Path of the Dragon Mage (Nomad) 65. Redemption (Patreon)

Special Saturday chapter! (And perhaps a Sunday chapter too...)

The tunnel out of the dungeon was much shorter than the one leading in. There had once been paintings on the walls, but the images had been ruined by years of seeping moisture. Corvus saw impressions of bright colors – a word here and there – but that was it.

Starella wrinkled her nose. “It smells awful in here.”

She was right. It smelled of damp and years of rot. Outside the single dry path that led through the tunnel, it was slick with an overlay of green algae. Half of the illuminated panels overhead were burned out or glowed with a dull light that helped no one. The few remaining ones sputtered with intermittent light and buzzed with a high-tinny sound. The dry bits of flooring may once have been beautiful marble stone. Bits were dimly visible under the layers of grit.

Corvus’s Night Vision helped pierce the shadows and that allowed him to spot the footprints.

“Wait.” He crouched to examine it closer. Oddly enough, he could see better when the dim flickering light wasn’t on. He moved over the footprint to put it in the shadow of his own body.

“What is it?” Gwen asked, coming over.

“A footprint. Not human.”

“Ratkin?” Roan demanded.

“No, it’s…” It looked a lot like Charm’s footprint back when she’d been as small as a dog. He thought back to the nest guardian – its draconic features turned ugly. Could they be demonic versions of dragons? “I think there have been nest guardians roaming around here. The tracks look similar to their feet… but I don’t know how old it is.” He couldn’t read tracks like Roan, not having grown up a hunter.

“Everyone keep your eyes peeled,” Roan said, turning to scan to the tunnel ahead.

Gwen scoffed. “Instead of, what? Bumping around with our eyes shut?”

“My egg may be down here,” Starella said. “If the water was able to break through, there may be a fissure above. Please keep an eye out. It’s dark blue with speckles on it like stars.”

They walked on, everyone on the lookout.

The tunnel ended a few dozen paces later to open up into a large arching room. Every bit as large as the throne room and the palace, time had not been kind to it. The ceiling above was a cracked ruin with new roots forced through the top and spider-webbing out and down. 

Between the roots, a sad sign sat overhead proclaiming: Winner’s Lounge, though the L had fallen to the ground and cracked in three places.

Lumps sat arranged here and there that might have once been furniture. Though mice and rats – the normal kind, not the demonic ratkin – had gone through and made nests. They now sat in half-disintegrated lumps. 

To one side stood a tall countertop that functioned as some sort of bar. Several bottles stood behind, all dusty with age.

And there was no sign of life anywhere. No slimes, no ratkin, and no nest guardians.

Starella turned in a circle. “This can’t be it. There’s no sign of my egg anywhere.”

Nor anywhere for an egg to have rolled down from the surface. Though moisture and vermin had gotten in, there was no opening visible to the sigh.

Roan pointed ahead to a dark tunnel directly opposite of them. “That must be the way out.”

“We’re not leaving yet,” Gwen said. “Not until we’ve looked the place over.”

Corvus wasn’t sure there was a point. He felt a stinging disappointment. He’d hoped to find something of value – perhaps another repository of knowledge like under the orphanage. Perhaps an explanation of the Blight. Something. Anything.

There weren’t even any interesting runes. Just rot and decay from an old city no one knew of anymore.

He sighed and turned in place, too. Letting his gaze travel from the lighted areas to the gloomy shadows. That was where he could spot things no one else could.

There was… something different about the wall directly to his right. With a frown, he walked closer.

It wasn’t a wall at all. It was a bank of windows that had become so dusty on the outside that he’d mistaken it for stone. Using his sleeve, he brushed at a panel. The grit was caked on, but he spotted a curved handle sticking out.

“There’s a door here,” he called and pulled it open.’

“You idiot,” Roan said, running over. “Don’t just open strange doors!”

But the door had already swung open on rusty hinges, and the old glass didn’t crack or shatter.

