I take the lead, drawing my [Blessed Sword] which glows in the darkness of the stairwell. Some sort of special effect of the weapon? Resonance with something in the dungeon? I know it deals light-element damage from the description, but I feel it has a hidden effect that the System isn’t telling me about. Something that seems like it’d be helpful in the upcoming fight.
“Ditched the inventor look for that of a valiant knight?” Lindsey asks.
“Neither you nor Chloe are frontline fighters, and I don’t have much ammunition left. Plus, I got this spiffy suit of body armor a few hours ago, so I’m the best-equipped to serve as something resembling a frontliner. Unless you have at least 80 [Defense] and 1,400 [Health].”
“Damn,” Lindsey says. “You’ve got some good equipment. And what’s with that health? I’ve got half a dozen levels on you and I’m only at 1,700 myself.”
“I allocated a lot of points in [Vitality] early and never stopped. Plus I get an extra point with every level.”
“Well, I’ll still be counting on you to keep Chloe safe, Lindsey.”
“I’ll keep you both safe,” Chloe says. She follows it up with a cheeky wink and smile.
I smile back, though I don’t avert my gaze away from the dark descent before us. We continue to tiptoe down the stairs, quieting down as the second floor becomes just a distant dream. The shining light from above goes dark, the air chills yet further, and we continue to walk as we descend into the frozen wastes of hell.
A door stands before our path as we touch down upon what I must assume is the bottom floor of the dungeon. My heart again races, though with both Lindsey and Chloe backing me up, I feel a lot better about our situation. I push on the door, and to my relief and concern in equal measure, it opens with only a token resistance.
The room opens up to something that looks like a mad scientist’s laboratory. Diodes flash on the sides of the walls. Mostly greens and reds and yellows, but a few blues and violets and whites are mixed in. The walls are decorated like the green of circuit boards, with tiny lights stringing along from source to destination. It’s as though this is the control room of the entire dungeon, information being fed into the room. Now the question is: who, or more likely what, is all that information being fed to?
I don’t discount for a second that the entire dungeon is being run autonomously. In that respect, the entire dungeon is one massive artifact of Ethertech far beyond my station as a novice mechanist to comprehend, let alone try to reverse-engineer. Of course, there’s still the question of what the defense mechanisms are. I daren’t even for a second suggest that the three of us are going to waltz right in here, shut down the dungeon, and mosey on out, loot in hand. It would go against everything I understand the System desires. More fighting, more killing, more Experience, more power. We fight, and we either overcome or succumb. Those are the options.
Sure enough, something moves. Swiftly, nearly silently, save for the biting wind that follows in its wake. I twist my arms to meet its approach, but that presence phases directly through my weapon as though it were nothing. More and more of this spectral presence coalesces into the center of the cylindrical room. It’s invisible to the naked eye, but my [Ethersight] can make it out quite clearly.
Cloud shaped. Puffy, ethereal, about as big across as I am tall, and half as tall. It floats about five feet off the ground, and has a single eyeball in the center of its shifting body. Despite the obvious horror implications, it actually is less frightening to my mind than that dreadful It that Crawls in the Night that Chloe and I fought a while back.
The ephemeral mouth that materializes below its single, unblinking eye is grotesque, but not unnerving. And its voice is actually dreamlike, entrancing, calming.
“Congratulations on making it to the end of my dungeon. I am E3-971-147.042, Codename Oneiros. You–” It glares directly into my eyes. “–are truly a remarkable anomaly. Completely unfazed by the challenges of this dungeon. Even without a single clue, you managed to solve my riddle. Only by experiencing all of what the world has to offer can one delve deeper into the secrets of the arcane. If you had been able to read the directions, you would have received that clue. But you solved it anyway. Almost as though you’ve seen this before.”
“I’m not sure how I could have,” I say.
Oneiros lowers its gaze a bit more. “I wonder if you truly expect me to believe that lie.” It pauses. “No matter. If you wish to conquer my labyrinth and lay claim to the treasures within, you will have to best me in combat. Now, fall asleep, and perish within my eternal nightmare!”
