Dungeon mantle, p.15
Dungeon Mantle, page 15
I began to pull Aelin towards the river. I was hoping that even though it was wider than the creek that we’d camped by, we wouldn’t have too much trouble crossing it.
I heard shouting and Aelin stopped.
“We shouldn’t have let her go,” she said, her voice weak with fear.
Before I could answer, the green-haired Shooter appeared behind her.
“Aelin!” I shouted.
Too late.
The Shooter hit her over the head, knocking her out cold. I looked around for something I could use as a weapon, but the black-haired Hitter and a leather-clad blonde guy with knives on his belt appeared beside her.
“I’m going to enjoy this.” The Hitter smirked.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
My face hurt.
So did my hands.
And my side.
As I took inventory of my pain, I decided it was easier to conclude that everything hurt.
It was dark when I came too. Rix and Aelin were both tied up next to me. Aelin was still out, but Rix was awake. She must have been mouthy because someone had gagged her. I was finding the concept of her being mouthy to be new considering that I’d heard her say more in the last two hours than I had in the four days I’d known her.
I blinked away the dark spots in my vision and tried to focus on what the other party was talking about, but they were too far away, or maybe my senses were still messed up.
It looked like they had made camp on the trail, but I couldn’t see any trees, and it was all short grass. I didn’t know how far we were from the woods, but the Dungeon in Aurox had only one biome and one monster species per floor. I hoped we hadn’t gone to a different floor, but that would have meant that they’d carried us through the boss room, which would have meant that we would’ve gotten extra experience. I doubted it’d be enough for us to level up, but I found myself hoping that it had.
The swordsman walked over. He kicked Rix before he sat down in front of me.
“Your friend here did a number on me.” He jabbed his thumb over at the redhead.
“She has that effect on people.” I tried to straighten up. “Why did you attack us?”
He laughed. “Attack you? She was the one with the blades.”
“Only after you broke a stick across my back.” I fired back.
“Oh, yeah.” He shrugged. “This was only supposed to be some hazing, but after she decided to raise the stakes, the rest of my party has come up with a nice challenge.”
“You really think you can kidnap us like this and then we’ll do whatever you want?”
He sighed. “I thought you might say that, so here’s the deal. We don’t like our new teacher. She’s a complete softy and is having us go back over the basics that we finished under Mister Vowler months ago. We want him back. But the only way that might happen is if you all drop out.”
“You want us to quit?” I shook my head. “You’re crazy. And you can’t keep us here for long. Once Trent…”
His laughter cut me off. “You don’t get it.” He kept going for a bit before wiping his eyes. “Mister Vowler does this to all of his classes. During the first week, while the other teachers are giving their ‘introduction lectures.’” He made air quotes. “He locks his new class on the first floor for survival training. That’s how we knew you all would be here. He did it to us last year.” He laughed again. “Mister Vowler won’t be opening that door for five more days.”
My last hope at rescue vanished. We weren’t strong enough to win on our own and it was going to take way too long before someone noticed we were gone.
“Now, if you all died, then Mister Vowler would be free to take our class back over, but if we kill you here, then it’d be pretty hard to convince the Priests that it was a coincidence that we were on the same floor when it happened.” He slapped my shoulder, which made me wince as pain shot down to my toes. “So we thought up a little game. If you all can beat the floor one boss before Mister Vowler comes to collect you, then we’ll acknowledge that your class is more worthy of his talent. But if you can’t, then you all have to drop out.”
“Why would we take that deal?” I tried to ignore the eye-roll Rix made. “We just have to wait out the week and then we don’t have to worry about you guys harassing us.”
“If you were smart, you would have just taken the deal.” He clicked his tongue. “But it doesn’t matter, we were going to take blondie here as an incentive.” He patted Aelin on the shoulder. “You seem like the kind of guy who rushes to save the damsel in distress.”
“You can’t!” I strained against my bonds.
“Challenges and bets happen between teams all the time.” Wrye twirled Rix’s knife in his hand. “All I need is for you to take the deal. Prove you are worthy of Mister Vowler, or I’m throwing blondie here into the boss room by herself at the end of the week.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
I felt sick.
I was sure that getting knocked out might have had something to do with it, but I didn’t like the idea that he could just strong-arm me into taking a deal that would affect the entire party.
Rix strained against her bonds, but her muffled words were falling on deaf ears.
“You really think you’re going to get away with this?” I growled.
“You just don’t get it.” He shook his head. “But maybe that’s because you’re not nobility. This is the way the world works. Nobody is going to care if a few Mundane-born nobodies wash out because they couldn’t hack it.”
“How do you know I’m not a Noble?”
He pulled back the collar of his armor. “You see these three dots? It means I’m a Tribble. Flaer here has a red one and two black ones to mark her as a Hoyt.” He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t have any nobility marks.” He gestured at Aelin. “Neither does she.” He looked at Rix. “Or her.”
“So you see?” He spread his arms. “No one is going to miss you. But if you don’t want to play, then we can settle this another way. We’ll track down the rest of your team and throw you all in the boss room. It’ll just be some tragic case of Mundanes who didn’t know their limits.”
