NOVEL NEXT WiWi 2, Chapter 50
Today's Earth date: April 12, 1992
Wilmond and Rathain are coming around to my way of thinking. For them, they adopted Horcus' view that we are in a sort of video game and weren't sure if they could hold that view and believe in all the good that we were doing. If it's just a game, why would it even matter?
But here's the thing: I felt like a hero when I beat the Dragonlord in Dragon Warrior. And I felt the same playing Zelda, Final Fantasy, and even Super Mario Bros. to be honest.
That made it click for them. We can still care about and be heroes to a place that isn't completely real.
-The Journal of Laszlo the Paladin
Wayne used his Pictionary skill to attempt to print a bridge, but when the third attempt fell into the void of Drumin's Divide, he reluctantly switched to carrying each person across. One by one, he scooped them into his arms and used Blitz to traverse the distance.
The HUD map interference persisted on the opposite side, so much so that Wayne minimized it completely. Having that space empty in his vision felt odd, like forgetting to put on his glasses, but he carried on.
After about an hour of exploring prop-stuffed hallways, the party encountered a drastic change: Complete emptiness. Muddy ratman tracks and miscellaneous bits of debris were all that remained, like an old garage that had just been emptied.
The line between lots of stuff and no stuff was so stark that Wayne surmised the Temple barrier ended there. Everything inside that barrier was inaccessible to the rats, so they couldn't touch it.
"Was at least fifty different rats moving around down here," Hector said, squatting to inspect the mud on the floor.
"That's pretty exact," Margo observed.
Hector shrugged. "Probably my fancy new Tracking skill."
"Let's go back to treating this like a crawl," Armond said with Voice. "Formations and priority Voice talk only, starting now."
Without complaint or hesitation, the party followed Armond's orders.
Wayne turned on his HUD, hoping to confirm whether or not the party was alone down here. The interference was still terrible so he minimized it again.
"My HUD map isn't working, so we won't have advanced warning of enemies," Wayne said. "Sorry about that, everyone."
"Don't be sorry," Armond replied. "We have eyes. Shouldn't be much more dungeon left either, right?"
"Every other floor has been symmetrical, so yeah, I'd say not much left."
Around every corner was more nothing. Just the dirty after-images of boxes, statues, ratman feet, and whatever sticks and leaves they tracked in. The repetition of turning corners to find nothing of interest slowly dulled the party's ability to stay alert and mindful. Even if they could be sure a potential threat was in the basement with them, that high-degree of attentiveness was taxing and difficult to maintain.
Wayne's Metox alarm went off at the same time Margo yelled his name.
Flag Girl.
"Four rogues going for backstabs!" Margo warned in the pause.
"Ambush actions when the pause ends!" Armond called.
The instant the pixelated flag girl signaled the start of the race, the Zeroes executed several abilities and spells at once.
Hector activated Oh Go Away! and Intimidate to delay the attackers.
Armond cast Deban to place air barriers behind himself, Fergus, and Margo–all people in the back row with their flanks exposed–and buffed the party with the speed boost of Ner.
Margo ducked and spun, banking on her agility being higher than a ratman rogue for her to launch a successful first-strike. The contest of speed was close until Armond's buff hit.
Fergus dove forward, turning as he went, and cast Freeze Please blindly behind himself.
Wayne cast Defense on his party members at the same time he activated Fart.
Armond and Hector weren't quick or lucky enough to avoid the rusty daggers that sank into their shoulders, just below their collarbones. Though the wounds were serious, they weren't augmented by Backstab damage. In spite of the pain, the party was relieved and completely aware that it could have been much worse.
And Wayne's Fart was foul enough to make even ratmen wretch.
The ratmen had already used their strongest attacks. Now that they were out of Stealth, their advantage was gone, and a party of rogues wasn't a great match up for a party as diverse as the Zeroes. In open battle at close range, the rogues were at a disadvantage.
They knew it as much as the Zeroes did.
The ratmen tried to run, but they didn't get very far. The party's assortment of skills and spells earned via the system collectively saved the party from disaster and delivered a victory instead.
All of the Zeroes now wore Smart Suits that included security alarms when threats were imminent. Margo's Second Sight skill allowed her to see invisible enemies, like ratman rogues cloaked in Stealth. The skills Hector used to scare enemies could be resisted, but even if they failed to send the monsters running, the act of concentrating against his attack broke what the ratmen needed to maintain Stealth.
For Wayne's part, he was happy to see this encounter with ratmen rogues go better than the first. Backstab damage was still a serious threat, but he could feel how much stronger and how much sharper he was now compared to then. Having a measuring stick like that was motivating. He wanted even more levels, and he wanted them as soon as possible.
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As the party regrouped, Wayne sent Running Back bot ahead of the party. His primary objective was to draw the aggro of any enemies that might be Stealthing along the route the Zeroes intended to take, but Wayne also wanted to see the Faciones ability from Centurion give the robot a chariot.
The chariot that appeared was scaled to match the tall-garbage-can stature of Running Back bot as was the horse hitched to the chariot. Though the chariot itself was stylish Roman brass, the mini horse pulling it was a robot designed with the same late 80s aesthetic as Running Back bot, which is to say it had the blocky structure of a primitive 3-D character.
Running Back bot snapped the reins and charged down the hallway, which was when Wayne learned the drawback of putting his robots on chariots: Turning radius.
When Running Back bot tried to cut a ninety degree turn a short while after his summoning, the chariot flipped, sending the whole mess of metal crashing into a basement wall. The damage was enough to unsummon the robot and his vehicle. Wayne frowned and made the mental note to save robot chariots for more open battlefields.
