Forge of Eternity: Alpha Testing, page 49
The mana continued flowing from my hand, still passing through the wand and into the floor of the dungeon. The wand began to radiate heat, slowly starting to glow. As quickly as the spell relaxed its hold on me, it reasserted control, urging my hand to reach out for the wand. On contact, the thin wooden shaft shattered. The small explosion sent splinters deep into my hand, only to be followed by a larger shockwave of mana powerful enough to knock me into the ceiling.
Will of the Forge - Channeling Interrupted!
Unstable creation mana deals 150 (75 magic, 75 force) damage,
You take 75 Terrain Damage.
You have died.
Respawn time 2 hours…
Enter training room or log out?
Deacon - Activation
“Amalie and Gavin are our mages and we left them behind. I don’t have any magic, Phelyya can only steal spells, and Uri is our evasion tank… because he’s a Warmage,” I struck myself in the forehead for forgetting about Uri. I turned and yelled out the door, “Uri! You’re technically a mage so we need your magic touch.”
The Warmage peeked into the room, one eyebrow raised as he pointed to his face. He was chewing a large piece of salted meat, small flecks of it visible in his beard. I motioned our dignified savior over, aiming him at the spot Lex needed to charge with mana.
“You know how to channel mana, right?” Lex asked, looking over his shoulder. “Just give it a steady stream for five minutes. You’ll know when it’s done, it’ll start glowing.”
The mage set his hat on the console and climbed underneath, following directions as the artificer moved his attention to different locations in the magical machinery. It was my turn to get out of the way, so I met up with Phelyya and Goodwin in the small bunk room. The monk was lounging in one of the racks, hands behind his head while Phelyya sat motionless in the opposing bunk, bent double to be able to fit in the small space.
“Need a hand with anything?” Goodwin asked, barely moving to look in my direction. “I think Phelyya’s logged out still.”
I nodded, leaning against the doorframe. “Yeah, she’s offline. Don’t need anything, just waiting for Uri to add mana so we can manage a non-zero chance of surviving the day.”
“You sound nervous,” Goodwin said, closing his eyes and leaning his head back into his palms. “Don’t think the repairs will work?”
“Rush repair job on an unknowably ancient magical self-healing dungeon? I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said, rolling my eyes. “No way connecting it to some magical nuclear reactor can backfire and destroy everything.”
“Meh,” the monk shrugged, still reclining. “If we fail here we’ll spawn somewhere else with a good story to tell. Plenty of time to earn permanent immortality again.”
The calm certainty of the monk’s words was more reassuring than expected. I briefly wondered if he had some sort of ability active, eventually deciding that I didn’t care to dig that deeply. With the stress of the day weighing on me, I’d take any small moment of peace I could find. The tension faded from my body just in time for a wave of quakes to invade my tremorsense and knock my feet out from under me.
I pushed the screaming tremorsense from my mind, along with the roar of grinding stone, using the doorframe to pull myself upright. The intensity faded quickly this time, but the quake didn’t fully stop. The violent shaking evened out to a regular, rhythmic vibration similar to the feeling of an old bus engine rattling loose flooring.
Quest Updated: Learn to Know
Repair main control power 1/1
Begin dungeon’s self-repair function 1/1
“Looks like the halfling fixed the issue,” Goodwin said, hopping down from the bunk. “Let’s see if they need a hand.”
“Earthquakes don’t really give me a ton of confidence in this fix,” I said, leaving Phelyya’s mindless avatar behind us.
Neither Lex nor Uri looked worse for wear, the Warmage’s hat back in place. Lex moved about the levers, knobs, and glowing crystals with efficiency at the direction of the orb in her hand. Lenny was guiding her actions, asking to see gages or telling Lex to press specific buttons. The artificer flung slabs of metallic chitin aside, sometimes standing on them to get to specific controls. Another series of strong tremors knocked loose a few bricks, but they landed without damaging anything important.
“You, uh, Deacon!” Lex called, motioning me over. She handed me the crystal in her hand.
