NOVEL NEXT Chapter 20
Chapter 20
Orion - Day 10 of Landing
Population of Thornhill - 30
Our council meeting was essentially over. The town meeting had proceeded as anticipated: the newcomers complained, and Bianca appeased them with her usual grace. Our council meeting, too, unfolded predictably. We were all expected to shoulder the burden and grant the newcomers more time. The only problem was that the newcomers outnumbered the council, and more were coming.
Herman had come to me after the council meeting requesting a talk.
“Son, can I talk to you?” Herman asked me, and we made our way to the campfire.
“What is it, Herm?” I asked.
“Do you plan on taking over as the leader of this place?” Herman asked, crossing his legs when he sat on the log bench near the campfire.
“No, of course not,” I said. “Ethan, Anika and I have an understanding that Bianca should be the leader.”
“Don’t want the job?” Herman reached over to stoke the fire.
“It’s not that. It needs to be someone like Bianca. Someone who can stay in the base and cares about everyone. Anika and Ethan don’t like telling people what to do and I only care about myself and my brother."
“Then they all need to know you support her. You can’t constantly issue commands or make decisions. When Bianca makes a decision, you have to follow it.”
“But, you disagreed with her too, Herm,” I said, not understanding what I felt to be hypocrisy.
“I gave her my counsel and advice, I did not tell her what to do or what we should do. There’s a difference.”
“Everyone knows where I stand with Bianca,” I said, unsure of what Herman was getting at.
“Act like it. Support her. She doesn’t need a yes man, so offer her your thoughts, but if she makes a decision, you stick by it. Especially in front of the group.”
“We need her to get hard, Herm. You know that,” I said.
“She’s her own person; she’ll figure it out. If you’re not willing to take command, then be her sword. A captain needs her soldiers to have her back, and not just in your head and heart where no one can see it. You have to show the rest of the soldiers out there too.” Herman reached over and patted me on the shoulder.
A cough came over the old man, and in the campfire light, the lines on his face seemed deeper, each one an intense ripple on his onyx face.
“Are you alright?” I asked him.
“Yeah... my body ain’t young anymore. I haven’t worked this hard since I was in boot camp. It’s not the fishing so much, it’s the walking. So much damned walking,” Herman rubbed his knees. “Anika is giving me some bark juice she made. It helps some.”
“Take it easy, alright, Herman,” I said, rubbing his back. “Let your assistant carry and bring in the fish.”
Herman smiled faintly as he parted, limping his way to his shelter. It wasn’t fair that we relied so much on an old man for half of our food, but nothing in this world was fair.
I walked to the stockpile to fetch some rope for a project I had and noticed most of it was used up. We had assigned a couple of the new people to make more rope, but it looks as though we ended up with less rope at the end of the day than we had at the beginning.
Cass came over when he saw me sitting on a tree trunk in the stockpile, braiding rope together using plant fibers that Slate had harvested earlier. My younger brother came over and helped me braid the rope and told me about his day. He had spent it with the other kids and Roza. Cass also told me that he could hit the tree eight out of ten times now with the sling. I asked him if he could collect stones for chess and go pieces and he thought it was a great idea.
When I had enough rope, I tied several of them together in a checkerboard fashion over a bent tree branch to create a basic fishing net. The leftover rope I left in the stockpile; I would need it tomorrow.
Basic fishing net - D
Fish 20% less likely to escape
In the beach shelter, I saw several people whose names I didn't know lying down or hanging out by the new clay lanterns, talking or winding down for the day. I nodded to them in greeting as I left the fishing net by the place where Herman stored his two fishing rods. We were running low on salt, so I fetched some clay pots and seawater and made some before I turned in for the night. Cass was already sound asleep when I got back to the second shelter, my shelter, and I could hear faint muffled crying from someone in the darkly lit wood shelter.
