Vol.3 Ch.13 – Beach Episode?

Chapter 13: Beach Episode?

I may have mentioned before that dungeons could get pretty damn bizarre. The funny thing was that, no matter how many dungeons you went into, they somehow still found ways to stun you into disbelieving silence.

I had deliberately not asked Annabella what to expect because I wanted to go into the dungeon with as few preconceptions as possible, so I was entirely unprepared for what happened.

As with any other dungeon, we went into a cave entrance that looked unassuming except for some faintly glowing runes dotted around the stones. Runes that didn't match any runes found anywhere else, by the way. Some scholars had taken to analyzing the dungeons' runic language but aside from some vague idea that they might be both letters and pictograms they couldn't puzzle out much.

When we found a light at the end of the very short tunnel we stepped through and had to cover our eyes against the sudden influx of light. So far, so normal. But then...

“Not what I was expecting at all," Yume said.

“Yeah," Selene breathed.

“It's... gorgeous!” Alisha gasped.

I couldn't fault them.

We emerged onto an island. A tiny little island. And there were dozens of such tiny islands connected by pale stone bridges. Giant palm trees and small shrubs were growing on these islands, but most of their surface area was covered by incredibly fine, almost white sand. The water surrounding us wasn't the sort you'd expect in a cave, either. It was almost turquoise and we could see quite a ways down beneath the waves it was so clear. The horizon stretched out in every direction with no end in sight, though I knew that had to be some sort of illusion. And above us? A crystal ceiling high above us lit the place up bright as day, making it seem as though we were truly on a magical archipelago. I looked behind us to the entrance and found a tiny little rock formation with a cave entrance that couldn't possibly lead all the way back to where it clearly did.

“Welcome to the first floor of the Crystal Crown's dungeon," Annabella said as she saw us all gawking.

“How is this possible?" Selene asked.

“Dungeon magic," Annabella explained with a shrug. “So, first things first. This is the first floor and thus the easiest but that doesn't mean this place is harmless. You can still die here quite easily if you're careless. Next, that thing over there," she pointed at a structure of dark stone and crystal that looked wholly out of place here, “is the teleporter. After each boss room there's a treasure room and each of those contains another teleporter that links back to this one. Once you've cleared a boss you can also teleport from here to that boss' treasure room, which means we can catch our breath and sell our loot after every boss we need to face.”

That was incredibly convenient. I'd heard of such mechanisms but they only existed in dungeons that had multiple floors, which was pretty rare. So rare in fact that I'd never been in one of them but for a dungeon as ancient as this one it only made sense.

“Also, important safety announcement," Annabella continued. “Do not, under any circumstances, go for a swim. If you think you might die against a group of enemies on land, take your chances anyway, because even the worst odds on land are still better than your odds in the water.”

“Why?" I asked.

“Well," Annabella said, “first of all the monsters on this floor can all swim and they're all better fighters in the water than any mortal could hope to be. Second..." she trailed off and found herself a rock. She examined it, testing its weight, and then threw it into the water, at a shadow I'd barely noticed before.

The moment the stone hit the water an enormous maw shot out of the water and closed around where the stone had hit. It seemed to belong to a fish, the maw triangular and full of sharp teeth. And also big enough to swallow any two of us whole. Once the jaws had clamped shut the enormous beast sank back underneath the waves with a loud splash.

“What the fuck was that?!" I demanded.

“Monster fish," Annabella said. “They're similar to but not quite the same as the beasts that make travel to the southern realms so dangerous this time of year. They're not actually that dangerous. The royal guards routinely lure them onto dry land and kill them but in the water you have absolutely no hope of surviving them.”

“Why would the royal guard do that?" Selene asked.

“Both the royal family and the royal guard can come down here to train and to gather materials," Annabella said. “The crown pays handsomely for all materials taken from here. When we get back we can sell our loot directly to the treasury. I won't guarantee that they'll give us the best prices in the capital, but selling directly to the treasury lets us avoid the kingdom's dungeon tax.” The dungeon tax was a 10% cut the royal family took of all earnings gained from dungeon loot. “And these fish have lots and lots of tasty, valuable meat on them.”

“So, would you recommend we do that?" I asked.

“No," Annabella said. “It's good coin but we're not here to get rich. We're better off avoiding them entirely. There's an area later on where we might end up having to tangle with them but ideally we should be able to reach the boss room without encountering any.”

“So that means we only have to deal with the other dungeon enemies," I said. “Any tips for those?”