“The dungeon’s self-healing is functional again,” the orb stated without preamble or emotion. “There is no way the entire dungeon is going to repair itself before the Forge activates, but you will be safe here. The control center, Hall of Challenge, and one of the lesser-used boss rooms are all showing full strength. Each of them has a direct connection to the Focus and are safe.”
“Think the service tunnels are safe to travel?” I asked, looking over at Lex without meaning to. “We need to get back to the surface and bring the minders to the dungeon before things get really bad.”
“The tunnels are as safe as any place in a dungeon left without maintenance for centuries,” Lenny said, dryly. “To be clear, that was sarcasm. These systems are maintenance, in case I hadn’t stressed that enough. If we could pull huge amounts of raw power through it safely like we were building it fresh, we might be able to do more but that’s not possible in the time we have. Safe places are the place I listed and nowhere else. ”
“So we might die on the way out,” I said, glancing at the remaining quest timer. “In which case we won’t have enough time to get everyone down here.”
“You keep saying everyone,” Lenny ventured hesitantly. “How many people are you leading down here? Can they all survive the Marble Forest?”
I stared at the orb, trying to make eye contact with the vague face-shaped image in the battery. “I intended to walk them through with us. There’s maybe a hundred, almost all halflings.”
“You think Zeek is going to let you march a small company through the marble forest unchallenged?” Lenny asked, punctuating the question with a humorless laugh. “Even if he did, the dungeon has maximum occupancy fail-safes built in. Monsters become more powerful for every member over the standard party of six. Once a group hits ten people in size, the dungeon assumes it’s an invasion or attack of some kind and stops playing fair. The dungeon will spawn waves of enemies until the group leaves or dies.”
“Wonderful, so if I’m hearing you right,” I said, facing the party. “We need to fight our way through the Marble Forest, then run a gauntlet to get back to this room.”
“If the tunnels remain intact,” Lenny added helpfully in a chipper tone.
My stomach turned at the situation. If this were a game I was playing at a mouse and keyboard, I’d be a little stressed but more intrigued than anything. With this being my life, everything felt different. Errol in Stathmore who set me on this quest, all the halflings and their frightening competence, not to mention the chances for my own survival, all hinged on some really thin odds.
“Isn’t this place supposed to be repairing itself,” Goodwin asked, leaning against the doorframe. “I’d think that would include the tunnels.”
“It will,” Lex nodded, “Lendralgin explained how the self-healing works while we were fixing the controls. With the size of this dungeon, it’s going to take weeks to fully repair at least. Factoring in how long it’s been degrading here, long enough to spill raw mana into the silver ore, I think weeks is at the lower end of the full repair estimate. The tunnels aren’t high priority.”
“We have less than six hours before the boom,” Uri said, pointing at the door. “We should be walking and talking at this point, right?”
“Agreed,” I nodded, stowing Lenny in my inventory. “Lex, I think it would be safest if you stayed here with the faction shrine. You can use it if you get trapped so you won’t starve.”
“Not going to work,” Phelyya joined the conversation, having logged back in at some point and joined up near the entrance to the control room. “Remember the tunnel with the boiling sewer water? It’s not just trickling in anymore. Bunk room is starting to flood and it’ll be here soon.”
As she was talking, the rank sewage smell hit me. The demontouched elf’s boots were shiny up to the ankles with the foul substance. I rushed out of the control room in time to see a puddle of the liquid begin oozing its way out of the bunk room, spreading across the floor.
“Back up the tunnel we came from,” I yelled, grabbing Lex and hoisting her over my shoulder. “Sorry about this.”
Ignoring the halfling’s squeak of surprise, I led the group through the calf-deep boiling muck in the quarters. The heat was scalding in a way I recognized from previous in-game burns, but the itchy sensation gave me the impression this was more than water and sewage. I checked my logs and cursed.
