Wild Era, Ch 20: Dungeon Plot

As the adventurers gathered around, Kelin laid out what he knew about the dungeon.

“The Hesen should have a city or some type of encampment deeper into the forest,” he said, indicating the path along the road. “I was planning to head there slowly and clear everything along the way.”

“You're only Level 40,” Serai said, looking at him thoughtfully. “How did you take care of him so easily?”

“That wasn’t the most difficult thing I’ve seen recently,” Kelin said, shaking his head. “If he’d been Level 85, things might have been different, but he wasn’t, and my particular type of magic was effective.”

The fight had been brief and a little harder than the Hesen, but it was nothing that stood out much, just a footnote to the dungeon. He was more interested in the questions that the Sarathian’s presence raised.

“You’re at High Bronze,” Maro said as he studied Kelin. “Perhaps that explains it. You must have been through some things to earn that at your age. I don’t know how you managed that rank at Level 40, but it’s clearly not for show.”

“I appreciate solidity,” Galin said, nodding in agreement. “You seem like a good type. We’re all at Low Bronze, so you outrank us, and you have precedence here. How should we do this?”

“If you tell us a bit about yourself,” Seria added, “we can figure out what tactics work best. Without a healer, we’ll have to be careful.”

“I’m a mage with Soul and Fire affinities,” Kelin explained. “I have the general arrangement of mage abilities, but also some small healing capability, which is touch-based. I also have a more powerful heal over time ability that will help us while we’re resting or in a long battle.”

Maro gave him a surprised look, and then closed his eyes for a moment as if struggling.

“Maybe if we had found you five minutes sooner...” he muttered to himself, but then he shook his head.

“This dungeon is supposed to have strong forces and a powerful Hesen chieftain as the boss,” Kelin said, “but caution is best. Dungeons don’t always stay stable and that assassin might have come to this one for a reason.”

He looked at the trio, who all nodded. 

“We’ll proceed carefully and take care of the outlying forces, and then decide how to handle the main group. We can work on our tactics on the way.”

There should still be quite a few smaller groups to face before they reached the final battle, which would give them some time to get used to fighting together.

When they were all ready, Kelin dusted off his clothes and led the way down the road. His staff tapped at the road as he walked and he kept a close eye on the fluctuations of mana everywhere, to make sure there were no traps.

Gaius was also scouting.

Along the way, they discussed some group tactics, all of them based on standard arrangements from the guild. It wasn’t new information to anyone.

The only change was that Kelin declined to take a role at the back, which was the most common for mages. Usually, a scout or a melee fighter led the way. The assassin would have filled that role before, while he was pretending to be a rogue. 

With his senses and Gaius, he was the best suited for it, although the sylph and dwarf likely had quite decent awareness as well.

It wasn’t long before they encountered another group of Hesen. 

This time, it was two Hesen Warriors, three scouts, and an archer, which was a slightly stronger  force than the ones that had come before.

Galin slammed his axe against his shield as he stepped forward, releasing a wave of energy. The ability turned into a shockwave that swept across the distance and slammed into the Hesen, hurling them from their feet.

Maro raced ahead, holding a flaming axe in each hand, and his body burned with a shield of flames that was both an assault on his enemies and a protective mana barrier.

Seria raised her hand and a cold wind blew along the road, turning into a rain of icy spears that fell from the sky. As they landed, they impaled the Hesen archer and one of the scouts, and injured the rest. 

A wave of chilling frost spread from the impacts, slowing the enemy down.

Kelin took it all in with a critical eye, but he joined in himself, sending a series of soulfire bolts searing through the air. Hesen heads exploded one by one, clearing the field until Maro was facing only a single Hesen Warrior.

Maro was a blur of flames as he dueled with the warrior, but he was faster than the Hesen. Within a few seconds, his axes tore through the lizard’s defense and sent the Hesen’s head flying into the air.

The entire battle took less than a minute, and Kelin had only used nine mana. Galin hadn’t even needed to join Maro in the melee. He’d stayed back as a rear guard in case something got through to the mages. 

