Stepping Wild (Dungeon Runner 04)

Tibs rested against the wall. In so much pain, he didn't care if the clothing he'd found over this run was pretty much entirely destroyed.

"No," Merka screamed, stretching the word, as the last head was covered by moss. "How could I, the Dungeon's Protector, be defeated?" They made their voice fainter, more distance. "Next time, Villain. Next time I will get you."

The unexpected laughter nearly doubled him over with pain. "Next time?" he panted. He looked at his bleeding, ripped side. "I think you pretty much got me this time."

The focus he'd needed to make the fire etching within the moving serpent's head had slowed him enough Merka let out the crystal barrage before it exploded and he hadn't jumped away in time to escape unscathed.

"You're still standing," they said dismissively, abandoning all theatricality now that there were no serpents left. "So, I didn't do the job."

He laughed again and immediately regretted it.

"Go ahead," Firmen said. "Heal yourself."

"I'm not out," he panted.

"It isn't like you left anything behind that'll hurt you. And I make the rules."

He waited. "Are you going to let them say that unchallenged, Merka?"

"Just take the victory, Tibs," they replied without judgment in the tone.

Still surprised at how magnanimous they had become in losing, Tibs etched purity and applied it.

He'd expected some annoyance, beyond the acting, at the damage he'd caused with his fire essence. Firmen hadn't changed anything to how he made his structure, so Tibs had decided he needed another demonstration of what a Rho Runner could do. Instead of navigating the floor of triggers, he'd burned a patch to the cache and then the exit. He'd refilled the reserve, then kept only as much essence as he thought someone at Rho could manage and had used that to defeat the Woodlings in his way. The creature room had resulted with the entire floor and lower walls burned as Firmen had increased the numbers and Tibs had lost control of the essence in being overwhelmed. That had also cost him the loot chest.

Merka had quickly cost him the extra essence he'd brought to their song level fight, then had forced him to exhaust the reserve faster than he'd expected, leading to that last, desperate gambit.

"You're a lot better with those attack etchings than I was after a few days."

"Merka practiced from the moment you left until you returned. I think I had to repair more holes than what you destroyed in this run."

He leaned against the wall, fighting the relief the diminishing pain brought on, and the desire to sleep. "Then maybe you should follow their example. I shouldn't have been able to cause as much damage as I did. You need to better protect yourself. Even if I'm the only one doing the runs. You might not have time to adjust if someone shows up unexpectedly."

He'd mentioned the hunter, but Firmen had scoffed at the idea he needed to do anything in preparation for one of them.

Firmen sighed. "I suppose that is true."

He waited, and when nothing came by the time the etching seeped deep into him, he looked up. "Okay, where's the complaint I'm telling them something you didn't, Merka?"

"What?" they replied, annoyed. "You know things about Runners I don't. You lived through it. Of course you'll know things I don't. Are you healed?"

He managed to keep the laughter to a loud chuckle. "No. You came too close to killing me this time."

"But you are healed enough to show me another etching, right? You can be certain I'll use that one to get you all the way dead, villain."

He couldn't stop the laughter this time, but the pain was manageable. "You are going to make me regret agreeing to teach you, aren't you?"

"You are the one who wanted more challenge," Merka replied.

* * * * *

"Go away," Tibs grumbled, face in the mattress of hay, after the knock and the door opened.

"You don't get to sleep around all day, young man," Mother Natril said. "Not when there's work to be done. Sun's been up long enough. There's porridge, then threshing for you to do."

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"I already did all the trashing," he grumbled, thinking of all the Woodlings and Serpents he'd fought over the last two weeks of runs. Firmen hadn't entirely protected their walls against essence attacks, but they made sure Tibs couldn't rip the Woodling apart with that anymore.

"What's that?" she demanded.

"I'm getting up."

He'd thought all the work relating to the harvest would be done in the two weeks he'd been with the dungeon. That he'd help look after the animals, move hay into the barn. Things that would let him take it easy.

If he'd known, he would have stayed away longer.

* * * * *

The threshing was more boring than laborious. If he'd etched a cyclone of air, he could have separated the grain from the chaff easily, and without the day long exertion boredom exacerbated.

The upside was that it left Tibs too exhausted to be bothered by the looks and whispers when he ate at the inn, and that, in return, led to the other treating him like one of them, instead of the odd outsider.

The hunter from before still eyed him suspiciously, but he didn't have the energy to care.

