Pocket Dungeon 2, page 5
The lion-like monster was a different story, however. I glanced over my shoulder to see that the last of the three creatures was the only one that had figured out how to glide through the air.
It was yet another level seven monster, and this one was named Timul. It gave another terrifying bellow and leaped toward me through the air with all the grace of a swimmer diving into the water.
“Shit!” I shouted and threw myself out of the way of the blow. At the same time, I ended up stumbling back into proximity of Yasha and Trog.
Trog threw his arm out and grabbed onto Yasha’s waist before she could drop down onto the ground and onto the venomous cloud that had formed above the struggling spider.
I felt a wave of relief wash through me, because I had a feeling that she might have been a goner if he hadn’t managed to catch her in time.
Thankfully, Yettop seemed unable to do much of anything other than twitch in agony, even now that it was back on the ground. All of its limbs had been severed from its body thanks to the quick work between Yasha’s deadly katana and Trog’s skilled use of his axe. All it needed was a final death blow.
Timul was a different story, however. The lion-like monster was just outside of the perimeter that kept it in the air, but I doubted it would stay that way for long.
Phantom Doomslayer was vibrating even harder in my hand now, and the blade seemed to thrum like it never had before.
I remembered what the text for the orb had said about letting the power burn for too long, and I was starting to get the feeling I knew why. My sword seemed to be nearly overcharged with power from the siphoned magic in the air.
Even the flames were reacting to the surge of power, and they jetted up toward the ceiling like someone had cranked up the heat.
I used all of the power the blade had harnessed, however, and I jumped up and slammed the tip of the blade straight into the center of Timul’s chest with all the force I could. As I came within proximity of the monster, it dropped from the air like a ton of bricks. The sudden return of gravity helped to drive it further down onto my blade.
The blade sank in all the way to the hilt, and the sound that came out of the creature in front of me was something I knew I would hear in my nightmares for weeks to come, but I didn’t stop my assault.
Instead, I twisted the blade while it was still inside the creature’s chest.
All of the power that had built up seemed to release at once, and before I had a second to react, the creature speared around my sword simply exploded into a fine red mist and disgusting chunks of hair.
At the same time, Trog swung Yasha like she was simply a weapon herself, and the fox-woman leaped atop the spider monster that had drifted weakly back up into the air and drove her katana straight into its central chest cavity.
It gave one last throttling cry before it too died.
My entire arm felt like it was on fire as the power started to leak from my sword, like light coming in from under the crack of a door. It was beginning to get painful to handle, and the heat in the room was almost too much to bear. I tore the Effervescent Orb from my pocket, and as soon as I tapped it firmly with my thumb, the magic turned off as simply as if I had flicked a switch.
I let out a loud sigh of relief as the immense, overwhelming, and conflicting feelings all faded at once, and my sword stopped burning so brightly.
I hadn’t even realized the blade itself had been glowing like it was lit from within until the effect ceased with the orb’s waning power. I tucked the orb back into my pocket and finally sheathed my blade.
The scene in the room was one of overwhelming gore and chaos, and I scrunched my nose in disgust. But before I could go and snag the three treasure chests that now lingered in the room amidst the bodies, I turned my attention to Trog and Yasha.
“Are you two alright?” I asked. I was worried about Trog, of course, because he was my friend, but I would be a liar to say that the majority of my worry didn’t center around Yasha.
“I am quite alright,” she assured me. “Trog made sure I did not float into the spider’s blood.”
“IT WAS NOT A PROBLEM, FAIR ARCADION WARRIOR!” he announced cheerfully. “ANY FRIEND OF WES IS A FRIEND OF MINE!”
Yasha actually offered the massive demonic man a smile, and it seemed truly genuine. Her ears didn’t even twitch at all, which I took as a good sign.
“Come on, let’s get our chests and get out of here. We only have fifteen minutes left in the dungeon, and we have no time to waste.”
