Wishlist Wizard: The Rise of the Zero Hero [Isekai LitRPG / Now releasing 3x weekly!]

Today's Earth date: October 17, 1991

Fuck Horcus. If I see him again, I'm beating the shit out of him.

We camped on a small bluff, and then we got swarmed by skeletons in the middle of the night. Hundreds of them. We've been fighting them for a full day now, long enough that we are rotating one person out at a time for rest, and I can't sleep. That seems like the only way we can outlast this. We'd run, but there are skeletons in every direction.

Paladins are supposed to be powerful against undead, but there are too many of them to banish them fast enough before my mana runs out.

-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin

***

Sleeping in a ratman nest didn't count for a system reset, but the rest was rejuvenating regardless. When the party was awake and ready, they packed their things and ventured back into the dungeon hallways.

The next six floors were uneventful, the party encountering fewer and fewer ratmen as they went. Armond suggested that the nest may be close to being destroyed, but Fergus argued that the remaining survivors grouping up to protect the den mother was more likely.

On floor ten, the aesthetic of the dungeon changed. The same structure and materials formed the corridors and rooms, but the rats had hung their own standards–small flags with a red claw print–on the walls. The floor was covered with dried leaves and dirt, and a few of the hallways had been painted black with blood.

"This is a very advanced nest," Fergus whispered. "It takes a mature den mother for social structures to take root. Rare for rats to last this long in one place."

"How does that affect us?" Wayne asked.

"Might encounter smarter rats down here. Could be armored, could be magic users, definitely expect more archers."

Where every other floor was a wide network of interconnected rooms and hallways designed to make travel through the settlement as convenient as possible for the dwarves, this floor funneled into a chamber akin to the one they found just inside the dungeon entrance. A bevy of ratman archers and grunts massed in that room, guarding the entryway to an even larger chamber beyond. That had to be where the den mother nested, Wayne thought.

Wayne counted roughly thirty ratmen in that first chamber, and he cautioned the party to be judicious. Their mana and stamina had to hold up for another, potentially more difficult, fight after this one. Since Wayne had the deepest reserves, he did most of the killing while the party watched his back for surprise attacks.

The last batch of seven ratmen dropped their bows and ran through the doorway at the back. The party advanced slowly and heard the scrape and slam of a stone door shut.

As they feared, the rats had shut a set of double doors similar in size to those at the entrance. Hector gave it a push, but it didn't budge.

"Heavy or barricaded. Maybe both," he observed.

Wayne instructed the party to ready for combat and stepped forward, pressing both hands against the door.

Urg.

Wood splintered behind the door as Wayne pumped his legs to drive it open. The stone was still heavy, and the ratmen used that small delay to fire arrows.

Two stuck into his side. His hitpoints fell to 76.

Wayne ducked behind the other door, the one still closed. He looked at his HUD and counted thirteen red dots.

He recast Defense on everyone, and said they were going to crash the room. "Follow me in, but keep your formation."

The party nodded.

Wayne Blitzed through the doorway, looking to cut down as many rats as he could before his party followed a few seconds later. With the right amount of luck, he could kill enough rats to fully charge Morale and buff his party again.

This final chamber was unlike any of the other rooms or halls in the dungeon. It was wide open with high vaulted ceilings and a dais centered at the back with a throne. Two other raised platforms were on either side near the front but far lower than where the throne sat. Statues of dwarves wrapped the perimeter of the room, set into alcoves with intricate arches and borders.

Sticks, cloth, and loose boards were piled in the far right corner, forming a crude dome with a rounded entrance. A proper rat nest.

Wayne noticed long white bones–twice the size of an ettin's at first glance–built into the nest. The massive pelvis was near him to the right, as well as a skull the size of a smart car.

The party hacked through the pack of ratman defenders, but Wayne was late in noticing a new, larger dot appearing in the nest corner. He realized his error when six streams of white liquid, as if shot from water guns, fell upon the party. Margo screamed and dropped her bow. Fergus stopped casting, desperate to remove his outer tunic. Hector and Armond screamed but held their ground.

Everywhere the white liquid touched sizzled and bubbled. Acid.