In the morning, around dawn, I got up, holstered my knives, and set out for the stockpile. I grabbed some rope and draped it on my body like a satchel. I went west past the dungeon, past several streams, to locate some wild boar. A sounder of pigs was feasting on fallen acorns and wildflowers in a meadow. I spotted a mother and her three piglets near the stump of a fallen tree, digging up roots. Another larger boar, a male with long tusks, was feasting next to them. From the rock ledge that descended below where the animals were grazing, I hid, waiting. I planted four knives in a row on the dirt before me, readying them. With my Deadly Shot activated, I launched my first knife at the larger male boar and struck it straight in the cheek. With my next knife, and with my Deadly Shot on cooldown, I launched one straight into the gut of the sow, missing my true mark on her head. Two more knives came out and finished both, each one delivered to the neck of each pig. The piglets near the sow fled the scene in confusion but stayed a reasonable distance away.
I started dressing the male boar, hanging it from a tree with the rope and gutting it. A midnight blue jackdaw the size of an owl was watching me on a tree. I took out the eyes from the pig and offered it to the black bird which it flew towards and gobbled up. After cleaning the carcass, I brought it back to our main mess hall to be prepared. I handed it to Gladys, my assistant who was peeling some wild garlic, who at this point knew how to render the fat of the animal for soap and fuel and prepare the meat in a stew.
Coming back to the scene of the kill, I collected the rope hanging from the tree. The three hand-sized piglets were nursing on the dead mother, bugs, and flies already swarming around them. It felt like a waste to leave the mother's body but it was ruined at this point. Instead, I would go after the piglets. With my rope, I snuck behind them to grab the piglets by their legs and tie them. I hauled the three tiny piglets, the size of guinea pigs, in my hands by their legs, the animals squealing all the way back to camp. Three stakes were planted, and three piglets were tied in the boundaries of the new animal pen while it was still being constructed.
“Aww, how cute. Can I name them?” Bianca asked as she came over to see me securing the rope around one piglet's neck.
“Don’t get attached to food,” I said.
“Aren’t you going to breed these?” Bianca wondered.
“Hopefully, but we’ll still eat them in the end,” I shrugged.
The piglets fed on our discards from yesterday’s meal, and we brought plates of water to leave near their stakes.
With the look of a used car salesman, Alex approached me as I started fetching some water, he and his fellow dungeon divers.
“Always rising early, aren’t ya, Rion?” Alex said, patting me on the shoulder like a longtime friend.
“Someone’s got to put food on the table,” I said, hopefully without a mark of bitterness.
“Look, we’re going to the dungeon. Come with us. We can’t get past floor 2. Five is better than four.”
The four of them, besides Alex, didn’t exude confidence or the aura of a traditional dungeon-diving team. Cade was a tall Black youth who held a bronze spear like a cane. The other two, whose names I forgot, both looked like high school kids; the younger boy was peppered with acne and had a constant nervous look. The olive-skinned female of the group was a slacker who used to do farming but was convinced to go diving instead. She always had a smug look plastered on her face. Alex, however, looked more and more heroic as the days passed. His armor set was coming along nicely, and his chubbiness was fading with the exercise and new world diet, the line of his jaw becoming more toned.
“He’s probably scared, one of those all-talk types,” the female of the group said. “Didn’t the two of you get blown out, and you had to save him the last time you went down there? He’ll probably slow us down.”
Well, that was one strategy to get me interested in going down there. I was weak, I have to admit. That bait wouldn’t have worked on a stronger person, but I was weak. Another part of me wanted to think I was being pragmatic. I needed bags. A backpack, a satchel, just anything to hold in stuff that I could carry on my body would make my work so much easier. We were currently working on leather, but the curing and tanning process would take some time before we could construct leather bags.
“I have some time,” I said coldly, readying my knife. “Already did most of my chores.”
“Just don’t slow us down,” the girl smiled challengingly, and the five of us set off to the dungeon.
