NOVEL NEXT Book 3 Chapter 11
After a half hour of everyone futzing with the gantry crane, trying to get it put together and set up, followed by everyone but me sitting on their asses reading a book or picking their noses for another half hour while I futzed with it myself, I managed to get all of ten moves into the thousand-move sequence that'd solve the puzzle and get us out of here when Summer had a breakthrough.
"Hey," Summer said, as I pulled on the block-and-tackle chains that moved the crane slowly along its gantry. "You think that thing could pick up two disks at once?"
"If they were just normal rocks?" I asked. "Probably, yeah. This is a puzzle with rules, though."
"Man, fuck the rules," Summer said. "If the rules are real and it won't let you? Fine, whatever. But at least try it."
"Alright," I said, before setting the smallest disk back down atop the second smallest, and carefully setting up the crane to try picking up both disks at once. "Let me just... Oh. Holy shit, it's working!"
"Hell yeah!" Summer crowed.
"Did something happen?" Faith asked, lifting her book off of her face and sitting back upright.
"We figured out how to cheat the puzzle," I said, as I reset the puzzle with the crane. "Oh, god, I feel like such a jackass, here."
"Whoa, hang on, whatchu doin'?" Summer asked, watching me undo my progress. "Are you-"
"It's simple," I said, as I put the smallest disk back on top of the original stack. "I don't have to move only one stone at a time. I can move as many stones at once as I can physically lift."
"Yeah, but... Aren't those stones heavy as shit?"
"They are, but I don't care," I said, as magicka coalesced at my fingertips. "I'm a fucking Wizard, and I refuse to let myself be gatekept by a pile of fucking rocks."
With a great effort and outpouring of magicka, the entire stack of stones lifted up, and slowly, glacially, drifted across the floor, before finally, I set it down on the ending pedestal.
The door on the far side of the room clicked, unlocking and swinging open.
"There," I said, planting my hands on my hips. "We were making it way harder on ourselves than we needed to."
"I... That..." Summer blinked a few times. "...You can do that?!"
"I'm a Wizard," I repeated, shrugging. "Besides, that whole thing wasn't even twenty whole tons of rock."
"I... That... you..."
"I'm gonna start taking down the crane," I said, using a bit more magic to speed along the process of disassembly by unscrewing bolts and the like. "Should be ready to go soon enough."
---
"Whoa," Faith muttered.
"It's a hub room," Summer said.
The next room of Floor 1 was about as big as the first one, but this one seemed to lack any real puzzle. In the center of the room, there was a big circle of smooth stone on the floor, with four thin, chest-high pillars around its perimeter. The one nearest to us had a line of glowing white light circling the top, running down the side facing away from the circle and then across the floor to the door leading back to the first room.
"Yeah?" I said, turning to face Summer. "How so?"
"Those pillars are gonna light up when we solve the puzzle in the matching room," Summer said, pointing at the other three doors on the other walls of the hub room. "Once they're all lit up, that circle's gonna become the stairs down to the next level, I can feel it."
"Interesting," Volex said. "You're familiar with the design language of dungeons, then?"
"This one feels pretty game-y, but... Yeah," Summer said, nodding. "Now... Let's see if we get better puzzles with the next room. Anyone got a preference?"
"Left hand along the wall solves the maze," I said. "I mean, right hand does the same, but whatever."
"Left it is, then," Summer said, striding across the floor. "C'mon, bitches, let's do this shit!"
---
The first room had been a scavenger hunt, with all sorts of detritus scattered around the room to hide ten black pearls the size of an eyeball, which got inserted into a stone fixture in the center of the room with a divot for each pearl.
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The second room had been a sequence of three different children's puzzles- the sliding-tile puzzle, Lights Out, and Towering Skyline (a puzzle traditionally played on a 5x5 grid; each space was a tower of a different height, with 1 being the shortest and 5 the tallest. There was one of each height in each row and column, and along the perimeter were numbers saying how many distinct towers could be seen in that row/column from this point.)- each of which yielded a mirror when solved, which enabled the completion of a fourth and final puzzle where we had to bounce a laser around obstacles to reach a target.
Each time we completed a room, we returned to the hub to see another of the pillars lit up, confirming Summer's intuition. I wondered, was her intuition accurate to dungeons in general? Or was The Abyss just humoring her?
The third and hopefully final room of Floor One was bare and empty. In the center of it stood a goblin man- or perhaps a half-goblin, as he was a full foot taller than the usual goblin- wearing a kimono, a katana resting at his hip.
