The Runic Artist

Nate stared down the hole as Frick continued to excavate it for them using the Powerful Earth rune currently imbued into Nate’s robe. The Familiar was already over twenty metres down and Nate was beginning to get worried that his Spatial Awareness had been wrong. Could a Dungeon really be found buried this deep in solid rock? Every other Dungeon they had found had space around it to access it. Even when its placement was inside a tree, it still had a hollow around it that meant you could reach the spatial anomaly that marked the entrance. Just as he was starting to think he had made a mistake the rock and dirt beneath the hovering Frick collapsed.

“There’s tunnels beneath the Plains?” he asked, turning to Aisling.

“Not that I was aware of, but the Plains stretch for over a hundred kilometres. It wouldn’t be surprising to find that some areas have tunnels beneath them,” she replied, stepping forward to fly down the hole.

Nate followed quickly with Kiri, using a barrier to lower them down into the crudely carved shaft. Reaching the bottom they alighted on a rough stoney floor that looked incidentally carved rather than created. The angle of the sun above made sure that only a trickle of light managed to reach all the way down the shaft and he activated his Light rune so that Kiri could see. He wasn’t sure if Aisling had been unable to see in the dark as well, but considering she was a Platinum Badge he suspected she likely had some method of piercing the darkness.

The tunnel they stood in stretched off in both directions. The incline was relatively flat and the floor uneven. The tunnel was silent except for the shuffling of their feet and with no sign of anything nearby, he started walking toward the spatial anomaly he could sense. Frick had been pretty accurate with his hole and they barely had to walk two metres before they found a small alcove in the wall, hidden by the gloom.

Nate pointed into the alcove and Aisling responded by pointing at them both and then at the ground before stepping into the darkened nook and vanishing through the Dungeons spatial aperture.

After only a few seconds she was back with them, a look of concern painting her tanned face, “Follow me in. I need your eyes Nate. I am confident this Dungeon is Low Rare but I want to confirm before I allow you both to challenge it.”

As the Platinum vanished again he stepped forward with Kiri. As with any time he portaled, he kept his Spatial Awareness active, trying to divine the nature of the spatial tunnel. Any information could be useful in helping him to develop his Skills.

Entering the Dungeon they found themselves once more standing in dark tunnels. It was the first time he’d seen a Dungeon reflect the area it had been found in, however what truly grabbed his attention was the very faint prickling on his skin. It was the first time in months he’d felt the tingling of an area of higher mana density than his body was comfortable with. He was about to ask Kiri if she felt the same when his Eyes of the Runic Artist triggered a notification. Bringing the notification up he forced it to display in the air so the others could read it.

You have entered a Dungeon!

The Assessment Period will begin now. You have five minutes to choose to leave the Dungeon before the entrance will be sealed.

Dungeon Name: Tunnels of I’abeax

Dungeon Tier: Rare (Low)

Dungeon Challenges: 6 + 1 Bonus Challenge.

Exit Conditions: Survive one day.

Walk your Path. Reach your Goal. Become One with Mana.

After they’d all read it Aisling motioned back towards the exit and stepping through they found themselves once more in the tunnels below the Plains of Saulon.

“So we’ve confirmed it’s Low Rare. That’s good,” said Aisling, opening her mouth to continue before Kiri interrupted her.

“What’s Low Rare mean? I thought it just went Uncommon, Rare then Epic?” she asked.

“It’s a way of determining the likely level range of the Dungeon’s denizens. Common and Uncommon both have small enough ranges that it’s not really relevant. Common tends to max out at ten while Uncommon maxes out at thirty,” Aisling explained. “Rare however can be anything from thirty to sixty. So it’s normally divided up into Low, which has a range of thirty to forty. Mid, which has a range of forty to fifty and High which has a range of fifty to sixty.

“If it had been Mid Rare I would’ve forbidden you from trying this Dungeon. The risk would’ve been higher than I was comfortable with. Low Rare is doable and the fact that the Curator has set the exit conditions to be a day's survival rather than completing a Challenge makes me think you should both be okay. But there’s a few other things to be aware of. The first thing is, even the lowest level enemies in this Dungeon are going to be at least level thirty. Secondly, as Dungeons go up in Tiers, they also go up in size. This Dungeon will be noticeably larger than the two you’ve both completed. You could be in this Dungeon for days. Maybe longer. Only take Challenges you're confident in defeating and for the love of the Gods you don’t need to beat the entire Dungeon. I am asking you both to be careful and stay as safe as possible,” she finished, giving them both a pointed look.

He nodded his agreement, Kiri following a moment later. Together they made sure they had everything they needed. They’d moved Kiri’s bags into his spatial storage and Kiri now had her own much smaller storage space in the form of a skill called Soul Space. So far it wasn’t even a cubic metre but it would grow with the Skill over time and for now, she had some food, extra daggers and clothes stored in there. Frick had commented that the skill was likely storing the items in a pocket space in the Spiritual Realm which Nate thought offered some interesting opportunities down the line. Frick however had strongly discouraged him from trying to visit the Spiritual Realm unless he spent some time raising his Willpower significantly.

