CA Chapter Fourteen (Patreon)

“Come on, Alpha!” Vexxx wheedled for the millionth time as they forged ahead through the lush grass of the broad, verdant meadow that lay beyond the jungle.

“No,” she said, firmly, ignoring Myles’ snicker as he strode along beside her.

“Come oooonnn,” the boy said again, batting at one of Alpha’s fairy servants who flew in front of him as he staggered around a bush that was heavily laden with golden berries. The fairy swooped down, plucked one of the berries, and threw it at the lightning mage, where it splattered on his robe with a satisfyingly juicy smack. With a grimace, he brushed it away, and Alpha caught his finger as he raised it to zap the tiny pest.

“For the millionth time, don’t [Shock] the fairies, Vexxx,” she growled, absorbing the small zing of electricity with the palm of her hand.

You have lost 1 Blood Drop.

“What?” he muttered, shaking his hand as she let it go. He was a bit of a glass cannon, and while he had a lot of mana, his Strength was surprisingly low for someone over level eighty. “They won’t even fight back.”

“Exactly,” she said, stopping so she could glare at him properly. “All of these fairies are my servants,” she shot a scowl at Myles, “whether I want them to be or not, and since you’re in my party, they won’t even fight back. That makes them non-combatants, and we don’t kill non-combatants for fun!”

He shrugged, looking away. “Whatever. It’s just a game.”

Tess clicked her tongue disapprovingly at this oft-repeated phrase, though she didn’t try to convince him otherwise, as she had the first dozen times he’d said it.

Alpha sighed and forged ahead, though not without sending a dark look at Myles’ back. The Sword Reaper was the one who agreed to let Vexxx join them. He’d also told the boy that if he could convince Alpha to turn him into a vampire, then he, Myles, would teach the boy wizard how to use his Death spell. Which left Vexxx living up to his name as he harassed Alpha across multiple ecosystems.

“Hey,” Vexxx said suddenly, looking around as he swatted yet another fairy out of his way. “Why is this place called the Labyrinth Dungeon, anyway? I mean, there aren’t even any walls.”

Alpha practically tripped over her own feet. Honestly, she hadn’t even thought about it. This was where Myles brought them to train up her [Turn Ally] skill, and it was apparently a ‘safe’ place to take Amy because there was no chance anyone would see her in an instanced dungeon.

Tess hummed. “I wondered that, too. I mean, I figured we were here for… other reasons,” she cast a sidelong glance at Vexxx, keeping her words intentionally vague, “but I always figured a labyrinth would be more, you know, labyrinthy.”

Myles had remained suspiciously silent throughout this whole conversation, but Alpha caught a glimpse of his face as he glanced back at them, and she knew that look of suppressed amusement far too well by now. Pulling up her interface, she took a look at the quest she’d gotten when she entered the dungeon.

Quest: “Find Your Way to the Center of the Labyrinth” accepted.

Make your way through the Labyrinth Dungeon to meet the boss. Don’t worry, there are no goblins.

Success: A World First. Experience. Loot. +10 Relationship with Quezal.

Failure: Somebody else gets all that stuff.

The tone of the quest was distinctly Amythyst’s, and Amythyst loved nothing more than setting up sneaky surprises, especially if they were obvious in hindsight.

Holding up her hand, Ava brought the group to a stop. “All right,” she said, slowly, “first of all, do we even care about this quest? As Tess said, we’re not really here for the dungeon,” she pointed a finger at Vexxx as he opened his mouth, obviously ready to ask what they were there for. “You, hush. So, given that the dungeon isn’t our goal, does figuring it out even matter?”

As she spoke, she kept an eye on Myles’ expression, and she saw his eye twitch as he realized she wasn’t going to take the bait. Then Tess spoke up.

“To be honest,” the dwarf said, “I’d kind of like to do something else. We’ve been slogging through knee-high grass for hours, and when we get to the mountain habitat, we’re going to do the same, just with less grass and at a higher elevation. I know you said the mountain fairies taste like hot cocoa, but nobody else is eating them,” her nose wrinkled before she shot Alpha an apologetic look, “and it was stupid cold up there. Without even fighting fairies to break up the monotony, this dungeon is kind of-”

“Boring!” Vexxx broke in. “I thought you guys must be doing something super fire, since you have a unique class and you,” he gestured to Myles, “have that dope skill. But no, you’re all cheugy.”