I picked up some rope, which I draped upon myself as a sash as we made our trek to the dungeon. There was an idea I wanted to test in the dungeon. I would also take my copper mace from a previous run and latch it to my body with a rope holster I made for it. Five obsidian throwing knives would be strapped against my body to my belt, two of which were freshly stoned to replace my old ones. I would take a piece of flint as well in case I needed to start a fire. My last supplies would be some pork cracklings sprinkled with salt and dried herbs that I wrapped in palm leaves, and a smoked chicken wing of the scarlet fowl wrapped in palm leaves. I checked a jar I held in the corner of my possessions in the hut to see if the crab claws I had stored from a previous hunt were still good. After a quick sniff test, it smelled fishy and pungent, so I decided I would feed them to the piglets later rather than risk it for the crab buff.
Fried Wild Boar Skin - D
Boar Padding: 10% resistance against piercing and slashing attacks for 3 hours
Smoked Scarlet Fowl Chicken Wing - D
Flight of the Scarlet Fowl: 10% increase in top sprinting speed for 1 hour
On my way to the dungeon, I saw some resin on the trees and coated one of my throwing knives with it. I wanted to use my Firewielder skill in combination with my Throwing Weapon skill.
Was I trying to impress my party members?
I made an observation as the five of us ventured into the dungeon entrance. “You guys are all melee.”
Cade was carrying a copper spear. The huge youth was a Guard class and would likely set up as a future tank. Alex was a Hero class that carried a copper sword. The girl was carrying a copper axe as well, while the young teenager was carrying a copper sword.
“That’s why we needed you. You throw those knives from the back, and we do the chopping. I think Sasha wants to use a crossbow if we ever find one,” Alex ever smiling when thinking about the dungeon.
“What’s prevented you from going to the third level?” I asked.
“It’s a fucking maze down there,” Sasha grimaced. “We always get so hungry before we find an exit, so we retreat and go back up.”
“You know, if you stayed around the camp, you could dry some meat to bring with you on your adventures. Maybe make a backpack for supplies, some camping gear,” I suggested, trying to get the party to help around camp.
“The dungeon will provide everything,” Alex kept smiling merrily along and whistled a tune as if we weren’t going into a possible death scenario.
Before we entered the dungeon, I ate a piece of the pork crackling I was saving to keep track of the time and then wrapped the rest for later.
The first floor of the dungeon went smoothly. The rats fell to my stealth-throwing knife and charge technique. Alex had wanted the sixteen-year-old kid he brought to get experience, so Bryden, as I found out his name upon Alex's command, took the final stab at it. One thing about the rat meat that came here was that it was always rancid and rotten when we brought it back; in any case, I had no room anywhere on my body to carry it.
The two chests on the floor contained a copper, or as we started calling it, starter sword and a leather cuirass, which we gave to Cade. I felt terrible about leaving such a weapon, the copper sword, but the group said it would only slow us down, and the camp didn’t need another sword or mace; it just wasn’t useful. That was our logic at the time, and it made sense. If I had to drag a sword with my armament of obsidian throwing knives, my ivory-hilted long knife, and my mace, it would make responding to an attack awkward and slow.
The second floor was a series of empty cells of black iron and long maze-like hallways that led to dead ends or open rooms with black iron manacles nailed to the walls, one on top for the hands and another set of black iron manacles on the bottom for the feet. We found our first stairway, and I had flashbacks of my last time here when I was fighting off a group of gremlins back-to-back with Alex in the staircase. As I expected, this was the same stairway we fought in; however, the layout had been switched and was now on a lower floor level, and the floors somehow kept shifting the configuration like a sliding tile puzzle.
This time, six gremlins came out of the shadows of the open cells of the literal dungeon, their yellow eyes glaring at us as we entered the floor. With his long reach, Cade thrust his spear in rapid successive strikes that made the air whistle. I saw a card he pulled up called “Spear Flurry” levitate in the air before him, become tapped, and then gray out in a cooldown.
Alex pulled out his card, Holy Strike, and his sword came down in a vertical slash, dissecting a gremlin in half in searing white light. Not wanting to be outdone, I pulled out Deadly Shot and tossed a knife that went between the eyes of another gremlin, this one far to the right. When two more approached, Alex dismembered their arms in a precision strike. He backed off, smiled, and waited until Sasha and Bryden came forward to finish them, passing off the killing experience.
“Did you get a class?” Alex asked.