The inside lit up with such brightness that he winced and threw an arm to cover his eyes.

The room inside had been protected by the creeping moisture. It was clean, with only a thin coating of dust on the surfaces. There was a small counter in the back set up like a merchant stall.

As Corvus walked through followed by the others, a message made of green light flashed in the air behind the counter.

No staff present. Please use the automated ticket system.

And there, right in the middle of the counter, was a slot illuminated by a blue glow.

Corvus stepped over.

“I don’t like this,” Roan muttered.

“You don’t like anything new,” Gwen said as she stepped in.

“Or this could be a trap,” Roan insisted darkly.

Everyone looked at him. Even the normally anxious Starella. “How?” she asked.

Roan shrugged. “The slimes were trying to kill us. Those ticket things came from the slimes. Easy connection to make.”

“Yeah, if you’re paranoid,” Gwen said.

“I’m a guard now. It’s my job—”

“I’m doing it,” Corvus said and with that, he inserted his first ticket which happened to be the golden X500 from the boss. 

The moment he pushed it in it was as if an invisible hand grabbed the other half of the ticket from inside the slot and yanked it from his grasp.

As it did a blue light appeared from a corner of the wall and swept Corvus up and down.

The message made of light changed.

“Scanning… scanning… Welcome Corvus: Level 23 Path of the Dragon Mage.”

Total Tickets: 500

Curious, Corvus inserted another ticket. This was one of the X2’s he’d gained from the second level. 

The counter increased by two to 502.

“Five hundred and two ways to kill you…” Roan muttered darkly. “Five hundred and two monsters set on you at once… Five hundred and two years until they let you out—”

“Would you stop?” Gwen demanded. 

“Perhaps it will convert the tickets into coins?” Starella said.

Corvus ignored them and continued feeding tickets in. He wished that they had stopped to kill a few of those invisible slimes on the third level. Then again, he hadn’t seen a rule that said you could only enter a leveling dungeon once. 

Was this how people once leveled their Paths?

When he was done, he had a grand total of 996 tickets.

When he paused for more than a few seconds a new prompt flashed into the air. 

Do you wish to redeem your tickets?

“Here we go,” Roan muttered grabbing his hammer.

His pessimism was getting to him because Corvus held his breath as he selected: Yes.

Suddenly the surface of the counter lit into a brilliant display. They all crowded around to look down.

They were… pictographic images of objects with numbers underneath them. One was a sword, straighter and narrower than the type Corvus used.

Fencer Sword: 750 Tickets

Below that: 

Magically locked notebook: 550 tickets.

Magicians Robe: 1000 Tickets

Slime in a jar: 100 Tickets

And on and on. There were hundreds of pictures. Perhaps thousands. 

1 ancient penny: 1 ticket

Teddy bear with a shirt that said ‘meadows dungeon’ 250 Tickets

XL Bag of Holding: 800 Tickets

“Is this… a shop?” Gwen asked.

“I think,” Corvus said, “It’s like a quest, only I get to pick the reward using these tickets.”

“We haven’t finished our quest yet,” Gwen said. “Not the one Perry gave us.”

He nodded and continued paging through. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the order of the objects. Anything that cost more tickets than he had still showed but was depicted in gray font.

He paused at three interesting items set in their own row:

Subclass Change Token: 5,000 Tickets

Standard Path Change Token: 100,000 tickets

Premium Path Change Token: 1,000,000 Tickets

“You can change your class? Your Path?” Gwen breathed.

“Yeah, I failed out of my first Path remember?” Corvus said. “What’s the difference between standard and premium?”

He pressed his finger over the premium – there was no danger in activating it as he had nowhere near the million tickets needed.

A description lit up in hovering light before them:

Premium Path Change Token: One-time use token allows user to change their life Path and retain the current class step. Warning: Incompatible skills may be altered or lost.

The setup was much like the Path system he’d been interacting with for years. Corvus absently paged back and clicked on the non-premium version.

