Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-One — Ramp Up
Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-One — Ramp Up “Oh, looks like we're going to need lights,” I said as we moved into the second floor.The entrance was a crack at the base of the massive tree, a space where the bark was pushed out enough for someone to walk in without bumping into the sides, though it was still a bit tight, and the entrance zig-zagged a bit, cutting off any direct light from outside.Hence my complaint about the darkness, because that little bit of light from the entrance was the only light in the floor.Puffles summoned another light ball and held it up above his head with one hand, then, surprisingly, he touched the magical ball to the tip of one of his antennas and it held there.I stared for a moment, then summoned a ball of light of my own-a spell I was growing pretty comfortable with-and touched it to my ear. It felt fizzly for a moment, but when I pulled my hand back, the light faded and disappeared.I, of course, tried again, but this time while also looking around. Amaryllis and Caprica had summoned their own lights, and Awen pulled out a little lamp from her backpack and turned it on before hooking it to her belt.It was more than enough light to see by, though I wished that the floor itself had its own, steadier lighting. The entryway seemed to be a big space with-unsurprisingly-floors carved out of the tree’s wood. The space narrowed out ahead and pushed to the left next to a great big hole in the ground that I couldn’t see the bottom of.“Is the entire floor this dark?” I asked.“Aye, it is. Never been much of a problem. Just got to cross the little bridge there, and then walk all the way to the top. That’s all,” Puffles said. He nodded, which made his antenna, and the light hanging off of it, bob up and down.“Seems too simple,” Amaryllis said. “Also, Broccoli, what are you doing?”I paused, feeling suddenly rather guilty with both hands up atop my head holding a pair of lightballs against the tips of my ears. “Uh,” I said. “I think I figured it out?” I let go, and the two lights stayed in place.I wiggled my head and the lights bounced around with the motion of my ears. It worked! The trick was pushing mana to the tips of my ears, which was surprisingly vexing. I hadn’t realised it, but all this time I was mostly casting spells from my hands and on rare occasions from my feet. Using magic with my ears was a new one, but this was less about casting a spell and more about feeding magic to a spell I’d already cast.Awen giggled while Amaryllis rolled her eyes with a ‘you’re very silly and I refuse to acknowledge your silliness’ sort of huff.“What’s the challenge here, Mister Ward,” Amaryllis asked instead.“Beetles, like I said earlier. They come rolling down the passage, bouncing off every wall along the way. If they hit you they can knock you down pretty hard, and if you tumble down that hole... Well, that’s it for you.” He pointed to the big hole, and I glanced over the edge again. Thankfully, I wasn’t afraid of heights, because the yawning darkness within might have been spooky otherwise.“Does that happen a lot?” I asked, worried.“Hmm? Nah, of course not. We can fly.” He beat his wings for show and lifted a bit off the ground. “Usually just fly past the entire floor, really. But with the vines in the way, can’t do that. Still, the vines make the beetles all messed up too.”That made sense. I could see some traces of Evil Roots already. They were smaller than some of them became, hanging from the ceiling like vines with bits of rotten wood clinging to them.“Let’s stick together, then,” Caprica said. “Maybe we can even tie each other together, in case? That way there’s less of a risk that any one of us will fall into the impossibly deep hole.”“I have rope,” Awen said as she reached into her backpack again. Soon we all had knots tying our belts together, which would definitely make moving through the dungeon trickier, but we were all pretty decent fighters, so I was sure we’d find a way around that.“Alright, so when the beetles come down, the best thing to do is just avoid them outright,” Puffles said. “Usually you can stick to the sides. The wall-side is best. They’re fast and they hit hard though, so don’t try stopping them.”“What happens if they’re stopped anyway?” Caprica asked. “What if one of them was stopped by some of those vines?”“Then we might have to fight them,” Puffles said. “They’re not great in a fight though. Big, but slow.”We crossed the hole via the bridge, careful not to trip into the pit, then once on the other side, we started to climb. The floor was angled upwards, moreso near the centre than on the edges, and was about three metres across at its narrowest.The whole thing reminded me a bit of one of those fun gumball machines, the ones where you’d put a quarter in and then the gumball would come rolling out of it and do loops before falling into a little basket you could fish them out of.Only instead of gumballs rolling down to be eaten, we had giant beetles rumbling down the worn wooden floor with a noise like thunder.“One of them is coming!” Caprica called out, though her voice was almost drowned out in the noise.Then a spinning ball of black and blue came rushing around the corner and before any of us could react, it impacted.Fortunately, the one it hit was Caprica herself, and she was ready for it. Her shield’s bottom rim was planted on the ground and her knees were bent just-so. There had to be magic and skills at play, however, because the beetle was as tall as I was, even rolled into a ball, and it had to weigh quite a bit, I imagined.