The Newt and Demon

Theo wasn’t sure if he would ever get used to this sensation of entering a dungeon. He pressed his hand against the surface of the portal and felt himself being drawn through. It was a sensation not dissimilar to dropping into the void or using the portal back in Broken Tusk. Upon entering the dungeon, he was unsurprised to see a landscape similar to the one he had just been standing in. A large cavern sprawled out before him, featuring the same type of rock as before. However, this time, the glowing fungus was abundant, illuminating the entire area with ease.

“Finally, I can see,” Tresk said, huffing a breath as she entered behind him. Elrin came in shortly after, followed by the massive tiger.

The creature didn’t waste a second, dashing off down a tunnel without making a sound.

“As expected, the monsters here are high level,” Elrin said. “Around level 100.”

“Oh, that’s not disconcerting or anything,” Theo said. “Well, I’m glad we called you.”

“Indeed, you would have likely died,” Elrin said. “Just stay behind me and lend support when you can. I’ll be taking it slow, since these dungeons can hold many surprises.”

Theo was happy with whatever the man wanted to do. He knew enough not to question when someone provided help like this. Maybe Fenian could have come and taken care of the dungeon, but Elrin was the perfect man for the job. The more he thought about it, the more he realized he knew little about his level or even his class.

“What level are you?” Tresk blurted out. She must have sensed what Theo was thinking and took it upon herself to ask.

Elrin tried and failed to hide the smile on his face as he walked forward. Eventually, he pulled up his hood. “I’m pretty high,” he said. “The system for my world differed from this one, so when I accepted the change, it adapted what I already had and gave me a few bonus levels, I guess.”

Elrin led the way down the passage, his gaze shifting from side to side as he searched for threats. “Back in my world, I could absorb the power of dungeons, which gave me more attributes than I should have. When I came to this world, the system took note of that and assigned me the appropriate level. I’m level 782.”

“Damn, boy!” Tresk said. “Save some for the rest of us.”

Elrin actually laughed. “It’s not that impressive; just a lot of hard work. The way your system works makes it very hard to gain levels infinitely.”

“The key is to take a specialization skill for your cores. That’ll allow you to use two cores as your main cores,” Theo said. “You won’t need to level a billion other cores to get to the higher levels.”

“That wasn’t an option for me,” Elrin said. “I didn’t see it, anyway.”

“Yeah, I don’t think you’re getting any levels until the reset,” Tresk said. “The trick Theo is talking about only works for aligned cores. I think.”

“Disappointing, but not unexpected,” Elrin said. “From what I understand, everyone should be reset to Level 1 when the change happens.”

“We’re uncertain about that one,” Theo said. “I have a theory about it: we will be placed on different worlds to start. Those of us who have Thrones of Power will likely begin on our respective worlds, although Tresk and I are unsure. Our bond is unique.”

“Reminds me of the bond I have with Trevor.”

“Yeah, right. Our bond is super special and weird,” Tresk said. “We made an entire planet with it.”

Elrin stopped walking, turning to nod. “That is a powerful bond.”

It was strange talking to Elrin as though he were a normal guy. Since the moment he had arrived, he had been cagey with information and often vanished without a word. He must have had a deep interest in destroying these Ascendant Dungeons. They walked in silence for some time before Theo realized the tiger was ahead, killing kobolds before them. If the man’s pet was as strong as or stronger than him. That was concerning. Exactly how powerful had this guy become before the other worlds had been reset?

“Want to see something cool?” Elrin asked.

“Duh!”

Smiling to himself, Elrin reached for his side, shaking his head a moment later. “The system gave me an inventory to replace my old bags. Still getting used to that…”

Elrin held out his hand, and a gun appeared. It was about his height and had, of all things, a suppressor on the end of it. The weapon was primitive by Theo’s standards, but it felt more advanced than anything a person in a fantasy-themed world could create.

“The visitors from Earth helped me with this,” Elrin said, flashing a devious smile. He pressed his thumb into a lever in the middle of the weapon and it cracked in half. He then slid a hand-length round into the chamber and snapped it closed.

“That’s a lovely sound,” Tresk said, sighing with contentment.

Elrin padded ahead, sticking closer to the edges of the cave’s wall. His tiger came back eventually, entering a similarly ineffectual sneaking pose. The group came to a corner and poked their head around the side. A group of the foul-smelling creatures waited there, all milling around as they awaited their death. As promised, they were between Level 95 and 100.

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Not only were the kobolds a higher level, but they were more advanced gear. Some wore armor that glittered with magic. Their weapons were well taken care of. One even held a staff topped with a glowing magical gem.

“Watch this,” Elrin said, his smile widening as he looked down the sights of his rifle. His body shimmered with energy, the tip of his weapon bursting into magical fire. When he pulled the trigger, it made almost no sound, but threw him back a few feet.

The shot traveled through the air in a blink. It punctured through the armor of the first creature and kept going, leaving behind a trail that tracked a cross-cross pattern through the room. A blink later, and all five kobolds in the room fell over dead. Elrin turned, giving the thumbs-up and smiling.

“Well, that’s a fancy move,” Theo said, craning his neck to ensure all the monsters were dead.

“One of my favorite abilities. Glad the system didn’t take it,” he said, cracking the rifle in half again and replacing the round. “Yet firing that thing still takes 500 health away. I could never fix it, which made it a less-than-favorable weapon.”

“Maybe we could make you a railgun instead,” Theo said, scratching his chin. He noticed the look of confusion on Elrin’s face. “Instead of using gunpowder to accelerate a projectile, we use magic… Kinda.”