In the moments Wayne hesitated, surprised by the attack, he saw the red outlines that were growing thicker with every kill reset back to their original thin lines. He felt the bonus speed dissipate as well. Like kill-streaks in shooters, Wayne guessed that Morale required him to kill another enemy within a few seconds to keep the skill growing. As soon as he stopped, he went back to normal.

The den mother paused her attack and ascended the stairs to the throne, giving Wayne his first look at the boss monster.

She was three times the size of the other ratmen, and her fur folded over rolls of fat. When she bared her chest, Wayne saw her twelve nipples stretched long from nurturing her suckling brood. White acid shot from each nipple in bursts, appearing to buff and heal the ratmen instead of burn them.

To Wayne, that seemed like way too many nipples, but Fergus later told him that female rats typically had twelve. More nipples meant larger litters.

But that was after the fight. In that moment, Wayne's shock turned into a yelled warning for everyone to cover. The ethereal shields created by Defense blocked a few of the bursts, but they couldn't withstand more than two squirts of the caustic fluid. Every member of the party except for Wayne got splashed at least twice. Hector and Armond stood strong, but Fergus and Margo struggled to fight through the pain.

A chunk of ice slammed into the den mother's stomach, interrupting the milk assault. Wayne mentally tapped Missile several times, not bothering to count. The den mother held up a hand, and the Missiles burst against a magic shield.

Fergus cast Rot. The den mother's back left leg began to turn black and shrivel, a dot of necrotic flesh continuously expanding. It wasn't fast enough to be the end of the monster, but the boss was in obvious pain and already seemed less mobile.

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A burst of milk hit Wayne. He mostly covered his face, but he felt it burning his scalp and forehead as well as his chest, arms, and legs. His hitpoints fell to 21.

He launched another volley of Missiles and chased after them. The den mother brought up her shield again, but as soon as it dropped, Wayne came out of the smoke of the blocked Missiles.

Blitz.

He thrust his sword into the den mother's chest, hoping to hit her heart.

He didn't.

The den mother grabbed him, and though his strength was high enough to eventually wrestle free, the rat pulled him toward one of her nipples. Wayne suspected she was about to melt his face off with her milk.

Fire a Broadside.

The cannonball tore off the den mothers right arm and much of that side, but she continued to claw at Wayne, her movements now desperate and haphazard. Arrows and Missiles came in from the side, pelting the rat to disrupt its attack. Then a fireball hit the den mother in the face, and her charred, milky corpse finally collapsed.

Wayne dug two healing potions out of his pocket and brought his hitpoints up to 81. Being that low was too scary.

"Wayne!" Fergus yelled, panic cracking his voice.

Fergus pointed to the skull and pelvis bones in the corner, they glowed red.

Another boss? Wayne wasn't certain the party could manage a second difficult fight.

The bones built into the nest glowed as well, and they rolled to the center of the room, as if all were pulled to the same point by strings. They rapidly assembled to form a giant skeleton. When the glow stopped. The skeleton looked around and stepped toward the party with a heavy foot.

Then it paused, bits of sands falling from its bones. In the next second, the rest of its body turned to sand as well, crumbling to the floor. Finally, the room was quiet.

"I was sure we were dead," Hector said. "Absolutely sure."

Fergus looked at Wayne for an explanation. He didn't have one.

"What the hell happened?" Margo asked.

"I cast Undead," Armond said.

***

A few ratmen might still be hiding in the corners of the dungeon, but the nest itself was destroyed, of that Wayne was certain.

He let Armond tend to the injured party members, first. Fergus, especially, was in a bad way. He had acid burns splashed across half his body or more. Margo was in better shape than Fergus, but not by much.

Everyone gained a level from that fight, Wayne included, but he wasn't ready to drop his guard and poke around the system yet. Exploring the throne room meant looking under the chewed remains of all manner of animals, and all he found was more filth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the nest move slightly. Oddly, his Crosshairs didn't flash red to indicate an enemy.

He pawed through the tangled mess and found a young man, curled into a fetal position and looking sickly.

"Armond!" Wayne called. "Need you now!"

The cleric ran over and immediately understood why he was needed. "Help me get him out," he asked.

As gently as they could, they picked up the boy and moved him into the open.

"He's breathing," Armond said and then began casting Heal.

"How was he not eaten?" Hector asked no one in particular.

