay hesitated for a moment before nodding in agreement. She wasn’t going to get anywhere during this trip by being timid.

The five that were left waited for the body to be dragged away before the tree was marked with an arrow and they continued on their way.

“Who’s up next?” Nate asked as they pushed through some thick prickly bushes that tore and stuck to their clothes.

“Probably you,” His father answered. “However, with any luck, we are where we need to be for the moment. Unless there is a beast already here, or one comes along, we will have a short break while we pick some herbs.”

Angie looked up from her sleeve and the slight tear it had just gained from a prickly thorn. “We’re already here?”

“It’s only the first of the possible locations that were mentioned in the file. Even if there are some herbs here, there won’t be many of them. It’s why we parked where we did. It was a good location to reach several of the sites without needing to walk for hours on end,” Niall told her as he punched through a particularly thick wall of brush and overgrown debris.

He ended up trading places with his wife, who was able to use her falchion more effectively than he could his tonfas in the endeavor. Several feet of thin twisted bush limbs later, they burst out of their self-created tunnel into the remains of a playground.

The rusted steel remnants of a slide leaning dangerously to one side were the first thing to draw Nate’s eye. Near to it was the ever-present swing set, the chains locked together by rust and the poles riddled with holes. There was a spinning disc of some kind that was mostly buried in the grass that he vaguely recognized.

It was enough for him to realize how old the playground was, but that was it. For how long, or short of a time really that the dimensional zones had been around, it was a miracle that technology had continued to progress. On his old world, it had been a global endeavor, and often one driven by war. Here civilization was little more than barely connected pockets.

Each city specialized in something, and this was the result. A world that had still managed to create laptops, cellphones, and cars.

A fair bit of the more specialized parts and electrical items were still imported at extreme costs. The difference was that now each city actually had an area devoted to factories and manufacturing.

“What is the herb we are looking for here?” Nate asked, glancing around the overground space with a critical untrained eye. The only herbs he had ever seen were the ones currently sitting inside his storage.

His mother pulled out a sheet of paper that she had received, along with the extra job. Printed on it was a picture of the herb in question, along with its description. She passed it around to each of them as they huddled around her.

“Isn’t this just a slightly weird-looking milkweed?” Nate asked doubtfully. He had heard that it had certain medicinal properties and that the old Indians had once used it for pain relief. But it was literally a weed. It grew almost everywhere.

“It used to be milkweed,” Angie told him. “I’m guessing one of the things you’ve forgotten is how the dimensional zones have changed the plants growing near them.”

“They do?” He shook his head. “Silly question, of course they do. I guess I just never thought about it. What is it now?”

“Herbs that are mutated versions of existing plants like this one are typically called ‘enhanced’ or ‘dimensional’ plants. So, it’s an enhanced milkweed. The name is rather fitting in this case, as all the effects have been enhanced.” She carefully explained to him. “It will be used in the creation of pain relief and minor healing alchemical pills, along with a few others. It’s not a very expensive herb, but the sheer number of uses our people have for it makes each trip more than worth it.”

“Does anyone see it?” Niall asked, gingerly climbing to the top of the rusted slide. It creaked and toppled to the side as one of the poles, holding it up, crumpled and disintegrated in parts. He jumped free and looked back at it with a sad look of regret. He hadn’t meant to destroy the slide with his thoughtless action.

“Come on dad, it would have fallen apart in another year or two anyway.”

“I know,” He replied, not looking away from the pile of metal. “I was just thinking about how much history our world has lost. Things like this, that have gradually been lost to time. Soon, all traces of our past will be lost.” Niall shook his head and looked away. “Come on, let’s get to looking with the others.”

The old playground was as overgrown as it could have possibly been. It took the group a few minutes to look through everything before coming to the realization that the weed was nowhere in sight. Despite Nate’s assertion that it grew everywhere, this was one place that it apparently didn’t.

They were wrapping up their look around the area when Lindsay and the three guards returned. They were sweaty, covered in scratches from the thorny bushes, and covered in a thick, stinky slime.