Standard Path Change Token: One-time use token allows user to change their life Path. Warning: Path all Path progress, skills, and experience will be reset to zero.

Corvus winced, remembering his indignation of having to grind up his Literacy skill again. He’d effectively had to relearn to read.

He looked at Gwen who stared down at the words with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Is that something you want?” he asked softly. “Do you want to change your Path?”

He knew her feelings on her choice were… mixed. Especially when it came to Roan.

Gwen let out a long breath then shook her head. “No. It’s not an easy Path, but it’s one I believe in.”

Roan, meanwhile, had set aside his distrust and was scrolling through the options along with Starella. The screens were dynamic and allowed multiple shoppers to browse. From their whispered conversation, Starella had picked up on the fact that Roan’s reading comprehension wasn’t the best and was reading descriptions aloud.

“Ohh… those are pretty,” Corvus heard her say. “Imagine how they’d make a room look.”

He glanced over and saw she was paging through a beautiful display of multi-hued orbs.

“Those are essences,” he said in shock and turned to his own screen. “Where did you find those?” But he was already paging down in search.

There they were… and there was a shocking variety of them. Blood Moon Essence, Golden Sun, Soil, Silver Moon, Jack of All Trades, Gold, Bonding, Poison flower, Stone…

On and on. Pages of them in dozens of varieties.

They were 100 tickets apiece. As Corvus gazed at them he saw a smaller number listed under the essences. It had been the same with most of the magical items. The Blood Moon Essence had (8) in tiny script under it. Meanwhile, the bonding essences he knew came from the Ratkin had (5,632). 

“Oh, these are the things you feed NightShade to make him fly?” Roan asked Gwen.

Starella looked startled. “Isn’t NightShade her horse?”

“I think these smaller numbers are amounts in the store.” Corvus felt his eyebrows furrow. “Why do they have so many ratkin essences?”

A prickle of bad omen went up his spine. He’d only been able to loot essences from higher leveled ratkin. This store had close to six thousand of them.

Where had they come from?

Perhaps the jungle hadn’t taken care of the ratkin problem as well as he’d thought. But if not that, then what had?

“Are you going to buy any of these for Charm?” Gwen asked.

“I… don’t know. I’d like to talk to her about it.” He tried the connection but found it still blocked.

“Then move over. I want to enter my tickets and try,” Gwen said. “I saw a bow in there that looked real nice.”

He stepped back and the screen went dark. Gwen stepped forward, and, after a scan, started feeding in her tickets.

His mind still on the mystery of the ratkin essences, he put his hands in his pocket… and felt a crinkle of two tickets he’d missed.

He pulled them out. They were two of the X1’s. 

His eyes fell on Roan, then back down to his tickets.

Corvus’s stomach swooped as an idea – and a sense of premonition hit him. The thought was foolish and yet clicked in his mind like the final piece to a puzzle. He’d had something like it happen before when he’d gotten the inspiration that had finally hatched Charm’s egg.

It was dangerous because if this worked… it could change everything.

“Roan,” he said and when Roan looked at him, Corvus handed him a ticket. “You should try.”

Roan looked down at it and smirked. “Wow, are you giving me a whole ticket for saving your ass in the maze all those times?”

“Something like that.” The tone of his voice must have been odd because it caught Gwen’s attention as she fed tickets in.

She glanced at Corvus and then stepped aside. 

“Yeah, why don’t you buy yourself something nice?”

Roan opened his mouth to snark something back at his sister, but then caught the odd feeling in the air. “Are you two serious? I’m a null time-run thing. It’ll probably zap me out of this place.”

“It hasn’t hurt us yet,” Starella said. “Try it, Roan.”

He looked at her and then shrugged again, stepping forward to the slot.

The light scanned him up and down. Nothing happened until he entered the ticket.

Error!

Access to Path corrupted.

Reset? 

Yes/No