DD1 ASC - Chapter 25 - Delve

The opening was wider than he had expected. It looked more like a horizontal slit in the earth where the ground outside essentially formed a dirt shelf a good twenty or so feet above the large flagstones that made up the subterranean floor of the dungeon. Peering in from the outside, he could tell that the walls and floor were made from solid stone, worked and uniformly even, a clear sign that this was far from a natural rock formation. Dank scents of musty air periodically wafted up from within the opening, contrasting sharply with the otherwise fresh breeze of the foothills. However, above all the scents emerging from the mouth of the dungeon was the vibrant hum of life-giving mana that steadily flowed out from the entrance in a constant enticing stream of concentrated energy.

Some of the adventurers seemed to be disappointed by the appearance of the dungeon’s entrance. Perhaps they were expecting a grand set of doors or a carved staircase, but even from here, Typhoeus could tell that this was just a baby dungeon incapable of such grandeur. Maybe it could have been something great someday, but whatever runes the humans had carved into the core’s surface in order to ‘tame it’ had also caused profound damage to the creature’s mind, and he could tell from its fumbling attempts to control him that the dungeon core was barely coherent.

“Alright, listen up. This is it. I know that it isn't much to look at, but it’s a real dungeon, so you need to be on your toes. Remember that while you are being judged on the time it takes your team to reach the core and the monsters that you manage to kill along the way, if any member of your group is killed or seriously injured, then your entire team will be issued a failing grade,” Arden said, scowling at the gathered group of adventurers as she let her words sink in.

“Now remember, exploring a dungeon at your level is a valuable opportunity to gain accolades before your next rank up, so do not waste this gift. The Gods gave us dungeons so that we may grow stronger, and the Guild is giving you this delve for the same reason. Now, what are you waiting for? Get to it!” she said, finishing her little speech by taking a step backwards off the edge and allowing herself to fall dramatically through the opening, where she then presumably proceeded to make her way to the dungeon's core chamber to await the other teams.

As if signalling the start of the race, the other adventuring parties hurried forwards to lower knotted ropes, already carefully anchored against a nearby boulder, down into the dungeon as they hastily climbed through the crack in the earth. Judging by the sounds of fighting that echoed up soon after they had made their descent, they had a much rougher go of moving through the dungeon undetected than Arden did. Typhoeus and Arilla, of course, were not part of the mad dash to get started, as even though Galen was supposed to resolve their issues with the Guild, they were still under implicit orders to do poorly in the test and so the decision to wait an extra hour before entering wasn’t a hard one to make.

“Do you think that’s enough of a head start?” Arilla asked, her posture relaxed after having spent most of their break having her hair unbraided and rebraided again by Typhoeus. The simple act of him repetitively running his hands through her hair doing much to soothe his warrior’s fragile nerves.

"Probably. Do you feel ready?" he asked, answering her question with one of his own.

“I think so. You sure it will be okay?” she said, her concern showing as she once again hesitated to approach the ropes leading down into the dark.

“I’m certain this isn’t one of the great dungeons from one of those stories you like so much. This is a crippled little thing made to test children. I promise you that here's nothing down there that we can’t handle.”

“I wouldn’t call the other adventurers children,” she said, changing the subject.

“Really? You’ve seen how they are; I don’t think any of them has ever been in danger before this trip, and if this is the peak of their trials, then consider me unimpressed. You should have seen how easily Galen folded when I promised to kill him if he didn’t leave us alone,” Typhoeus gloated.

“I still can’t believe that you got away with that. I know that you’re confident you can handle yourself, but threatening the heir of the Traylan dynasty just seems like an absolutely terrible idea to me,” Arilla said warily.

“Perhaps you’re right, but it was a better idea than just waiting for him to screw with us again. If I threatened him earlier, then maybe we wouldn’t be out here wasting our precious time,” he said, an arm outstretched as he gestured to the surrounding foothills.

