Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 33 (Patreon)

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“I need cover and time!” Troy shouted. “I can read it, but my [Detect Magic] isn’t high-level enough to tell me what it does!”

“Got it,” Ryan said, drawing his blade. “I’m good on mana again. Let’s go. Rose?”

“Ahead of you,” the [Bard] said, beginning her [Song of Strength].

Troy knelt down next to the carving of a rune that would respond to fire magic, procuring a pen and paper from his cloak’s pockets.

“You just carry a set of those around?” I asked him.

The [Apprentice Mage] made a vague noise of affirmation before laying the paper on the floor and scrawling something I couldn’t read on it.

Six constructs were slowly emerging from the walls, each of them large enough to nearly completely block the path around the goblet. I stayed sitting where I was, ready to dissolve the monsters if necessary and ready to heal when someone got hit.

“One within ten feet of Troy,” I called out. “Might want to—“

The bone-shaking clang of magical metal against mana-shaped dirt and rock interrupted my sentence, Ryan’s [Agility Boost]ed strike making contact before I could finish.

Despite the [Song of Strength], it wasn’t enough to take it out in one blow. Not even close. There were cracks spreading out from where the hit had connected, but not having Troy to soften them up with a strengthened [Fireball] or just straight up dismantle them with [Create Water] meant that those cracks didn’t amount to much more than that.

“Ah, fuck,” Ryan said, withdrawing a step or two to avoid the slow, lumbering swing of the earth construct’s punch. “Can’t get enough of a windup in here for a proper hit.”

The muted crack of Anderson’s pistol sounded off, his [Eagle’s Eye] guiding him to an accurate strike in the center of the same monster.

Unfortunately for him, it seemed like there was nothing super special about his weapon or its ammunition. While his shot was perfectly aimed, a single bullet didn’t really do much to the construct besides make it stumble a single step back.

It was more than nothing, at least. Ryan struck at it again, a solid hit to the side that once again saw cracks propagating from the point of impact.

“Hundred seconds left!” Rose shouted, pausing the [Song of Strength] to do so.

Huh. She had another spell going at the same time, one hidden away enough that I had to stretch the dungeon senses to their limit to perceive it. A [Metronome]. Haven’t heard that one before.

Whatever it was, it seemed to give her a solid grasp on the time, because nobody questioned her.

Another pair of bullets struck the construct, the [Sharpshooter] firing two guns at once. An average feat for a level 2, for sure, but not one that was adapted to the room that had been built to challenge the stupidly overpowered level 4s that Minus One were.

Still, it bought time, and it looked like Troy was getting somewhere.

Ryan was alternating between using his [Knight’s Shield] and his sword, and it was working for the time being. Despite his best efforts, though, the construct was gradually pushing its way towards Troy. Another step or two and it’d be within melee range.

“Ah, screw it,” I heard Ryan mutter.

When he struck again, his sword lit up with mana and light, an [Adamantium Strike] activating at full force.

With Ryan’s improved power and a [Song of Strength] behind it, the empowered strike cleaved through the construct like a knife through hot butter. Ryan’s swordplay was swift enough that he was able to keep a bit of the spell still inside the spell on the backswing.

When the mana had faded from the sword and the air around it, the construct was already in the process of returning to the earth it had come from.

“Ninety seconds!”

Pretty efficient, all things considered. Not fast enough to clear all six of them before the next wave, but then killing every monster here wasn’t the intended goal of this room. That was just time pressure.

“I have two left!” Ryan announced.

“The hells are these monsters?” the [Sharpshooter] asked. “They’re unkillable!”

“They’re constructs,” I said. “Larger ones than you’ll see elsewhere in this dungeon.”

“Resistant to nonmagical damage,” Troy said absentmindedly, still scribbling down notes and translations of the magic he was reading in. “Plain gun might not be the most effective.”

“Shit,” Anderson replied, swiveling his head back and forth to see where the nearest enemy was.

This room was large enough that there was a decent possibility they were never going to need to fight the others. Still, there were two ten-foot tall constructs on their way to make the impromptu party’s life a fair bit harder, and nobody was really that far from any of them.

Anderson himself was facing one down. Well, for a certain value of facing down, at least—there was still at least twenty feet between him and the construct. Still, the man was practically shaking in his boots.

“Eighty seconds!”

He did, at length, pull himself together, building up mana of his own. This time, the spell suite he accompanied his shot with wasn’t just his [Eagle’s Eye] and maybe another targeting spell. This time, he was going all in.

