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Chapter 56: The Main Dungeon
🕑 Added 2025-07-03 14:43:16 +0000 UTCThe skeleton collapsed into a small mound of bones. Most of its weight disintegrated to ether. The rib cage broke apart into little bits. As always, the host bones were rather insignificant in comparison to the reanimated monster. Blue wisps of ether rose from the bones, as if a campfire was burning. The sizzle of collectible ether was far louder than with any other basic monster Vivi had killed.
Lucius grinned wide. “Wow,” he said. “That worked. I think you might be smart, Vivi. How did you know when to throw the spear?”
“You heard me counting, Lucius…” Vivi said. “How much ether did it drop?”
Lucius was already collecting the ether. It took him a few seconds to collect it all. The blue campfire of wisps flowed into his core. In the end, his reserves rose by over six hundred, eventually hitting 1537 wisps.
“Six hundred,” Lucius said. “For a single basic monster.”
After collecting the ether, the host bones turned totally ordinary. They weren’t any different from the cluttered bones in the free dungeon above.
The skeleton was worth six hundred ether. That was a small fortune—the kind of amount that bandits would have killed a family for. Lucius’s reserves were almost doubled just from one monster. If Vivi could kill a skeleton worth six hundred once a day, clearing her debts would be realistically possible.
“And that was just the guard to the dungeon…” Vivi said. “We need to kill less than ten of these, and we’ll hit five thousand ether.”
Behind Vivi, light footsteps approached cautiously. Eem peeked her head from over a stone. When she saw that the skeleton was dead, she stepped closer and showed her tongue at the collapsed host bones.
“Should we wait for it to respawn?” Vivi asked.
“That will probably take a while,” Lucius said. “The more ether a monster carries, the more effort a dungeon needs to put in for it to respawn. This part of the dungeon has probably been brewing for at least a few decades.”
“So we have no choice but to head deeper,” Vivi said.
The arched entrance to the main dungeon was unprotected. A blue glow shone within, but Vivi couldn’t make out any details from outside. Some sort of misty shroud blocked her from seeing deeper. She could feel ether within. A lot more ether than the amount she’d felt in the wraith skeleton’s arena.
If we step in, what are the chances we’ll die? Vivi thought. She didn’t want Eem to hear.
“We are stronger now,” Lucius said. “Six hundred ether is a considerable amount. The more skeletons we defeat, the easier they will get. My claws will start to do real damage after we reach around three thousand ether.”
Well, the dungeon is our only way out… Vivi thought. She looked at Lucius’s reserves. The fight with the earlier skeleton had exhausted over two hundred wisps. Fighting at full force wasn’t cheap. Just to empower Vivi’s muscles, Lucius required a lot of ether.
But they still had over thirteen hundred active wisps, and Vivi certainly didn’t have time for rest. If she wanted to make it back up for collection day, she’d probably need to clear her way out today.
“Eem, stay behind me,” Vivi said.
She approached the entrance carefully. She touched the shroud with her left hand. Her hand passed right through. It didn’t seem to be dangerous.
Lucius, if there are traps, try to shield me.
Vivi stepped into the shroud, entering the dungeon.
A low-hanging spectral chandelier welcomed her to a wide chamber filled with caskets and coffins. Stone bricks were arranged in patterns on the well-maintained floor. The same ice-blue glow radiated faintly from between each brick. The glow was brightest in the middle of the floor, growing weaker as it traveled to the edges and up the walls.
The glow was bright, but the dungeon was dark. Ethereal light always had weird properties. Sometimes, the brightest light didn’t illuminate its surroundings in the slightest.
Vivi stood by the entrance. At the back, a stairway pointed deeper. To the left was another doorway, leading upward.
“We probably entered through a secret entrance. The stairway down probably leads to the second level and the boss. The way left leads back up.”
I see… Vivi thought. And the coffins?
“Probably more skeletons,” Lucius said.
Vivi sniffed the air. There was a weird smell, but Vivi couldn’t call it musty. The air smelled like mint and an old house smell combined. She could breathe surprisingly well.
Slowly, Vivi stepped deeper. Nothing attacked her just yet. She could feel hostile ether all around her, as if any step she took could activate a trap or alert her presence to monsters that lurked unseen.
This whole place feels like a puzzle, Vivi thought. The guard skeleton acted as if it was placed under a spell. It wasn’t thinking at all.
“All monsters act on their instincts,” Lucius said. “They don’t think. They wander around and kill anything that’s alive.”
The skeleton wasn’t wandering around. It patrolled the exact same area with precise movements. It chased me for a bit when it saw me, then it forgot I existed. It’s like it couldn’t store memories.
“Yes, monsters don’t store memories,” Lucius said. “That’s what makes them stupid.”
Vivi thought back to the fourth level. She could have sworn the Twilight Shaman was different. That monster acted almost like a child that had been given too much power. It played with Vivi before trying to kill her. Its eyes had intent.
Vivi really struggled to understand how monsters worked. But for now, that didn’t matter.
