NOVEL NEXT 95 - The End of the Fun and Games
After he'd shot the Slingerclerk in the head, Archmund waited for its corpse to wick away into dark miasma before pulling its core Gem from where it had laid.
"I can't believe you," Beatrice grumbled. "I need half a minute to take the damn thing out, and you do it better and faster in three seconds?"
"Hey, look, it's not a competition. At least, not in that way."
"Young master, you always say the strangest things."
"Point for me," Beatrice said.
"That's Betty for you. Take her down a notch, and she'll grab your neck to pull herself back up!"
"…Point for me."
The real competition, of course, was which one of them managed to get fewer complaints from their companions after killing some amount of Monsters. So far, they were tied.
Beatrice sighed as she crouched to grab the Gem she'd won from the Bladeclerk, but stopped as she touched it. "It's larger than I expected, given how I did so much more than you."
"Did so much more."
"You know," Beatrice said, throwing her hands up in frustration. "I actually had to shoot a bunch at it. It used its power defending. But the Gem isn't that much smaller!"
It was true. The Gem she'd won wasn't that much smaller than Archmund's. Both were about the size of a thumbnail, though he had no inclination to run his power through it. Nor, it seemed, did Beatrice. She raised it up against the mysterious blue of the unbroken skylight.
Mary nodded approvingly. "Those will be worth a good amount."
"Great. That's great," Archmund said. He still didn't know the value of money, but he was really hoping Granavale was now rich enough to rival the Duke of Agraria.
"Gelias? Any ideas?"
Gelias shrugged. "Perhaps your blue spiral froze the magic in place instead of truly scattering it."
"Damn," Archmund said. "Now I really want one of those."
"Mine," Beatrice said, clutching the wand protectively.
He rolled his eyes. "Don't worry. I won't take yours. It wouldn't work for me anyways now that you've touched it."
They proceeded onwards into the Dungeon. It was as if they had moved from the Middle Subtier, where things didn't make sense, into the Deepest Subtier, where things reflected the outside world but held within them portents and omens.
They no longer walked through narrow corridors, but rooms chained from end to end, connected with no true logic between them. A meeting room with a long table flowed into a personal room with single desks, which then led in turn to a library, which in turn connected directly to a supply room. And then endless other rooms in similar configurations, all leading from one to the other with greater senseless variety.
In a supply room, a Wandclerk and a Flailclerk formed from the darkness.
"That one has a wand. I want it."
"Well, I don't need two."
Archmund killed the Monster with his Infrared Lance and began walking forward.
"What are you doing? she hasn't taken out the other one yet!" said Mary.
"Point for me," Beatrice said.
"Can you help him first and then keep track?" said Rory.
"Point for me."
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In a library, two Monsters, humanoids with plates of crystal rotating around their torsos, appeared.
Archmund killed one with an Infrared Lance, and the crystal plates clattered to the ground.
"You know, we could speed this up a lot if you just let us help," Rory said.
"Point for me," said Beatrice as she fired off a bunch of blue spirals. The crystal plates blocked them, but after about three hits, the plates clattered to the ground.
"You've really been abusing that tactic," Rory said. "It might get you bigger Gems, but wouldn't it be safer to kill quickly?"
"Point for me."
Beatrice scowled and finished the Monster off with a barrage of black darts to the face, filling the air with an ominous black dust.
In a room with a long table, which Archmund felt was a conference room but realistically was probably a dining room, they ran into two Monsters with sharp crystal spikes held between their knuckles.
"You know, it strikes me as unfair that Rory's comfortable criticizing me but Mary's not criticizing you," Archmund said.
Beatrice looked at him as she wove a sheet of red. She seemed to be turning over her words carefully. "She doesn't want to need you to owe me a favor."
"I beat your face into the mud already once. Can't you overlook—"
"That's not it. She doesn't want to burden you, but you like carrying all of us."
Archmund didn't know what to make of it.
"Hey, Mary," Beatrice said with a sigh. "For this contest, don't worry about sounding rude or anything, okay?"