Fetid Ooze Larvae (level 2) deals 6 (2 disease, 4 acid) damage
Clinging Ooze (Debuff) - Your clothing is harboring Fetid Ooze Larvae causing 5 damage per second while the affected items are equipped. 60 seconds remaining…
“This liquid is some sort of living acidic slime!” I yelled back as I focused on not splashing the NPC over my shoulder. A dozen feet into the tunnel I felt we were high enough to safely stop. I set the halfling down, careful not to let her touch anywhere I’d been splashed. The itching and burning made that an easy thing to determine. The debuff would do about 300 damage, leaving me with something like 70 health. Survivable outside of battle, if unpleasant.
The rest of the party didn’t have the luxury of a giant health pool, and we had no healer. I had a couple of pitifully underpowered pseudo-health potions from our stop at the apothecary, so I turned back to discuss which of the party might be able to survive with the potions. The words died on my lips as I saw Phelyya and Goodwin stripping off their boots and pants. Before I could form a question, they began wildly swinging their pants against the floor, only adding to my potential question pool.
“Take off your pants and boots to remove the debuff, hitting them against things deals damage to the larvae,” Goodwin explained. Uri was silent and fully clothed, if somewhat indistinct in the background. His health bar ticked up in my party icons, cluing me in to how he had solved the potential debuff issue. Must be nice to just literally reverse ever having gotten a debuff. I watched more of my health tick away and doubled checked my mental math from before, now that it wasn’t quite as urgent.
“I’m going to keep my pants on,” I said, pushing the pain out of my mind. It felt like I was wearing pants made of ghost peppers and razor blades. “When you are all ready to keep moving, I guess just put your pants back on.”
Despite the pain, I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw the look on Lex’s face. She stood, mouth agape, as the elf and monk attacked their own clothes, clad only in the game-provided undergarments below the waist. The scene continued until the debuff wore off and they apparently stopped getting damage notifications.
“Sorry about the whole over-the-shoulder carry thing,” I said, gesturing at the muck on my pants. “I figured you could handle being carried forcibly a bit better than wading through slime.”
Lex covered her mouth, face turning red as she looked away from everyone. “It’s… it’s fine.”
My health began recovering at its standard rate outside of battle. We rushed up the tunnel, pausing for the increasingly frequent tremors. I had to shield Lex from falling stones a couple of times, thanking my tremorsense for the warnings. At the top of the tunnel, the Artificer fiddled with the rune panel, and the door slid open to reveal a nightmare.
Amalie - Respawn
My phone chirped for attention in my earbud as I stepped into the elevator. Shifting my iced coffee to my other hand, I silenced the alarm telling me I had fifteen minutes left on my respawn lockout. Thinking about my death’s unfortunate timing brought back a flare of frustration, the emotions admittedly not quite as strong as when I’d initially died.
I spent about half an hour taking out my anger in the Training Keep, blowing up targets with little focus or skill. It was cathartic while helping to recoup 247 of the 495 experience I lost. Waiting for respawn wasn’t nearly as boring as it sounded. Players had a small keep with modest medieval furnishings, rooms with a variety of training options for skills, and a combat yard full of respawning automatons.
As interesting as it was, I decided to log out and clear my head instead. I wandered through the park just outside my apartment complex, wishing I could trade the oppressive humidity and heat of the Florida summer for the pleasant mild temperatures around Stathmore. Escaping from the mid-afternoon sun, I grabbed a quick lunch and ignored text messages from Jane. As much as I wanted to rub her nose in my find, I wanted to make sure it didn’t explode first. It was a great break from the stress of my time-sensitive, world-altering quest.
The elevator doors opened on my floor, and I wasted no time in getting logged in. I spawned in the keep’s bedroom, lying on a moderately comfortable bed with my hands clasped over my stomach. Sitting up from the creepy corpse pose, I was glad the game didn’t feel the need to force memories of my avatar sitting motionless for over an hour into my mind. Hopefully, the pain of absorbing memories is just a byproduct of the game still being in alpha testing, there’s no way they could release it to even an open beta without that getting fixed.