If the rest of the dungeon behaves similarly, perhaps we can use the weird behavior to our advantage. Like solving a puzzle.
“I hate strategic dungeon hunts,” Lucius said. “But I admit… We’re too weak to run in and fight everything.”
As Vivi was thinking, Eem slipped past her feet, slowly stepping into the dungeon. Vivi sighed in her thoughts, but decided against scolding Eem. The fiend was tiptoeing cautiously.
Eem peeked into the next room over, and the ground blinked. The shroud to the next room lifted.
The next room over was filled with ethereal auras. Vivi spotted at least six skeletons, all wielding thousands upon thousands of ether.
“Run!” Vivi shouted. She bolted in the opposite direction, the way she’d come.
She fully expected the walls to close in, or another thick slab to crash down on her exit. Neither happened. Vivi and Eem ran out of the dungeon, back to the shoreline.
Vivi knew she stood no chance against six skeletons at once. She ran straight to the lake. If these skeletons behaved at all similarly to the guard skeleton, they probably wouldn’t chase her into the water. She dove in and swam as fast as she could.
Not five seconds into the swim, Lucius shouted, “Behind, block!”
Vivi turned around to see that three skeletons had followed her. Two of them were broad-shouldered skeletons wielding maces. They were eight feet tall, glowing with the blue burning wisps of ether. The last skeleton was an archer with a bow. It had no quiver. Instead, a giant ethereal arrow materialized as it pulled the string of its bow.
Vivi felt a chill. A perfect block wouldn’t have blocked an arrow like that. Vivi held her runesword to the side and pushed Shadow Swipe outward. Her sword burst in flames, ether coating it.
The archer adjusted its aim and shot at Vivi’s sword.
The weapon flung off of her hand, into the lake. The arrow was redirected upward. It flew all the way to the ceiling. An explosion reverberated across the cavern as the arrow made impact. The shaft poked out from the ceiling.
Lucius, hide my ether! Vivi shouted. Make me invisible!
She used Shadow Swipe negatively. With no weapon in her hands, the skill was uncertain what to do. Nothing seemed to happen.
The archer was loading another arrow above the water.
Lucius hid deep within Vivi. Her ethereal aura calmed down on its own. Vivi continued diving down, heart racing.
The arrow never came. The skeletons turned around, leaving Vivi alone.
Ten seconds later, Vivi’s head popped up from the water. The skeletons trotted back to the dungeon.
Vivi scanned the area, searching for Eem. The fiend’s head poked out from above a rock on the shore. Vivi let out a breath of relief.
“What’s wrong with that archer?” Vivi said. “How much power can one arrow have? Did you catch my sword?”
“Let me find it…” Lucius said.
He dove into the lake. Vivi watched her surroundings for any fish trying to eat her. The area seemed clear. She waited for Lucius to search for her sword. With ether still inside, finding it shouldn’t have been difficult. After half a minute, Lucius came back.
“Uhm, I’m sorry, Vivi…” Lucius began.
“Is it too deep?” Vivi asked.
“No, I found it. But it’s… not looking good.” He summoned it to her hands.
The sword had a dent and a crack in the middle. The blade was bent where the arrow had hit. Vivi’s heart skipped a beat, staring at the sword.
She pushed ether through the runes. If the sword still contained ether, it could be used, bent or not. The runes worked, pushing ether to the veins. At first, the cracks merely leaked a few wisps at a time.
Then a grinding sound came from the sword. The cracks grew, and the crystal mithril snapped in half along with the veins inside.
“It’s gone…” Vivi said. Looking at her snapped sword, a lump formed in her throat. Was this the limit of runesmithing?
“The sword served us well,” Lucius said. “No spirit blade in the world would have survived that arrow. This dungeon is just insane.”
“Yeah…” Vivi said. “It was just a one-runed sword. Grandpa would have called it a toy.”
“It was one of the better weapons I’ve seen,” Lucius said. “Swords aren’t meant to sustain damage like that.”
Vivi sighed. “I can make a better one once we find a smithy. But for now… We’re stuck. The only weapon we have is our javelin. How many skeletons were there in that room?”
“I saw seven,” Lucius said. “If we kill them all, we’ll have enough ether to match the black-masked swordsman.”
“If we kill them…” Vivi said. She bit her lip, then began slowly swimming back to shore.
Defeating the skeletons would be her only way up. If she defeated them, she’d easily max out her ether reserves. By that point, she would be one of the strongest nimrods in Zand. But with her sword broken, the only weapon she had was her javelin and Lucius’s claws. She would struggle to beat a single skeleton one-to-one, let alone multiple at the same time.
Only three skeletons chased us, Vivi thought.
“Yes,” Lucius said.
And they leave us every time we move into the water… Ideas popped up in her head. She was far too weak to fight seven skeletons head on. Even fighting one was still difficult unless she managed to catch them off-guard.
Perhaps she would have to do just that.
Lucius, how good are you at digging holes?
