Primer for the Apocalypse

“Where is the rest of the city?” Zavira asked once our feet were solidly connected to the arrival platform on the sixth floor.

After dismissing the dungeon’s sixth floor welcome notification, I glanced around, noting the familiar buildings of the central village surrounding the small village square. While the dungeon-made buildings were all in their normal positions, if a bit larger than before, the familiar towering cityscape was nowhere to be found.

“Maybe we should ask one of the dungeon golems,” I suggested as I took a step toward the edge of the platform. “The tavern keeper is usually friendly.”

“Or we could just ask another challenger,” Zavira said, nodding her head toward a familiar-looking group exiting the village’s large residential building.

Though I wasn’t nearly as social as Zavira, I still recognized the trio of challengers heading in our general direction. In fact, the group was one of the few that I’d introduced to Zavira instead of the other way around.

“Ava!” I called out, drawing the attention of the Earthborn Nature/Earth Mage.

The dark-haired woman was dressed in an outfit that reminded me of Robin Hood, with its greens and browns. She even had a bow, completing the look.

“Emie!” Ava said with a surprised smile. “You made it here already?”

A check with Assess showed Ava and her two companions were only level fifty-two, meaning they’d only gained a single level in the year and a half or so since they’d reached the sixth floor.

I’d only met her Earthborn party members a couple of times on the previous floor, but both of the men seemed nice enough. All three were focused on returning to Earth as quickly as possible, which I understood. However, I worried about how they’d handle the changes to Earth once they eventually arrived.

“I told you we were fast,” I said before motioning toward my companion. “You remember Zavira?”

“I do!” Ava said energetically as she focused on the half-dwarf. “It’s actually really nice to see you. The weapons here are so overpriced. Can we commission a few things from you once you get settled in?”

Jacob, the party’s front-line fighter, elbowed Ava. “Jeez, Ava. Give them a chance to take a breath. They literally just stepped off the platform.”

“I said when they get settled in!” Ava pouted as she rubbed her side, exaggerating the pain.

Jacob looked concerned that he might have actually hurt Ava. He whispered an apology as he wrapped an arm around the Archer, pulling her into his side gently.

Zavira grinned at the interaction. I found myself copying the expression. It was nice to see their relationship was still going strong.

“I don’t mind crafting a few things for you. I’ll give you a good price, especially if you acquire the materials you want incorporated,” the Smith replied. “Obviously, we have no idea what resources the floor provides since we just arrived. I don’t suppose you three would mind filling us in a bit?”

“We were about to head out—” Riley, the group’s dedicated Ice Mage, said before getting cut off.

“Not at all!” Ava said cheerily before shooting the Ice Mage a glare. Turning her attention back to me and Zavira, she said, “A little delay is no problem if it helps friends. Besides, we’re just grinding right now anyway.”

“I can treat you guys to some Earth snacks if you have somewhere we can go,” I offered.

The trio already knew about my MealMaker since I’d sold them one before they left the previous floor. Theirs only had a handful of recipes, though, and making blueprints out of blueprints never resulted in quite the same quality.

The offer was enough to motivate the other party into action, and we were soon settled into the apartment shared by Ava and Jacob.

“So, where’s the rest of the city?” I asked once everyone had a snack in hand.

“Cities, you mean,” Jacob said, answering since Ava’s mouth was full of pudding. “The dungeon’s little village sits between two separate cities. Harbor is toward the Spring zone, and Hexaport is on the border with Fall. There are a couple of little settlements outside of the safe zone, but they’re mostly for people getting close to leaving the floor since they are deep in the high-tier areas.”

“Do you know anything about the floor’s Trial?” Zavira asked hopefully.

Jacob nodded. “Yeah. It’s similar to the ones on the first three floors,” he told us. “By that, I mean it doesn’t move around or anything. It just stays in one spot.”

Zavira’s eyes were alight with excitement at the news.

“Where is it?”