“Sure," Annabella said. “But on this floor the normal enemies are pretty self-explanatory. One are mermen with harpoons and the other are big turtles with incredibly tough shells. What you need to watch out for is one of this dungeon's oddities.”

I quirked up at that. I loved hearing about dungeon oddities. Aside from the bizarre locales, most dungeons had some sort of quirk to its monsters or environments, some sort of mechanic that only existed in that one dungeon. That underwater dungeon, for example, had changed how magic worked. Fire magic, for example, had created spheres of boiling water that'd made excellent traps to shove enemies into. Another oddity I'd witnessed had been elemental shift, giving mages entering the dungeon access to different elements and at the end of the dungeon they could have decided to keep their new element.

“What's the oddity here?" I asked, probably a bit too excited.

“Some enemies have crystals growing somewhere on their bodies," Annabella explained. “Those enemies are stronger, faster, tougher and drop better loot. Normal enemies also flock to them and regard them as leaders. These crystal variants can appear randomly on any floor.”

“Elite mobs, huh?" I asked. “Interesting.”

I'd heard of such an oddity before but I'd never expected the Crystal Crown to have it. I'd expected its oddity to be something like puzzles revolving around refracting light through prisms. Then again, a dungeon this old might have more than one oddity.

Either way, I was suddenly very glad to have Annabella with us. These elite variants were exactly the sort of system dungeon malice loved to exploit. If you were doing a little too well, the dungeon would “just so happen” to spawn more and more of these “randomly appearing” variants until you were overwhelmed.

But with a member of the royal family on our team this dungeon's malice wouldn't affect us. I didn't entirely trust the queen's word on that but from the way she had seemed so intent on that information not being spread around I was fairly certain she'd had no reason to lie about that.

And assuming she didn't lie about it, we were at least safe from the dungeon “randomly” siccing a battalion of elite variants on us. On the other hand, that same phenomenon would still be able to affect those we were pursuing.

I was already imagining a hilarious scenario where we found those bastard cultists surrounded by a group of elite variants and could just munch on some snacks as we watched them being torn to shreds but I knew we wouldn't be that lucky.

“Anything else we need to worry about?" I asked. “Environmental hazards? Rare enemies? Herbs to watch out for?”

“The only environmental hazards come later on the floor," Annabella said. “There are lots of useful herbs here and I'll point them out as I harvest them. As for rare enemies? Aside from the three types I've mentioned and the boss at the end there's only one more but you'll want to ignore it.”

“What is it?" I asked.

“Birds sitting in the trees," she said. “They're perfectly content to ignore you but if you attack one the whole flock will throw things at you all the way to the boss room.”

I groaned.

“They're really not that bad," Annabella said. “The royal guards use them as a hazing ritual. They make new recruits attack a bird with a thrown rock and then have them run all the way to the cleared boss room. But if you actually need to fight enemies on the way the little distractions can be lethal.”

“Hold on, cleared?" Selene asked. “What do you mean?”

“The bosses respawn after seven days," Annabella said. “And the boss of the first floor in particular is killed whenever it respawns.”

“Why?" Selene asked.

“It's valuable," Annabella explained. “And it's much easier than the other dungeon bosses, so the royal guards kill it as often as possible.”

“Hmm," I said. “So if they respawn after seven days that would mean if we ever find a cleared boss room we're less than a week behind the intruders, right?”

“Exactly," Annabella said. “Now, between us and the first rest spot there are usually five or six encounters, depending on the dungeon's mood. I suggest we use those to get used to the dungeon monsters and then we rest up. Sound good?”

“Yes," I said. “Let's.”

**

Unlike Annabella we had no experience with the dungeon so we decided to test ourselves against the dungeon monsters first. Our only fight with Annabella along had barely been long enough to qualify as a fight, after all, so she knew little of what we were capable of.

The first encounter was a single merman and I wondered whether the dungeon was taking pity on us. I mean, don't get me wrong, the mermen looked formidable, but there were five of us and only one of it.

The merman was humanoid and about as tall as the average human, though slightly hunched, which only served to emphasize its distinctly inhuman features.

Its body was covered in dark turquoise skin and covered in sporadic scales that were slightly lighter in hue. Its belly was a pale off-white instead. The beast also had fins on its back, on top of its head and along its forearms as well as a short tail fin behind it, all of them a much lighter turquoise than its body. Its hands and feet were webbed and ended in wicked claws and in its hands it held a rusted harpoon covered in barnacles. But its most distinctive feature was its head.

