All the skills 3 a deckb.., p.27
All The Skills 3: A Deckbuilding LitRPG, page 27
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Laird snorted. “No one within memory has completed this dungeon without the key.”
His words hit like a blow. Brixaby snapped open all of his wings. Arthur stepped back, and Cressida put a hand to her mouth.
“That is absurd,” Brixaby said. “We have fought through the waves just fine.”
But they hadn’t. They had been on their last legs. They still were, Arthur thought, glancing over to the final scourgeling. It still wasn’t disintegrating, but it wouldn’t be long now.
“No one?” Cressida asked in a horrified whisper.
“The only ones who have survived were those who were rescued by somebody with the key before they were swamped in the final waves,” Laird said. “I’ve accessed the notes from the original dungeoneer, over fifty years ago. The waves begin sharply accelerating in difficulty starting from the seventh.”
Arthur’s spike of fear turned immediately into irritation. “Then why are you here? Are you looking to die?”
Shadow snorted. “That’s the problem with you Legendary riders. You’re never grateful for any help from the lower ranks.”
That was hardly fair, and Arthur opened his mouth to say so, but Laird beat him to the punch. “You are lucky that we arrived at all. The dungeon only allows new participants to enter between waves, and we couldn’t linger near the entrance for long or else risk being seen by spies. We are cutting it close.”
Then the dragon reached to the side, there was a brief flash of light, and he withdrew a net gleaming with runes. Laird must have some sort of Personal Space ability of his own.
But that wasn’t all, because he began withdrawing items from the rune-etched net. One was a green-tinged sword and shield he handed to Shadow. Another was a giant, dragon-sized bowl filled with steaming . . . oatmeal?
Arthur briefly wondered if this was a hallucination after all. Things had just turned too strange. But in the next blink, he realized what that oatmeal had to be. He took an eager step forward. “Those oats were grown in the experimental caverns, aren’t they?”
Laird glanced at him. “You know about those?”
“I worked down there for a time. What does it do?”
“These oats rapidly regenerate mana,” Laird said. Then he paused. “Soaking and cooking it makes it go down easier,” he added, as if it was shameful that he didn’t want to eat raw oats.
Arthur didn’t care. He gestured for Cressida and Joy to approach. When Laird didn’t object and indeed seemed expectant, Arthur grabbed a ladle from his own Personal Space. Dipping it in, they took turns sipping.
It was exactly as bland as oats boiled in water could be, without a hint of spice or salt. But immediately, he felt his mana reserves start to refill. It wasn’t an instant process, but he had a feeling he’d be mostly full within a few minutes. Tipping the bowl back, Laird finished the rest.
“What other weapons do you have?” Brixaby asked, eyeing the net with interest. “I will accept a sword as well.”
Laird looked slightly embarrassed. “If I’d had time to prepare, I would have brought more. These are my personal items.” Then he straightened in pride. “But you have two more dragons at your aid.”
Arthur still had questions for the dragon, some of which had been hovering since the first day he was brought to the Mesa Free Hive. But that had to wait. They weren’t in the position to be choosy. The final scourgeling of the last wave had fallen and was starting to disintegrate. They were nearly out of time.
“I’ve seen what you can do,” Arthur said. “You’re welcome to fight along with us and share the cards at the end. How many more scourgelings should we expect for the next wave?”
“Two hundred,” Laird said easily, as if this wasn’t a devastating number.
Two hundred?
Arthur wanted to blanch, but that would not be helpful. He felt everyone’s eyes on him. He was the Legendary rider. He was the leader.
“Then your place will be up in the air. The scourgelings will slow right before they start climbing the hill. Hit them with all the fire you can while they’re bunched up. That goes for everybody.” He looked at the others, one by one, and saw that their expressions were grim . . . but not despairing. “Hit them with everything we have. No holding back.”
As he spoke his last few words, the terrible whistles started again.
Now that Arthur had gotten a broader view of how this dungeon was supposed to work, he saw how it made such an effective trap. By the eighth wave, people would be exhausted. Their mana levels run low.
Any help that came from the outside would be chancy at best—the one-way door opened only between the waves. And once someone was in here, they were committed to either win or die. And they’d be coming in blind, not knowing what shape their friends were already in.
However, if there was a team loyal enough, or desperate enough, it seemed like this dungeon should have been conquered before.
It still felt like he was missing a vital piece of information.
His first worry that the scourgelings in the last wave would not only be more numerous but significantly stronger didn’t play out. They were still the same type of scourgelings as before. It seemed that the dungeoneer only had a blueprint for one. But numbers were on their side.
Laird’s fighting made the biggest impact.
He was fresh to the battle, full up not only on mana but on strength. Corrosive purple candle-top flames drifted down from the sky like evil snowflakes. Wherever they touched the scourgelings, they burned. And they continued to burn right through the body and out the other side without either spreading or stopping.
Arthur suspected Laird had quite a few aspects to his flame powers, as this was subtly different from the ones he had seen before as a child. But he wasn’t complaining.
Using the enchanted metal bar, Arthur heated his own metal rivets and sent them flying at the scourgelings that escaped Laird’s wrath.