Though the party stayed on high-alert, they didn't encounter more ratmen until the final room of their search, and those ratmen weren't crafty, skilled rogues.
Seven rats slept in a large storage room, curled up in corners or slumped against the walls. The smell of spoiled food and wet rats thickened the air. The party could see most of them from the hallway and moved slowly enough to avoid disturbing the grunts. As they approached the doorway, Armond sent a warning over Voice.
"Puddles ahead," he said. Now that the cleric pointed it out, Wayne could see the edge of a glitching surface through the doorway, flickering and distorting at random.
"Margo, can you stealth in and get a better look?" Armond asked.
Margo followed the order without a word and slunk through the entrance to scout the area for her party.
"I count seven puddles," she reported. "Four on the ground to watch for in a fight. Two on the ceiling. One on a wall. And all of the ratmen in here have glitch sickness as well."
"All?"
"Every single one. There is a tunnel leading out, but I don't see any other threats."
"Thank you, Margo," Armond replied. "Let's do this quick and at range."
Though that wasn't a specific play like Homewrecker or Silent But Deadly, the party understood their roles. No one was to willingly engage in melee combat with a glitch-afflicted ratman. Hector was on standby to run interference if a rat got loose, and Fergus knew to be ready to switch from attacking to crowd management. If any rats came near the party, he would use Twine Time and Freeze Please to keep them at a distance.
Ultimately, Margo did most of the work. Four of her laser arrows headshotted four rats in the time it took Wayne and Fergus to each cast one spell. The room was clear of threats in just a few seconds.
Of all the basement they explored on this side of the Temple barrier, this room had the most stuff left behind. A familiar dwarven desk was flipped over in one corner, food scraps and the remnants of some kind of construction. Sawdust and stone chippings from that work blanketed the room.
Buried in the food scraps, Wayne found a tablet sized like a dungeon memo. As he translated it, Hector reported from the other side of the room, kneeling next to a glitched part of the floor.
"Used to be a workbench here," he said, pointing out the drag marks left behind by table legs. "More than half of it was in the puddle."
"Anyone see signs of hammers or chisels?" Wayne asked.
The party all shook their heads.
"So they either destroyed or relocated the workbench and tools."
"I would place my bets on relocated," Fergus said.
Wayne agreed. "Scout the tunnels a little bit while I translate this?"
The party nodded and set to their task while Wayne set to his. After a few minutes, he read the translation back to himself from his documents screen:
Project Plan 1.1.3c:
Logic Structure, Acts 4 and 5
Refer to GDD for encounter specifications
Act 4:
-On death of Lighthouse Keeper, set Charybdis spawn to active
-On death of Charybdis, trigger scene and give rings of water-breathing
Act 5:
-On death of Mega Mantis, spawn Scylla
-On death of Scylla, set were-virus region to true
There was that name again, Scylla. Seeing the names Scylla and Charybdis made Wayne think of Greek mythology, and he again wished that he had access to something like Wikipedia to run down why his mind made that connection. Otherwise, it was a nebulous thought with no real value.
The Zeroes returned from the tunnel a few minutes after Wayne finished with the translation.
"The tunnel is collapsed," Armond said. "I can't say for certain, but my bones tell me it was intentional. Hector says the tracks in the tunnel suggest everything that was down here went out that tunnel. Hundreds and hundreds of trips in and out, all ratman feet."
"Another smart move from the rats," Wayne mused. "Finding this end of the tunnel means we can't tell where everything went. Finding the other end would mean not having any idea what or where they looted."
Armond nodded. "That's my take as well."
Wayne read back his translation of the memo to the Zeroes.
"We've only encountered two of the four bosses mentioned in that document," Fergus said. "Having confirmed the boss floor of the Lighthouse is empty, my largest concern is this Scylla character."
"I had the same conclusion, an unknown boss and the potential of a glitched workbench being in the hands of ratmen give me the most concern. The fleshmancer who could use Christmas List made me 'feel' a glitch when he bit me, so maybe that workbench has something to do with how the rats are getting system access?"
Fergus wobbled his head. "There are several leaps of logic in that theory, but I see how you would make that connection."
After a few more moments of quiet reflection, Wayne wiped his hands on his pants and addressed the whole party. "Congratulations, everyone. We officially cleared the Earth Temple. Is anyone opposed to heading home now?"
The party groaned at Wayne's sarcasm.
"Let's get back across the Divide and hit Rise as far northeast in the basement as we can get. Since the floors got larger and larger as we descended, I'm hoping hitting Rise from there will put us in the rainforest outside of the Temple instead of in the mountain on top of it."
When the party reached the point Wayne had in mind, he hit Random to turn on music. If siren traps were in the area when they appeared on the surface, he didn't want to succumb to their song.
Song: Powada –Aika Shur Shivbacha Itihas
Artist: Vishnu Shinde
Album: Powada
Genre: Powada
The music that played had the raw percussion and twinkling brass sounds that Wayne associated with Indian music. When the lyrics began, he felt pretty good about that guess, but he didn't speak any of the many languages found in India to be able to say for certain. For a brief moment, Wayne frowned to himself. Random had shown him how little of Earth's music he actually experienced in his life.
More and more, Wayne saw his time on Earth as little more than a glimpse through a keyhole. He knew an infinitesimally small fraction of the human experience. Did he feel that way because Earth was so big, or did he feel that way because he regretted not being more curious?
Questions for later, he supposed.
Powada wasn't Wayne's preference for easy-listening, but it would do for drowning out the siren songs. He cranked the volume and wrapped the party in a group hug.
Rise.