With all their checks done under Aisling’s watchful eyes, they were finally ready to challenge their second Dungeon as a team. At Low Rare, maybe this one would pose more of a challenge to them, but honestly, he had his doubts. They’d absolutely crushed their last Dungeon. Stepping up from Uncommon to Low Rare was an increase of a single rung on the difficulty ladder, how bad could it be? With a final wave to Aisling, Kiri stepped through the aperture, followed by him a moment later.

Standing in the dark tunnels he watched with his Eyes of the Runic Artist as Kiri pulled out the small Light rune he had made for her and activated it. The light illuminated all the things his eyes hadn’t been able to see. His vision through the skill was capable of revealing mana which made it easier to see the shape of the tunnel, but not the details. The craggy tunnel was barely tall enough for him to stand in and the brown and grey stone led downwards away from them in a single direction. The only things behind them were a rough wall and the spatial anomaly that indicated the Dungeons exit.

With a nod to Kiri, he sent Frick out ahead of them.

“I got this, Boss. Nothin’ will get past Scout Frick!” cackled his Familiar as the spirit began floating down the sloped tunnel.

They followed as Nate spun up a barrier around himself and a second around Kiri, before pulling out one of his Mana Gathering Arrays. He dropped five partially filled mana gems into the cube before closing it. The rush of mana towards them as he activated the Mana Gathering Array raised the tingle on his skin from a faint distraction to an annoyance but he couldn’t miss this chance to fill up as many of his mana gems as possible. Besides, who knew how much mana he was going to be forced to burn to battle whatever existed within these tunnels.

“What do you think it will be?” Kiri asked, reading his mind.

“I just hope it isn’t spiders,” he replied.

“Scared of them?” she queried with a teasing smirk.

“No, though considering where I grew up maybe I should be. They’re just creepy and I am a bit worried about poisons I guess. Not something we’ve really faced before,” he said, eyes darting around the walls as he kept a look out for odd mana structures.

“That’s pretty fair. Dad always said poisons were the weapon of ambush predators. So, if we run into any spiders, let's hope they’re big ones,” she replied, her face getting more serious as the noise in the tunnel changed. It had been quiet until now but up ahead they could hear a faint whistling.

As they caught up to Frick, they found themselves on a ledge staring out over a gaping abyss. The shrill sound of the wind flowing through the open air of the cavern was a constant drone and their little bloom of light around the rune held by Kiri revealed a path down the hollowed out shaft to both sides of them.

“Left or right,” Kiri asked.

“Left,” he replied without a thought. Just keep going left was all he was thinking.

Frick led the way again as they walked down the path to their left which then led back into the walls of the shaft and down another tunnel. They strung the party out with a couple of metres between each other with Frick at the front and Nate at the back. They’d been walking for almost ten minutes when the silence was broken by a scream from Kiri. She was sitting on her ass with a piece of bone sticking out from her shin alongside a metal bolt. He hadn’t seen or heard anything and looked around wildly but there was nothing nearby. He moved to help his best friend but she was already pulling the bolt out as she grit her teeth through the pain. Letting the thin bolt clatter to the floor he could see her soul energy vanishing into the wound as it repaired itself visibly before his eyes. He wasn’t certain but it seemed to him that it took more soul energy than she usually used.

“The fuck was that?” he asked as the pain finally left her eyes, the wound vanished along with a quarter of her soul energy.

“Shit that hurt. Bone apparently takes wayyy more soul energy to regenerate compared to stab wounds,” Kiri said, slowly standing back up. “ I didn’t see anything, did you? One minute I was walking then the next I had a bolt sticking out of my leg,”

The three of them spent a minute inspecting the tunnel before Nate found it. A small hole in the curve of a rock on the floor. Even with the light cast by the rune the hole was hidden in a shadow. Using his Earth rune he’d excavated the rock to find a mechanical trap built into it. He was torn between feeling vindicated and feeling apprehensive. Dungeons had traps. That was apparently sometimes a thing. What was worse though, he quickly realised, was that his Eyes of the Runic Artist couldn’t detect the traps. That meant he and Frick needed to use Spatial Awareness. But it only had a functional range for the sphere of awareness of two and a half metres. That meant they could only detect the mechanical traps when they were close. He could use his Barriers to defend against them at that range he supposed. The last one had only gotten Kiri because the trap had already been inside of the barrier itself. If there were any that had a significantly further range they’d struggle to detect them but the barrier should stop those.

“Well, fuck. That’s going to be annoying,” he griped.

