B4 Ch38: Level 0 (1/2) (Patreon)

The world revolved around Arthur. Or maybe he was the one spinning while the world remained still. Lost, disoriented, and confused, the only thing he knew for sure was that he was no longer sitting on Brixaby’s neck.

The first thing that finally came into focus was the classic scents of frying garlic and mushrooms. Then, in the next moment he found himself standing nearly nose-to-nose with a brick wall that radiated heat.

He took a step back. No, it wasn’t a wall, it was a brick oven. A huge contraption he’d seen in a few high-end kitchens with brickwork extending to the ceiling.

“Brix?” Arthur started to turn. Before he could, a voice shouted right behind him.

“You, there! Boy!”

Fully turning, he saw who—what—spoke and jumped back so fast that the back of his shoulders knocked against the uncomfortably warm oven.

Automatically, he reached for his Nice Shot card. To his horror, it wasn’t available. Only a few bare cards were: Master of Skills, Charming Gentle-Person, and Return to Start.

He had nothing to defend himself against the scourgelings in human clothing that stared down at him with an unimpressed gaze. It was shaped like a donkey. Though, in the nature of scourgelings, its remaining fur was thin and left patches displaying weeping sores. One long ear was half off and dropping over its – his? – face.

It raised a hoof hand, pointed at Arthur, and in a man’s voice said, “Are you just going to lollygag around, or are you going to work?”

“Work?” Arthur breathed.

Was he meant to kill this scourgeling with his bare hands? He’d been through a dungeon before and knew he had to fight his way out. Where was Brixaby? Cressida?

Arthur’s reply had been a question, but the scourgelings took it as an answer. He waved at him with a hoof hand. “Then follow me. Let’s see if you’re worth anything.”

There was a tail sticking out of work-pants.

This was… very, very wrong.

A horrible thought seized Arthur and he shot a quick glance at his own hands. Still human. That was a relief… but his hands were smaller, the skin a little brighter, and he was missing a few peppered burn scars that usually dotted his knuckles. These were still his hands, but younger.

My Master of Skills, Charming Gentle-Person, and Return to Start were all my first cards, he thought.

This all flashed in and out of his mind within a second, then he moved to follow the scourgeling. They moved through a professional kitchen that didn’t look too different from the one in Barlow’s restaurant back in Wolf Moon hive.

Though the kitchen seemed larger than Barlow’s in an exaggerated way because Arthur found he was shorter. He was maybe twelve or thirteen, he judged, thinking of his cards.

Glancing internally, he made sure his Cooking class was equipped. Strangely, his other classes like thief and gambler were all locked to him, even though he’d had them as a kid.

What in the world was going on?

There were other cooks in the kitchen, including crab-type scourgeling that, horribly enough, seemed to be making a seafood stew.

The other cooks glanced at Arthur, though only in mild curiosity, like anyone would when seeing a new face in the kitchen.

The donkey-scourgeling stopped at the last workstation in line at the back. There was a cutting board, a set of knives – only some were appropriate for chopping – and one whole side piled high with vegetables.

“Now, let’s see what you can do with this.” Despite the fact the scourgeling had a hoof for a hand, he grabbed a knife from the block. It made sense in a dreamlike way. He handed it, handle-first, to Arthur.

Taking it, Arthur wondered if he was meant to stab the donkey with it and harvest its cards. Then he took a closer look and frowned. “You want me to… chop the vegetables?”

“No,” the donkey said dryly, “I want you to sing a tune. Keep us all entertained while we fix your meal.”

The casual disrespect in the kitchen – the way it acted like a boss, struck a reflex in Arthur. “No, chef. I only meant this knife isn’t appropriate.”

The donkey’s eyes narrowed. One was weeping puss. “How so?”

With his free hand, Arthur pressed the tip down and it bent, flexible as a green twig. “This is a filet-knife. I could carve a fish with this, but not carrots.”

The donkey said nothing, but half stepped back and gestured to the block. “What would you use?”