“I suppose you may be right, but at least the scenery around here is pretty,” she said, sounding unconvinced as she tried to distract herself from the gaping maw of the dungeon that she was about to step inside.

While this dungeon wasn't particularly big, it lived inside the corpse of a much larger dungeon, the core of which had been harvested a long time ago by enterprising adventurers who likely sold it for a tidy sum. What this essentially meant was that the dungeon’s claimed territory was only a tiny fraction of a sizeable labyrinthian system of underground hallways and tunnels. This made the test much harder without necessarily increasing the danger as the dungeon had all the benefits of the extra space to confuse and disorient, but without the mana density required to attract the high-level creatures to fill it. Given the abundance of non-crippled dungeons nearby and the supposed runework overseen by the Guild on the core itself, only beasts below level 10 would see any benefit to living within this dungeon's territory. And as Typhoeus could testify, living near dungeons without getting anything out of it was an unpleasant experience at the best of times, their presence felt grating as they constantly attempted to exert their crude mental control over their more mobile neighbours.

With the enslaved monsters roaming the halls, the teams of novice adventurers would be forced to stop and rest frequently. Their low levels ensured that they would quickly empty out their limited stamina and mana pools, the latter taking much longer to regenerate than the former. In this, Arilla was remarkably enduring for her level. [Sworn Service] had finally reached level 5, and for her rank up, she had chosen to modify the skill by having the bonus provided to her stats count for double for the purposes of calculating the upper limits of her resource pools giving her 160 Health, 160 Stamina and 100 Mana for as long as she remained in Typhoeus’s good standing. Given that Typhoeus had no intention of fighting anything within the dungeon, he was hopeful that with her relatively high stamina, they could make their actual delve a brief one.

While severely limited in its capabilities, the core was still directly connected to a mana-rich ley line, providing it with more than enough energy to broadcast its disjointed thoughts. The moment that Typhoeus had entered its range, he had felt connected to the creature as the dungeon core tried to use its mana to brute force its way into his mind. With his high mental stats, he was in no danger of succumbing, but he could still feel it constantly pushing its urges at him. The dungeon wanted protection from the invaders, for him to kill the humans plundering its depths, it wanted to be unshackled from its runic restraints, and above all else, it wanted Typhoeus to know that the wards were failing. It was too damaged to try seducing him with whispers of treasure or promises of power; instead, it overlayed its various wants and needs with a violent storm of cascading emotions. Anger, fear, hunger and frustration, it was a heady mix that the core threw at Typhoeus like a missile, trying to subdue his will with the intensity of its own need.

Ignoring its confused pleas for help, Typhoeus stepped over the edge and like Arden before him, fell through the opening. The rushing air caused his ill-fitting clothes to billow outwards as he allowed himself to fall to the floor below. Mana blossomed out from beneath him, bleeding off the kinetic force from his rapid descent as he slowed to a crawl in the air before his booted feet softly kissed the ground. Arilla was quick to follow, not quite confident enough to trust in his gravity defying as she instead clambered down one of the knotted ropes dangling from the entrance. Her two heavy swords clanked noisily against her mail, andcaused her to sway from side to side precariously as she carefully lowered herself hand over hand.

Her huge zweihander was unlikely to be of much use throughout the cramped hallways of the dungeon besides the occasional room such as the entrance chamber, where there was actually enough room to swing the five-foot-long blade about. As such, her heavy two-handed sword would likely remain strapped to her back for the entirety of their delve, forcing her to rely on her unadorned arming sword, its 30-inch steel blade looking paltry and inadequate by comparison to her much larger rune-etched sword.

