The Newt and Demon

Theo watched through Tresk’s eyes as she entered the dungeon. He had never seen an open, grassy field packed with so many monsters. By the time she turned to escape, they were upon her. That’s when he shouted for her not to enter.

“That bad, huh?” Tresk asked.

“I couldn’t even count the number of monsters inside,” Theo said, shaking his head. “It was an endless field of them. A few thousand, maybe?”

“As I suspected,” Xol’sa said, “a dungeon within a dungeon is not a good thing. We were lucky it was only a ton of monsters and not something worse.”

“Oh, come on,” Sarisa said. “We can take a few thousand monsters. Shouldn’t be that hard.”

“We need some ideas,” Aarok countered.

“Let’s nuke it,” Tresk said.

“Items cannot be thrown through a dungeon entrance,” Luras said.

Xol’sa placed his finger on his chin and tapped it. “That’s not entirely true,” he said. “Normally, you can’t put an item through a dungeon entrance. But I am a wizard and a Dungeon Engineer. If I wrap it with a good amount of spatial energy, I can trick the entrance into thinking it’s a person, or at least something that’s allowed to enter.”

If Theo used an ability to enhance the power of his improvised bomb, he was fairly certain he could nuke all the monsters at once. But he had some questions about that.

“Will the blast affect us out here?” Theo asked. “I can make a bomb powerful enough to level a city.”

“We should be perfectly fine thanks to the dimensional magic of the dungeon,” Xol’sa said, “But did you get a sense of the timescale inside? That might affect our approach.”

“About fifty-to-one maybe?” Theo said, just guessing. When he watched Tresk enter the dungeon, he felt his mind being pulled and stretched. That number was what his intuition told him.

“Excellent. How about you withdraw that bomb, and we make this work?”

Like any good paranoid person, Theo always had a nuke in his inventory. Perhaps that says something about his mental state, but things have been rather weird during his time in this world, so he felt justified. Although he hadn’t told anyone, he had since updated the design of this weapon. It relied on the fact that when two opposite essences interacted, they created a powerful explosion. The one he now held in his hand took advantage of interactions between fire- and water-based essences.

“I had constructed this one in case the undead got out of hand,” Theo said, holding it at arm’s length. “The trigger is particularly sensitive, and the reaction is fairly devastating.”

“What did you call it?” Tresk asked. “A fuel-air bomb?”

“Something like that,” Theo said, invoking his Shadow Wrap skill. His willpower was infused into the bomb, making the weapon’s devastating effects unimaginable. He watched in his foresight as Xol’sa approached and tried to take it from him. “Don’t touch it,” he said. “If anybody, aside from me, touches it, it will blow up.”

“Ah, of course,” Zulsas said, bowing his head. Instead, he came over and held his hand over the bomb. An orb of glittering magic appeared around it. “Now you only need to toss the bomb into the portal, and it should pass through like normal. How long will the effects linger?”

“Give it about a minute for the fire cloud to fully form, and then another minute for the heat to settle. It’s mainly a bomb based on force,” Theo said. “So two or three minutes.”

“Which means we’re here for about four hours,” Aarok said, jerking his head to the side. “Let’s make camp and settle in.”

As the party broke up, Theo approached the portal and held the bomb in his hand. He looked to Xol’sa for confirmation. The wizard nodded, so Theo gave it a light toss. It impacted the shimmering portal, and for a moment he thought it would explode there. But then it just kept going, entering the dungeon. If anything was happening on the other side, he couldn’t know. The plan was to use Tresk to test if it was safe inside after five hours had passed.

Camping atop the giant monster seemed weird, but the adventuring party was fine with it. Everyone was surprised by the lack of monsters on the surface of Frank, but they weren’t complaining. Instead, they broke into their little groups and began chatting and snacking. It was up to Theo and Zarail to maintain barriers to keep everyone safe. They sensed no more Death magic coming from the monster, but one couldn’t be too careful when it came to dangerous magic.

As the party waited for something to happen with the dungeon portal, Theo thought about how useful it would be to get a spell or alchemy ingredient with the void property. But even Xol’sa didn’t know of any spells that existed with that element. Even his spatial-based magic was considered rare, and he often wondered if it was all that useful. It had many limitations.

As Theo relaxed by the dungeon porthole, a system message he’d never seen before appeared. He laughed as he read it, then gawked as the message reproduced, first hundreds, then thousands of times.

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Unable to gain experience for a kill while you’re outside of the dimensional space.

“Well that answers that question,” Theo said with a shrug. He explained the situation to the others, who laughed at his misfortune.

“I can’t expect to get experience if you’re not there, right?” Tresk asked. “Just be happy we have a safe way to clear it. Wait, will this work on the other dungeons?”

“It depends if the dungeon is structured the same way as this one,” Xol’sa said. “The only reason this is working is because the interior of the dungeon we are attacking is a single room.”