My eyelids grow heavy at the boss’s declaration. It’s a contest of will merely to remain upright, and from the looks of it, neither Chloe nor Lindsey is handling the challenge all that much better than I. My muscles grow weak. My sword lowers to the ground, a third leg buttressing me as my legs try to collapse upon me like wet spaghetti. I groan and grit my teeth, but even moving is a challenge against whatever spell Oneiros is casting upon us.
Invasive thoughts begin to assail me. Powerlessness at being unable to defend Chloe. Weakness compared with Lindsey and her comrades. Ignorance of my purpose, of who I am or once was. Fear. Fear of failure. Fear that I’ll lose my friends just like I lost my mother. Fear that I’ll not be good enough to reach my goals of finding out why I’m here and what the System really wants. Fear that I’ll disappoint everyone yet again. Not just the people here, but the people back in that other world who seemingly sacrificed everything just to give me a second chance at life. Me, unremarkable, ordinary, everyday Seraphina Mortensen, a quiet kid from a poor neighborhood in an average city in middle America.
And I hate it. Hate hate hate it so much. I hate feeling like I’m dancing to others’ strings. Like all I can do is watch and let things play out with no agency, no matter how much I push forward or try to grasp whatever the future might hold for me. That the yokes of birth and circumstance are trying to crush my mind and spirit underfoot, denying me the opportunity to choose my own destiny.
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My legs grow numb. My arms follow suit. My entire body wants to succumb to this facsimile of an ancient god of dreams. I collapse to one knee, barely holding myself from lying prone with my weakening grip upon the hilt of my sword.
And I’m doing the best of the three of us. Lindsey is on hands and knees, fighting against her own body with beads of sweat dripping down her forehead. The muscles in her body tense all at once, then relax, then tense once more, almost as though she’s trying to treat her entire body as one giant heart, beating to control the flow of blood in her body. And Chloe is completely on her stomach, only able to lift her neck high enough to see my back and butt as she struggles to keep herself clinging to consciousness.
What power it must take, to so easily suppress all three of us.
I get an idea, though I dislike the implications it has. I let my grip slip past the cross-guard and onto the blade. And I let my hand grip it by the blade. Pain surges through my left hand as blood oozes onto the ground. Each heartbeat sends another drop or two down. I’m inflicted with the [Bleed] status ailment and my [Health] starts trickling down, little by little. But the pain, coupled with my will to survive, to overcome, to be more and defeat this damned guardian, starts to overcome the [Drowsy] ailment placed on me.
Strangely, Oneiros hasn’t made a move to attack us other than to force us to submit to its nightmare. No cutting wounds, no manipulating the room around us to attack us with all the machinery contained within. Not even an attempt to asphyxiate us and force us into unconsciousness that much faster. Maybe it truly is just an ethereal projection given form through the Dungeon and the System, as is everything we’ve experienced to this point.
I grip my sword once more, feeling the hilt’s grip sinking into my right palm. What was once a blade of bright white is now tinged pink, lensed with a thin layer of my crimson blood. My knees and shins and thighs are all still asleep, but I’m able to reach and move them despite the lack of feeling.
I stand, iron will in my blood and defiance in my heart. I activate [Ethersight] and witness the full glare of Oneiros’s single eye bearing down upon me. Pressure mounts over me like a cascading waterfall, ordering me to resist. I crumple for a moment, bending my knees to absorb the shock of such an attack.
A beam of light shoots through the air, grazing past my left shoulder and gouging the dungeon boss. To my shock, the attack actually does something. The pressure eases up, and I’m able to get one two-handed slash in. I miss the eye itself, but I cleave directly through the cloudy body surrounding it, lopping about an eighth of its form off.
What I slice off doesn’t sit there, floating in midair as I expect. And it doesn’t fall to the ground. Instead, it disperses. Into the air, into the rest of the ambient Ether of the dungeon? I don’t know; my [Ethersight] isn’t attuned enough to figure that much out. But it does something, and so I redouble my attacks.