The entrance chamber itself was as large and unremarkable as the opening above it. It was roughly ovoid in shape with the shattered stone remains of what could have once been a staircase littering the floor. Eight narrow halls, each with their own sturdy-looking doors, branched off from the room like the legs of a twisted spider, the paths of the previous teams made obvious by how three of them were left ajar. Typhoeus took his time sniffing the air as he tasted the flowing mana swirling out from each entrance in turn before gesturing for Arilla to lead the way down a particularly humid smelling passage. The door guarding the entrance to the hall beyond was stiff from disuse and refused to budge until they both threw their respective shoulders at it. The stone door grumbled loudly as it was slowly pushed back over the tiled floor, large marks in the dust being left behind as it was moved for the first time in years. The corridor on the other side was narrow with a deceptively irregular ceiling. For the first time, Typhoeus was grateful for his short height as Arilla was forced to repeatedly duck down as the ceiling intermittently dipped precipitously enough to injure an unwary adventurer. The walls and floor were unadorned, but it was all worked stone, with enough mistakes around the edges of the large bricks to suggest that once long ago these halls had been carved by something humanoid.

Following in the wake of the other adventuring teams, they weren't overly concerned about encountering any of the dungeon's defenders, even though it was clear that none of the previous teams had taken this particular route. Typhoeus knew dungeons, and all its defenders on this floor would have already been ordered to throw themselves at the other teams by now, the creatures making use of the interconnectedness of the dungeon’s twisting hallways and branching paths to ensure they arrived to attack the novice adventurers at the worst possible times.

This tunnel was completely lacking in any light sources, and only by the golden glow given off by Typhoeus’s conjured magelight was Arilla able to see. Although with how frequently the narrow corridor twisted and turned, he doubted she could see much further than her hand in front of her face. The tunnels steadily widened as they progressed, the winding halls splitting erratically as they took spiralling staircases ever deeper into the dungeon. With Typhoeus’s connection to the core and his ability to perceive mana, they were pointedly staying outside of the dungeon cores’ claimed territory, instead taking a circuitous route by anyone's standards as they navigated around the area where the dungeon’s thralls would most likely be found. The two of them stuck to the tunnels that were formed by the current core's long-dead predecessor. As a result, the halls and corridors they travelled through were clear of monsters, the dungeon directing whatever defenders it had to combat the adventurers physically encroaching within its territory and leaving the two of them alone as they explored the periphery of its senses.

Occasionally, they heard sounds of far away fighting, sword blows, or incantations echoing through the labyrinthian passageways that connected them. Still, each battle they deliberately ignored, as they instead focused on their own conversation as they travelled deeper through the disused tunnels, confident that any monsters who had once made them their home had long since moved out when the mana levels plummeted with the removal of the old core.

“What's the point of dungeons anyway?” Arilla asked, her voice travelling far in the darkness of the narrow hall.

“What, you didn’t hear Arden’s speech about them being challenges for us to level, gifted to us by our benevolent Gods?” Typhoeus said, deflecting her question.

“I heard; I just noticed how you were rolling your eyes the entire way through,” Arilla stated triumphantly.

“What makes you think that I know any better?” he asked.

“By the way that you’re still dodging the question,” she said smugly.

Typhoeus had to give her that, and after checking [Sovereign’s Perception] to ensure they wouldn’t be overheard, he spoke again. His tone hushed as he didn’t want it to carry through the twisting tunnels. “Fine, maybe I know a little better than our ranger guide, but it doesn't mean I want you spreading it around."

"Are you going to tell me or not?" she inquired, smiling widely as the bobbing magelight cast her face in golden hues, a sight which oddly suited her complexion and spawned the thought that she would certainly look better draped in gold jewellery.

"Fine, dungeon cores are interesting creatures, I suppose,” he said, and then paused for a moment in thought. “Once, a very long, long time ago, they had a truly important purpose, but those days are thankfully behind us, and now they are little more than parasites that feed on the mana of the world which they then use to control weak-willed creatures that fall into their little traps.”

“What kind of purpose?” she asked, her voice echoing.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. Just trust me on this, today dungeon cores are inconsequential to the grand order of things, and I pray for all our sakes that they stay that way,” he said.

“You’re being pretty ominous there,” Arilla said in her usual upbeat tone. A smile on her face as she was clearly enjoying their delve even though it had amounted to little more than a lot of walking in the dark.