Dungeons were normally segmented into floors a person had to clear. Both the dungeon they were currently in and the dungeon he had tossed the bomb into were only one room. This got the alchemist thinking: would this kind of attack work on the dungeon he was standing in? He thought about it for a bit but questioned whether the blast’s effects would reach Frank. Even if they did, they might have to clear the secondary dungeon, but it might be an approach for the future.

“I ran a few dungeons in my day, you know,” Zarali said.

Theo, Zarali, Xol’sa, and Tresk were lounging around near the portal. There had been no monsters since they had arrived at the portal, and they all doubted some would come. The points when Frank banked to one side were uncomfortable, but they were getting strangely used to the motion.

“You never talk about where you were born or what you did after Belgar went,” Theo said.

Zarali shrugged. “Not much to say about it, really. Dronon have always carried with them a stigma. Most broods aren’t hunted, but most demon hunters don’t care if you’re from Zagmon or Drogramath.”

“I met a dronon once,” Tresk said. She shook her head at Theo. “A dronon that isn’t Theo.”

“We met a few when Fenian turned the Zagmon dronon to paste,” Theo said.

“No, there was this green one that passed through town once. The locals didn’t really care, but it caused a stir elsewhere,” Tresk said. “I wonder what happened to that guy.”

“Sounds like a Bakor dronon,” Zarali said with a shiver. “You’re lucky the dead didn’t rise from their graves.”

“I dunno he was kinda hot,” Tresk said.

“Yes, you’ll feel quite hot as he wrenches your soul from your body,” Xolsa said with a shake of his head. “Have some standards, woman.”

“I suppose I’m more interested in this creature,” Theo said, patting his hand on the ground. “Can’t imagine a creature like this in the real world.”

“Right? Just makes ya wanna stab something,” Tresk said. “Well, guess we’ll see a real one of these outside if we mess this mission up.”

The conversation shifted to a technical analysis of the way two dungeons interacted and the implications of all that. Unless someone could give me the short version, Theo didn’t understand exactly how it worked, and he wouldn’t try. The moment time got involved with the interaction of energies, stuff got weird. That wasn’t even considering how strange dungeons were to begin with. No, he was happy to blow it all up and keep his people safe from monsters. Xol’sa could contend with the difficult topics.

Theo was drifting in and out of the conversation when something caught his eye. Sarisa held a large stick above her head. A moment later, she brought it down in a wide arc. He winced when it slammed into Rowan’s head. To everyone’s surprise, the man didn’t react. She then handed the stick to her brother, and the same thing occurred.

“What the hell are you two doing?” Theo asked.

“We’re playing smack-wince,” Sarisa explained.

Theo blinked a few times, allowing the information to settle. Yeah, of course Broken Tuskers would come up with this game. He watched as it developed. It wasn’t just that they were hitting each-other with the stick. There was another step.

“Good god,” Theo said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“You never played smack-wince?” Tresk asked. “Watch the next part.”

Sarisa removed something from her inventory, placing it on the end of the stick. She smacked Rowan again, and this time he winced. A small purple scorpion was on the end of the stick. With this smack, it stung him in the face. Theo’s mouth fell open, the urge to yell at the village idiots bubbling to the surface. But he settled back on his butt, watching in awe. Rowan took his hit, and Sarisa didn’t make a move.

“I can’t cure venom!” Theo shouted to the pair.

“I can,” Zarali said, raising her hand.

“Seriously? Don’t encourage them,” Theo said, jabbing her in the ribs with his elbow. “I have enough trouble keeping them under control. Next thing you know, they’re going to start playing stab-stab. That’s a game where they stab each other and see which one bleeds out first.”

Zarali sprung to her feet, jogging over. Theo sighed. Rowan had stopped breathing and was laying on the ground, his face all puffed up. It was amazing that anyone in Broken Tusk had survived this long. But he suspected that it wasn’t a town-wide game that had been played, but something the more rambunctious folks engaged in. Healing magic swirled over the man’s body and he gasped for air.

Aarok was quick to yell at the pair. They could play all the games they wanted once they were home, but if they were in a dungeon they had to behave. It was even worse when Theo realized Sarisa hadn’t pulled the scorpion from her inventory, but her pocket. As far as he knew, living things couldn’t be drawn into a person’s inventory. Not even if they were bugs.

At least things calmed down after that. Someone withdrew an artifice fire from nowhere and began cooking sausages. Others broke off into small groups to play card games. But most importantly, Sarisa and Rowan stopped bashing each other in the head with large sticks. Now the waiting began. Theo and Tresk checked the entrance every now-and-then with their future sight. At first the interior of the dungeon was wreathed in flames. Then it was too hot to enter. When the dust finally cleared—six hours later—the area had been completely destroyed, but it was walkable.

Aarok gathered everyone up and prepared his troops to enter. “We’re going in together,” he announced. “Same deal as last time. Stay inside the stealth bubble, and keep an eye out for anything. We’re heading straight for the dungeon core, and there shouldn’t be enemies.”

“We’ll finally see if my technique to destroy the core works,” Xol’sa said, chuckling to himself.