The thought that he was going to go capture the rest of the team hit me like a brick.
“You can’t expect us to just walk into a boss fight without being able to prepare.” I realized that the chance of us winning was just a formality. He really did plan on us not being able to prepare before going into the boss fight.
“If you’re more worthy of our teacher than we are, then yes, yes I do.” Wrye sighed and sat down in front of me. “Do you know why Mister Vowler locks his classes in here on their first week?”
“Because he doesn’t like teaching?”
Wrye punched me. The blow knocked me face-down into the dirt. I felt hands grab my arms and set me back up while my jaw throbbed.
The black-haired man sat back down in front of me, then called over his shoulder. “Flaer! Can you fix him? I’m not done talking and I don’t want to listen to him butchering his words because his jaw is swollen.”
Relief flooded into me and in a few seconds the pain and swelling was gone.
I wiggled my jaw, testing the effectiveness of the healing.
“First time getting healed?” Wrye chuckled.
“No, I got a Healer to cure me during the plague…” I let my words drift off. That had wiped out my savings, but back then I’d been too sick to care and too out of it to remember much.
“Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “There was once this Adventurer who fell down a trap that went all the way from floor fifty-eight to floor sixty-four.” He waved the knife in my face. “This Adventurer was the only one of his party to survive the fall and it destroyed all of his gear and broke his CB.” He tapped the Crystal on his wrist.
“This lone Adventurer had to crawl back from a floor so deep, no Adventurer had ever reached by himself without a stitch of gear.” Wrye motioned out to the darkness. “Hard for even a Mundane to die on the first floor.” He took a deep breath. “That’s why Mister Vowler locks the first years in here.”
He waved the knife in my face. “Don’t you ever let me hear you insult Mister Vowler like that again.” There was reverence in his voice as he spoke. “Now, where were we? Oh, yeah, the challenge.”
“So we just have to beat the first-floor boss in five days and we win?”
“Five days?” The black-haired man looked offended. “No, no, no. You have four days. You have to beat it before Mister Vowler shows up.”
With five of us, we were going to need to defeat over a hundred monsters a day in order to reach that number. Even more, considering that Edward had sat out all of today. If we could keep up the increased completion speed, that would take us more than twenty-five hours per day, not counting that we would have to start the fight before the end of the fourth day. Logistically, there was no way we could do it.
“It can’t be done.” I shook my head. “If we had five days, maybe. With only four, there is no way that we can hit Level 2. The Bramble Skeletons don’t spawn fast enough.”
“Then don’t fight Bramble Skeletons.” He pointed out at the grass. “There are Giant Snakes out there. The wood bones are on fifteen-minute spawns, but the Snakes are on ten-minute spawns.”
That upped it to a possible six per hour, to hit the eighty-two experience we’d need, it’d take about seventy-two hours, which would give us about six hours to sleep, plus a small cushion. So it was doable in theory, though we wouldn’t be able to spend our stats, and we wouldn’t have much time to learn how to use any spells or skills we received—if we even got any. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it was at least theoretically possible.
“Promise you won’t throw her in the boss room.”
He eyed me. “No. You have to have a reason to not chicken out.”
Justia was going to kill me if I took this deal. Maybe not until after this stupid challenge, but I couldn’t see a way out of this without her refusing to work with me afterward.
“Hey!” Rix blew a stray hair out of her face. “Take me instead.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
“When did you…?” The Hitter glared at her.
“Take me instead.” Rix repeated, spitting the rest of the gag out of her mouth. “She has nothing to do with this and it’s me you’re mad at anyway.”
“No.” He shook his head. “They won’t try as hard for you.”
“She’s just a Buffer without any skills.” Rix puffed out the chest she didn’t have. “You’ve seen what I can do. Taking me off the board makes it harder for them.”
He looked like he might consider the swap.
I didn’t want them to keep either of them, but I had to admit, I believed Rix had a lot better chance of surviving than Aelin if we failed.
“Making it harder for them, while taking away the urgency.” He shook his head. “Tell you what.” He smacked his knees. “You’ve convinced me.” He looked at me. “Midnight in four days, if you haven’t reached the second floor, then we throw her in to fight the boss by herself.”
“No!” I shook my head.
“Deal.” Rix spoke over me.
“You cannot be serious.” I glared at her.
“We have a deal!” He stood up. “Let’s go!”
The others got up from their fire and started heading past us on the trail. The Tank hoisted Rix over his shoulder.
“You can do this!” Rix shouted as she vanished into the darkness.
“Since this just became a little more interesting.” The black-haired man dropped the broken sword and Rix’s knife in front of me. “Here’s a few pieces of information. The boss room is right there.” He pointed in the direction the rest of his party had walked. “Follow the trail that way and make a right at the T.” He pointed in the other direction. “You should get back to the bridge in about an hour. From there, you can figure out where your friends are.” He looked at Aelin, then back at me. “If you stay on the road, the monsters won’t attack you.” He grinned and followed after his team. “See you at the end of the week!”