“No, still nothing yet,” Bryden sighed, disappointment plain on his acne-riddled face.
“Gotta keep trying. Everyone, check the cells for loot.”
We cleared each cell one by one. Each cell stank of ammonia and rotten eggs, covered in grease and empty except one.
“Found one!” Cade called out, and like hungry wolves, we all rushed to check it out. Cade speared the chest for safety and opened it, pulling out a leather helm. The piece of armor looked like a brown leather swimming cap.
Leather Cap of Awareness - D
20% increased dark vision
It sounded like an amazing helm that I could use, but apparently, it was Bryden’s turn for loot.
Moving forward, there were more cells and more stairways. Another hallway led to a dead end with a lone shackle on the wall and an unlucky lone gremlin that fell to a spear in the back. I came forward to examine the skin of the gremlin, finding it sticky, probably hard to make into leather.
Why isn’t there any loot around here that I can bring back to camp? Give me a damn bag of holding. It would make life so much easier.
Going down the hall of cells, we checked each cell one by one. Each room had a long hallway several yards wide with black iron bars. The cell doors had not been installed, so each cell was essentially open. The walls were lit with luminescent orange wisps that lit the dungeon like searchlights. Alex started kicking the wall at the end of the cells to check for any hidden walls. Finally, we found a wooden door at the end of the hallway with an iron lock. They all looked at me as if I was a rogue class and had a lockpick on me. I grabbed my mace and smashed the door to splinters, reaching behind to open the lock from behind.
Thank you, Levi.
Another stairway was on the other side of the door, with wide stone steps that led to an opening. Beyond that opening lay a room with three pathways to the front, right, and left. As I checked on my food buffs, I noticed my Boar Padding buff was gone, meaning three hours had passed. I reached into my pockets and unwrapped my leaf to eat another to bring it back up.
“We should split up,” Alex suggested. “I’ll take the center, Rion and Sasha take the right, and Cade and Bryden take the left.”
“That’s a stupid idea,” I said. “Every time someone says ‘let’s split up’ in this situation, it doesn’t go well.”
“Why do I have to go with this pussy anyway?” Sasha asked.
I sighed and said, “As much as I like the satisfaction of saying ‘I told you so’ later, let’s just stick to one path together. We’ll go center.”
“We’ve been here forever. Let’s go back,” Cade said. “Yo, I’m starving.”
“These are low-level mobs. They are pretty much AFK farms at this point,” Alex said. “Since Rion is afraid, he can go with me, and you three go to the left or right. It’ll make it much faster.”
“He’s right,” Bryden nodded. “Whenever we get here, we always take too long in these rooms.”
“Am I taking crazy pills, or is anyone not seeing the crazy red flags here? We stick together, or we go back,” I said, gritting my teeth.
Alex ignored me and ventured to the center. I followed, but looking back, it seemed as though Sasha was going right, and Bryden and Cade were going left. I sighed and went back to follow Sasha.
We both silently went back to another bend that turned back in the direction of where we came from, only to find a dead end with a chest. I threw a knife at the chest, which made Sasha laugh, saying, “You are way too tense.”
“I don’t get why I’m the only one worried about actually dying down here,” I said, collecting my knife as Sasha looted the treasure chest.
“You gotta figure we are in a shit life or death situation, no matter where we are, the dungeon or not. At least this place isn’t a fucking chore. Oooh la la la, look what we have here.” Sasha pulled out a shortbow with a chocolate finish. In the chest, six copper bodkin arrows in a small leather quiver accompanied the weapon. She tossed the copper axe she came into the dungeon with aside, held the bow, and draped the quiver on her back.
“Do you know how to use that thing?” I asked.
“I’ll learn. Let’s head back to the room and take the left path,” Sasha said and marched past me. Alex came back to the room with the four pathways at the same time as we did, looking triumphant, standing in the center of the room with his new copper helm in the style of a barbuta, a round dome of copper with a t-shaped opening that provided plenty of line of sight.
“Run into any problems?” Sasha gently caressed Alex’s arms.