As I spoke, I had already started to gather the chest closest to me, the one from Timul. As I did, Yasha managed to get the chest from Berkus, as well as the final chest from Yettop.
“Now what do we do?” she asked and looked at me for confirmation. “There is not a door.”
She had a point. I looked around the room and saw that the stone ring that remained around the pit where the monsters had just crawled out of was highlighted in yellow.
“I think we have to head down there,” I said and pointed toward the edge of the pit.
I made my way over to it, and was careful not to stand on the very edge. It wasn’t illuminated in red, but still, I couldn’t ever be too cautious when it came to not fucking dying.
I peered down into the pit, and after a moment of squinting, I saw it. There was a ladder bolted to one side of the pit.
A laugh bubbled up in my throat. Had the creatures climbed out by using a fucking ladder?
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll go first.”
Without any further hesitation, I quickly lowered myself down into the pit and planted my hands and feet firmly on the rungs of the metal ladder. It felt secure enough, and I tried not to imagine what sort of terrifying shit might be waiting for us at the bottom as I climbed down.
The pit wasn’t nearly as deep as I had expected, maybe only ten feet or so, and I hit the bottom in no time. There was a slight drop down, but it was only about six feet, so when I dangled myself down from the final rung, I had no issues landing on my feet.
I ducked my head down, shuffled forward a few steps, and then was able to stand upright. The pit had led down to yet another hallway that resembled all the other hallways I’d seen in this dungeon, right down to the moss on the walls.
Trog dropped down from the pit next, and he had to duck substantially lower than I did before he could straighten back up to his eight feet of height.
Yasha took up the rear, and before she could drop down the same way we had, I moved over and held my arms out so the fox-woman could drop into my arms instead.
Her injured leg might have been fully healed, but I didn’t want to run any risks of her agitating the old injury.
It was a little awkward to hold her as I shuffled with my head down until the ceiling raised again, but I decided it was more than worth it to make sure she was entirely okay.
“Thank you, Wes,” she said as I placed her back on her feet. She pressed a kiss to my cheek before she moved out of my arms.
I looked around to take in our surroundings, and saw that the hallway was rather short. At the end was a large door made of wood, and it was highlighted in yellow, but I didn’t need the highlight to tell me what it was.
We had reached the end of the double crystal, level seven dungeon.
Thank fucking god.
“Do you want to come into the equipment room with us?” I asked Trog. The last time, he had been rather excited to see all of the loot, though he hadn’t wanted to keep any of it.
But, to my surprise, the large demonic man shook his head.
“NO, MY LITTLE FRIEND, I THINK I WOULD LIKE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE DOUBLE CRYSTAL DUNGEON,” he told me with a clear giddiness in his deep tone. “IT IS RARE TO HAVE THIS OPPORTUNITY. I WILL NOT BE LONG, SO FRET NOT. BUT YOU DO NOT NEED TO WAIT FOR ME.”
“Are you sure?” I asked him. I trusted that he knew what he was doing, but still, it wasn’t something I would have done, that was for certain.
Trog, on the other hand, seemed downright delighted.
“BUT OF COURSE,” he said. “HERE, TAKE THIS, AS YOU KNOW, I HAVE NO NEED FOR IT.”
As he spoke, he reached into… somewhere? Did he have pockets? I had no idea, but he passed me a treasure chest, which I assumed he must have gotten from fighting the creature that had come before the triple threat we’d faced together.
Then he pulled out a crumpled piece of parchment and gave me a loaded look.
“STUDY THESE INSTRUCTIONS CAREFULLY, MY FRIEND,” he intoned. “WE WILL BE ABLE TO MEET AGAIN SOON, I AM SURE OF IT.”
“Thank you,” I said and tucked it safely into my pocket. “And be careful, alright? We’ll have to try to meet up again soon.”
“WE WILL INDEED!” he agreed.
Yasha stepped forward and gave a slight, formal-looking bow to Trog.
“Thank you, Trog’thukaz the Academic, for helping me,” she said. “I am glad that we are now friends.”
