The First Archmage

The first Floor is denoted by the stairs stopping in a large cavern, and Michael informs us that the next set of stairs is at the far end of the Floor. In other words, we have to travel across the Floor to get to it.

“However,” he adds. “It’s a straight walk to them up until the fifth Floor, when you fight the first Floor Boss. After that, you have to know where they’re at or get lucky in finding them. That, or you can jump down the holes to the next floor.”

His tail starts swishing when he talks about jumping down the holes, and I can’t help but wonder if that has anything to do with the incident the last time he was in the Dungeon.”

“I’ll train here on the first floor,” Warren says. “Go to the second only if I feel confident enough in my strength to pass it.”

“Okay,” I say. “And don’t hesitate to flee if you feel like you need to. Before you go, though, I want to pose a question to the two of you.”

“Okay,” Warren says.

“What if we split up?” I ask. “Train on our own? Not fully split up, but we’re at three vastly different power levels. I could obliterate Michael with ease, and Michael can easily kick your ass, Warren. The three of us should be training at our own level, instead of stuck with the others. Here, we can do that. We can meet up every now and then, to share progress or just hang out, but other than that, do our own thing, train our own way. That way, you guys aren’t stuck fighting monsters too strong for you or Michael and I aren’t stuck fighting monsters too weak for us. We’ll get stronger faster that way, I believe.”

“I agree,” Michael nods. “We’d only hold you back, and if we were to all go with you, you’d be constantly saving us. We’ll grow faster separately.”

“Alright,” Warren says. “I agree with that.”

“Let’s set a time limit,” I say. “In six months, we’ll meet up again. Until then, we’ll train separately, do our own things. If we make it to a Class Advancement Quest, we can accept it before then and increase our Class. I wouldn’t want you to be stuck a few Levels because we weren’t together. Looking at you, Michael.”

He smiles at me.

“We’ll meet back up,” I say. “In the Guild above six months from today.”

“Uh,” Warren suddenly looks concerned. “You’re not going to try to master another Tier III spell from your Grimoire, are you?”

“No,” I smile at him. “That would be a waste of Mana. I’ll probably drop in here twice a day, and work on condensing my Mana and expanding the pool as well. I will work on learning some new spells, though – they saw me use fire magics, and will probably prepare for me being a magician of fire magics, especially since I said I’m of the Order of the Violet Flame. I need stronger fire, and to counter it, they’ll probably work on water and ice. So, I’m going to learn ice and lightning. I will melt their ice and evaporate their water, but also freeze their water, blast apart their ice, and turn their water deadly to the touch.”

“You’re evil,” Michael says.

“I’m chaotic,” I look at him. “I do what I must to achieve my goals. My goal is to restore Jozan and complete this Blood Quest. It’s also to establish a true Order of the Violet Flame.”

And complete this other Quest as well.

Quest: Create Order

Requirements:

1 Member (Minimum of 25 needed)

Establish a headquarters

Establish an emblem

Establish a primary purpose

Time Limit: 5 Years

Reward: 1,000 Experience

Penalty for Failure: -50% Experience and CHA gain for 5 years, CHA is halved

I still haven’t decided on a primary purpose or an emblem for it yet, though I do have an idea for the emblem.

“Why do you want to create an Order?” Michael asks. “I mean, I understand you don’t want to be a part of your father’s anymore, but-”

That’s it. That’s why. Because something isn’t right with the Ancient Order. I don’t like that. I don’t like the way he talked, and wanted to hand me four rings with bounties on them. I got the sense that he was lying, and about a lot of things.

What would I have had to give up, in order to unlock my Bloodline with them?

Just what do they really do? I find it hard to believe they really spread knowledge to everyone. I mean, they probably do, but for a price. I don’t care about that, though.

Protection.

Jozan was destroyed because of human greed and desire for power. My own village had to flee their homes or risk being slain – and they were all there, leading me to wonder why Michael thought most of them were slain in the first place. Warren was kept as a slave, and Michael, while not a slave, still faces the same hate that Warren does for not being human.

Safety.

I want my Order to be a place of safety, a place where people of all species can feel safe and learn from each other, where they can live in harmony with each other, not in fear of abuse or exploitation.

After the six months are up, I’m going to ask Michael if he knows of any open spaces I can use for my Order’s headquarters, somewhere people can get to easily.

That means I’ll need to tear apart the barriers preventing travel between continents…

Looking at Michael, I realize that he knew about the secondary form of Dungeons. He’s not from my continent – none of the wolfen beastborn tribes have black fur. I’ll talk to him about that at some other point in time.

“What?” Michael asks.

“We can talk about it later,” I say. “Just thinking about stuff, about another Quest I have.”

Quest Altered:

Quest: Creator Order difficulty has increased, and now has a time limit of 10 years from start to compensate, reward remains the same

System Quest!

Quest: Remove Boundary of Sages

Requirements:

Remove the Boundary of Sages which separates the eighteen continents and regions of the world Nierfa

Time Limit: 9 Years

Reward: 10,000 Experience

Accept: Y/N?

No penalty for failure on this one… guess because I decided to do it as part of another Quest, there’s no penalty for failure. That reward, though… if completing the Blood Quest will net me 25,000 Experience, just how difficult is removing the Boundary of Sages?

I nod as Michael asks me what Quest.

“To create the Order,” I answer. “I need a minimum of 25 members, a headquarters, an emblem, and a primary purpose. I have the primary purpose, now, but the others… it’ll be awhile. The Quest did just increase the time requirement, though.”

“It has a time requirement?” He interrupts me. “Sorry, Gavin, that’s just weird. Most regular Quests don’t have time limits.”

Then why do I have two with time limits?

“It does, though,” I say.