Typhoeus shrugged. “I guess I am. Still, we should hurry up,” he said, changing the subject. “I know we don’t want to be first to reach the core, but I’d like to be heading back to Rhelea before it gets dark.”

After nearly half an hour of their steady descent, they crossed some sort of threshold where the gradually widening tunnels abruptly opened up into much grander corridors. The previously nondescript stone bricks lining the walls had been replaced with decorated panels painstakingly carved by non-human hands, each section of the walls featuring majestic engravings that depicted scenic vistas and fierce battle scenes. The hallways were still too narrow for Arilla to comfortably swing her zweihander, but for the first time in a while, they could walk side by side as they cautiously moved along the tiled floors, their steps kicking up great clouds of almost ancient dust that obfuscated the sweeping decorations of the hall.

"What is this place?" Arilla asked, her voice filled with wonder as she kept looking at the intricate murals on the walls rather than keeping her eyes peeled for danger hidden amongst their surroundings. A mistake he would have chastised her for if she wasn't so clearly enjoying herself.

"My guess is that this is part of the dungeon that was finished by the original core. If it were still alive, we would have had to worry about traps and its favoured monsters right about now."

"But they're definitely gone, right?"

"Yes, you can tell by how thin the mana is in the air. The current core is simply too small to draw enough from its ley line to fill these halls. I assure you there's nothing dangerous down here,” he said confidently.

“So why all these rooms then? The stories tell of there being traps and such, but I never thought there would be quite so many bedrooms,” Arilla said, peering through an open doorway into one such room, the wooden door having long since crumbled away into dust.

“For the occupants to sleep in obviously,” Typhoeus said, gently pushing his sworn sword into the dust filled room before following her inside. “A dungeon is a living thing, an ecosystem if you will, and its occupants have to eat, sleep and shit somewhere, hence all of this,” he continued, lifting a piece of debris that could have once been part of a bed.

“This is so unreal, all this,” she said, gesturing all around her.

“What, the dungeon? I assure you it's all very mundane; I can show you a ‘wild’ one after this to compare if you’d like,” Typhoeus offered.

“No, not that, although I will take you up on that offer someday,” she said, spinning around the room with a wide smile on her face. “This. Adventuring! A real dungeon dive, I have a class and stats and skills! It’s everything I’ve ever wanted and so much more!”

“I feel like your ambitions are far too modest. This is just us creeping through the bowels of a long-dead thing,” he said, his derision at her ‘lofty’ goals evaporating in the face of her overt excitement. “…Although, do you want to explore this place properly?”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, bar this little detour, we are currently moving in a fairly straight path towards the core chamber, but we have time to kill, and there are a lot more of these dead halls filled with abandoned rooms to look around if you want to, he offered.

“Really?” she asked, her enthusiasm palpable.

“Why not? You can tell me about these dreams of yours while we look around,” he said with a wry smile that was rudely interrupted when Arilla pushed him up against a nearby wall as she began kissing him. The spontaneity of the act was ruined by the thick cloud of dust that left them both coughing as they fanned the air away from their faces.

They laughed and kissed some more before Typhoeus finally allowed Arilla’s lips to leave his as she began leading the way on an exacting tour through the abandoned rooms and halls of the dead dungeon. There wasn’t much left to see at first, as only faded stonework and rust-covered metal remained of what had once been a fairly sizable underground complex, but as they moved further away from the living dungeon core, they began to gradually find rooms with increasingly intact remains. Despite his best attempts to view the entire diversion through a jaded lens, he couldn’t help but get caught up in Arilla’s vibrant energy as she recounted her many childhood fantasies of someday becoming an adventurer. Soon Typhoeus found himself joining in and getting his hands dirty as he helped her sift through the various piles of detritus that littered each room, searching for interesting fragments and curios to salvage.