Trog smiled brightly at Yasha. “OF COURSE, MIGHTY WARRIOR. NOW, GO! I HAVE A DUNGEON TO STUDY!”
And with that, the massive man turned, hunched, and started back up the ladder that led into the pit once again. He had about thirteen minutes left by my timer, and even less by his own, but I wasn’t worried.
Trog knew dungeons like the back of his hand. I mean, he had even figured out how to meet up with me again. I was certain he was going to be fine.
“Come on,” I said to Yasha, and together, the two of us pushed our way into the equipment room.
We had some loot to examine.
Chapter 4
I still wasn’t quite used to the huge upgrade that the equipment room had undergone since my first few dungeons, but it was definitely a relief to be in there as opposed to the grimy dungeon outside the walls.
The stone tiles that made up the walls and floors of the equipment room were a blessedly clean dove-gray, as opposed to the mossy, ooze-covered tiles that had made up the vast majority of the dungeon just past the wooden door.
Large, sturdy-looking equipment lockers lined one of the walls, and elegant metal sconces held torches that kept the room illuminated and bright. A wooden ladder was propped up against another of the walls and led up to the hatch that would take me back to the real world outside of the crystal itself.
I still shuddered every time I remembered the scary, fucking rickety rope ladder that had previously occupied its spot.
The centerpiece of the room was a massive wooden table that looked as if it had been plucked straight from the pages of a book about King Arthur. It was so large that even if I leaned across it, I knew there was no way I would be able to easily touch the other end.
Yasha and I made our way up to the table and started to shuck off our armor and our weapons, and the two of us tossed them into a fairly unorganized heap on the wooden surface.
I was just removing my boots when the only permanent resident of the equipment room sauntered toward us.
Well. Maybe sauntered wasn’t quite the right word for what Mimic did.
Mimic was just that, a chest mimic. When he wasn’t walking or talking, the chest mimic looked like a massive, oversized treasure chest. But when he decided it was time to annoy me, he had stubby little arms and legs, and a strange face made out of the shapes on the chest of his body.
He was… interesting, but he did serve a purpose in the dungeon. Whenever I had items I didn’t want to keep, I could feed them to Mimic, and he would spit out gold for me in return.
“Welcome back, Wes,” he greeted, and I could already tell he was jonesing for something to eat.
“Hello, Mimic,” Yasha said pointedly.
The chest mimic sighed, which was still weird that he could even do something like that.
“Hello, Yasha.” The chest mimic seemed annoyed I had brought someone with me once again.
There was literally nothing that said I couldn’t bring someone into a dungeon with me, but for some reason, the chest mimic seemed to prefer our alone time. Maybe he thought he could bully me into feeding him a little easier if there weren’t two of us splitting the loot from the dungeon.
Speaking of loot, I quickly emptied my pockets of the four treasure chests we had collected during our time in the level seven dungeon.
It still hadn’t ceased to amaze me how things the approximate size of breadboxes on average could so easily fit inside my pockets while I was in the dungeon. I knew it was magic, but it was still wild to me.
Unfortunately, that breaking of physics didn’t carry over into the real world, so I had a special satchel I had actually been given by Mimic to carry my gold in when I crossed over from inside the crystal to the real world outside.
“You don’t have to sound so excited,” I joked.
“Do you have anything for me to eat?” Mimic moved closer to me, and I was very distinctly reminded of an overeager dog as he practically stood on my foot.
I had just taken off my Leather Boots of Swiftness, so I really didn’t want the chest mimic standing on my socked foot. I hadn’t had a chance to put my own shoes back on yet.
Yasha seemed to notice this, and the sexy fox-woman made her way over to one of the equipment lockers with a door ever so slightly ajar.
Mimic had put away our street clothes for us while we traipsed through the dungeon. It was a strange nicety that he tended to enact. For some reason, he got rather irritable whenever anyone else tried to organize the equipment room, so I’d decided it wasn’t worth the argument, even if I did think it was a little weird how insistent he was about putting away my damned shoes.
