Chapter 28 (Patreon)

Eros had an arrow knocked. Poppy hadn’t seen when that happened.

Anna’s shadows slid across the broken dungeon room, disappearing and lurking in wait.

“Sai?” Poppy asked.

Her heart was at war.

Hope, excitement, and dread filled her. The man standing across from her wore the name and face of the man who had changed the entire course of her life in a matter of days.

Of course, no one besides Poppy’s party knew that. The rest of them didn’t even agree with her. The man had appeared and disappeared without a trace or a record. She had people comb through the entirety of the records of people who had traveled to the frontier, through the entire records of the Trailblazers, and through the massive library of house Vascara in search of his class; Cultivator.

There was no record of it.

What was more was that the dungeon to the south of Spearpoint hadn’t been there. It wasn’t that people had simply missed the place — there were records of scouting routines to the region. There had been a mountain there. Now it was gone.

Everything about it was wrong. But his sudden reappearance was especially wrong.

[Sai Feng, Level 49 Warrior]

She heard Eros’ bow string draw taut, throwing a hand up to stop him.

“His class is wrong.” Eros hissed, crouched low behind her. Mana shifted in the air around him as he readied a skill.

Poppy hadn’t been able to sense that before meeting Sai.

Her heart jumped as thunder boomed in the cloudless sky, remnants and artifacts of memories warring to imprint themselves on the sound and sky of the chamber. It was still empty and black, stretching out into the infinite dark.

Sai just sat there, smiling. The quiet stretched on, unnerving, as Sai’s companion looked between Poppy and his compatriot. Her eyes shifted over to land on him.

“You entered the dungeon with him?” Poppy asked.

[Dale, Level 49 Shadowmancer]

“Yes!” Dale said. “This is my good friend, Feng. Isn’t that right, Feng?” Dale said, slapping the man on the back. Dale’s eyes lingered on Sai. Poppy recognized that he had used [Identify.] He frowned.

Poppy turned, looking back to Eros.

“Do you think they’re a projection of the dungeon? More memories?” She asked.

“Memories from out of our heads?” Eros hissed, his one good eye not leaving the two of them.

“Do the rules change that much when the dungeon begins to break down?” Anna whispered.

“No.” Poppy replied.

“It’s an honor to meet you all.” Dale said, throwing out his arms and taking a step forward past Sai.

Anna leaned forward, ready to activate her dash skill, and Eros’s bow creaked with power in response. Dale flinched back.

“Sorry! I’m just a massive fan of your work. Your party levels so quickly.” Dale said. He licked his lips, eyes glancing at the massive void to the side of him. “Are you heading for the core chamber? We’ve been looking for the path to it as well.”

“We are.” Poppy said, nodding at him.

Dale’s eyes slowly browsed the row of doorways arranged in a semi circle beside them. Each one warbled, showing warped images of the dungeon chambers beyond. Poppy glanced at them and back.

“We should stick together.” Dale said.

“We should take different routes.” Annabelle said at the same time.

Their party had been betrayed in the dungeons too many times to trust anything even remotely strange. Poppy squinted at them. Dale threw his hands up.

“You’ve already reached your first tier. The next room might doom us but be nothing to you.” Dale smiled apologetically. “I’m looking out for my health.”

Sai said nothing. His arms were crossed over old, bulky armor with signs of wear and age. It was unpolished, the metal matte and scarred with scratch marks in area. Strangely, the armor seemed to be segmented at parts of his body, as if it was designed to be exited rapidly.

Poppy smiled.

Dale clearly thought they said Sai’s name as part of [Identify,] and didn’t suspect anything.

“There’s no reason we can’t let you trail along.” Poppy said. “You two can go first.”

Dale’s eye twitched.

“Of course! Of course. That won’t be a problem.” Dale said. He looked over at the row of doors standing to the side. “We’ve seen most of these chambers. The only three we haven’t are… looks like a desert, a blizzard, and… a floating island? I thought there weren’t any island chains West of Illyria.”

“There aren’t. At least not any known floating islands.” Poppy said with a frown. She folded her arms, looking at the doors, but not moving any closer. The two groups maintained dozens of feet between them, a tension there even as they agreed to work together. Dale didn’t move any closer to them either.

Many people died routinely in dungeons. So many that their deaths were routinely written off. Leveling into the first tier — beyond level 50 — was a suicidal effort for the untrained.

It went without saying that many people tried to take advantage of it. Eros’s lost eye was proof enough of what their party experienced — and why they never tried to recruit again.