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.The impact shook the floor under my feet, but Caprica didn’t move back even a smidgen.The beetle was flung backwards and it unravelled in mid flop, articulated body parts unfurling to reveal... well, a giant, rather angry beetle. It landed on all six legs, then shook its big head.“Nice block,” I said.Caprica just nodded and wiggled her shield arm, as if she was trying to get the pins and needles out of it. I imagined that a hit that hard had to sting, even if she blocked it.Amaryllis and Calamity immediately struck the beetle in tandem, one of his arrows plunging into its head while lightning crackled and raced across the giant bug’s carapace. It shook most of that off, surprisingly, until Awen levelled her crossbow and fired with a deep ker-chunk.Congratulations! Your party has rolled a Ball Beetle (Level 6) into an early grave! Due to combating as a team your reward is reduced!“Nice work!” I said.“Mhm,” Puffles agreed. “We’ll be seeing more of them,” he warned. “They’re slow once they unroll, but try not to get hit anyway.”I nodded, that seemed like sage advice. Not getting hit was generally a fantastic thing to do in a fight.“At least, ah, we can hear them coming,” Awen said. That was also a good point. The beetle wasn’t exactly a stealthy enemy.“It dropped something,” Caprica said. I turned, looking at the spot where the last of the beetle’s body was fading away. There was something left there. A chevron-shaped chunk of what looked like the beetle’s shell.I fired off an Insight at it.Ball Beetle Shell Shield, New“A shield,” I asked. “Oh, that’s neat. Maybe you could use it, Caprica?”“We don’t get those too often,” Puffles said. “On account of avoiding most fights. But if you scrape that shield up into a powder with a grindstone you can make some very nice dyes with it.”Caprica picked the shield up and turned it this way and that, then shook her head. “It’s too small. Too light as well. I don’t doubt that it’s fairly tough, but it’s not the kind of shield I’m used to using.”I looked to my friends, and we all seemed to debate on who should have it. Calamity fought with bow and arrow, and if he needed to, he’d use a knife or a spear. He wasn’t keen on shields. Awen didn’t have a real use for it, and my fighting style relied on not being hit in the first place.“Well, I suppose I can use that for now,” Amaryllis said. “We might sell it to the village once we’re done. Or trade it for some of that dye.”With that sorted, we continued on our way up. It wasn’t long before we heard another rumble coming down, but this time, as we prepared to meet another beetle, the rumble just... stopped, some ways ahead.We shared a look, then continued onwards, though at a more careful pace. The number of roots were growing, with several of them poking through cracks in the walls and spilling out across the floor. They were actually kind of helpful, since the floor was at a constant incline and it was a bit hard to find our footing.As we continued, our lights (including my ear lights) illuminated the path ahead, and we discovered why the last rumbling had stopped.A big beetle was caught up in a heap of roots to one side of the passage. It had unfolded from its ball form, but that had only gotten it even more tangled in the roots filling that side of the passage.“Should we put it out of its misery?” Awen asked.I hesitated, but Amaryllis replied before I could make up my mind. “Sure. It’ll be good experience for the lot of us, I think.”Awen nodded, her bow went ker-chunk, and then we gained a little smidge of experience. I pushed the guilt in my tummy away. It was just a dungeon monster, so it wasn’t that bad. That didn’t change the fact that I’d felt bad for it.We continued upwards, and after a few more revolutions, I was starting to lose track of which direction we were facing. The walls all looked roughly the same, and the floor was decorated in nothing more than concentric ringsWe came upon another beetle that was caught in some roots, but the moment after Awen put it down, another rumble started to echo down from above. “It’s possible that one will make it to us,” Caprica said.“Then we ought to hide,” Calamity said. “There, behind the roots. If it takes the same route it’ll get jammed up too.”That seemed like a great idea, so we huddled up behind the outcropping of roots, ready to fight the beetle that came thundering down.Our optimistic planning turned out to be pointless as it roared past, knocking aside a few of the dangling roots and slapping us with a bow wave of wind.I barely saw more than a black-blue blur before the beetle was past and rumbling on down towards the ground floor.“Well, that was mighty exciting,” Calamity said after a moment.“Really,” I said. “Maybe we can avoid the rest too?”“As long as there are more roots the higher we go, I suppose that wouldn’t be too hard to do,” Amaryllis said. “In any case, shall we keep going? I don’t mind the break, but I’d rather have a longer pause rather than a few short ones.”“Yeah,” I agreed. “This is really working out my calves.”“It’s not ideal for my talons, I’ll give you that much,” Amaryllis said.“Now come on, ladies, I’m sure ny’all have perfectly pretty legs,” Calamity said.We all stared at him, while Puffles pointedly stared off into the chasm.Calamity wilted. “Oh, sheesh, fine,” he grumped.