Yasha came back over to the table and set down a bundle of her own clothing, along with my shoes, with a small, pleased smile in my direction.
“Mimic, look away,” I said, as opposed to answering his question about his meal.
The chest mimic gave a loud huff, another weird thing he was able to do considering I didn’t think he had anything remotely resembling lungs in there, but he made a grand show of turning around on his stubby little legs all the same.
I’m sure he was thrilled to continue stomping on my foot in the process.
While Mimic looked away, I didn’t bother. Instead, I watched without any sort of shame as Yasha stripped out of her armor without a care and casually tossed it back onto the table along with the rest of our discarded items.
She wasn’t wearing anything underneath, and I took a moment to let my eyes rake over her perfect body, all the way from her beautiful face to her delicately muscular legs. She was made up of plenty of harsh, deadly angles, along with perfect plush curves.
She grinned in my direction as she caught my gaze, and I saw a flash of her sharpened teeth.
“Don’t mind me,” I joked. “I’m just enjoying the view.”
“It is a good view, then?” she asked, though I was pretty damn sure she knew the answer to that. She was too sexy for my own health.
“A great view,” I told her, and I tried not to look disappointed as the view was quickly covered as she redressed herself in the clothing she’d worn into the crystal.
It had taken us some time, but eventually, we had found the sort of normal, Earth-specific clothing that Yasha liked.
The fox-woman tended to favor short but flowing skirts so she could easily hide her tail from view, paired with teeny-tiny shirts and a lack of a bra that left me with zero complaints whatsoever.
Today’s outfit was made up of a black skirt made out of a soft-looking crushed velvet, and a pale green halter top that showed off plenty of skin, along with the deliciously tempting curve of her breasts. She finished off the outfit with a beanie decorated with cat ears on the top.
She had found the item hilarious, considering she wore the beanie to obscure her ears from any potential prying eyes anyway.
“You can turn back around now, Mimic,” I announced as I bent down to slip on my boots now that I didn’t have anything better to look at.
The chest mimic let out a grumble that sounded an awful lot like ‘I don’t even like fox-women’, but I couldn’t be sure.
“Thank you, Mimic,” Yasha said, though there wasn’t any lost love between the two of them.
I cleared my throat. “Are you ready to take a look at this loot?”
“Yes,” Yasha announced. “But why did Trog’thukaz give you his chest? Did he not wish to keep it for himself? I do not understand why someone would do something like that.”
“It’s like I said,” I explained as I opened up the first of the four chests. “Trog is a scholar. He studies the dungeons, and he says that actually taking any of the loot biases his research.”
“But what of his axe?” Yasha asked as she came to stand next to me and peer over my shoulder into the newly opened chest.
“He brings that with him each time he enters the dungeons,” I explained. “I think it’s to give him a constant, despite the fact that the dungeons change. I mean, clearly his research has been paying off, though, because he was able to find me again. We had talked about it briefly, but I wasn’t sure if that was something we’d ever be able to do.”
“It is very impressive,” Yasha admitted. “I have never heard of something like that, either. I would very much like to see the parchment of instructions that he gave you.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m sure you might understand it better than I could anyway. But that can wait until we get home. Let’s have a look at this loot.”
I turned all my focus to the chest in front of us, and despite the fact that this was far from my first rodeo, I still couldn’t help the quick intake of breath as I caught sight of all the damn gold inside the chest itself.
Each dungeon increased in the amount of gold I was granted, and each time I saw the new amount I was able to take back to the real world with me, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It was insane.
I ran my hand through the sea of gold pieces to live out my Scrooge McDuck fantasy real quick before I started to scoop handful after handful into the magical satchel Mimic had gifted me.
Yasha quickly started to help, and I made a mental note to remember to count out the gold later that night after we got back to my apartment. I always tried to keep a running tally, that way I knew how much I had on me at any given time.