“Good work,” Kelin said as a series of experience notifications rang in his mind. “Let’s keep going.”

They collected the monster cores and moved along down the road.

That battle wasn’t enough to get him another level so quickly, especially now that it was being split between all of them. 

The Path took care of experience distributions for teams. It was normally divided evenly unless someone was trying to cheat the system, like taking an under-level nobleman into a dungeon who then did nothing. 

In a case like that, the Path would announce either a reduced experience gain or none at all for the dead weight. 

If you wanted to benefit from a dungeon, you had to participate.

In this case, their levels were close enough that the experience distribution was even, but he only got 25% of it and then that was divided in half with Gaius, so it was fairly limited. 

That was one reason he didn’t plan to group up too much, since he would level more slowly than everyone else, but he’d already accepted it for this run.

As they proceeded, the next few fights were much the same. 

They cleared the Hesen encampments quickly, with barely a need for complex tactics, and it became apparent these three were a solid group. 

Their healer must have been equally impressive. 

It was no surprise that they’d been willing to try this dungeon.

Kelin took advantage of their presence to continue working on his abilities. He switched up spells during each encounter, projected mana shields around Maro, and threw out the occasional explosive sigil.

He also summoned an acid bolt from his staff a couple of times, testing out its charges. It created a spear-shaped bolt of sizzling green acid that flew across the distance and slammed into a target with a considerable impact.

It was a good staff.

A handful of the fights later, everyone was moving easily and was more familiar with one another. The same sense of purpose was still there, but conversation started back up.

“This is smooth,” Seria said thoughtfully as she looked at Kelin and then at the others. “We’ve had decent dungeon runs before, but this is different. Whenever something slips it, it feels like you’re already there and it never develops into a problem. But it’s so understated that it’s hard to notice, like when Maro slipped once, but the Hesen that was on that side died at the same time, so nothing came of it.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to look like when things go well,” Kelin said. “It’s what happens when it all falls apart that matters.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Galin muttered in agreement as he stomped along beside Seria. “Leave him be, Seria. He’s got his secrets, but you can’t blame a mage for that. He’s clearly earned his rank. I’ll be happy if we can clear this without any more injuries or worse.”

“True. It’s curious though,” Seria said as she looked at Kelin. “Your skill and level...they don’t match up. This is almost like going on a dungeon run with a guide. It feels simple, even though it’s actually dangerous. But I’ll leave it alone.”

“We’ve heard a few rumors about this dungeon,” Maro said, changing the topic as they walked on. “From back in Cerith. Someone at the guild was out here a couple of weeks ago and said it was more organized than usual.”

He glanced around.

“Apparently, these Hesen are supposed to wander more. You usually find big groups scattered around even close to the entrance. Now, it’s like they’ve pulled back the bulk of their forces and become more structured into these guard teams.”

“Interesting,” Kelin said. “It sounds like the chieftain has changed. Or something stronger has reorganized them.”

His thoughts turned to what the assassin and the Sarathians might have been up to, and a few possibilities came to mind. 

He didn’t have confirmation, but it was possible they had tampered with the dungeon. Since the Path oversaw dungeons, there were only a couple of ways that could go, methods that were in line with its greater goals. 

If that was the case, it would explain why the wild monsters were being driven out of this area of the forest too. 

Some things didn’t like competition.

“We’ll see soon enough,” he added. 

The experience from the encounters was limited, but it was still better for him than for the rest of the team that was around Level 50. 

After a few more Hesen, he reached Level 41. 

He added the free points to Intelligence, as he had with the ones from Level 40, bringing it to 367.

On that note of optimism, of course, the encounters changed. The next one was nothing like what they’d seen so far. 

The road in front of them looked like it had been torn apart by giant claws. The Hesen who  would have been guarding it were still there, standing among the ruins, but their eyes were hollow and a strange green mist rippled around them.

The bodies of a stone bear and a treant were draped across the remains of their fortifications.