Arthur replaced the filet-knife and instead picked up a good straight edged paring knife. “I’d use this for peeling and segmenting smaller vegetables and fruits. And a heavier weight knife, like this medium-weight here, with the thick heel—” he pointed to the base “for the harder stuff.”

 

New Skill Level: Knifework

Level 40

Arthur flinched slightly at the surprise notification. Knifework was a higher tiered skill, and he rarely got a new level in it.

Wait... level 40? He hadn't been near that...

The donkey didn’t seem to notice. “Hmm, not a complete idiot then.” He gestured to the pile. “Get to work. I want all these prepared for the dinner service.”

Arthur glanced at the pile. It was truly random with carrots, peppers of all varieties from sweet to hot, root vegetables including squash, carrots, and potatoes in several colors. There was celery, cucumber, tomatoes of several shapes, florets of broccoli, lettuce, onions and more.

He glanced at the chef. “Is there a way you want them prepared? For a particular recipe?”

The long donkey face gave no expression that he could read. He only tossed his head, knocking that revolting hanging ear out of his eye. “Use your best judgment.”

This, he thought, was a test. Arthur nodded and got to work. He still wasn’t entirely sure if he was meant to fight or not – he’d keep a hand on a knife just in case.

Then he took one of the carrots, peeled it, and started to neatly julienne the pieces. As he did, he glanced around to see if there was any sign of his friends or Brixaby.

Wherever they were, they weren’t in the kitchen. He only hoped that whatever test they were facing, they were okay.

****

“This has to be some sort of a joke,” Horatio grumbled.

“Be calm,” Sams advised.

“You be calm. I’m perfectly calm. We’re just light-deck specialists who are stuck in a never-ending dark room. What’s there not to be calm about?” But he could hear the peevishness in his own voice. Horatio made himself stop. “Sorry, Sams.”

“Thanks to your Rainbow Knight card, are we ever truly without light?”

As a matter of fact, they probably weren’t. Did Arthur even know the gift he’d given to them? Well, if he did, Horatio thought that he still would’ve done the same thing. Arthur could be nice like that.

And his dragon was turning into an enchanter, of all the ridiculous things.

“All right, all right.” Sams was right. Just because his eyes didn’t see did not mean it was truly dark. There were bands of light that went beyond what dumb human and dragon eyes could pick up.

Horatio activated his Rainbow Knight card. Sure enough, he felt power trickle in through what he liked to think of as the slow, low light… even though he never said as much out loud because it didn’t make a lot of sense. It was light so red that he couldn’t see it, but it was still there.

Thanks to his Rainbow Knight card, Horatio could gather it. Then, with a push through Brixaby’s ingot thingy, he raised his palm and let out a beam of light in the visible spectrum.

Sam snorted in approval.

They stood next to a wall. One that Horatio was certain hadn’t been there a moment before since it felt like they’d been walking for at least a half hour before this.

The walls had squares all over it. And by ‘all over it’ he meant thousands of squares. Each was a different shade.

“I don’t suppose we could use the Flash Fry card to get through this,” Horatio said.

That was the card that he and Sams had created together on their linking.

Flash Fry

Rare

The wielder of this card will be able to condense a beam of light which is hot enough to burn.

It was a simple description for a Rare card, which meant it was ridiculously effective. No catches, no weirdness like with his Twice as Much card which made food… but not necessarily nutritious food.

Plus, when Horatio used Flash Fry with his Ultraviolet card, that beam of light became invisible to the eye.

Unlike material objects – or a few people he could name – light wasn’t complicated. Yeah, Horatio liked light a lot. And he liked it better that his dragon had a whole lot of light-support cards stuffed in his three cores.

Sams was old enough to be wise and had been high ranking in the hive when he’d been linked to Horatio’s father. So, it wasn’t too much of a surprise when he looked at the wall and said, “We should not blast past this. We should solve it properly.”

“Properly?” He remembered something Cressida said during their conversations over the last few days. “So, you think this is like a puzzle dungeon. Ugh.” He made a sound of disgust. “I always hated puzzles – always lose the pieces.”