“Something must happen if you don’t create the order,” he says. “But then… why would the time limit increase, then? That’s just weird. Quests don’t normally change like that – I’ve only ever heard of timed Quests losing time, not gaining some.”

Something will happen if I don’t create the Order? What? And what’s with the Boundary of Sages, then? Do I need to take it down in the next nine years? I get a penalty for not doing one, but do for the other. This is confusing.

“We can think on this later,” Michael says. “You have plenty of time, right?”

“More than nine years,” I nod. “Plenty of time.”

“Okay,” he says. “We can talk about it after we reunite in six months.”

“Okay,” Warren says. “Then I’m off. I’ll see you two around.”

He waves, then disappears off into a cavern. Michael and I quickly make our way through the Floor, and I note only goblins as monsters. A single hit is all I need to kill them, but the short, squat green things are interesting to me. I might come back at some later point to study them a little bit more.

The second, third, and fourth Floors also have Goblins, and they get progressively stronger the deeper the Floor. The fifth floor is empty, and I look at Michael.

“Bosses only respawn after an hour,” he says. “That way, if it was several parties that fought it, they all have time to do emergency heals and move on to the safe Floor.”

“Ah.”

We pass by, and the Floors have some goblins, but also spiders. Michael stops on Floor 10 again, and I pass through to Floor 11, hoping for another boss fight. None.

Who’s killing all my Bosses?

Down another Level, through the safe zone, then down to the thirteenth Floor. The monsters here are easy, they’re a mix of spiders, goblins, bats, and kobolds. Floor 15 adds in some wolves, but they aren’t too tough, even with me being by myself.

Floor 17…

I smile when I see the orc standing there, fighting a team of ten Adventurers. They’re struggling in the fight, and after a quick assessment, I determine that they may be a little underpowered for this battle. They haven’t even scratched the orc’s hide. The big, tall, ugly green orc that’s swinging its club around. I watch them for a few minutes, and determine that they don’t have a chance in hell of killing this thing. In fact, I think they’ve begun to realize it.

I summon a Firebolt, concentrating the energy within it, increasing its power, then fire it. I summon two more immediately after and fire them as well, each one hitting the orc in the same spot in the chest, the third one piercing through its hide.

The orc stops moving, turning still for a moment, then explodes, its guts and blood turning to shadows and dissolving after a moment. The ten Adventurers stop moving, staring at the decent-sized crystal sitting on the ground.

+20 Dekami Experience!

+20 Class Experience!

The Adventurers turn and look at me, and then their eyes widen and mouths drop in shock.

“That was easy,” I comment as I approach them, making my way past them to the magic crystal. Drops in here aren’t looting automatically into my ring, and that’s annoying. I place a hand on the crystal – roughly twice the height of a watermelon and just a little bit slimmer – and it disappears into my ring. The ring’s starting to get full, there isn’t much space in it after my kingdom’s wealth. “Sorry for claiming the kill from you, but you weren’t even hurting it, and I wanted to see if I could. Looks like I really can handle the third Boss. I wonder why she only said the first three, and not the fourth?”

“The fourth is a wyvern,” one of the warriors approaches me. “Resilient to physical and magical attacks, has two legs, then foreclaws on its wings. Its claws and its bite are dangerous, and they’re particularly nasty to kill.”

“I’ve killed a wyvern before,” I shrug. “Shredded its wings with my magic, first, then, as it was crippled, sliced off its head.”

The Adventurers all stare at me as if I’ve grown a second head.

“What?” I ask.

“Killing a wvyern isn’t that easy,” the warrior says.

“It was for me,” I say. “Though I will admit, that wyvern in particular was only four years old, so its magical resistances hadn’t been fully developed. An adult wyvern might pose a small threat to me. However, I fought it alone, and I do have a party.”

The Adventurers look past me in confusion.

“They’re weaker than me,” I explain. “And are training on previous Floors. I’m looking for a Floor with more of a challenge. I suppose, since it’s a wyvern for the fourth boss, I should train a little bit more before challenging myself.”

“Past here,” the warrior says. “You’ll be finding larger, stronger monsters than you have before. Weaker orcs, trolls, giants – mixed in with the smaller monsters, of course. It proves a deadly combination. After the safe area on the twenty-fourth Floor, you’ll start coming across undead. That is, if you make it past the wyvern. A team finally made it to the boss on the forty-seventh Floor, and it’s a Scaled Wyvern. Couldn’t even scratch its scales. Those things are far, far more powerful than any wyvern you’d come across.”

“Sounds interesting,” I say. “I have an issue with Undead, so I probably won’t go past the fourth safe area.”

“How are you so powerful?” He asks. “You’re only a child.”

“I’m not just any child,” I say. “I’m me.”

“That doesn’t explain anything,” the warrior says.

“Nor does you being here,” I say. “Considering your Levels are far too low, even as a team of ten with three Novices, to be able to take on the Orc Boss that was in here, yet you were.”

“Those are two unrelated things.”

“Indeed,” I say. “So mind your own business.”

“Alan,” one of the mages steps forward. “Look at his right hand.”

The warrior looks at my hand, then frowns.

“Judging by the magic in it,” the mage says. “That’s a very, very large spatial ring. I’ve only seen two others near that size in my life, and each of them belonged to the head of a wizard’s Guild, including my own.”

Of course it’s massive – it has to hold the entire Wealth of Jozan. I’m watching it, until the king returns and his kingdom is restored.

“Good luck returning to the surface,” I begin walking to the other entrance. “I may see you around.”

The next Floor is a large cavern with grass covering the bottom, a few huts built up here and there, but not much else. All of the safe Floors have looked like this so far. I decide to rest for a few minutes, since it’s taken me a few hours to make it down here. Once I’m recovered, I’ll begin the trek downward, to see just how far I can go.