Mary gave them both a dubious look, but let out a slight squeak. "You are both so in tune with how other people act and think, and yet for yourselves you're both so reserved."
"I think that's a point against both of us?"
Beatrice fired a stream of black darts as Archmund launched an Infrared Lance.
"I guess so."
"You want to call it?"
He'd lost track, but they'd probably killed more than 60 each.
They were facing more Monsters at once. At first, they'd been facing convenient pairs of two Monsters at a time. Then, four. Now, they'd just blasted their way through their first room of six, a claustrophobic room with a long table splitting it down the middle and a low ceiling. Archmund had blasted three using his Infrared Lance, though he'd needed to channel a bit more power than he'd anticipated. Beatrice, meanwhile, had bound three Monsters in red tape, stunned them with blue spirals, and killed them with headshots of black darts.
Archmund glanced at Rory and Mary, who were looking increasingly nervous, and Gelias, who continued to look inscrutably neutral. "Yeah, let's."
"So… did you win, or did I?"
"You each got exactly the same amounts of complaints about your personal issues," Gelias said helpfully. "Though I doubt you would have forgotten, every time one of you got a complaint, the other's gloating elicited a complaint in turn."
"You really are related," Rory said with a chuckle.
"Well, some things run in families," Beatrice said, giving him a weary stare.
He chuckled, this time more nervously, and scratched the back of his head.
"You think this is safe enough to take a break?" Archmund said. "I want to look over what we've gathered."
"Monsters will take more than a few minutes to reconstitute within the room, and we can keep watch on the doors," Gelias said. "We should be fine for you to take inventory."
Archmund nodded.
He and Beatrice both had around 15 Gems apiece, each about the size of his thumb. Hers were smaller, but they'd started to grow as they'd fought their way through and she'd gotten more skilled with her wand.
He wasn't feeling tired at all, and from the looks of it, neither was she. He didn't bother checking since he trusted his body. Though maybe it had been the caffeine?
He'd won a wand of his own, though he had the sneaking suspicion that there wasn't any real point of him using it just yet. Frankly, it was a useful expansion to Beatrice's offensive capabilities, but he already had robust offensive and defensive Skills. He could kill in seconds and could survive great blows already.
They'd also gathered Gemstone Lanyards from each of the Monsters they'd mowed through, though they'd left the corresponding keycards in place. Simply put, the Lanyards didn't absorb living magic, instead channeling magic from the artifacts they were attached two. They contrasted sharply with the Gemstone Keycards, which hungrily absorbed their magic and Attuned to them with but a touch.
There was something interesting he could do with the Lanyards, he was sure of it. But that was a matter for later.
They'd left most of the tankards and flails and other useless weapons on the ground where they'd fallen, so they could be consumed and reabsorbed into the Dungeon.
Maybe on another trip, they could establish a harvest of the tankards, making those one of the useful exports of Granavale, one of the cultural trinkets that would persist long past the slow decay of the Dungeon itself. Maybe the legacy of Granavale Dungeon would just be mugs that could keep drinks as hot or cold as you wanted.
He could see that future. And he refused to let open-faced crystal thermoses to be his legacy. At most, they would be a footnote in his own legend.
They fought their way through the rest of the Deepest Subtier, towards the bottommost floor where the shadows grew deepest, where the spirits of Tier 2 held court in the heart of their power.
The whitewashed walls gave way to Gem, silvery blues and purples glinting with faint unearthly light. The tables and adornments now shone with unearthliness, feeling less real and bearing with them a density and weight.
They came to one final door. Curiously, door was at the corner of the room beyond. It was at a diagonal. They could see the two far walls, but not the adjacent ones..
And there was a lock.
"So… who wants to do the honors?" Archmund said. He held up his Gemstone Keycard.
Mary, Rory, and Beatrice all held up theirs in turn.
"Gelias, you don't have one?"
"Those things are hungry," Gelias said. If he had been less reserved, Archmund imagined he might have shuddered. "I want no part of them."
"Together, then, except for Gelias," Archmund said.
And the four of them touched their Keycards to the lock.