I once went to an exhibition that showed off deep sea creatures and one thing that had stuck with me had been something called an angler fish. A fish that dwelt deeper than any human could dive, half its body a giant maw full of pointy teeth, its eyes a milky white and on the top of its forehead hung a lure. It looked like a fishing rod but with an orb on the end. According to the description that orb glowed and would attract other fish in those dark depths, which the angler fish would then devour.

And that merman looked as though he had an angler fish for a head. A giant maw full of teeth complete with a huge under-bite and a faintly luminescent lure atop its head, with fins on the sides and top of its head. The only real difference was that the merman didn't have milky white eyes. Its eyes were an unnatural piercing yellow.

“Allow me," Alisha said as we approached and I smiled as I realized what she had in mind. She'd used that trick before, but she'd had a lot more practice with it now and so it went much faster. She summoned a single air lance and then began shoving her Qi into it, making the air inside it swirl faster and faster and then she let it fly at the merman who had only just noticed us.

I would say that enhanced air lance tore into the merman like a cannonball but cannonballs didn't shred and tear. The projectile hit the monster right in the chest and then exploded outward, cutting winds tearing his body to pieces. They kept going as the merman fell down and only when it was clear that he was dead and never coming back did the spell peter out.

Annabella looked dumbfounded at the shredded remains of a dungeon monster. While magic was very powerful and dangerous, air mages were generally considered skirmishers who had a tough time dealing decisive blows and instead had to harass anything larger than a goblin for quite a while. And Alisha had just demonstrated that she was capable of using this element that was usually best for crowd control to deal powerful blows to single targets. And thus, the princess turned to stare at Alisha and the cleric said sheepishly:

“Maybe I'll need to tone it down a bit.”

“I should probably have mentioned this," Annabella said, “but dungeons are so full of mana that they enhance all spells cast inside them, so please be mindful of that.”

“Right," Alisha and Yume said at once.

**

We kept advancing through the first of the dozens and dozens of islands and only then it became clear to me how big this place was. It hadn't looked all that big at first but now I realized that we would easily be here for a couple days and that was already taking into account the fact that we had Annabella along and could therefore avoid running into any dead ends, otherwise it would take even longer. So, assuming we'd be here for multiple days I asked:

“What do you usually eat on this floor? I find the idea of eating anything humanoid slightly barbaric.”

Annabella nodded. “Yeah, apparently some royal guards swear by merman meat, but I prefer to kill the huge turtles for meat. Kill one and you're set for a couple days. Plus it's pretty good.”

“Let's just hope we run into one of those, then," I said and Annabella pointed at something I'd assumed to be a boulder.

“There you go," she said and I stared at the thing.

The turtle did, in fact, have a moss-covered boulder on its shell. When Annabella had spoken of huge turtles I'd assumed she'd meant man-sized, but instead the shell was about seven feet tall and the body underneath was huge, easily ten feet wide and fifteen feet long. Its head had the swiveling eyes of a chameleon and a maw that looked formidable enough that I was sure it could bite through solid stone.

I looked over at the slender herbalist and asked: “How did you kill these things? If you wanted to eat them I doubt you would have poisoned them.”

“That's not as big an issue as people think," Annabella said. “You can poison a monster, wait for it to die and then soak the meat in antidote. But no, I used to hide in a tree, waited for them to poke their heads out and then stabbed them through the head with my sapphire sword.”

“Ah," I said. “You can't approach them from the sides thanks to the eyes, right?”

“Exactly," she said, then watched me pull out a mace. “What are you doing?”

“Testing out a new trick," I said and then approached the turtle from the back, outside the range of its eyes.

Once there I raised the mace high above my head with both hands and charged a Qi Burst to power up the strike and Qi Projection so it would cover a wider area when it struck. The mace had a minor durability enchantment and I hoped that would be enough to keep it from shattering.

This attack did hit like a cannonball, crashing into the target and not stopping. The boulder on top of the turtle's shell cracked apart and I managed to break through the shell underneath and mangled the beast's spine in the process. Then I calmly walked around its huge body and cut off its head, mostly to end the poor thing's suffering.

“What was that?!" Annabella demanded. “I've seen you fight. You're not that strong. No human is that strong.”

I smiled. “If you tell me about that magic of yours I'll tell you what this was.”

She bit her lip as she considered. “Let me sleep on that," she said.

“Sure.”