Before he fired, he gathered mana inside his guns, focusing on the bullets he was about to shoot.

In a single instant, one of the bunches coalesced, forming a [Void Bullet] in the revolver in his right hand.

Anderson didn’t quick-fire his bullets this time, instead taking the time to carefully aim before shooting.

“Seven—“

The crack sounded otherworldly, like reality itself was tearing alongside the air as the shot traveled, and a streak of pure darkness manifested in the air for half a second before piercing straight through his target. The void-touched mana it had been imbued with was on the stronger end of a second-level spell—though it wasn’t quite as ridiculous as the quantity and quality of mana that M-1 could regularly put out—and the spell effect was strong too.

While the bullet had been no larger than a standard revolver shot, it punched a hole the size of my fist straight through the center of the construct, almost penetrating it all the way through. As I watched, the hole expanded, the residual mana chewing away at the edges, and though it didn’t expand very far, it was a crippling blow to the construct he’d shot at.

The [Sharpshooter] huffed out a sigh of exhaustion and dropped to one knee, the mana cost of his first shot making itself known.

His construct wasn’t moving much towards him, so I looked over at Ryan.

Rose and Ryan were still going strong. I wasn’t sure why Rose hadn’t used [Song of Displacement]—maybe the mana cost with it was associated with the amount of mass she had to move with a single spell?—but her chosen strategy of alternating between [Song of Strength] and [Lesser Heavenly Note] to keep Ryan’s strength boosted was working out pretty well. It probably would’ve been working better if she hadn’t been glancing over at Anderson every few seconds, but it was understandable to worry that an unproven ally would fuck you over.

The [Knight] was most of the way to dismantling a second construct with just the base magical blows of the sword, not having had to resort to an [Adamantium Strike] just yet.

“Sixty!”

Another ethereal crack came from behind me, and I turned just in time to see the second [Void Bullet] blast through the already-shot construct’s core, toppling it to the ground. Anderson the [Sharpshooter] nearly stumbled to the ground as the construct did, his energy expended by the effort of using both bullets. He wasn’t completely out of it yet, but I could tell he wasn’t going to be doing many more of those.

“Fifty!”

As Rose called the time out, she glanced over towards Anderson. Upon realizing that he wasn’t in full fighting shape, she cursed. “Ryan! Can you handle them alone!”

“If I need to!”

With another irritated obscenity, she turned towards Anderson, starting a melodic [Song of Rest].

“I’ve almost got it,” Troy announced. “Magic activates them. Three separate runes activating makes the water go up?”

“Why would—“ Ryan paused to deflect a blow from the construct, stumbling back with the force of it before he could retaliate. “—you do that? Don’t we want to empty it?”

“I’m not seeing any better options,” Troy said. “I’ve got it.”

“Forty!”

A quick look towards Anderson and Rose told me that the former was back on his feet, but there was another construct approaching him.

“It’s types of magic,” Troy said. “Lucas, can you dump healing magic into this rune?”

He figured it out.

I passed a [Healing Stream] into the rune he pointed at, and the mechanism I’d created acted, beginning the first step of a [Create Water] to fill the Pythagoras cup.

“It’s probably a greedy cup!” Rose called. “Mother used to love those. Thirty seconds!”

Troy set his notes down and blasted towards the only two other runes he could see, activating a [Flameburst] from one hand and a [Thunderspark] from the other. The former spell worked, the rune glowing bright red and the rate of the [Create Water] within the goblet increasing, but the latter fizzled without doing anything.

“Shit, I read it wrong,” Troy grunted, still supplying mana to his weak flame. “That one doesn’t need lightning, it needs… void? I think? We need to get that third one going. If this is a greedy cup, I don’t think we’re getting it fast enough.”

“Anderson has void magic,” I said.

“Anderson!” Rose called, breaking her [Song of Rest]. “We need you to use your magic on this rune here. Fifteen!”

“Magic?” the [Sharpshooter] asked, palming his gun. “What magic?”

“Void,” Rose said. “On that rune. Ten.”

Anderson pulled out his revolver, gathering mana into his gun, then stopped.

The walls started to rumble.

“Four,” Rose whispered. “Three, two, one…”

An earth construct appeared from the wall, then another and another and another, adding four to the four that still stayed standing for a total of eight.

“Fuck,” Troy said. “They’re blocking our way to the other runes.”

“One moment,” Ryan said, his blade lighting up with mana.