The typical goblin was around three feet tall, and were, to some degree, proportioned like humans who had been magically shrunk down by a linear factor of two or so. Their heads were bigger, almost matching the size of a human head, with big, floppy ears that almost resembled that of a desert fox or a fucked-up housecat, and were pointed at the end like an elf's. Their limbs were a bit longer than those of the hypothetical half-sized human, and their muscles coiled with supernatural strength that made them capable of the same feats of strength as a human twice their height would be. Their skin pigment was green, much like that of the orcs, but their hair came in every color of the rainbow, for some reason.
I'd once met a traveling goblin merchant at a market, who was infectiously cheerful and sold me a number of books and scrolls that took me weeks to translate with magic. Perhaps it wasn't the most accurate picture, but I'd never known goblins as anything other than a friendly people with a fascinating and beautiful culture.
Of course, they were a real culture that actually existed, and pretty much no society survives for very long without developing a martial tradition of some sort.
"...Uhhhh," Summer began, taking a step back.
"It is no use," the goblin said, shaking his head. "You cannot progress past this point until you defeat me. I promise you, child, that no lasting harm will come to you. But if you do not attack me with the intent to kill... your way ends here."
"Can I, uh... appoint a champion, or...?" Summer turned and looked at me, and the sword on my own hip.
"G'luck out there, Champ," I said, patting her on the back with enough force to shove her forwards, stumbling as she approached the goblin.
"Draw your weapon, child," the goblin instructed, as he drew his own.
"C'mon, we don't really have to do this, do we?" Summer pleaded. "Joseph? A little help?"
"This challenge is for you, Summer," I said. "Remember what Professor Takeda said? You should be able to beat this guy. You've just gotta get over that silly little 'empathy' and 'inhibitions against hurting other people on purpose with deadly weapons' nonsense."
"Joseph..."
"Enough. Stand and defend yourself," the goblin said, before charging at Summer, who yelped and recoiled.
As the goblin's sword made contact with Summer, I could see that it didn't actually cut anything. It was a solid illusion, likely giving Summer the feeling that she'd been cut- i.e., pain- but not actually doing any real damage.
Nonetheless... Summer got her ass kicked, and once she was on the floor, moaning in pain, the goblin retreated to his starting position.
"Stand, child," the goblin said. "We will do this for as long as it takes for you to succeed."
I cast a very minor healing spell on Summer, mostly just removing the psychosomatic pain, and she slowly pushed herself back up.
"So, the way The Abyss works is pretty fascinating," Volex said.
"Is now really the time?" Summer asked, quietly.
"It's a grand construct of Occult magic," Volex continued. "Nothing around us is real, it's all ectoplasm- illusion-stuff- given the appearance of a Sunset-style padded dojo, and a goblin samurai."
"...Uh," Summer began.
"The goblin isn't real," Volex said. "His sword isn't real. He's just a shadow puppet that exists because the animating intelligence of The Abyss wants you to fight a swordsman and win. So. Forget about how scared you are. Forget about how little you know about fighting with a sword. Just draw steel, grit your teeth, and go wild. Fuck him up, Summer. Do it! Do it!"
Summer hesitated... but then, finally, drew her sword, and squared her shoulders, taking the sword in both hands. It was a longsword, patterned on an era where slashing swords were still the primary weapon, but plate armor was beginning to appear on battlefields, and thrusting weapons to pierce the gaps were becoming more desirable. She took a single step forward, falling into a ready stance, and the goblin nodded to her.
"Begin."
Summer took Volex's advice, and charged in aggressively, hacking away like a madwoman, which the goblin was hard-pressed to defend against. He was good, but not that good, and in the end, aggression won out, and Summer split him in half from shoulder to hip with a single mighty stroke of her blade.
He smiled at her, and then burst into a cloud of purple smoke, before disappearing without a trace.
"...Huh," Summer said quietly. "I think I leveled up from that."
"Let's go check the hub room," I said.
"Right. Yeah, let's go."
We all turned around and walked back out into the hub room, to find the last pillar lit up, and a new pillar sitting where the floor-circle had gone, extending all the way up to the ceiling. The face of the pillar had a pair of rectangles etched into it, and as we approached it, they parted, revealing themselves to be sliding doors, and revealing a room big enough for all six of us to stand side-by-side, with a big ol wood-and-brass treasure chest sitting in the middle of it.
"Oooh, loot," Summer said, rushing forward and opening the chest. "Sweet! It's a spellbook!"
"She got over that quickly," Talia remarked quietly.
"Let's hope she stays that way," I said dryly.