I’m not alone. Lindsey looses another arrow, sending it around my neck and into Oneiros’s form. I’m not sure how she’s able to pick out her targets; [Identify] might give her at least a vague idea of where the boss is.
I notice Chloe starting to come to, finally. She’s still groggy, like waking up from a restless nap, but she’s forcing herself back to her knees and feet. She readies a healing spell, but I call out to her, asking her to ready her wand’s [Fireball] instead.
“But–”
“The pain keeps me awake. Keeps me focused.” I continue cutting through Oneiros as Lindsey provides covering fire. “I’ve got enough [Health] to survive this fight. But not if we succumb to that pressure again!”
“I– I understand, Sera. Ready when you are!”
“How dare you defy me!” Oneiros’s ethereal voice is tinged with anger and befuddlement.
“Damn right I defy you! As do all of us here! That’s what we do. We see danger, we see challenges. The challenges aren’t always easy. Sometimes they seem insurmountable. And oftentimes, it’s easier to give up. To give in, to submit, to take the easier path of going back to sleep and enjoying a peaceful sleep. But that’s not the world we’re in!”
I continue rotating throughout the room, taking advantage of the small quarters to position the eyeball-cloud hybrid into Chloe’s sight. I watch as it stares at Chloe with its eye, attempting to assert its will on her once more. But Chloe is empowered, and Oneiros’s skill has little effect.
She stands, legs shoulder-width apart, wand held with both hands, narrowed eyes. I give her the signal. And she screams out, “Fireball!”
My health is now under two hundred and still trickling down at a rate of about eight per three seconds. My vision is growing thin, my muscles weak, the pain from my lacerations starting to take their toll upon me. But I see no sign of the dream-demon who guarded this chamber.
I give Chloe the okay. She hits me with her strongest healing magic, and goddesses above help me, but the way it can restore lost blood in addition to creating new skin and muscle is nothing short of a true miracle. My throbbing headache and lightheadedness fade away, and I’m able to finally take note of the numerous System Notifications accruing in my eye.
[You have slain Dungeon Core Oneiros, The Dreamer (Level 24). You have gained a boosted 13,500 Experience. (Experience increased due to defeating a Dungeon Boss. Experience increased due to defeating a Dungeon Core. Bonus Experience awarded for clearing a Dungeon.)]
[Your team is the first to clear Dungeon E3-971-147.042. Your team is the first to clear a dungeon in sector 147. An additional 5,000 Experience awarded. Dungeon E3-971-147.042 will be deactivated for (167:59:24) to allow for re-creation.]
[You have gained enough experience to reach Level 21 (From 18). [Vitality] +3, [Mind] +3. Please assign additional stat points (12 Remaining).]
I bat an eye at ‘12’. Why not 9? Not that I’m complaining. However, the next notification answers the implied question.
[Stat Increases for Class: [Planetouched Mechanist] have been altered. Beginning with level 20, Free Stats increased from +3 to +4 per level. (Assigned stat points to [Vitality] and [Mind] remain unchanged.) One bonus free stat point assigned for clearing dungeon E3-971-147.042.]
I assign 3 points to [Vitality], then 4 points to [Mind], then 2 points each to [Strength] and [Speed]. The last point, which I can't seem to assign until the end, also goes into my [Mind] stat.
[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x2 + Current Level + Rand[1, 3] = (117, 119, 124)]
[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0, 2] = (77, 84, 87)]
[Level: 21; Experience: 47,884; To Next: 9,876]
[Current Stats: [Health]: 1,005 / 1,742 ; [Ether]: 592 / 1,055]
[Current Stats: [Strength]: 24; [Speed]: 24; [Vitality]: 50; [Mind]: 64]
[[Ethersight (Rank I)] has upgraded to [Ethersight (Rank III)].]
[[Intermediate Ether Manipulation (Rank II)] has upgraded to [Intermediate Ether Manipulation (Rank III)].]
Well, hot damn.
The dungeon is collapsing, with the exception of a portal leading back to the surface. I grab the contents of the treasure chest that appears without examining them, and the three of us head back to the surface above.