**

To my surprise it didn't take us that long to carve the turtle up. My Qi techniques had removed most of the rocks and a large portion of the shell, so it had been easy to get at the meat underneath. At the very center of the boulder had been a chunk of ore and Annabella had informed me that it was of a magical metal found only within this dungeon, so I pocketed it in case we managed to find enough to make something interesting out of. If not, the royal family would pay a premium for it. As Annabella explained, this metal was used to forge particularly powerful swords which were gifted to members of the royal guard who went above and beyond in their duties.

I was pretty sure I'd seen those swords before. They were longswords of a slightly bluish metal with a cross guard. Very good-looking weapons, though I'd never had occasion to see these swords in action so I didn't know what qualities the metal gave the weapons and I didn't bother asking until I had enough of the ore for it to matter. The royal family wouldn't sell this ore to anyone, so the only way I would get enough was if we collected enough of it ourselves. A few more chunks would be just about enough to make a ring or two, though.

Either way, after harvesting the meat we came across another merman and this time Selene stepped up.

She approached slowly enough that the merman could see her and had time to get into a defensive stance. I'd already taught her how to use the Qi Dash, but she clearly hadn't wanted to use it. Instead, she swung her great sword two-handed and the merman blocked the slash with his harpoon. It was then I could tell that Selene was testing out how strong they were. She wanted to know whether she could hold her own against one of them and so she used the opportunity to find out now, before the encounters got bigger and the margin for error got slimmer.

As I had expected, she was able to hold her own. I had taken her measure a long time ago and I knew that she was strong. Not quite as strong as me, but she had much more potential than I did and even just a month of honing her skills had brought her close to me in terms of sheer strength. Soon enough she'd overtake me. And against that stood a monster of the first level of a dungeon.

Dungeon monsters were tougher than normal monsters, but this was still just the first level of a dungeon and so the monsters weren't that strong yet.

And between Selene's strength and that first level dungeon monster, the paladin won easily, pushing the merman back inch by inch by their locked weapons. She took one hand off the hilt of her sword and even against only one of her arms the merman couldn't muster the strength to push back against her. And then I finally saw her drawing Qi, not into the sword, but into her other hand as she balled up a fist, wound up a haymaker and then let it fly assisted by a Qi Burst, striking the merman right into its overextended jaw and sending him flying through the air. When he landed, Selene used a Qi Dash to reach him before he could get up and neatly chopped off his head.

Unlike the showy attack I had used, what Selene had done could just barely be explained away by human strength, so Annabella didn't comment on it except by staring at Selene. And by the way the brunette's eyes were traveling the curves of Selene's body I wasn't convinced the staring had anything to do with the paladin's performance.

**

As we kept traveling my little fox became more and more impatient. I thought it was because she didn't get to fight yet, but finally she exploded.

“What is up with this dungeon? The last one I went to tested my limits in ways I haven't felt in all my life. This is pathetic!”

“It's the first floor," Annabella said. “Me and my siblings all had to train until we could survive for weeks in here on our own. If our party had issues here I would be very concerned.”

“But even so," Yume said, “these monsters might be difficult in larger groups, but not as single encounters.”

Annabella nodded. “It's only like this on the starting island. The encounters get bigger from here. The bridge leading to the next island often has a dozen mermen guarding it.”

Yume relaxed at that. “Alright, that's better.”

“Don't worry," Annabella said. “By the time we reach the depths of the second floor you'll wish you were back here.”

Yume snorted. “How many floors are there?" I asked.

“We don't know," Annabella said.

“How can you not know that?" I asked.

She hedged. “Well, the dungeon grows new floors over time. The last one who reportedly reached the end of the dungeon was my great-grandfather, over a hundred years ago. He led a group of a hundred royal guard down the dungeon to find out how deep it went. They went down to the fifth floor where they fought the boss. By the time they were done, of the one hundred royal guard members he brought with him, only forty-seven were left alive and after the boss room they found a treasure room but no stairs leading down. But after those losses nobody has ever tried to even fight the fifth boss, let alone see if a new floor opened up beyond it.”

“Well, then I hope we catch up to the cultists before they make it that deep," I said.

“Even if we could make it that far down, I doubt these cultists could," Annabella said. “If we're lucky we find their corpses in a boss room up ahead.”

“But we won't be," I said. I wanted to go on a rant about how these things always ended the worst way possible when Yume's ears pricked up.

I scanned the area and found what she'd heard. A merman, except this one had a mess of crystals growing over its shoulders and along its jaw.

“An elite variant," Annabella said. “They normally don't spawn this early.”

“Maybe Yume pissed the dungeon off with her rant and it has something to prove now," I mused.