I watched him vanish into the darkness, then started working on getting free. First, I tucked my legs and got my hands in front of me, then I grabbed the knife and cut my feet free. Once I was able to walk around, I moved over to Aelin and cut the ropes on her. Once she was free, I shook her until I was able to get her awake.
“Wha—?” she exclaimed. “Where’s Rix? Where are we? What happened to you?”
I dropped the knife in front of her. “Cut me loose please.”
“Oh.” She grabbed the knife. “What is going on?”
“They took Rix and said they were going to throw her in the boss room in four days if we don’t make it to the second floor before then.”
“Why would they do that?” she exclaimed while she cut my bindings.
“Because they’re pissed that Trent got taken from them, so they want to hurt his new students for revenge?”
“No. I mean, yes, that. But why did they take Rix?”
“Because she almost killed two of them?” I didn’t think she needed to know that they were going to take her originally.
“That makes sense.” She got me free. “Can we even get strong enough to beat the boss by then?”
“It’s possible.” I said. “But it’s not going to be easy.” I slipped the knife into my pocket and realized that I was missing the Level 16 Crystal. I wished I had left it on my desk. But it wouldn’t be too difficult to prove that it had belonged to me. It was from a monster on the fourteenth floor of Aurox, which would be easy to prove I had been on. I just had to survive the week to get it back.
I grabbed a stick from the fire and handed it to Aelin, then took one for myself. “Come on, let’s get back to the others.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Justia met us at the fence.
“Where’s Rix?”
Aelin jumped over the fence that had been finished and ran over to the Healer and wrapped her arms around her.
Justia looked at the crying blonde attached to her and then up at me. “What happened?”
It was around five in the morning and the sky was shifting from moonlight to the first blush of morning. We had lost almost our entire day because we’d had to hike up from what felt like the other side of the floor. On top of that, finding our way through the woods without Rix was hard enough, but at night, it had taken a lot longer. On top of that, my arms and legs were burning and I desperately wanted to fall asleep, but we had to move our camp. There was too much to do for me to stop.
“We ran into Trent’s old team.” I leaned up against a tree as I composed myself. “They came to haze us and took it too far. We tried to fight back, which only pissed them off.”
Justia slowly bent down and laid Aelin on the ground. I realized the blonde had fallen asleep. Justia touched our Buffer’s cheek and motioned for me to move away from the group.
There was a low fire smoldering in the middle of the fenced area. Ether and Edward were sleeping on either side of the fire.
“How bad is it?” Justia demanded.
“Bad.” I nodded at the fire pit. “You got a fire started.”
“Don’t change the subject.” She glared at me. “How bad is it?”
“Really bad. They want us to drop out so they can have Trent back. They wanted to kill us, but they know they can’t get away with that, so instead they want us to fight the floor boss. If we don’t beat it before Trent shows up, then they are going to throw Rix in the boss room by herself.”
She bristled. “They think we’d risk dying to save her?”
I hadn’t expected her not to want to save our team member. “This is a member of our party.” I tried to emphasize the situation. “They are torturing, healing, and then torturing her all over again.”
“My job is to keep you safe.” Justia shook her head. “It doesn’t matter who the other person is, even if it was me, you shouldn’t be risking your life.”
She had a point and not just about risking my life—but I was going to be risking everyone’s lives. I could call their bluff and hope that they weren’t killers, but I had a nagging feeling that the only reason they hadn’t killed us on sight was because they hadn’t thought that they could get away with it. And I had a feeling that this ‘game’ of theirs was just a facade and that they were going to try to find a way to kill us anyway—if the floor boss didn’t do it for them.
I shook my head. “There isn’t any risk because the one thing this game of theirs gives us is time. We’ll have time to get stronger and prepare for our next encounter. With them.” My mind was swirling with how to deal with the other group. “What I need from you is for you to get the others on board.”
We both looked at our sleeping team members. I felt my eyes start to droop, but forced them open. Once the sun came up, it’d be easier to stay awake. I had less than an hour, but I wasn’t going to waste that time.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea.” Justia shook her head. “There has to be something we can do to signal our teacher.”
“Do you think he’s going to intervene?”
“He’s bound to protect you!” my priestess exclaimed. “If he knows about this, he can’t sit back and watch!”
“He’s bound to keep me alive and train me.” I walked over to the stacked fruit. Ether had put her jumpsuit back on and laid mine out next to the food. I started knotting the arms and legs. “If the two of us make it out of this alive and gain Level 2, will it matter if we ‘almost’ died?”
“He wouldn’t.”
“We’ve known the man for less than a week.” I started stuffing the jumpsuit with fruit. “He has to be one of the highest level Adventurers.” I stopped as a wave of exhaustion washed over me. I used my palms to force my eyes to stay open until it passed. “How many times do you think he’s seen people ‘almost’ die or even really die?” I made air quotes. “He’s locked us in the Dungeon with barely any gear for practical training...” I pointed at her axe. “Instead of giving us the basics in a lecture. This whole thing sounds to me like something he may have even orchestrated as a way to toughen us up faster.”