"Noble lineage has many uses in dark magic," Fergus said, sadly. "The den mother fed on him but in a different way."

Hector grimaced. "How do you know he's a noble?"

"He's still alive, and we knew the Governor's son had been taken by the rats. If we're lucky, that's him, and he's able to survive this."

Once it was clear Armond didn't need assistance, Wayne asked the others to help him search the room, briefly explaining how he found a chest at the bottom of a pit in the last dungeon. They uncovered no secret switches or hidden compartments. They did, however, find a few odd ratman mutations.

One had the bone of its right arm exposed and filed to a point, like a jailhouse shiv. Another had similarly exposed bone but it was far longer than a natural arm and ended with a hook, its shape and size somewhere between a scythe and a shepherd's crook.

"Ratmen are highly religious," Fergus said, inspecting the strange growths. "Perhaps this is from a ritual or some kind? Or maybe these were birth defects turned into weapons?"

Though he posed those as questions, Wayne knew the old scholar was thinking out loud for the most part.

"Aren't dungeons supposed to be full of treasure?" Hector asked, standing at the top of the dais. He sat on the throne. "This thing isn't even comfortable. What kind of king tolerates a shitty throne?"

The dungeon rumbled and shook. On the back wall, a web of bright red runes lit up. Part of the wall behind the throne descended into the floor, revealing a small chamber. Set on a pedestal in the middle of that chamber was a cube large enough that Wayne could just barely get his arms around it.

Every visible side was covered in dwarvish writing.

"Not exactly 'tablets,'" Fergus observed, "but not so different."

They didn't have the references they needed to translate the dense block of text on each side. Wayne opened a blank file in his word processor, and thought about copying each symbol, as if he were retyping a print document.

He doubted that his DOS software supported dwarvish characters natively, but they appeared on the screen all the same. The process was slow, and he copied each visible side. Penelope and Kryss could have the artifact. As long as Wayne and Fergus had the text, they could continue their research.

Fergus pointed out that the bottom of the cube likely had text as well. Wayne risked lifting it off the pedestal, needing every point of his strength to do so. Any piece of solid stone this size was bound to be heavy, but the density of the cube felt unnatural. Sure enough, however, there was more text on the bottom. Wayne copied that too and put the cube back in its place.

"We'll let the dig team pull this out," Wayne said. "That way it's not our fault if it breaks."

Fergus agreed that was wise.

Resource Values.

Dwarven Diagnostic Cube, Average Value of [no sales data available].

That was new. Resource Values had never failed to provide a gold piece estimate before, but if it was truly based on averages, that must mean a cube like this had never been sold. Ever. Therefore, there was no data to generate an average from.

Wayne and Fergus rejoined the party in the main room. They all sat on the stairs leading to the throne, enjoying the quiet.

"I think he'll make it," Armond said, referring to the sickly man they rescued. "He won't be himself for a long time, though."

The rest of the party nodded, grimly.

"In brighter news," Armond continued, "this counts as our first dungeon clear as a party, right?"

Smiles appeared on everyone's faces.

"Did anyone else gain a level?" Fergus asked, looking at his system.

Everyone had, Wayne included.

Moving to level 9, Wayne's stats increased to:

Hero: Wayne the Guy

Level: 9

HP: 81/146

STR: 18

AGI: 16

VIT: 14

LCK: 22

He got this passive skill from Super Monaco GP:

Wing Type 1, Heaviest – The higher the traction, the faster the car goes. The heavier the wing the harder it is to turn.

He didn't feel faster and his agility stat didn't appear to be affected. Wayne saw more testing in his future.

And he added this spell from Phantasy Star II:

Fanbi – Use this to draw life power away from your enemy and into yourself.

Wayne remembered that Phantasy Star II had "techniques" instead of spells, probably an effort to fit the sci-fi theme. He found it funny that even the system agreed that was silly and labeled Fanbi a spell. Regardless, Fanbi was an exciting addition.

The party talked about their unlocks as well, but Wayne's mind was elsewhere. This room felt staged like the gargoyle boss. Boss, red runes, treasure. The ratmen were interlopers just as much as his party was. Yet, the giant skeleton didn't come to life until a few minutes ago.

And the dwarves built this place. All of the stagecraft was their work.

Every observation had the same question attached: Why?