“Yeah, just think of it like this: thing go fast,” Tresk said.

“I’m interested.”

Clearing through the dungeon was a breeze with Elrin. Theo didn’t realize exactly how easy it was going to be with him and the tiger coming along when they had started. While he cleared the dungeon, the alchemist concerned himself with a few reagents he had spotted along the way. Tresk had always been his eyes within dungeons, collecting reagents where she could find them. But she had never been in a Kobold Dungeon, and there were a few interesting mushrooms.

All the glowing fungus that clung to the walls was not alchemically reactive. But nestled between the various rocks was a kind of mushroom growing in wet bunches. The base of it was gray with spots of brown here and there. As Elrin cleared another group of kobolds, he cut a sample free and held it up for inspection. As expected, the properties weren’t revealed so he used his Reagent Deconstruction skill before inspecting it again.

[Lizard Beard Mushroom]

[Alchemy Ingredient]

Epic

Do lizards have beards? Does it matter? I named this mushroom. Deal with it.

Properties:

[Scales] [Tails] [Frail]

Theo snorted a laugh. “Why do they all rhyme?”

Not only did the properties rhyme, but the description had been created by a Loremaster. A grumpy Loremaster at that. They had named the reagent and given no context to what it did. Which was pretty annoying, but that was their right. He had a feeling the Tails property would actually give someone a tail. The Frail property would likely make a good poison, and Scales would be a defensive property. The Scales property reminded him of Carapace, which covered a person in chitinous shells. That effect was cumbersome, but effective.

“I never had a knack for that,” Elrin said, coming alongside Theo to inspect the mushroom. “The old alchemy system was different, though.”

“It’s not that hard,” Theo said, moving from the first cluster of mushrooms to another. This one seemed harder, as though the gray-brown cap itself was a stone. “There’s a lot of class-specific stuff that helps me. I guess you get to a point where you see a mushroom and just know it is alchemically reactive, but the system helps a lot.”

This time, Theo deconstructed the reagent without inspecting it. It revealed the first three properties, but refused to help with the fourth. That had been a trend lately, and he didn’t know what it meant.

“What did you do there?” Elrin asked.

“Broke the reagent into its base parts so I can see what kind of effects it has,” Theo said. “You’re left with this dust, which is Primal Essence. The most pure form of an essence I can currently make. Problem is, it doesn’t interact like it should so it often needs reprocessing.”

“Sounds complicated. My old system started by picking a recipe from a list. As I climbed the levels, it got more complex until I was just doing everything by hand. This system seems like a blend,” Elrin said. “Not sure which I like more.”

Theo nodded along, grabbing another sample of the mushroom and inspecting it.

[Ironcap Mushroom]

[Alchemy Ingredient]

Rare

A hard-topped mushroom that grows in the deep places of the world. The cap is said to grow large and hard enough to provide a shield for the deep-dwelling diminutive races of the world.

Properties:

[Ironskin] [Defense] [Quench]

Defense was a repeat from before. It was a useful property, but Theo didn’t need another source of that. But Ironskin was likely a better version of Barkskin, which the alchemist was excited about. Quench was a weird one that he couldn’t get a sense for. It felt like a property that would affect an item on the surface, but that feeling wasn’t strong. He couldn’t tell until he brewed it into a potion. The good thing was there were plenty of both types of mushroom scattered around the area.

“I’ve got plenty of Dragon Talon Mushrooms,” Theo said, gesturing to a group of the spiky mushrooms. “Seriously. I’m disappointed we aren’t seeing any extremely rare reagents.”

“Does the magical density of an area determine the quality of reagent?” Elrin asked.

“It directly affects both quality and type,” Theo said. He explained the problem they ran into with having low-quality reagents screwing up the new system brought by Tero’gal’s alchemy. “But the one thing I haven’t studied well is how dungeons affect reagent growth.”

“That’s why you should run more ascendant dungeons with me,” Elrin said. “I’m sure you could figure it out after a few.”

Theo nodded, following along with Elrin as they headed down more passages. The alchemist hadn’t really run a normal dungeon. He always ended up in these weird dungeons, and felt as though he would always be denied the authentic experience. Although this was an ascendant dungeon, it seemed mostly normal.

Keeping track of time in the dungeon was hard. They descended several floors and Tresk even got in on the action along the way. She stuck to the shadows, applying crippling poisons to monsters to aid Elrin in the fights. He hardly seemed to need the help, though. Each room was easy for him to clear, and he wasn’t even breaking a sweat by the time they approached what felt like the last room.

“We have a boss up ahead,” Elrin said, crouching and slinking toward the corner of a room. He clicked his tongue. “This might be a problem.”

Theo drew closer to the corner, his brows furrowing as he set eyes on the monster. It was another creature like the one that had emerged from the dungeon’s portal. Another kobold-dragon-centaur thing that shambled around a massive arena. This one seemed in worse shape compared to the first one. It had trouble walking with one of its four feet, and the wing on its left side seemed broken. But its face was twisted into a snarl as it searched the room, its head tilting up as it sniffed the air.

“Chimeras are annoying,” Elrin said, preparing his weapon. “Get ready for some weird stuff. I’ll shout if I need any help.”

“There goes my hero,” Tresk said with a sigh.

“Thought you hated that guy,” Theo said.

“Just a friendly rivalry. I respect anyone who can cut monsters in half, and boy howdy can that guy cut monsters in half.”