Meanwhile, Shadow used his teleport power to pop right in front of the dark forest. His jade sword flashed—he wielded it more like an expert swordsman than a dragon, so it was either enchanted or he had a card power to help. He popped out again to another location down the line of trees before the scourgelings could properly turn and swamp him. Each teleport was a mere blink of time—hopefully not enough for the monsters that lived in the shadow space to find him.
Meanwhile, Joy and Brixaby continued their hit-and-run attacks with poisoned claws and void fire, respectively. Cressida’s three bears, empowered by a renewal of her mana, rolled down the side of the hill like unstoppable forces, burning paths through the scourgelings.
They were an effective team. So effective that the two hundred scourgelings were whittled down to less than forty that managed to crest the top of the hill. Arthur was forced to take shelter in Cressida’s shield bubble a couple of times. The mana renewal oatmeal didn’t affect his Phase In, Phase Out card. He once again ran out of time.
But forty scourgelings were much more manageable, especially when Shadow and Laird came to assist.
Before Arthur knew it, the last of the scourgelings was disintegrating.
Laird pulled a second bowl of oatmeal out of his rune net.
“How does that not tip over and spill everywhere?” Joy asked, cocking her head to the side.
He shrugged. “I don’t know much about enchantments. I just know that it doesn’t.”
“I would very much like to examine the runes on that net after this is done,” Brixaby said, again eyeing it. Arthur had originally thought it was because he wanted the treasures inside. It turned out, he just wanted to study the runes.
The other dragon gave him a bland look. “We’ll see.” Then he pointedly tucked it away before Brixaby could get too close. As before, he shared the bowl.
“Two more waves,” Arthur said. “We can do this. We’re almost done.”
“I thought you said . . .” Shadow trailed off and looked at Laird in confusion.
Laird grimaced. “One more wave, technically. One thousand scourgelings.”
Cressida, who had been taking a delicate bite of the oatmeal, nearly coughed it back out. “One thousand?”
Arthur felt the same.
“Yes,” Laird said. “This requires a dragon’s assistance, which is a reason human teams have failed in the past. I suggest we fight them from the air.”
Brixaby grumbled at that, but he didn’t outright object.
Cressida and Joy went up as a pair, and Arthur sat on Laird. There was a little bit of irony there. He never thought that he would be able to ride the dragon that had given him his first big break in life. For the sake of Brixaby’s feelings, he didn’t make a big deal of it.
Instead, he looked to his dark dragon. “If we can get you enough cards, we might be able to fly together soon.”
Brixaby looked slightly mollified.
The ninth and final wave was . . . immense. So many scourgelings came out of the forest that they toppled the trees. The weight of them—the physical effect of so many clustered together—killed the grass underfoot, leaving blackened rot behind. The shrieks were so loud that Arthur had to resist clapping his hands over his ears.
Instead, he grimly got on with the work, pelting the things from above. His once finely crafted chainmail shirt was in tatters from using all of the rivets.
When he ran out of those, he started pulling heavy objects out of his Personal Space and just tossing them down. He had one sturdily built chair and several large rocks that were sacrificed to the cause.
And when he ran out of that, he copied the spells Laird was using:
New Counterfeit spell obtained: Candle-flake Fall
Remaining Time: 59 Minutes 59 Seconds
New Counterfeit spell obtained: Ever-flame
Remaining Time: 11 Hours 59 Minutes 59 Seconds
New Counterfeit spell obtained: Corrosive Flame
Remaining Time: 59 Minutes, 59 Seconds
The last wave wasn’t exactly dangerous, but it was a pure slog. Laird and Arthur could only rain down so many flames at a time, and Joy’s movements were restricted when she had to worry about the safety of her rider on her back.
They did what they could, and slowly but surely, the scourgelings were whittled down.
It was Brixaby who killed the last one. On a hill now blackened of life and covered with so many disintegrating scourgelings that they didn’t realize it was over until the whistling finally, finally stopped.
Laird landed, and everybody else followed. All stared around at each other as if they couldn’t quite believe that they’d done it.
“What happens now?” Arthur asked, looking around. He half expected trumpets to blare out of triumph, and combat cards to rain down from the sky. But there was nothing.
Again, Laird and Shadow exchanged a look. This one was grim.
“The tenth wave,” Laird said.
Brixaby let out a sound suspiciously like an undignified squawk. “You said there were nine!”
“The last wave is not a fight, but a test.”
As soon as he said that, a bright line split the air and then expanded, resolving itself into a gleaming golden doorway.
Laird continued. “By design, only one is allowed access to the reward—the library. We either decide here who among us goes in, or we fight one another for the privilege.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Shadow immediately lunged for Joy.
Standing on top of an open hill and not near any large shadows was surely what had kept him from teleporting and then attacking. Still, he was a fully grown dragon, and she had only recently become large enough to fly with her rider in the air. It wasn’t a fair match-up.
Out of all of them, her venomous claws presented the most immediate offensive threat. That had to be why Shadow wanted to take her out first.
All of this flashed in and out of Arthur’s head in a second of horror as he watched his former allies turn on them. Just as the dungeon was designed to do.