“Few of those gremlins, nothing I couldn’t handle,” Alex smiled, and the two shared a look that made me want to tell them to go get a room.
“Let’s go check on Cade and Bryden,” I suggested.
The final unchecked room on the left revealed an altar chamber resembling an underground Colosseum. Rows of stone steps descended to a slate table, its surface strewn with monkey-like skulls. Eleven gremlins stood in single file, holding smaller gremlins in sacrifice before an orc with marble-like skin, seated on a rock throne. The orc's eyes were completely black, and black blood streaked down from his lips to his chin. He was entirely naked, resembling a nightmarish statue. Towering at an estimated eight feet, he was a giant with arms and legs like thick tree trunks, each ending in black nails.
We were some distance away near the back at the entrance, but we saw Cade and Bryden hiding behind a large stone pillar on the left wall, unsure of what to do. Cade clutched his spear tightly, while Bryden could barely keep his feet from buckling under him. A pool formed at Bryden's feet, which made Cade squirm. It wasn't long before the gremlins caught the scent.
Well, that’s not good.
The orc on the throne got up, pointed in Cade and Bryden’s direction, and issued a command to which all eleven gremlins swarmed the stone pillar. They swarmed like wild dogs at the two hiding behind the pillar and to their credit Cade and Bryden swung and thrust their weapons wildly to keep them at bay. The three of us watched no longer and charged forward. I had no trust in myself to throw a knife into that swarm of bodies and instead reached for my main long knife.
Bryden was fighting off three who came at him at once. He swung his sword wildly, chopping the arm of one gremlin off, but another grabbed his legs. Desperate panic was in the teenager's face. Screams of “help” and “mommy” came out as one gremlin clenched its mouth around his sword arm, causing a loud clang against the stone floor as Bryden’s sword tumbled down the stairs towards the altar. More “helps” and more “mommys" echoed in the chamber. It was agonizing to watch as we cleared through other gremlins to get to him.
Cade speared the gremlin on the ground reaching for Bryden’s legs. Bryden made a frantic break for it only to have more gremlins claws rip at his back. A sword from Alex cleaved through the line of gremlins reaching for Bryden as he collapsed forward. Sasha let loose an arrow that wildly reared off course, nearly hitting Alex, who dodged it at the last second. I came through with a knife at the back of a gremlin lunging for Cade's blindspot. Wild swings of my mace connected with a few limbs of gremlins reaching for Cade who was trying to clear a path to us.
“Pick him up, Cade! Carry him out! We’ll hold these,” Alex shouted. A blue card was pulled out of Alex’s palms and flashed before the Hero. A Holy Strike came down and cut a gremlin from the top of the goblin's head down to the balls.
"I'll help," Sasha said, realizing the futility of her marksmanship. The young aspiring marksman stepped forward and lifted the bloody, unconscious boy, draping one arm over her shoulder. Cade did the same with the boy's other arm, and together they helped him out of the stone altar room.
There was just one problem: the orc had finally made his presence known. The boss of this level blocked the entrance of the way out, his marble figure stood watch like a gargoyle at our escape path.
“I’ll distract it,” I said, “Get him the hell out of here.”
I withdrew my resined obsidian throwing knife and sparked it against my copper knife. My Firewielder card activated, and the knife lit up in flames. Pulling out my Deadly Shot in my palms, I threw my flaming knife straight between the eyes and took out its left. That was my first throwing knife. The shriek it let out nearly burst my eardrums. The pain of the still flaming dagger searing in its eye socket made it fall to its knees. Firewielder activated, causing the flame to erupt and sear the flesh around his eyes, causing more ear-piercing screams of an unknown language that was drenched in the promise of vengeance. My mace came out to deliver what I thought would be a final blow to its head, but a roar came from the orc that made me hesitate for one second, and then the back of the orc's hand, hard as iron, crashed into my chest, sending me flying towards the corner of the room. My back smacked against the stone wall, knocking the wind out of me. I struggled to get on my feet as all the air had been pushed out of my lungs.
