Dungeon Tour Guide ch. 62 (Patreon)

Whoops, I accidentally wrote a chapter.

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Inquisition honestly worked really well with each other. I hadn’t even said anything about their composition, but it was pretty clear that they recognized their weakness on that front. As the constructs stepped out from the walls, the entire party moved.

“Red,” the [Fire Mage] said. “This is gonna suck.”

‘Red’ must’ve been a code word for something—ooh, that was a good tactic, I’d have to share that around—because Nora tossed him a vial of oily pinkish-red fluid.

He uncorked it and downed it in a single gulp, and mana expanded inside him.

Jonathan didn’t quite grow in size, but his aura grew in intensity. His skin took on a reddish hue, his fire mana enhanced in the area immediately around him, and he made the first move of the fight.

“Targeting left construct,” he called with a grimace, putting his hands together and summoning a gout of flame. “I need the oh-three in a sec.”

The constructs here were unchanged from before—I’d figured that it would be a bit rude to throw [Displacer Construct]s at lower-leveled parties. Still, there were six of them with more on the way, and this party was uniquely unsuited to fighting strong melee opponents in confined spaces.

“On it,” Nora said. “We got anyone on the puzzle?”

“I have it,” Alice muttered, sleepwalking over to the runes and kneeling. “Protect me.”

“On it,” Alex replied, his voice as clipped as ever. “Using limited resources. Target right.”

The [Zen Archer]’s [Meditation] came to a peak, and magic coalesced in the tip of his next arrow.

Unlike before, he didn’t turn into a human machine gun, barraging the constructs with arrows faster than the eye could track. Instead, he focused the entirety of his spell into the single arrow, flavoring it ever so slightly differently from before.

The construct on the right closed in on him, stepping within ten feet of the archer, and he fired.

The arrow sang through the air, and its song of [Zen Arrow - Purity] rang true as it smashed into the construct.

With the passive effects of [Meditation], the [Zen Archer] didn’t miss, and his arrow pierced through the construct’s earthen core like it was hot butter.

Just like Anderson’s [Void Bullet], it expended itself while it was still inside of the monster, exploding into purifying magic and breaking the frame of the arrow in the process.

The construct started falling apart, the magic within chewing away at its very existence until it could no longer sustain itself.

“Recharge in one minute,” Alex said, already nocking an arrow.

“I got it,” Jonathan said, still in the middle of fighting his target. “They’re not fast, but there’s not much space to—“

He cut himself off, dropping to the ground to dodge the sweeping strike of the construct’s arm. A moment later, he retaliated, using his [Burning Hand] once more.

“It’s resistant to fire, I think!” he called out, stumbling backwards.

The construct was closing on him. On the right side, the [Zen Archer] was forcing the construct back with a deluge of arrows, pausing every now and then to snipe at the [Mephit]s flying above them.

Nora finished the [Mephit]s off with a tossed capsule that exploded into a cloud of [Lesser Neutralize Magic], disabling the explosive property of the monsters as they fell.

For the time being, they had the lesser monsters sorted out. The [Mirror Beast] was still in the back—I wasn’t sure if Inquisition had spotted it yet, actually—but they had a plan of action to end the [Mephit]s.

The main issue was still the constructs. Aside from the [Zen Arrow - Purity], there wasn’t much that they could actually do against them.

“Three!” the [Fire Mage] shouted. “Now!”

Nora threw the vial she’d been preparing. “This took me two hours, man!”

The vial detonated on the construct that Jonathan had been unsuccessfully attempting to burn, and an [Embrittle] exploded out from it.

I raised an eyebrow, sending a [Rejuvenating Pulse] at the [Fire Mage] to patch up the minor scrapes and scratches he’d picked up while dodging and weaving around the slow but lethal construct strikes.

That was a fairly niche spell. In combat, its only use case was weakening barriers or weakening constructs, since it generally did nothing to organic material. Having it prepared in her bag said a lot about the [Alchemist], and having a pre-prepared code word to deploy it said even more about the level of teamwork and preparedness that the party had overall.

There wasn’t enough space for him to cast [Fireball] without catching all of us inside its blast radius, so Jonathan moved to cast a separate—

I frowned. He was moving in?

The [Fire Mage] punched the construct, the ‘red’ potion amplifying the force of his strike threefold, and he cast [Fire Fist].

That was… an incredibly weak fire-based spell, from the looks of it. It was accessible to fire-based mages at literally level one, and it didn’t actually do that much damage.