Sams, used to his complaining, ignored it and pointed one claw to the middle of the wall. “See this? Middle green as you see in the mid-range of the visible spectrum. And here, perfect ultraviolet purple. Do you think they can copy these exact shades with your Rainbow Knight card?”

There were literally thousands of shades, but Sams had pointed out the exact midranges of each band. He was just that good.

Horatio squared his shoulders. He had to work to be a rider who could match his dragon.

“Let’s find out.”

He lifted his hand and accessed his Rainbow Knight card. With Sams’ help through his own Light Modification card he had, they made it the same shade of green that was shown on the square on the wall. A beam shot out and hit the square dead on.

The green faded and turned dark. Then Horatio turned his attention to the next square which was a touch lighter in color.

Unfortunately, a few squares down the line, he got a little sloppy and accidentally swept the green beam of light over a blue square which was row lower.

A buzz filled the room and then the darkened completed squares all lit back to life.

Horatio winced. “Guess I gotta start over. Say… what are the chances we put in all this effort and the wall drops only to show a bunch of scourgelings or something horrible waiting on the other side?”

Sams snorted and took a long look around through the darkness. “It doesn’t seem like we have much of a choice but to move forward.”

That was true enough. “All right, let’s start with the middle green again.” Because there was nothing stopping him, he stepped close to make sure his light beam hit accurately. “This is going to take all day…”

****

If Cressida didn’t have to see another wave-type dungeon in her life, she would die happy.

And she didn’t care what other people said, this was absolutely a dungeon. A twisted, scourgeling version of a dungeon, but one all the same.

She really hoped Joy was okay.

But she couldn’t think much about that as she sent her fire bear summon, Whicker, forward to kill another scourgeling that came at her from over the top of the left-side hill.

She’d arrived in the valley between two identical earthen hills. Sometimes the scourgelings, which had the shape of giant centipedes that scuttled in the dust, would come at her from both sides. Sometimes one at a time. Whicher was happy to maul them all, though her water crane was less useful because centipedes didn’t have lungs and couldn’t be drowned.

Cressida was safe for now, but her mana would not last forever.

“Arthur, if I get killed in this stupid dungeon, I’m going to kill you,” she muttered nonsensically to herself.

Then, deciding she couldn’t stand here forever, she summoned her water crane again and charged up the right-side hill.

Three enemies immediately scuttled over the top and down to meet her. Cressida kept moving upward and urged Whicker and the Crane together. They did so in a roiling burst of steam that cooked the three scourgelings.

Cressida glanced down at them as she passed and was dissatisfied to see no glowing from their chests. This truly was a terrible dungeon.

Bracing herself to fight a boss or guardian at the top, her foot hit level ground and… the landscape changed.

Suddenly, she stood in calf-deep mud. The hills were gone, and she was in a swamp with lichen that hung low off dead trees.

“These pants cost two Common shards,” she muttered, squelching forward.

But she wasn’t alone in the swamp.

Several frog-like scourgelings the size of wolves started leaping her way. They didn’t get stuck in the mud.

When Cressida reached for her shields to protect her, she found that her pool of mana had mysteriously refilled from one landscape to the next.

“Mana doesn’t work like that,” she thought, then remembered the conversation she’d had with that girl who’d made eyes at Arthur – Soledad.

Rules changed in the dark heart.

The issue was, the moment the shield was up, all the scourge-frogs in the immediate area seemed to be alerted by it. Dozens of moist, rotting big frogs jumped at her from all directions. Hitting her shield like that would train her mana down to nothing.

So, Cressida re-summoned Whicker and the water crane, focusing the effort through the enchanted ingot Brixaby had given her.

Whicker burned like a white light. The water crane was enhanced as well, with particles of ice reinforcing its dagger-like beak and wings. To Cressida’s shock, she saw it drill straight through two of the frogs, mid-leap.

The water where Whicker stepped boiled. He made short work of anything attacking him as well.

With her summons for protection, Cressida squelched forward toward a glimpse of dry land she could see ahead.

“This had all better be worth it,” she muttered.