He altered the barriers' shape around Kiri and himself to be much closer to their skin so that the same problem wouldn’t happen again. He was about to suggest he go second behind Frick, so that his Spatial Awareness could find any in case Frick missed one, when they heard the soft patter of feet slapping stone from further down the tunnel. Staring with his Eyes of the Runic Artist he made out a number of small shapes outlined by mana approaching them quickly. A moment later his identification ability triggered multiple times as he got a few different results.

Kobold Warrior

Clawed Warrior (R) (24) / Clawed Slasher (U) (7)

Kobold Warrior

Clawed Warrior (R) (29) / Clawed Slasher (U) (2)

Kobold Trapper

Clawed Trapper (R) (27) / Clawed Digger (U) (5)

Kobold Sneaker

Clawed Rogue (R) (28) / Clawed Digger (U) (3)

Nate quickly relayed his findings as he counted their enemies, “Seven of them. One Trapper, two Rogues and four Warriors. They’re all at least level thirty. The usual?”

Kiri grinned as she pulled four daggers from her Soul Space, catching two with her hands as two strings of soul energy mixed with mana caught the other two.

He thought it made her look a bit like a scorpion.

“The usual,” she agreed, excitement evident in her voice.

“Kobolds,” Frick said with disgust. “Discount goblins at best. Where is the in-fighting? Where is the self hatred?”

Nate had to agree as his Divine Translation picked up on the creature's words. One of the two rogues was directing the rest and as Nate heard their sibilant words direct the others to attack, he sent a mental command to Frick.

“They’re trying to let the Trapper set something up. Fire Trap beneath him!”

That was all he had time for before the fight was joined. The creatures moved faster than he had expected, closing with the two of them quickly. Moving behind Kiri he prepared to play the role of support and firepower. In his eyes he could see Kiri glowing with soul energy as she began dancing amongst four of the kobolds, her four daggers flicking and flashing about her as she dodged the claws of the creatures. Now that they were standing in the light of the tunnel, he could see that they didn’t all look exactly the same. Some had longer claws, others were noticeably larger while one of them had black scales instead of the orange and dull yellow the others seemed to favour.

As both his barriers were already in use, he let mana flow to his Powerful Earth rune and Projectile rune, creating a simple runic array. Imbue Intent was activated to shape the results and he started peppering the kobolds with spears of earth. The little lizard-creatures were very durable and even with the constant attacks he was barely able to do more than leave a few cuts on them. The exception was the black scaled variant whose arm he managed to break. Unfortunately he lost track of the kobold a moment later.

The small distraction he hoped he was creating allowed Kiri to score a few strikes, her flickering daggers started finding the vulnerable areas of the creatures. Shrieks of pain and anger filled the tunnel in response. Before the kobolds could begin their counterattack, a plume of flame went up further down the tunnel and a cackling Frick was seen floating near a slightly charred Kobold Trapper that was screeching in fury. The Fire, Gather, and Release runic array had worked well to create a fire trap, but even that was apparently not powerful enough to kill one of these fuckers. Maybe if it had enough more time to charge? The first kobold dropped a moment later, Kiri managing to lodge a dagger in the eye of the black scaled variant.

Before they could celebrate Nate felt a lance of pain and looked down to see a small, thin metal bolt sticking out of his arm. He pulled it out with a slight gasp and created a Life Drain runic array that he let settle on one of the Kobold Warriors to start healing him. He was confused how the bolt had gotten through his barrier but that would have to come after. His mana felt like it was draining faster than it should be and he started building up a new rune array to finish this fight. The array was a simple combination of Water and Exclusion but he had to spend a moment building up the mana till he was comfortable it would be enough to end the fight. The seconds ticked by and he felt another sting of pain but ignored it as he continued to flood the array with mana.

“Clear the zone!” he yelled. Kiri vanished as she appeared beside him with the lack of tell tale mana signs from her Soul Shift. That was enough for Nate who, adding Imbue Intent, unleashed the runic array over the tunnel for twenty metres. Dust fell from the ceiling and the walls as the water in the zone was forcibly removed by the rune. The kobolds fared no better, going from fighting fit to dehydrated and in the case of one of the rogues, desiccated, within seconds.

Nate collapsed to the floor, most of his mana spent as he heard Kiri move in to clean up the now barely moving and in some cases already dying kobolds. Silence reigned for a moment, along with the smell of blood and dirt permeating the air.

“That was awesome!” Frick exclaimed as he began to do his little stomping dance. “You were just like, ‘water be gone!’ This Dungeon’s going to be SOOO easy.”

Nate glared at his Familiar as the sound of many feet began to echo through the tunnels, coming from what seemed like every direction.

“You just had to say it, didn’t you?” he griped, already tired and looking for a place where they could make a stand.

The last thing he did before they began running was pull out the bolt that had penetrated slightly into his thigh and tucked it away in his spatial storage. Something weird was going on and he was on the clock to figure out what it was.