“Did the bear do that?” Maro muttered the question as they all paused at a distance to take it in.

“No,” Galin replied, shaking his head as he studied it. “The damage is too large for its claws. The treant’s roots couldn’t have done that either. That’s from something at least three times larger than a stone bear.”

“We’ll deal with that afterwards,” Kelin said as he looked closely at the mist around the Hesen. “Prepare yourselves. That mist is poisonous and the Hesen are not themselves. They’re being influenced by something else.”

He could see the flows of mana and soul energy around the Hesen, which made the changes obvious.

At that moment, the Hesen noticed them and their glassy eyes turned to look at the team. There was still a quarter mile between them, but the Hesen didn’t hesitate. They opened their mouths and let out an unearthly wail.

Streams of that green mist poured out of their bodies and formed into a dozen ghostly green wraiths in the air, which flew straight toward Kelin and the others.

The wraiths were partly humanoid but with warped features and incomplete bodies that faded into mist at their waists. They had long hair that trailed back from bare skulls, long green talons for hands, and their mouth was filled with jagged fangs. 

Their eyes were the same glowing green as the Hesens’ had been, but now that they were free, the Hesen began to collapse to the ground. Their bodies shook and convulsed as they frothed at the mouths.

Kelin raised up a ward of golden soulfire to block the road as he analyzed them.

Poison Wraith, Level 48.

Poison Wraith, Level 50.

Their levels were similar to the Hesen they had come from, but their danger was much higher and there were twice as many of them. Two must have been possessing each lizard.

It was strange to see them here.

Poison wraiths were a mix between elementals and spirits, and primarily magical in nature. They could pass through most barriers and their touch was corrosive. 

Without strong wards, they were highly dangerous. 

Maro was surrounded by a shield of flames and Seria and Galin raised their own barriers as the wraiths closed in.

The first wraith slammed into Kelin’s ward and ignited in a shriek of fury. The green vapor it was made from blazed in the soulfire, drawing on Kelin’s mana for reinforcement as it began to reduce the wraith to ashes.

The wraith fought against the flames, its talons slashing at the ward with a sizzling impact. 

Then the other wraiths arrived and slammed into the barrier too. Their movements were wild and savage as they whipped themselves at it.

Maro raced forward, his axes slashing out in red arcs to carve through them as he met them at the ward. 

Behind him, Galin also ran forward, holding his shield ahead of him like a battering ram. Spikes of earthen yellow energy coated the front of it and he angled them to meet the wraiths.

A whirlwind of ice and wind swirled in the sky as Seria unleashed a rain of icy spears that targeted them.

If it had been a group of Hesen, that would have been enough to eliminate them, but as Maro’s axes tore flaming lines through the air and the spells struck, the wraiths slid away like leaves on the breeze.

Their forms turned to wispy streamers as they dodged the magic, twisting and compressing in on themselves in one place as they expanded in other areas.

They couldn’t avoid all of the damage, but only two of the wraiths took significant damage, one that Kelin had lit on fire and another that was caught in the crossfire between Seria’s rain of ice and Maro’s axes.

The first wraith exploded, its body turning to a ring of expanding green flames that burned itself out, and then the second died as well.

But that still left ten that were milling around, and before Kelin could warn him against it, Maro gave way to his berserker instincts and leapt forward after the rest.

His axes spun like a tornado as the flames shrouding him grew taller. His flaming aura was a deterrent, but not enough to stop the poison wraiths as they began to spiral around him, their talons slashing inward.

He managed to catch one of the wraiths in a cross between his axes and sliced it in half, but at the same time green talons tore open wounds along his chest, arms, and back that glowed with a virid light.

Almost immediately, Maro froze in place as his body began to convulse, and his axes fell to his sides.

Galin saw what was happening and slammed hard with his shield, knocking the wraiths away from Maro, and Seria sent a wave of ice to seal the area around him. Tiny snowflakes began to rain down on the streaks of green light across Maro’s body, trying to freeze the poison.

The wraiths were only knocked back for a moment, and then they returned, flooding the area around Seria’s ice and pressing hard against Galin’s shield.