“It’s in the Fall zone, in the village near the border between high and peak,” Ava said between bites while she did a little dance in her seat.

“There’s no reason to get too excited about it,” Riley commented from his seat nearby, eyeing both Ava and Zavira, though I was sure it was for different reasons. “You can’t challenge the Trial until you reach level fifty-nine.”

“How sure are you of that?” Zavira asked, her expression dimming.

Riley shrugged. “It’s what Ava found, and she’s our Researcher. The first thing she always does is research the floor and everything about it.”

I glanced at the woman in question, and she nodded distractedly while scraping the remnants of her snack from the cup. Seeing her response, Zavira’s expression fell further.

“What about the Hot Spring?” I asked.

“Oh yeah, you can use that. It’s right beside the Trial. They both shifted with the floor reset just after we got here.”

“So it’s possible the Trial might have changed from what Ava found?” Zavira asked.

Ava shook her head. “No. I checked,” she said. “It was one of the first things I looked into when we learned about the change. We received some excellent rewards from floor Trials, so we try to find them whenever possible.”

My head bobbed unconsciously at the comment. “That’s smart. What kinds of rewards have you gotten?”

I knew it was a little rude to ask, but she had brought the topic up. If they didn’t seem opposed to sharing, I had no problems informing them about the magic mastery skills available.

“Mostly weapons and armor, though we were offered a new skill or spell on the last floor.” Her party members nodded in agreement. “What about you?”

“I only managed to do two Trials. We missed the one on the fourth floor,” I said. “We had the same offerings on the last one, though we also got the option to advance an existing skill or spell.”

“Blimey. How many waves did you get through for that?” Ava asked, reverting to English from Common. At Zavira’s questioning look, she repeated herself in the shared language.

“Eighty-seven,” Zavira replied. “I should have picked the new skill, but I went with something for my profession instead.”

“Really?” Ava asked. “Why would you ask for a new skill when you can just learn it on your own? There are plenty of people willing to teach skills in the dungeon.”

“Not every skill is easily taught,” I said.

“Did you take the skill?” Ava asked. “I would have thought you would bump your Enchanting or one of your best spells.”

“I did. Space Magic Mastery.”

The three teammates’ eyes grew wide.

“That’s not a real skill,” Riley said, pushing his light blonde hair out of his face. “It can’t be.”

Looking a bit closer, I noticed there were hints of pale blue mixed in his hair as well. I wondered if it would stay that way or continue to spread until his entire head was covered in pale, icy blue strands.

“Why not? Weapons Mastery was a valid choice,” Jacob commented.

Zavira barked out a laugh. “No wonder you were so quick to look into the Trials! That is an excellent reward!”

After hearing the comment, Jacob grinned smugly at Riley. The Ice Mage seemed to redden slightly.

“I’ll get Ice Magic Mastery then! It’s a better choice anyway,” Riley huffed.

Not wanting to spend too long on the topic, I clarified, “So, the Trial and the Hot Spring are in the settlement near the peak border in the Fall zone.”

When the others responded in the affirmative, I asked about the different zones and quickly learned that this floor was organized differently from the preceding floors.

Instead of zones with completely separate and varied environments, the sixth floor was separated by seasons. The landscape shifted by tier strength, with the low-tier portion of the floor being covered in water, the mid-tier being grasslands, high-tier was a forest, and the peak-tier was covered in mountains. Each season covered all four habitats, making the floor very different from the earlier floors.

Also different was the fact that the so-called ‘safe zone’ was a large island at the center of a lake. It was at least several miles in diameter, which meant the overall size of the floor was significantly larger than the fifth floor.

Spatial Sense was only able to provide me with a general feel of how large the floor was – and it was massive.

“This floor’s flora and fauna are definitely the most diverse so far,” Ava commented. “There is little wonder why the population here is so much higher than on the other floors.”

“It causes a lot of beast waves, though,” Jacob warned. “We’ve had one every five months since we arrived. It’s good because we’re able to kill a lot of creatures. But there are way too many non-combatants in the cities.”