With the power of the potion, it was barely enough. His fist exploded into flame as he made contact, and I heard a sickening crunch as the construct’s now-brittle earthen skin caved in underneath his strike.

A second punch with the same combination of spells was enough to send the construct stumbling back, and a third cracked its chest in.

With the fourth hit, he killed it, but not without consequence. So many unguarded strikes in a row gave the monster time to swing back, and it managed a glancing hit on his shoulder.

For what it was worth, the [Fire Mage] barely made a sound as his shoulderblade cracked in three places.

“I hate using this potion,” Jonathan muttered, wincing. “Alice! Healing and progress?”

“One moment,” she murmured, jerkily moving her hands around as she cast.

Her spell was a simple [Cure Wounds], a low-level healing spell that any healer could manage, but she didn’t end it there.

The [Druid of Dreams] gestured and muttered, and her [Dreamwalk] made its way into the [Fire Mage].

For just the briefest instant, Alice’s eyes flew open, her face contorting as she let out a wordless scream, and then it was over and she was half-asleep again.

The spell was done. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what it did—I’d never seen it before, and it looked to be unique to her class—but there were decent odds it was some kind of ‘taking on the pain’ sort of deal.

“Thank you, Alice,” the [Fire Mage] said. “And to the puzzle?”

“Use magic,” she said, shrugging. Her shrug looked really odd given the marionette-like way her body was operating, but it got the point across. “That activates it. Can’t give more details.”

Well, that made sense. It’d taken Troy quite some time to figure out the details of this puzzle, and he was an [Apprentice Mage]—well, he was sure to get a class evolution soon, but he remained an apprentice for now—and Alice likely had nowhere near his skill level when it came to magic.

“Got it,” Jonathan said. “I don’t think we can keep this up. Nora, focus the runes. Alice, get us eyes on what’s happening in the cup?”

The two girls nodded, moving to act. Nora pulled a fistful of clear glass marbles, each of them filled with a different vibrantly colored fluid, and Alice jumped, her trance-state empowering her enough to simply leap up to the goblet.

“Repositioning,” Alex said laconically, climbing up the side of the greedy cup as well. He was running short on arrows, I saw, which meant that the spam strat worked less well than it had before.

From there, it wasn’t too hard. The [Mirror Beast] died extremely anticlimactically—it started to [Mirror] the [Dreamwalk], but it died to a pair of zen-strengthened arrows from Alex, who’d just gained line of sight onto it.

Down below, the two other members of Inquisition were sorting out the puzzle. Nora was throwing her spheres left and right, and while more than two-thirds of the broken alchemical fluids were applying the wrong effects, the sheer volume of the small samples of bottled magic was enough for her to activate runes.

“The water’s rising,” Alice called, swaying on her feet.

“Kill anything that gets close to you,” Jonathan grunted, retreating from another construct. “Nora, we’re out of time. Let’s go.”

The two of them clambered up the side of the cup as well, leaving early enough that neither of them had close calls as they made their way up.

The water rose, and it reached the target height.

Water fell, and as it did, I absorbed the monsters within.

“Well done,” I said. “The entrance to the next room is below.”

“Everyone ready?” Jonathan asked.

Around us, the earth started to rumble as the next wave of constructs started to make their way out.

“Not seeing a no,” the [Fire Mage] said. “Let’s go.”

We dropped into the entrance, and then we were at the beginning of the final part of the first floor of the dungeon.

The [Fake Hydra] was almost a joke of a bossfight by this point. Any single member of M-1 could probably solo one of them by now, given their levels, and even though Inquisition was only level 5, it still wasn’t much for them to deal with.

Their weaknesses weren’t nearly as apparent in this room. Given the massive amount of space, it was as simple as kiting around the monster while maintaining space. Nora threw a handful of vials while the [Zen Archer] and [Fire Mage] made up the bulk of their offensive force, and Alice sat in the backline to give them healing from time to time where an unlucky dodge meant the [Fake Hydra] managed to make contact with them.

It didn’t take too long. By my count, it took less than two minutes before they were able to knock out all four of its heads. Three went down to well-placed arrows, and the monster completely died when a [Fireball] immolated its final head.

Over the entirety of the dungeon so far, I’d only had to use a single healing spell.

“That was a well-executed fight,” I said, rejoining them as they examined the many-headed snake corpse. “Your party composition is—“

“Suboptimal, I know,” the [Fire Mage] said, taking the lead once again and cutting me off midsentence. “It’s what we have to work with, though.”