They stalked forwards through the dungeon’s ruined halls, Arilla’s arming sword never too far from her hand as they passed by what were originally wooden doorways that had long since broken down into dust and branching hallways that more often than not had collapsed into rubble with the relentless passage of time. It wasn't all a ruin; several rooms and connected halls all appeared to be almost perfectly preserved, and each one was a curiosity. A little look into the mind of the long dead core who had so painstakingly built bedrooms and workshops, along with grand halls and storerooms for the purposes of its unknown occupants.

Arilla was enthralled, the hallways of the dead dungeon likely reminding her of any one of a half dozen bardic tales where the hero finds an enchanted sword or slays a dragon amongst the ruins of the ancient past. The thought made him smile, as Arilla already had an enchanted sword and whether she knew it or not, the only dragon down here was walking by her side with his hand gently touching her hip. In part for reassurance, but mostly because Arilla had quite nice hips that he liked to squeeze.

It was surprisingly hard for him to help with her search for lost relics once he put his mind to it. With [Sovereign’s Perception], he usually had no trouble seeing through walls or sifting through piles of garbage, but due to the area’s nature being part of a dungeon, even the low levels of ambient mana had long since managed to saturate everything, thwarting his normally perceptive ability. While he could still see around corners and through open doorways, the occasional stone door that had successfully stood the test of time was more than enough to render him completely blind as to whatever lay on the other side.

One such set of large double-doors featured carvings that were noticeably sturdier and more intricate than any of those they had come to before. When he asked Arilla if she really wanted to keep on exploring she nodded with a fervent enthusiasm that left Typhoeus with no recourse, besides opening the doors, that wouldn’t spoil her fun.

Together they slammed their shoulders against the stone and heaved. The overly large set of inscribed double doors slowly slid open as the two adventurers struggled for footing on the smooth flagstones. It took minutes of sustained physical effort along with a discreetly cast spell, but the doors opened, revealing a massive high-ceilinged chamber with rounded walls, every square inch of which was covered in an intricate mural showing the outside world up above. It was huge and must have taken thousands if not tens of thousands of hours to piece together. The tiny chips of multicoloured stone carefully arrayed in such a way to get such a realistic representation of the foothills, but all of it in its majestic beauty was completely overshadowed by the chamber's occupants.

[Stone Scarab Brood Mother level 51]

Sleeping soundly in the centre of the room, surrounded by countless knee-high orbs that Typhoeus instantly knew were eggs, was a creature. It was about twice as large as a horse but lacking any of the animal’s stature or natural grace, as the brood mother’s form was undeniably bulbous and ungainly. It was essentially a giant beetle with massive serrated mandibles that would give anyone pause, as they looked large enough to easily bisect a man in full plate. Although, what overshadowed its deadly oversized pincers was a distended partially transparent abdomen from which he could see even more eggs moving slowly through its reproductive tract as even asleep the Brood Mother continued to lay more of its spawn around it.

He was immediately aware of the noise that the door was still making as Arilla was half a second behind him on the uptake. He grabbed her arm with a panicked grip, pulling her back from the still moving door which thankfully stopped its loud rumble as he silently mouthed ‘Stop’ at her, to which Arilla simply replied, “What?” The word flew from her mouth before either of them could stop it, and as it passed into the vast domed chamber, it echoed. Five distinct time delayed “What?”s in a slightly more ethereal pitch than her usual tone travelled through the room, each one louder than the last, shattering the silence of the Brood Mother’s deep slumber.

As if a switch was flipped, the Brood Mother awoke, its compound eyes suddenly glinting with predatory awareness as it slowly reared up on ten multi-jointed legs. It clacked its mandibles together in what was a surprisingly loud chittering call-to-arms that echoed in turn. From each one of the countless thousands of eggs that filled the cavernous room, smaller dog-sized tier 0 stone scarabs crawled out of their eggs that peeled open along seamed edges at their mother’s command.

As one, they charged headlong towards Typhoeus and Arilla, the two adventurers standing dumbstruck in the half-opened doorway.