“And they all expect us to protect them,” Riley added with a touch of irritation.

Jacob nodded in agreement. “They do, but most of them are too weak to do anything besides die if the beasts get into the cities. Most of the population is below Tier Six, though there’s a heavy population of peak-tier people just avoiding progress because the seventh floor is supposed to be a lot less pleasant.

“A lot of them are originally from the seventh floor and decided to settle here instead after doing their own mini-climb. They leave the seventh floor at Tier Two and stop once they reach the sixth floor. Most don’t even want to leave the dungeon. It’s home for them,” Jacob added.

“There were a lot of people entering the second floor from the seventh. I’d guess the majority were, actually,” Ava mused. “Once we reached the third floor, it was more likely for new arrivals to be from the fifth or sixth floor.”

“Not higher?” I asked curiously.

Jacob scratched his head lightly. “I met one guy who claimed he was from the ninth floor, but I’m not sure he was telling the truth. None of his equipment was very good and I doubt the dungeon singled out that one guy to mess with his stuff when it just downgraded everyone else’s stuff over a few months.”

I wasn’t sure about that, but I didn’t voice my uncertainty. The amount of mana in a Tier Nine item was probably so vast that downgrading it to comply with dungeon rules would have either taken too long or been too energy-intensive to make things worthwhile.

I could absolutely see the dungeon just replacing the guy’s stuff with weaker versions, though it probably should have allowed him to purchase tier-appropriate items through the kiosk’s marketplace.

Maybe it did, and the guy declined?

I thought back to the Merchant I’d heard about on one of the lower floors. He was able to keep items at their original tier as long as they stayed in [Stasis], though they would quickly downgrade after being removed.

The shift in tiers was much slower outside the dungeon, so I knew the swiftness with which items were downgraded was intentional on the part of the dungeon or whoever was running it. The same swiftness was not apparent when moving up a tier, interestingly enough.

“When was the last beast wave?” Zavira asked.

“A couple of months ago?” Jacob said uncertainly. “Time seems to blur a lot more now that we’re focusing so heavily on progressing. All we do is grind and craft.”

“But it will get us home that much faster,” Ava added resolutely.

“You’re still planning to leave as soon as you reach Tier Seven?” I asked.

“Hell yes,” Riley exclaimed. The other two Earthborns nodded beside him.

“You’ll probably have people interested in recruiting you once you leave,” I warned them.

“They definitely will, especially if they are some of the first people from your planet to successfully leave the dungeon,” Zavira agreed.

“There aren’t a lot of people from Earth ahead of us,” Riley said confidently. “But I don’t care about joining some alien faction.” He paused and looked at Zavira. “No offense intended.”

Zavira didn’t seem bothered by his comment.

We’d discussed the reintegration of Earth in detail, along with what had been done to most of the Earthborn challengers in the dungeon. She knew they hadn’t chosen to come here, that they’d essentially been kidnapped without explanation or comprehension of their new reality.

Zavira likely saw the group’s unwillingness to join those associated with the end of everything familiar to them as quite reasonable.

In many ways, I was the outlier among my fellow Earthborn.

When his eyes shifted to me, I merely shrugged. I’d joined a sect, and I didn’t regret it. Doing so had practically assured the safety of my family, even with Mom and Dad staying on earth.

I was fairly confident they would change their mind eventually. I doubted they would want to be separated from Justin and the kids by a whole planet – not that the actual distance mattered much with portals involved.

They were already talking about going to visit in a few months.

Subjectively, I’d been gone for eight years. To the rest of my family, it had been a little over a year and a half. By the time I reached the eighth floor, at least four or five more years would have passed for them.

Given how long I estimated it would take to finish the last three floors of the dungeon, I’d probably delay my departure by at least a few additional years. That might change when the option was actually available to me, though.

“I’m happy with my decision,” I said. “My family is being provided for. That’s what is important to me.”