Not keeping strangers at your back in a dungeon had become a common rule for Poppy’s team. It was considered highly impolite to trail behind another Trailblazer as they carved their way through these dungeons.

“Our party has seen the inside of the blizzard chamber.” Poppy said. “Let’s take one of the others.”

Her eyes hovered on Sai, who stared back at them. His glaze was unflinching. He hadn’t even blinked, just smiling and swaying slightly.

“Come on Feng.” Dale said, turning around. “Let’s go.


***


FENG SAI IS IN AN UNREASONABLE AMOUNT OF DANGER

[Memory of a corrupted Roc, Level 79]

[Danger Sense reached level 2!]

My side erupted in pain. I didn’t process what happened until after. [Danger Sense] activated, I threw myself to the side, and in the next second a black blur had streaked through the sky.

[Health: 50%]

The ground felt wet under my hands, layers of plants sucking the heat away. I gasped in pain. My robes, which had resisted cutting bites and acidic blood and magical fire, had been easily torn open. My side was bleeding. I limped forward, gasping a second time in the pain.

And then I shot to my feet and ran, shaping my movement technique as fast as I could. Each stride took me a dozen feet forward. I would have to stop to safely scale the side of the Azure Thief tree. So I didn’t.

I raced to the edge as the world stretched around me. Then I jumped, sailing through the air.

I heard the bird hit the ground behind me. I thought it was the memory of the Titan — but its name was different. Wrong. Its wing was being substituted by energy — a skill, maybe? I didn’t have time to investigate. I had to keep running.

The islands grew larger the more they neared the central island. That’s where I was heading — it was the only place with any amount of cover. Other trees grew more common the more I neared it.

The next island I hopped to had uneven terrain; the Azure Thief’s pulled chunks of land together until

I risked a glance backwards. The bird was gone. Smoke and dust erupted out of the hole it had drilled directly through the island; it had shot into the earth itself. Right as I had looked back, it shot back up; more than just a black blur, it moved with the branching form of a streak of black lightning. The world darkened around it as it shot up into the sky.

The ground too far ahead of me exploded. I leapt to another floating island.

“What’s going on!” I shouted at little bird. “It wasn’t trying to kill me in the last few rooms!”

Was it because it was corrupted? Or because it was so much higher level than me now? Did the predators of this world have [Identify] and avoid things stronger than them?

It didn’t matter.

The bird seemed to struggle to predict how fast I would move, slamming into the ground either ahead of or behind me. It was growing frustrated with it, slamming more frequently or looping around me.

I had no doubt that a direct hit would kill me.

“Why did the dungeon get so much more dangerous so much more quickly!?” I said.

Little bird chirped loudly by way of reply. I could almost hear the ‘I told you so.’

Perhaps it was because I hadn’t travelled my own course through the dungeon — falling through the shattered desert chamber had clearly locked me somewhere else entirely.

The explosions around me stopped. There had only been a half dozen.

I leapt to a new island. I was only one or two away from the mainland. The variations in height were plenty, and the Azure Thief trees grew more and more massive as I approached closer. I could see arches of Azure Thieves rising out of the forest ahead of me between taller pine trees.

I was almost there.

I heard the sound of wood snapping behind me, turning back to see the corrupted Roc cutting through the Azure Thief connecting my island to the one behind me.

It was okay. There were three left.

Another tree shattered to my right.

The two remaining trees creaked audibly as the entire island I was on began to tilt away. I was suddenly running uphill, turning a few degrees to the left as I shot forward. I was tearing up the earth, plants being ripped apart beneath my boots.

The corrupted Roc couldn’t kill both of the trees at once. They were too far apart to dive through.

It screamed.

A bar of cutting black-light shot forward as it flapped its wings, growing taller as it spread away. It cut one of the two remaining trees. The island began to fall, angling downward. It wasn’t with the full weight of an island.

But the bar didn’t stop at the tree. It started to split the entire island in half, and now it was leaning in two separate directions. Massive chunks of earth and stone began to fall apart around me as I shot forward.

Little bird was on my back, screaming its head off directly into my ear. It beat its wings as if it was trying to give me more lift, but its claws were digging hard enough into my back to drop my health by a point.

By the time I shot up over the edge of the island, flying into the air with my legs flailing, the Azure Thief was snapping to pieces, letting the island fall into the void. The air screamed as I shot forward, perpendicular to the ground.

Then I fell, slamming into the earth.

[Health: 39%]

The shaped technique in my legs snapped apart, but I shaped my movement technique again, throwing myself foward just in time for the corrupted Roc to land like an arrow in the earth behind me.

Burning dust and dirt covered my back as I shot for the forest.