The orc had only one thing on its mind: getting retribution for its eyes, blood gushed out of the orc’s eye socket as it pulled out and tossed away the now extinguished knife. As it came for me, Cade and Sasha rushed past with Bryden in their arms. More gremlins strayed away from Alex, seeing the uselessness in challenging the Hero, as they swarmed to get towards the defenseless Sasha and Cade. Alex charged after them to cover Sasha and Cade’s rear, leaving me alone with the orc.
A fist came flying towards my face where I sat catching my breath and I dodged it, rolling to the side. I backed away from it, rushing down towards the altar, and hid behind the stone altar, using it as cover. Its steps were slow and methodical as it savored cornering its prey. Loud wheezing and cries of pain came from the orc with every step. I kept track of the orc’s footsteps as it got closer and closer. In my pocket, I withdrew my smoked bird wing wrapped in a leaf and received its buff.
Smoked Scarlet Fowl Chicken Wing - D
Flight of the Scarlet Fowl: 10% increase in top sprinting speed
It gave me a prompt warning when it roared and lunged forward, reaching for the altar and I rolled out. I ran up the stairs past the orc towards the room with the four paths. In the room, a gremlin among the corpses of his fallen allies looked around confused, and I sent a Deadly Shot with my throwing knife to the back of its surprised face. That was my second throwing knife. I buried my long knife across its throat to finish it off. Rhythmic thumping sounds came from the altar room as the orc chased after me. I threw the gremlin body in the path of the door leading to the altar room and ran up from the way our party originally started.
My body moved like wind but at a cost. The buff made me fast, but it also stretched my leg muscles to its limit, my calves felt like someone poured hot acid all over it.
Back to the wide stairs and ascending them, I quickly lost most of my stamina. I realized I wasn’t going to outlast this orc in a marathon to the exit, so instead I readied my rope in loops for a bowline knot. When I reached the top of the stairs at a hard sprint with the sound of my impending doom behind me, completely out of stamina and breath, I turned left to the left cells and tied my rope around the top chain of the black iron bars of the cell walls. I let the loosened rope drag across the floor as I hurried to the right side and needled the rope through the top of the iron bars on the right cell.
I had to use every ounce of Tracking skill I had to place where I thought the orc was on the stairway. Closer. Closer still. Nearly at the top.
When I heard the thumps of the orc right before where my rope trap lay in wait, I pulled on the rope and let my weight drag it down. The tight rope sprung up, tightened, and clotheslined the sprinting orc across the neck, causing it to gasp its neck in pain and get knocked backward. While the orc held its throat, I came forward and drop-kicked the orc in the chest, sending it flying back through the doorway and falling onto the stairs; its body fell to the bottom step like a ragdoll.
My pursuer struggled to get up, pieces of bone sticking out of odd places on its legs and elbows, I took out my throwing knife and descended the stairs. One flew out and struck it in the back of the head. That was my third throwing knife. Another threw out and struck it in the back of its neck. That was my fourth throwing knife. Another one in its back. That was my last throwing knife. My mace came down when I reached the bottom step and made the orc’s head into pink and gray paste.
I collected three of my knives from its body and then my rope from the top cells. My brain was telling me I should go back up, but I killed the boss, right? This had to be the boss. A blue card revealed over its body and it was played, giving out 3 coins. That brought me to 12 jester coins.
When I came back to the altar room, bodies of gremlins and blood littered the stone chamber. I collected all the coins there bringing me up to 20 jester coins. Behind the throne, a pathway opened up as a stone wall slid up to reveal a dark passage. Beyond, the light of a blue chest came into being and was placed between two stairways. One stairway went up to the light. The other down to darkness.
Second Floor First Completion Chest was presented to me when I approached the blue chest. Opening the treasure chest revealed 3 item cards that were presented before me.
Chef Hat of Magic Repel - C Magic projectiles that target your head have a 30% chance to miss For those truly ruthless food critics
Apron of Many Knives - C Can hold up to eight knives. Knives placed in the apron are drawn quicker A chef can never have too many knives
Leather Boots of Steadiness - C More resistant to slips and falls A kitchen is a very wet place after all
I should have spent more time thinking over the choice but I immediately grabbed the apron. I would no longer have to carry them strapped awkwardly to my belt, it would grant me so much more agility. I put the black apron on, tied it to my person, and transferred my knives into the front pockets. I collected up the coins in the treasure chest bringing my total up to 25 jester coins.