It was two weeks before the threshing was done, the grain crated, and hay bundled and stored. Half the grain would be flour for the village, the rest would be handed over to the next caravan, to eventually reach the king and be payment for living within their borders. That was the caravan Tibs would leave on.

He was looking forward to that day more and more.

* * * * *

Tibs took off as soon as he put the amulet with the air reserve on and didn't slow his run as he reached the floor of trigger tiles. He etched disks of air and sent them ahead of him, leaping, landing on one, and leaping again. This time, he crossed it in four jumps, and kept running.

The Woodling stepped out of the trunk, and Tibs surrounded him with air-blades as he fought. They weren't as effective as before Firmen adjusted the Arcanus within them, but each added cut made the fight that much shorter and his destination that much closer.

The animals in the creature room were larger, not quite monsters, but soon it would be impossible to think of them as normal. They made the fight arduous, but he managed to regain most of the essence he had to spend fighting them by the time he reached the boss room

"We meet again," he announced, stepping into it.

"Today!" Merka declared, the three serpent heads already standing and bristling. "Today is the last time your presence will mar the purity that is this dungeon, Villain."

"Give it your best shot, Hero." He ignored Firmen's groan. "And I will show you why rogues will always be your better."

* * * * *

He dodged the purity blade, then slammed the wooden arrows with his ice shield.

"Give up, Villain," Merka demanded, the two serpent heads tracking him. "You are lost. There is no victory for you here."

"I now understand why you don't like bard's songs, Tibs," Firmen said, although the chuckle undercut the comment.

"I am lost?" he pointed the ice sword at the head. "I have defeated you time and time again, Hero. Yield and I will make your end quick."

The heads still had essence in their throats after the attack, waiting for the right moment to be unleashed into another etching Tibs didn't know. Merka had quickly grown beyond his teaching, so much that more than once over the last week, Firmen had had to stop the fight when they used an etching he considered too powerful for a first floor.

They couldn't replenish their reserves from the essence around them, the way Tibs could, but once Firmen had agreed to let the three heads have an element attack at the same time, it had increased the difficulty of the fight. Enough that Firmen had then limited Merka to a total of six such attacks.

Which they had become skilled in, not only in using, but in managing. They no longer unleashed the entire bubble each time, they used only enough to power the etching, which let them stretch each bubble's effectiveness.

Purity erupted from the maw of a head, that turned into a lance as it hit the etching. Tibs formed a pillar of water that threw him over the serpent and sent jagged ice at it, but a wooden shield formed and intercepted most of them. He landed and with a wave of the hand formed an etching that send a crescent of sharp ice at the now devoid of essence head.

"No!" Merka yelled in despair, as if Tibs had killed their best friend. "You will pay for this sacrilege."

Tibs shrugged. "A little more sacrilege, and this dungeon will no longer be so pure. It'll be perfect for me to move in."

With a roar, the head came at him. He had the ice wall up in time, and the impact cracked it, but he was around the side, and his sword cut through the neck

The scream of mock pain rose from the serpent's head as moss grew over it. "Next time, Tibs of Kragle Rock," they said, their voice growing distant, "shall be the last time we meet."

"You two are impossible," Firmen said in the stretching silence, and Tibs gave a bow. "Entertaining, but impossible. Are all bard songs like this?"

"It's less fun just listening to them. And they exaggerate what happened, when they aren't just making it up." He stretched. This run had left him with only a few cuts, and most of that was from Merka. Firmen was slow in adapting his creatures to how strong Tibs was now, as borderline Lambda.

Merka was better, but lacked Tibs's years of experience. Even now that they knew etchings he didn't, they didn't understand the breadth of what they could do with them, so limited themselves to the same attacks.

"Do you think our fighting is good enough they'd leave it as it happened?" Merka asked as Tibs headed for the exit.

"They'd remove our verbal challenges, since dungeons don't speak." He decided to leave it at that.

"Would they keep you in it?" Firmen asked, and Tibs glared at the ceiling. The dungeon had been strategic in his questioning of Tibs's relationship with bard's songs. He'd waited for hard battles that left Tibs too tired to filter what he said.

"Not if they know what's good for them." He tried not to blame Firmen for their curiosity, but didn't like that it was directed at him. "Hopefully, I was enough of a villain to be turned into one that will be lost among all the other stories."

"I was too much of a hero for them to notice you," Merka said, and he appreciated the attempt at making him feel better.

He stepped to the exit and looked out onto whiteness.

He looked up. He hadn't noticed the canopy was denser and blocked the view of the sky. He stepped into the snow and headed for his camp.