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Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Two — Upper Levels
Chapter Three Hundred and Ninety-Two — Upper Levels The rest of the second floor wasn’t all that much of a challenge. We continued to climb, taking a small break around the three-quarter’s mark for something to drink and to let our legs rest, then we kept on going and going.Eventually we neared the end of the floor. By then, the Evil Roots had become so common that the beetles didn’t have any space to roll through, and we had to climb over and through tangled roots just to keep going.The others still insisted on killing them whenever we found some. I found it kind of distasteful, even if I kept getting ‘team fighting’ experience from it.“Finally,” Amaryllis said after we beat the final beetle on the floor. The ground levelled off ahead, and I seemed as if we were done climbing for a while.“What happened?” I asked.She smiled, looking quite smug with herself. “I hit level sixteen with my main class,” she said. “Just now. I’ve been looking forward to that level up for a while.”“Oh, wow,” I said. “Congrats!”“Thank you,” Amaryllis said. “It was a long time in coming. Or... well, perhaps not so long in the grand scheme of things. At the rate we’re going we’ll all be quite strong soon. A few more dungeons, a few more of your little adventures and we’ll be hitting our third tier.”“That would be impressive, yes,” Caprica said.“There aren’t many third-tier people around, right?” I asked.“One in a thousand or so,” Amaryllis said. ”Or that’s the rule of thumb, it varies a lot depending on where you are, and of course it varies by profession.”“In the army it’s closer to one in fifty,” Caprica said. “In the Paladins, it’s closer to one in ten. The Royal Guard are all in their third tier, since that’s a requirement to enter. There aren’t that many Royal Guards, however, likely for that very reason.”“Oh,” I said. So it wasn’t super uncommon, but it was still the kind of level reserved for the elite, or at least people who were at the top of their game. “Wait, wouldn’t a lot of older people reach that kind of level?” Most of us were pretty young, after all.“Oh, sure, but if you’re hitting your third rank when you’re quite old, then you’re probably already settled down,” Amaryllis said. “The race for power tends to be a younger person’s game. Well, level-based power. Political power tends to be an older bird’s game.”That made sense, I supposed. “Okay then! Let’s all hit our third tier before the year’s out then!”“Broccoli, the year will end in a couple of months,” Amaryllis said. “What kind of harebrained levelling scheme do you want to try?”“I didn’t know that,” I said. “So let’s hit our third tier before the end of next year, then!”Amaryllis rolled her eyes. “It only gets harder to gain levels as you go, you know? Each new push requires more unique experiences and more work than the last. Although... maybe it would be possible, but I don’t want to take stupid risks just to gain a few levels faster.”“Oh, fine,” I said. She was probably right, risking our lives just to level a bit faster was rather silly.In any case, the discussion about levels and experience and all that stopped as we finally reached the top of the floor. The ground was flat once more, and after walking up a ramp for so long, it almost felt strange to be on even footing once more.“This is it,” Puffles said. “Next floor starts right through there.” He pointed to a crack in the wall, not too dissimilar than the hole we’d squeezed into to get onto this floor. There was a bit of light coming in from the other side, so we’d at least be able to do away with all of the magic lights we had.I was fond of my ear-lights, but they were consuming a small trickle of mana pretty constantly, and so my mana reserves weren’t replenishing.“What can we expect on the other side?” Calamity asked.“Third floor is tricky,” Puffles said. “Not so bad if you can fly, but still not easy. Roots might’ve made it easier too.”“How’s that?” I asked.“The floor’s all about jumping from one platform to another. They’re branches with flat tops. Hop on over from one to the other and try not to fall to your death if you can’t fly.”“That’s concerning,” Caprica said. She was untying the rope holding us all together (which really, we should have done earlier) and then handed her end to Awen who started to coil it up. “Only two of us can really fly. And jumping from place to place can be tricky at the best of times.”“There’s more,” Puffles said. “The floor has fireflies. They’ll buzz around and make a bit of noise, but I’ve never known them to attack anyone. But their abdomens can glow, and that glow does things to people. Reminds you of the moon.”“We’re going to be mooned by firefly butts?” I asked.Amaryllis whacked me behind the head and I laughed while covering my ears.“Take this seriously, Broccoli,” she said. “The way he’s talking it might be a mental effect. Something like an attention-grabbing skill?”“Something like that,” Puffles said. “I’ve seen good folk get distracted and fly right into one of those fireflies. They’ll usually just bumble out of your way, but you might end up chasing after one of ‘em for a while, and then you’ll tire yourself out.”“So how do you avoid doing that?” I asked.“Mostly a question of willpower. You got to remember that no matter how pretty the fireflies are, they’re not the real sun or moon. No point in chasing after them. We’ve found that having lots of lights around help too. Keeps you focused on the closer lights instead of those that are further out.”Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.“We could shoot them down,” Calamity said. “Depending on how many there are and how close by they fly.”“Awa, it depends on how big they are, and how quick they move too. I’m not as confident at range as Calamity is,” Awen said.“We’ll see, is there a safe space on the other side of the entrance?” Amaryllis asked.“There’s a platform of sorts,” Puffles confirmed. “The vines have grown all over the place. They might make it easier to jump around, might make it harder. Really depends.”With nothing better to do than move on, we slipped through the crack in the wall-some of us having to move through it sideways-then burst out onto the third floor.Calling it a floor was strange when it was clear that we were now way, way up on the tree on a small ledge created by one of the large branches sticking out from the trunk. There was a faint wind that caught at my skirt and I found myself tensing up a little as I moved to the edge of the branch and looked way, way down.It was a good thing I wasn’t afraid of heights, because the view, while quite spectacular, was still kinda frightening.“That’s the way up,” Puffles said over the wind as he pointed ahead.The branch curved upwards a ways while also narrowing and splitting off in a few directions, as branches did. The top part looked as though it had a layer of bark shaved off of it, creating a more even, flat surface to walk on.A few other branches had similar marks on them, and as I followed the path with my gaze, I was able to see where we’d have to jump from one branch to another. Some were a bit above, many of them would have us hopping down.“Where’s the fourth floor from here?” Caprica asked.“Other side of the tree,” Puffles said. “It’s a huge branch, and there’s only really one way to get to it. The path there can be a bit of a maze. Especially with these vines all over.”Ah, right, the Evil Roots. They were draped across branches like garlands. Some had those familiar Evil Root pods growing on them, and I was worried that we’d have to fight some nasty plant monsters on the way through.Then, there were the fireflies.They were big, plump bugs that bumbled about with a noise like a helicopter. The wind, I realized, wasn’t natural. It was coming from the fireflies as they gently flew past, butts blazing so bright that they lit up the entire world beneath the shadows cast by the tree’s canopy.“Mister Ward,” Caprica asked as she turned to Puffles. “Do the fireflies’ effects work on this ledge?”“Mhm, they do,” he said.“In that case, we should take turns looking at them while the others hold onto the looker. It’ll give us each a good idea of how potent the effect is on each of us.”That seemed like a reasonable thing to try. Caprica went first, and Calamity and I held onto her shoulders as she focused on the nearest firefly and squinted at the light coming from its rear. “Do you feel anything?” I asked.“Hmm, I recognize this feeling. A few people have used similar skills around me before, to grab attention and keep it. My father has something similar when he’s giving a speech. This isn’t as potent as that.”Soon enough it was my turn, and I squinted at the nearest firefly, specifically the large bulbous pod on its rear that glowed with a powerful yellowish light. It was quite pretty, actually. There were several different shades of yellow and white, all swirling into each other in a way that reminded me of a lava lamp.“Broccoli?” Awen asked.I shook my head. “Oh, right, uh, yeah, I guess it’s pretty? It is kind of distracting, but I don’t know if it’s dangerously distracting?”The others took their turns, and I could better see the effects on them than I could on myself. Mostly it amounted to whomever was watching the light being transfixed on it for a while, but anything that caught their attention would pull it away, even just calling out their name.“Hmm, you lot are better than most I’ve seen,” Puffle said with a nod.I... didn’t want to say it, but I suspected that the reason was somewhat innate. The Mothfolk seemed really keen on bright floaty balls of light, and that was before any sort of attention-grabbing magic was involved.“Okay, so now the only challenge is the jumps?” I asked.“They don’t seem that big,” Amaryllis said. “I think anyone should be able to make them, at least those I see. The branches are swaying though, especially when those fireflies move past. That might be enough to throw someone off their aim.”“Maybe we use ropes again?” Awen asked. “Will the dungeon do anything if you tie things together?”“Not as far as I know,” Puffles said.That settled it, and as a group we started down the main branch with Puffles and Caprica taking to the air around us. If someone missed a jump, then we had two fliers to help, which was reassuring.Puffles did fly off for a moment, but he returned with a serious nod. “I traced a good part of the path over. We don’t want to end up walking down the wrong way.”“Oh, that makes a lot of sense, yeah,” I said. There were a few places we could jump to, but it looked as though some branches didn’t reach others. Basically, we were traversing a massive three-dimensional maze where instead of walls, there were huge drops.I didn’t feel like using the old ‘stick to the left’ trick on this one.
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