With the increased number of constructs came even less space to work with, and they were approaching the adventurers from both sides now. One of them was almost on top of the rune that Troy was dumping fire into, so Ryan struck out at that one.

A single clean [Adamantium Strike] was all it took to take that one out, and then the [Knight] practically flew to the other side to do the same to a construct that was getting closer to Rose than was comfortable.

“I’m out,” Ryan announced. “All I can do is regular defense now. I can protect one side or the other.”

Just as he finished his statement, the construct behind the first one he’d killed started inching towards us, and the [Knight] was off again.

“Listen,” Anderson said, oddly calm despite the fact that a construct was enroaching on his position, barely ten feet away from him. “You need my magic to survive this room, right? Then give me half your share of the loot, we’ll call it even.”

“What in the fuck,” Rose said, emotionless. “Are you seriously pulling this?”

Wow. That was… pretty despicable. I’d been expecting the guy to maybe try to steal from the party after they’d gotten their loot, but I hadn’t imagined that he’d basically hold them hostage with my own monsters to get more money.

Well, the rules of the room were the rules. Troy hadn’t thought of using [Create Water] himself, and only two runes had been activated, so the cup wasn’t going to fill nearly fast enough.

I didn’t interfere, but that didn’t make me want to punch the [Sharpshooter] in the face any less. I’d intervene if someone’s life was actually in critical danger.

“A man has to eat,” the [Sharpshooter] said, dodging out of the path of a heavy strike from the construct behind him. “So yes.”

“Look, I don’t care about the money,” Rose said. “But are you fucking serious? Playing with people’s lives like this?”

“Yep,” he said, drawing both guns. One was pointed at the construct behind him, the other at Rose.

“Rose,” Ryan said. “I’m not sure how much longer I can—“

His [Knight’s Shield] wasn’t strong enough to fully protect from the blow this time, and he dropped to one knee with the force of the construct’s punch. At the same time, the [Sharpshooter] fired, a different type of bullet—one enchanted with [Repelling Strike], apparently—pushing the construct he faced back.

“I’m flagging,” Ryan finished.

“We’re almost there,” Troy said. “If you can hold out any longer—“

“Fine,” Rose said, glaring daggers at the [Sharpshooter]. “Half our share.”

“Sure, whatever,” Troy said. “Let’s just see if the greedy cup theory is right.”

“Hurry, please,” Ryan said, grunting as he took a glancing blow to the shoulder. He nearly fell over from the force of the earth construct’s hit. “Agh, these… hit hard.”

“Thank you,” the [Sharpshooter] said, smugness dripping from his voice, “for your cooperation.”

He funneled more mana into his gun and fired at the designated rune, his third [Void Bullet] visibly draining him once more, and the [Create Water] activated in full.

“It’s working!” Troy said, his [Detect Magic] pinging on the spell.

A second passed. Two. The water nearly reached the brim of the cup, and then—

And then the center of the snake-filled water hit the lip of the pipe it would fall down, forming a siphon that started sucking away everything inside, mana-born snakes and all.

“Water’s lowering,” I said, standing up on the goblet’s edge. “Congratulations.”

“Let’s move,” Rose said, still glaring at Anderson.

“Ladies first,” the [Sharpshooter] said mockingly, gesturing at the ladder.

Rose spat towards him, then turned away.

Ryan was still fighting, if barely. With his stamina lowered this much, though, it was only a matter of time until the [Knight] fell.

Rose solved that for him, using a [Song of Displacement] to send the poor sap flying up and into the rapidly draining goblet.

Troy was a moment behind him, clambering up over the edge.

Rose and Anderson were last, the former using her song and the latter climbing up normally. He almost took a hit to the leg as he climbed, but while my constructs were stupidly strong, they were also stupidly slow.

Shame. That would’ve been funny to watch.

“This goblet isn’t safe,” I said. “Just because we’re in a raised space doesn’t mean the constructs can’t get in here.”

As if to prove my point—well, since I was controlling the dungeon, it was precisely to prove my point—the ceiling started rumbling.

“Let’s get moving,” I said, pointing at the trapdoor at the base of the goblet’s interior.

“Fine,” Rose said, hints of her anger still clear and present in her voice. “Let’s go.”

I opened the door, revealing a stone chute beneath, and we jumped in.

Three adventurers of Minus One—far more exhausted than they’d been last time, mind—plus the dungeon’s tour guide and an asshat that felt like using a life-threatening situation to get money. We made for a bit of eclectic party.

It was time to go wake the boss.