“It worked well enough for this part of the dungeon,” I said. “Now, here’s a part that you probably hadn’t heard of before. Things have changed a little around here.”

“Oh?” Alex asked, noticeably more relaxed now that the fight was done. “Is there more?”

“You have two options here,” I said. I wasn’t completely sure on my new system for the dungeon myself, but I had space to experiment. “First, you can call a close on the dungeon here. You pick up your rewards, we chat a little, then you leave. Second, you can keep going. There’s another floor of the dungeon—far more difficult than this one—underneath us, and I am willing to take you there.”

“How much more difficult?” Alice asked, still in the process of blinking herself back to full wakefulness. “This wasn’t too bad.”

“Enough that I will have to step in,” I said. “I know you have a healer already, but at level 5, I believe that you would need a second.”

They were almost at level 6 now, actually, thanks to the artifact.

Goddess, I wish I could actually duplicate it. Try as I might, I hadn’t gotten [Replicate] to work on the experience booster.

“My [Meditation] period has expired,” Alex said. “I don’t think I can do another dungeon floor.”

“That’s fine too,” I said. “If you’d like, we could start here the next time. Skip the rest of the dungeon and go to straight to the second floor.”

“That sounds lovely,” Nora said. “I’ll need time to restock on my potions.”

“Sounds like everyone’s in for that,” the [Fire Mage] said, wincing as he rolled his arm. “Alright. Let’s get our rewards, then.”

They all seemed sufficiently equipped for the dungeon, so I didn’t bother giving them armor or anything. I still wasn’t quite able to duplicate magical items—though [Combine] had been giving me interesting results lately—so there wasn’t really anything new I could provide them.

As such, I just gave them money. From the looks of it, they hadn’t been expecting that much.

“This is southern currency,” Nora said, inspecting the coins. “Good in most of the kingdom, but I know the Omen uses this sometimes too.”

“Spend it in the south, then,” Alice said. “Spend enough of it and the Omen’s economy will break, no?”

“The scale of kingdom-level economics is high enough that dungeon rewards don’t have an effect on it,” Jonathan recited in a tired voice that made me feel like they’d had this discussion before.

“Thank you,” Nora said. “This is enough for my purposes.”

“Purposes?” I asked, gesturing at them to follow me to the tunnel that would lead to the exit.

“My brother,” she said. “He lost half his limbs when the Kingsguard attacked last week. None of our healers are strong enough to heal damage that permanent, and the Alder Corporation healers that might be able to charge too much.”

I sighed. I thought I’d left this kind of issue behind on Earth.

“You can bring him to me, then,” I said. “I can heal missing limbs.”

[Divine Healer] wasn’t there for no reason, after all.

“Really?” Nora asked, her voice cracking. “Truly?”

“Of course,” I said. “In exchange…”

“Oh,” she said, her voice falling. “Of course.”

“I want to know about the outside world,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I don’t know enough,” I said. “I’m dungeonbound. The other parties I work with update me from time to time, but they don’t know everything happening in the kingdom. I like news. I like learning.”

“We can definitely do that,” Jonathan said, cutting in while Nora struggled to process that. “To start with, uh, I guess I can say that the Kingsguard destroyed our town.”

“We had to flee,” Alice said, nodding. “The Guild retook it, but it was already too late.”

“You’re being awfully open with me,” I noted. “I appreciate it. I’m sorry about your loss.”

“You’re dungeonbound,” Alex said simply, as if that explained everything. “It’s alright. We’re adventurers, anyway, and this dungeon town seems nice.”

“Yeah, we’re moving in,” Nora said, a slight quaver in her voice. “Expect to see us more around these parts.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said as we made our way back into the safe room. “I hope you enjoyed Centerpoint Dungeon. Please do come again!”

“We will,” Jonathan promised. “For fun, strength, and profit.”

“That’s us!” Alice cheered.

As they left, a woman entered.

“Iris,” I said, trying to keep hostility from leaching into my voice. Locking healers behind paywalls…

“Lucas,” she said. “Is something wrong?”

“Nothing.”

She cocked her head, then shrugged. “Well, it’s been a while, but I’m happy to say that I have finally made some time in my schedule.”

I nodded. “Let’s get going, then.”

I’d been waiting on her.

Soon enough, I’d finally be able to use the artifacts she’d brought inside me.