Alpha glared at him. “Then. Go. Away.”

He just snorted and glared back, crossing his arms. “Bite. Me.”

For just a moment, she actually entertained the idea, but then she remembered how biting Amy had felt, and almost gagged. “Hellebore. No.” She didn’t even bother splitting her scowl to Myles, who had apparently changed her profanity filter from dogs to flowers at some point during the last few hours. Turning to Tess, she said, “So you want to try to complete the quest?”

Tessle grinned, her round cheeks bright pink with excitement. “Definitely! My guild explores new places all the time, but as far as I know, we’ve never gotten a dungeon First. Doom will be so jealous! Plus, I hear you get amazing perks and a title from the achievement.”

Vexxx nodded enthusiastically, offering his fist for Tess to bump. Somewhat dubiously, she did so.

Alpha looked down at Toggle, who had taken to walking directly in her wake, using the trail she and her shadow, Amy, left as they waded through the grass. “What do you think, Toggle?”

Again, Vexxx opened his mouth to say something, and Alpha clapped a hand over his mouth before smiling at Toggle encouragingly. The little gnome, who had been silent up to this point, looked tired. “Whatever you want is fine with me, Mistress,” he said, glancing from Alpha to Vexxx, who was muttering angrily behind Alpha’s palm.

Alpha hesitated. On one hand, going further into the dungeon, if they could even figure out how to do so, was likely to grow progressively more dangerous. While the players could respawn, that wouldn’t be good for either Amy or Alpha, since Amy would end up back on Veralt’s server, and Alpha would no longer be a vampire, thanks to the ‘You Only Live Once’ racial characteristic.

On the other hand… The dungeon was boring. Worse, she couldn’t see how it was supposed to help Amy recover, if that was Amythyst’s intention. As far as Alpha could tell, the whole place had been designed by Amythyst specifically for this purpose, and at the moment they seemed to be failing to utilize it properly.

Looking over at Myles, Alpha said, “What do you think, Myles? Should we go dungeon delving, or should we just,” she waved her hand vaguely, “continue as we have been?”

Myles quirked an eyebrow at her, and she could tell by the twinkle in his eye that he knew she knew he’d been setting them up. This might even be why he wanted Vexxx to come along. The boy was shaking up the party dynamics, so they weren’t all just blindly following Alpha’s lead, and his presence kept Tess from asking too many questions.

At last, Myles let out a defeated little sigh. “I vote we try to make our way further into the dungeon.”

Alpha fluttered her eyelashes at him, and hoped she didn’t just look like she had dust in her eye. “Any suggestions about how we do that, exactly?”

Myles smiled mysteriously, but Vexxx was waving his hand like a kid hoping the teacher would call on him. Reluctantly, Alpha transferred her attention to the young wizard and raised her brows questioningly.

“Walls are, like, separations between rooms, right?” Vexxx said, shaping out squares with his hands, “This place doesn’t have any rooms, but it does have these, like, biozones, or whatever, and there’s a definite line in between each of them. Almost like a wall, right? Just an invisible one.” He grinned hopefully, and Alpha had to resist the urge to pat him like a puppy who’d just managed to make it outside instead of peeing on the carpet for the first time.

Tess nodded, looking thoughtful. “That… kind of makes sense. I mean, it makes as much sense as anything else. Otherwise, we just have to assume that the entrance to the actual labyrinth is out there somewhere,” she swept her hand wide, indicating the mountains, meadows, and the desert to the west. “I really don’t want to have to search every part of this place until we find the right ecosystem, or whatever.”

“So, if the divisions between the zones are the ‘walls’,” Alpha said, slowly, “then what do we do about it?”

“My mom is a major gamer, and she says whenever you get lost in a maze, you should try following the right-hand wall. Then, if that doesn’t work, try the left,” Vexxx said, shrugging.

Alpha frowned. “That makes sense if the walls are all connected, but I don’t know if the zones ever make a… corner? In theory, we could just walk in a circle and end up where we started.”

Vexxx made a face. “Sure? But at least it’s something. And if we do go in a circle, then when we get back to this stupid field, we can try something else.”