“Maybe," Annabella agreed. “We're immune to dungeon malice but that doesn't mean the dungeon will just let us insult it.”

“Check," I said. “Don't taunt the dungeon unless we want it to lash out.”

But Yume wasn't worried. She drew Kageshiro and advanced on the elite merman. It held a harpoon not unlike the one the other two had had, but it was overgrown with an enormous layer of crystal until it looked more like a huge mace.

Yume advanced on the merman and he swung that huge crystal club, intending to bring it down on Yume's head. She was about to smirk when she noticed that the merman was moving much faster than the others and she had to make a mighty leap to jump over the attack. The club slammed into the ground, creating a huge crater and blowing up sand in all directions, creating a dust cloud. Yume used that cloud to land behind the merman and stab at his exposed back, but he twisted out of the way far faster than the normal variant and when she tried to slash at him he stepped into her guard and smacked her hand away, sending the blade off course. Light blue mist sprang up around my little fox, but clearly she couldn't find purchase on his mind and switched tactics. She created a shield of fire to stop him from attacking as she jumped back, creating space.

The elite merman chuckled, which sounded horrible, a sound full of phlegm and bubbling water, and charged at her again. Yume growled at the monster and side-stepped his attack, then tugged his overextended wrist even further forward to throw him off balance and then charged a working of fire magic and Qi. She slashed once from right to left, then again from left to right and then swung a third time, diagonally upward from her lower left, which released a fire snake that coiled around the merman, burning him before he could recover from the three slashes. Then, to make sure, she used a mighty two-handed thrust to stab the monster through the heart.

As the elite merman fell, Yume glowered at the crystal ceiling.

“Alright, fine," she said with a growl. “I admit that was a decent challenge.”

The dungeon didn't answer her but there was an instant of smug satisfaction that rushed through our minds.

**

Annabella hadn't been lying when she'd said the elite variants dropped better loot. The normal mermen were decently lucrative already. Their scales and teeth were valuable and the barnacles on their weapons could apparently be ground down into medicine. But this one? The crystal weapon was a little unwieldy but tough and strong and, being made of magical crystal, it held enchantments very well. And the crystals on the beast's shoulders and jaw could be sold for a decent amount. The jaw would make a nice souvenir and the small gems on the shoulders would be interesting to a jeweler.

After the elite merman we found one more turtle but we ignored it and beyond that we found the first rest spot. Like the teleporter at the start it looked quite out of place. Instead of green grass or almost white sand, the rest spot was made of dark stone with glowing blue runes carved into it, and the middle of the circular shape had the remains of a campfire on it.

Rest spots like this were common in dungeons. Dungeon monsters couldn't touch the stone, couldn't see the stone and couldn't interact with what was on the stone. And even other adventurers wouldn't be able to sneak up on those resting there, as the runes would warn of anyone approaching with ill intent. It was the dungeons' biggest mercy, a place to catch some rest without having to worry about monster attacks or even about setting up guard shifts. More than once I'd come across adventurers on the first rest spot of a dungeon who had realized that they'd bitten off more than they could chew and were begging me to get them out of the dungeon.

Either way, it was a little early to pack up and rest but according to Annabella the journey to the next rest spot would be significantly longer than what we'd experienced today, so resting now was the best option.

Thankfully it gave Alisha time to familiarize herself with the turtle meat and get a stew going to soften it up. Useful because from what Annabella had told us that stuff would constitute the main part of our diet for the next few days.

The meat turned out pretty tasty and not as tough as the turtles' formidable appearance had suggested, which meant that after a couple hours of stewing over a fire it practically fell apart if we so much as glared at the chunks. The flavor was... odd. I'd never had turtle before so I didn't know what to expect, but the light meat ended up tasting a little like chicken, the way a lot of lizard meat did, but it also had the briny flavor of seafood, somehow. Overall, not bad, especially with the light vegetables we'd found and brought.

The best part about the rest spots of a dungeon was that they made watches unnecessary, so we wouldn't need to sleep in shifts. But even so, after dinner I made a little room for myself and sat down at the edge of the rest spot, as far away from the tents as I could get. I just wanted to admire the gorgeous look of the simulated sunset over the ocean. The crystals above us had dimmed fairly realistically when night should have fallen and I wondered whether the crystal ceiling above us was actually the Crystal Crown as seen from below. Or maybe from inside.

Either way, the view was amazing. The ocean around us couldn't be endless, but whatever illusion was in play was good enough that I couldn't even begin to see through it.

I just sat there, considering how the next few days would play out, when Annabella sat down next to me wordlessly.