Before long, a prompt appeared asking if I was ready to return to the world, or if I wanted to remain in the recovery keep. The message indicated I could remain here for up to eight hours, though there was a cap on skill and experience gains. Filing that data away for later, I selected the option to rejoin the larger game world. The keep winked out of existence in a blur of blue sparks, replaced with the eerie stone jungle. Zeek, the housecat-sized sphinx, snored softly as he lay curled against the base of the fountain.
Taking care not to wake the creepy cat-man, I drank from the fountain and regained the Soft Touch buff. I looked off in the direction of the dungeon as the rustling of some creature in the stones catching my attention. I reached for my wand, only to find it missing. Another noise from behind caused me to whip around, the beginning the hand motions required for Ephemeral Water Spirit until I felt a familiar, hard to describe presence.
“Lady Amalie,” Gavin called from the path, barely visible around a bend several paces away. “I didn’t expect you to have perished as well, considering the power you had in your control.”
Zeek grumbled and curled away from us as he napped. I pointed in his direction and put a finger to my lips. The cleric shrugged.
“He’s a cat, I am certain he is sufficiently well-rested,” Gavin stated, making no effort to stay quiet as he made his way back into the clearing. “I was intending to venture topside and lead our hosts to safety down here.”
I looked back in the direction of the dungeon wistfully, then nodded. “Makes sense, I don’t think we can handle the dungeon on our own at the moment. Let’s grab some high-level NPCs and have them carry us through to the service tunnel.”
We made our way through the path and mine as quickly as we could manage without depleting our stamina, acutely aware of the hour remaining on the first quest objective’s countdown timer. We reached the entrance just as a major earthquake shook the tunnel so violently even my elven grace couldn’t keep me from stumbling. The burned-out buildings around the miner’s encampment fell in on themselves as they were shaken apart. Most of the miners were arrayed around the entrance. When the intensity of the quake lessened I was able to get a better look around.
Only the foundry and, of all things, the outhouse stood with minimal damage. All other buildings had been reduced to rubble or had large chunks missing from their sides. A crater sat where one building stood previously, away from the others. Clearly, something volatile went up with a spectacular bang at some point in the fighting. Ponies and livestock stayed far from the smoking buildings, left to their own devices in the aftermath of the battle. Koh was nearby, crouched atop his partially melted battle-mech, checking the belay lines for a handful of halflings dangling above the mine entrance.
“Stop gawking at my sappers and give me some good news. Any news, actually,” Foreman Quickhand insisted, shrill voice easily piercing the low din of fires and rock settling.
“We managed to take out the adventurers that followed us,” I said, turning to face the halfling leader. “Gavin and I died in the process. Everyone else is down below.”
“And are we safer up here, or in the mine?” Quickhand asked, affixing a cigarette to her holder. “My scouts just informed me there’s another wave gearing up to attack at nightfall. We have maybe two or three hours.”
Pulling up my quest log, I let out a sigh of relief. “The self-repair is working again. The dungeon will be the safest place for everyone.”
Quickhand took a drag from her cigarette and tossed a small burlap sack up to one of the miners scaling the mountainside. The recipient began driving a stake through a loop on the bag, affixing it above the entrance and running a thick fuse line down the rock face. I winced, realizing the foreman was handling explosives with a lit cigarette in hand. She tossed another up to a different halfling and I took a step back.
“Seeing as you’re here, and not halfway across the continent, I take it the shrine is intact,” Lorekeeper Coal said by way of greeting, having arrived with Edralin as I was facing the mine. “Did you find somewhere to set it up long-term? Once we get down there, I can convert the shrine into a faction pillar, and maybe get some of us to safety. Probably not enough energy for all of us, but some can be saved.”
I bit my lip. “We didn’t respawn at the shrine. We died in the dungeon, or have Forge brands, or something. Either way, we returned in the first part of the dungeon. Er, pre-dungeon. We did grab the shrine on the way down, someone has it.”