The blue energy of her ice magic and the yellow of Galin’s defenses began to turn green and pale as their energy was corroded by the wraiths’ presence.

It wouldn’t be long until they broke through.

One of the reasons poison wraiths were so dangerous was that their sheer presence was enough to poison other types of magic. It meant that they could eventually break down most wards and other defenses.

The more perfect your wards were, the longer they would last, but it was still a problem. 

You needed to destroy the source.

Kelin shook his head as he walked forward.

Two soul arrows formed in his hands and he flicked them at two of the wraiths. As soon as those were gone, he summoned two more and did the same.

Then again, and again, and again, as rapidly as he could summon them.

Within moments, the remaining ten wraiths dissipated into the air as their souls burned away. They left behind a mist of the poisonous green fog that had made them up.

As Kelin waved his hand, the fog burned away under the influence of soulfire, revealing a dozen tiny green shards.

Those were the poison wraith cores. 

They had a few alchemical uses, including in antidotes, so he would collect them in a minute. 

Maro was still standing in place, his muscles locked as he convulsed at the same time. At any moment, it looked like he would fall over. 

Kelin walked up to him and placed his hand on top of one of the wounds. A stream of soulfire gathered around his hand, following the line of the wound, and then it sank into it.

He felt the poison resist him. It was like a green web sinking into Maro’s body and starting to take root. If it was left there, it wouldn’t be long before it invaded the rest of his body and sank into his bones and organs.

At that point, it would be difficult to save him.

It was fortunate that Soulfire was a cleansing flame. It seared through the energy of the poison, consuming it and leaving nothing behind. 

As the poison burned, Kelin got flashes of the aura behind it, something sharp and cold, like a serpent that narrowed its eyes as it sensed him.

A cloud of green and golden steam rose up from the wound, one that turned more golden by the moment.

One by one, he did the same to the rest of Maro’s wounds, until all the poison in them was purged.

Maro’s body finally unlocked and the barbarian collapsed to the ground, gasping as he took in shuddering breaths. His normally ruddy skin was pale and he looked exhausted.

“What was that?” he gasped out as he pushed himself off the ground and into a sitting position. “I’ve never seen a poison act like that before. Usually, I can resist them.”

“Poison wraiths are different from creatures that just use poison,” Kelin said as he glanced at the Hesen who had been fostering the wraiths. All of them had died now that the wraiths were gone. 

“They’re an embodiment of it, and their touch has many debilitating effects, from paralysis to corrosion. Unless you’re immune to poison or you have the capability to incinerate it completely, don’t let them touch you. If it does, try to destroy it immediately.”

His mana was down by about a third after the fight and healing Maro, so he sat down to meditate as he considered the new problem.

Notifications from the Path rang in his mind, telling him that he’d gained another level and reached Level 42. 

He’d gotten a bigger than usual amount of the experience from that battle, since he’d killed most of the things alone.

The wraiths seemed to be decent for experience, which at least was something. He added the free points to Aura as he considered the problem.

“The real issue is where the poison wraiths are from,” he added. His tone was calm, but his heart was unsettled. 

Soul magic was well suited to dealing with wraiths, but he didn’t have half of the gear he would have preferred for this sort of fight. Wraiths like this tended to come in waves, and it was entirely possible that enough of them could overwhelm his defenses.

The dungeon had just become much more dangerous.

“Think of the wraiths as the offspring of something else,” he explained. “That thing is what came through here and ripped up the road. It probably didn’t try to kill the Hesen, since they would have been dead long before now, but its presence was so poisonous that it tainted the air and them just by appearing here 

“Those wraiths were formed from it. It’s also why they only leave those shards as their cores. They aren’t complete monsters in their own right.”

The dungeon’s level description wouldn’t have been wrong, which meant the top monster here should be Level 68, unless it had gained another one since he entered. 

He didn’t want to face any of them right now, but he might not have a choice. They were already deep inside the dungeon’s boundaries, and the likelihood of retreating unscathed was low.

