Mantle of the Gods

I was part of ‘Team 1’.

It had been called that because for today, it was the first team to go into the dungeon. I had been expecting the gate to be guarded, but there wasn’t even a covering on it. Just a room for us to gather in while Gesai opened the gate. I could see that she was starting to get frustrated with it a little.

“What’s wrong?” I walked over to see what she was doing.

“I’ve never had to work one of these in a place where I haven’t at least cleared a floor.” She finally got the menu where she wanted it, “I’ll get used to it.”

“You’ve never been here?” That information surprised me, “I thought Trent did tours to get his students experience with all the dungeons in the Ward.”

“Not the Desolations.” The red haired woman got the gate to open, “This is my first time here.”

“Which means we know as much about this place as you.” Jovena walked up to the gate.

Gesai grabbed the white-haired woman’s arm. “Apparently not. This is a pocket dungeon. That means that there is no trail. Each room has a monster in it.” She nodded at Mitchel, “So the Tank goes through first.”

The blonde man stepped up and held up his shield, then stepped through the gate.

Fray and I walked in after him, followed by Ren, Jovena and Gesai.

The room itself was about a fifteen feet in diameter mud box. The lighting was so low that the first thing Ren did was wave her hand. “LIGHT!”

That lit the room up enough to show what looked like a place that might be under the swamp that we had driven through to get here. The putrid odor was strong enough that my nose burned as I breathed. The floor was spongy and definitely did not promise to allow for good footing if we had to move around a lot.

The next thing that I noticed, now that the room was lit up, was that there was a zombie in the middle of the room. Mitchel had his shield up in between us, but as slow as the purple-veined monster was moving, it was going to take a few seconds to reach us.

I took out my pistol and aimed between its eyes. “FIRE SHOT!”

I still had Earth Shots loaded into the magazine in it, but it seemed like fire would be the element to use here. The two flame bullets burned through its skull and it vanished into a cloud of smoke.

Mitchel picked up the crystal and handed it over to Gesai, “They don’t seem very difficult.”

“Don’t get too complacent.” Our teacher warned, “Their bite inflicts a curse that prevents healing.” She looked over at Ren, “We’ll need to see about getting you a spell to cure that. Until we do, I’ll heal you, but if I step in before the battle is over…”

The Tank swallowed. Right now, Gesai was just a supervisor, which meant the dungeon basically treated her as if she wasn’t there, but if she started interacting with us or the monster during a fight, it would bump it up to an Elite. Which wouldn’t be an issue for the Sacrist teacher to destroy, but a monster that upgraded mid-fight would become untauntable. So the whole fight would become a lot more difficult.

“Can it get through our armor?” Ren looked at her sleeve and touched her hood. She and Jovena only had on cloth jackets and pants. Normally, that would be plenty of defense for them since they stayed away from the fight. The other three of us were wearing tough leather armor with a hood connected to our jackets.

Gesai looked us over, “Your faces are exposed, but probably not the ones on this floor. Who knows about the boss or once we get deeper.” She pointed at the portal in front of us, “This way is the fastest to the bossroom.”

Mitchel nodded and headed for the portal. I swapped out magazines as I followed after him. It was going to be a long afternoon.