“What if the biomes repeat?” Tess asked, shaking her head. “I mean, what if we go until we reach the mountains, and turn right, then right again when we get to, say, a swamp, and right again at a glacier, and end up back at a meadow again, but it’s not this meadow?”

Sighing, Alpha said, “I guess I can turn a few fairies in each area. They seem to find me whenever I show back up, so if we don’t see any of my old ‘servants’, then we can assume it’s a new zone.”

“Maybe there’s a pattern?” Vexxx asked. “Like, meadow, mountains, desert, swamp, and back to meadow or something? Then if we find one that’s not in the pattern, we could check it out?”

Tess groaned, plopping down in the grass spread-eagled and staring up at the sky. “This will take forever.” Then her voice changed, and she said, “Oh, hey, wait!” Sitting up, she pointed up at the clear blue sky overhead. “We know that’s not the real sky because the light doesn’t turn Alpha into a crispy critter, right? Which means the sky is also part of the dungeon, which, duh, but what if it’s also part of the biome?”

Everyone turned to look toward the dark, threatening clouds that gathered around the tall mountain peaks ahead of them. Then they turned their eyes west, where the sky lightened from blue to almost white above the desert. Alpha squinted, and yes, she could just barely see a line where blue met white. Looking back at the mountains, she saw that the trailing edges of the clouds simply vanished when they reached the clear blue above the meadow, as if they’d been chopped off by an invisible cleaver.

“We can see the walls from here,” Alpha said, and flopped down in the grass beside her friend. “Look, there’s another spot to the east where the sky definitely turns gray. That has to be the edge of the next zone.”

Tess lifted a finger, tracing the faint differences that now seemed so stark. “Back to the jungle,” she indicated an area filled with fluffy grayish clouds hovering in deep turquoise skies, “and beyond that… Maybe it’s… yellow?”

Vexxx joined them in the grass and looked around, though he seemed to be mumbling something under his breath. Finally, he shook his head. “It’s not a rainbow, for sure. Even if we call the jungle part greenish, I don’t see anything that would count as purple. I also don’t see any repeats, though these areas are so big, I can’t see more than two in any direction.”

Alpha sat up with a sigh. “Then do we keep going forward until we get to the boundary between the meadow and the mountains, and then just turn right?” She traced the edges of the clouds with her finger until she came to a section where it looked like the sky was just solid bluish-gray. “Then we’d turn right again there, and again there.” She pointed to where the gray met a blue sky with tiny, fluffy white clouds like dollops of whipped cream in the sky.

“If we can see we’ll end up there, why not just go there in the first place?” Tess wondered, rubbing her eyes.

“I… don’t know,” Alpha said, shaking her head. “Is there some point to actually following the ‘walls’? Is that even the answer? Maybe we’re supposed to climb the mountains, and we’ll be able to see a lost city, or find a door to a real labyrinth up there.”

It was Tess’ turn to shake her head. “We were up there for several days, last time. You were busy biting fairies, but I had a lot of time and I needed a distraction from being so cold. I think that area over there,” she indicated the gray section, “is a marsh or a swamp. It looked really wet, anyway. I don’t know what’s past the mountains, since we didn’t actually manage to cross them, but I definitely didn’t see any turns, or openings, or anything.”

Toggle spoke up, his voice going slightly squeaky as everyone turned to look at him. “Maybe you aren’t looking at it right.” He blinked and tried to hide behind Alpha as Vexxx started to open his mouth, but continued on, presumably sharing the experience of a race that lived and worked in dungeons. “Dungeons are full of tricks and puzzles. There may be plenty of openings, but you can’t see them from here. Things aren’t always what they seem.”

Slowly, Alpha nodded and patted Toggle on the head, trying not to squash his hat. “That’s true. I don’t think we can see enough yet anyway. The sky may be the clue we need, or it may not mean anything except that the zones really go all the way up. I vote we go on until we reach the boundary, and then we can decide if we want to try this ‘right-hand wall’ thing, even though we can see where we’re going to end up, or if we should try climbing the mountains to get better visibility.”

Tess grimaced, but nodded, and climbed to her feet.

Vexxx pumped his fist and said, “I vote ‘right-hand wall’!”

Amy, of course, said nothing, as she fell into step behind Alpha, and Toggle also had nothing to add.

Myles, who obviously wasn’t handing out clues today - or any day, in Alpha’s experience - just grinned and led the way.