Greed and pride overwhelmed me as I wanted to descend. I descended.
The room I had entered was familiar. It was the same place where I met the Card Dealer. No... not exactly. A cosmic void had filled the endless horizon but instead of a singular open round table, there were a series of glass cabinets, each holding cards in it. Below each card would show a number assigned to it. Attending the table like a jeweler was a man-sized red shorthair cat with a Cheshire grin in a jester outfit and a cap of blue polka dots. As I approached the counter, the Jester cat laughed hysterically and juggled what appeared to be balls filled with galaxies in his hand before dropping them.
“Come and look. Come and see. All the cards I have for thee. Spend your coin. Become reborn. And the strong ye shall join,” the Jester said.
Resisting an overwhelming urge to reach over and pet the cat in the hat, I looked over his wares. The first three cards presented in the middle cabinet were:
Axe Mania - C Consecutive swings of your axe on a target deal more damage 70 coins
Knife’s Edge - C Your knives are never dull. The most dangerous tool in a kitchen is a dull knife. 40 coins
Whip it Good - B Your whips reach a meter longer. 100 coins
Only one perk may be purchased this run from this level's store.
On another cabinet to the right, the cards presented were:
Reversed Hourglass Restore all your buffs, health, hunger, thirst, and cooldowns to the same as when you entered the dungeon 10 coins
Mark of Greed Enemies will drop one extra coin for the rest of the dungeon run but will be 20% tougher to kill 10 coins
Token of Bravery Can only be used for this run. Receive a marble. Smash this marble in the ground to return to the dungeon entrance. 10 coins
In the glass cabinet to the left, the three cards presented were:
Bronze Crossbow of Repulsion - C Enemies get knocked back 1 meter if you deal a critical strike 150 coins
Iron Halberd of Insight - C Skills used by the Halberd have a 20-second reduction in cooldown cost 300 coins
Iron Throwing Knives of Blinding (3) - C Enemies struck by this have an increased chance of missing their next attack 100 coins
Damn. Everything I wanted was out of my price range. There was one thing that caught my interest though, a cabinet behind the jester showing a card with a lock and a card with dice on it. The lock was priced at two jester coins while the dice was priced at five jester coins.
“What are these?” I asked the cat jester.
“If you find the price too steep, lock the card you want to keep. If you find the selection poor, roll the dice to find some more,” the jester covered his grin with his huge furry paws and snickered as if he had just told the funniest joke.
I came around to the other side, took four of my twenty-five coins, and deposited them into the slot above the lock. Two lock cards were presented to me in the air. I grabbed them and deposited them into the slot for Knife’s Edge and Throwing Dagger of Blinding. A steel frame portrait wrapped them up after I had locked them.
“Two doors ye shall find if you are done. The door up takes you home, the door down to more fun.” More laughter from the cat.
Done with my transaction and curious to see what the next floor was like, I took the door down.
Upon stepping onto the floor, I was on a ledge that overlooked an expansive plain of swampland. Across the domain were towers of stone and ruined stone ramparts. Knee-deep water covered the lands and was broken by mudbars crowned with marsh bushes adorned with purple flowers. In the distance, monstrous crocodiles standing on two feet with bronze scales and claws the length of daggers patrolled the area. I turned around and went back up.
I couldn’t help but feel proud of how I reached floor three first, I nearly skipped my way back to the camp. My pride and joy came to a halt as I finally got back and saw the mess our adventures left in the village.
Bianca’s face of disappointment said it all. Like a boy sneaking home past his curfew, I kept my head low and looked apologetic, trying to avert my gaze from her wrath and standing near the back during Herman’s eulogy to Bryden.
When they tossed Bryden’s bloody body into his open grave, I was angry at myself. Angry for letting it happen and angry at how little I felt about his death.