Arthur’s arm snapped out, but he had used the last of the chainmail rivets during the final wave. They likely littered the grassy field, but he only had control if he was within an inch of them.
He was too far away to stop Shadow and Joy, to do anything but to yell, “No! Stop!”
The sound of his voice was drowned out by Cressida screaming Joy’s name in horror.
Thankfully, Brixaby was closer.
He must have used every bit of his Quick Sprint Flying skill to get between the dragons—the lunging Shadow and Joy, who was no coward or a fool and was bringing up her claws to defend.
“STOP!”
Brixaby had a ridiculously deep voice for a dragon so tiny, and no concept of what being quiet was. His “whispers” could be heard across a room. So when he roared out the word at the top of his voice, Arthur felt it in his chest.
For a moment in time, Brixaby was a Legendary dragon, and he had just given a Legendary order.
Of course, Joy and Shadow had no choice but to stop, shocked still in place.
It lasted for only a moment, but that was all Arthur needed.
He wheeled around on Laird, who hadn’t moved yet. Likely, the plan had been to capture or incapacitate Joy and then use her as leverage.
“We don’t have to do this,” Arthur said. “I have a way to get you all into the library.”
Laird leveled an unimpressed look his way.
It was Shadow who replied, swinging his head around. “Lies. You just learned of this restriction a few moments ago.”
“And you’ve been planning on turning on us from the start!” Cressida snapped. She ran to stand by Joy’s side, and though Arthur knew she’d used up every bit of mana in the last wave, thinking it was the last, her hands were out as if she were about to try to summon her flame bear anyway. She’d probably burn through her life force to do it if she had to.
“Only with the deepest regret,” Laird confirmed. “You have no idea how long I have waited for the chance to freely access the combat library, how many under my command—dragons and humans—have died in various attempts. If we had any warning you were going to try, we could have planned more properly. You could have been told what to expect.”
“We need those combat cards,” Arthur said.
“So do my people.”
“No,” Arthur repeated, “you don’t understand. We need the cards. Us”—he gestured around the group to indicate them all—“and everybody out there. Anybody who’s willing to take one. Two of them, if we can.”
That took the dragon by surprise. He narrowed his eyes. “You intend to completely strip the council of all of its wealth? Return it to the hive? The people? Hmm. I’ve heard of governments like that. They tend to work well on paper, but within a generation—”
“No,” Arthur said, “the council is working fine, but they’re being shortsighted. They’re not just giving wealth back to the hives and kingdoms. They’re giving away our one source of protection, and if I’m right . . . we may need that protection.”
He glanced at Brixaby, who nodded back.
“Protection? From who? The kingdom hives?” Shadow barked. “What do you know?”
“I believe that a scourgeling known as the Mind Singer is out there gaining power right now. You remember the last demi-scourge-eruption?” Arthur said. “That was organized, in part, by her.”
“And she is the same one we believe sent an assassin after Arthur,” Brixaby said.
Laird rumbled deep in his throat. Outwardly, it sounded a lot like a growl, but Arthur recognized it as a pensive sound of thought. “The council investigated that. I told you that particular free hive that man originally hailed from has been acting odd. Not returning messages. We are all independent, and that is not too unusual. Especially if there is internal strife. We aren’t the kingdoms, and we can’t compel other hives to trade or return inquiries. But you believe there’s something more?”
“I think that there’s a creature out there that has mind magic powers and has already shown that it can control a large number of people.” Arthur added, “And since she sent an assassin after me, she likely knows this hive has Legendary cards within it.”
He carefully kept out the fact that he and the Mind Singer had a history.
“And unlike the kingdom hives,” Cressida added, “you don’t have a large dedicated fighting force to repel an invader.”
Shadow snarled. “If you’re so concerned, why didn’t you leave?”
“Other than the fact that we’re essentially prisoners here?” Arthur asked.
Laird scoffed. “It is mostly bluster, you know. You likely could have left if you put your mind to it. But the council wanted to dangle the carrot first and leave the stick for an emergency. We wanted you loyal to this hive. As you said, you’re Legendary.”
“I don’t see you leaving this hive,” Brixaby said, pointedly to Shadow.
The other dragon shrugged. “I have nothing back at Wolf Moon, but I don’t want to stick around any place that cannot defend itself. I am a dragon, not a sitting duck.”
“Which is another flaw in your plan, Arthur,” Laird said. “Most in this hive would not take a combat card if offered. They do not wish to fight.”
“They might take a combat card if mind-controlled thralls were beating at their door,” Arthur said. “But the point is, our goals aren’t mutually exclusive. We all have reasons to get as many cards out of that library as possible.”
“Agreed,” Laird said, but then he leered at Arthur, all teeth, “Then you won’t have any objection to me entering the library.” He held up his rune net. “I will bring out as many cards as I can fit.”
“I told you, I have a better solution,” Arthur said.
“And what would that be?”
He hesitated. “Only one person can walk through the entrance into that library, yes? But you’ve read the parameters of this dungeon. Are there rules excluding anyone from bringing a personal storage space inside? Or a restriction from taking anything out from a personal storage space, once inside?”