It had taken a third of his mana just to deal with ten of them and a bit of healing. If there were fifty or a hundred of those wraiths...things would be more difficult.

Even Wildfire might not be enough.

“This might be what the Sarathians were up to,” he said, “but we’ll need to see the source to tell for sure.”

“What are you thinking?” Galin asked as he sat down nearby and took a swig from his waterskin. “That they overseeded the dungeon?”

“Most likely,” Kelin agreed. “They probably had that assassin or someone similar bring in a high-level core with unique properties, and then they tossed it into this dungeon. The mana here did the rest, recreating the monster that matches the core.”

That was what overseeding was. 

It was done sometimes to help foster a new dungeon or to give it a particular type of monster that the locals wanted, which could be beneficial for crafting materials or a particular affinity, but it could also be used in more nefarious ways.

“The monster’s level would be reduced to match the ambient mana and the dungeon’s level, but even a young version of some elite monsters can be troublesome.”

It was like the hydra he’d fought at the guild. That was technically a juvenile hydra, but it still had a lot of the powers of an older one.

If that was the case, the assassin’s job had probably been to keep people out of the dungeon long enough for the dungeon to claim the core and for the monster to grow. Depending on what it was, a much higher level team might be needed to handle it.

If that wasn’t caught in time, it would almost guarantee a dungeon break, and an ugly one.

He could already see the waves of poison wraiths flooding across the Shieldrun Forest. They might even spread far enough to reach Highmist or Cerith.

And eventually the monster that spawned them would appear.

The Path wasn’t a force that coddled humanity. It would eventually send forces to eliminate the dungeon, but it wouldn’t stop it from destroying the area before that.

“So there’s a Level 68 monster in here that doesn’t belong?” Seria asked, looking concerned. “What do you think it is?”

“Something Elite,” Kelin replied. “Poison wraiths can be formed from a number of different monsters with a high Poison affinity. It could be a basilisk, a poison hive of some type, one of several types of serpents or poisonous lizards...it could even be a Hesen Shaman that has acquired a Poison affinity. 

“It will be difficult to determine what it is until we see it. But the real question is if it’s alone or if it’s formed an alliance with the Hesen. If it’s a lizard of some type, it’s possible it could get along with the Hesen.”

He glanced toward where the Hesen had been standing. They were dead now, but until the wraiths erupted, they’d still been alive. 

That was why he was leaning toward the second option.

“This might be where they first met,” he said, “and this is the result. The Hesen weren’t killed by it, at least not directly. They were poisoned by its presence and died later.”

He frowned as he continued looking around.

“The other issue is that where there’s one batch of poison wraiths, there’s likely to be another. They will keep forming until the source is dealt with. They also tend to be aware of one another, like a system of wards that are all connected back to the source. They’re part of the monster that created them.”

His senses stretched out as he searched the area for trouble. 

Within a few moments, he felt more auras approaching that matched the poison wraiths they’d just killed.

There were at least twenty of them.

They were coming from two different places deeper into the forest. 

“More are on the way,” he said, abandoning his attempt at meditation as he stood up and explained what he had sensed. “We have about a minute, if that. Prepare yourselves.”

They could try to run, but the wraiths were just as fast and they might end up herded into a worse spot.

Fighting here was better.

He pulled the disk of purified quartz out of his storage and imbued it with soulfire. Then he set it to hang above his shoulder. Its ability to bolster defenses would be useful here.

His hand cut through the air, followed by a line of soulfire that turned into a sphere around the four of them. Its base was marked out by a glowing line of flame on the ground.

“Stay inside the circle,” he said. “Only your weapons or spells should leave it. Stick to long ranged attacks if possible. Maro, my ward will improve defensive Fire spells, if that helps you at all.”

The berserker was the only other one with a Fire affinity, so hopefully it would do something for him.

Kelin’s hand flashed through one rune after another as he augmented the ward in the time they had left.

Behind these wraiths, he was sure there were more he couldn’t sense yet.