Stumbling Up: A Loser's Guide to Progression - Chapter 22: Planning Something Stupid

"Where's Richard?" My voice was tight.

Meredeath gave me a flat stare, "Calm down, he'll join us in a bit. Unless you got a system notification that he died?"

I shook my head.

"It'll just take him some time to get back to us." She wasn't here for my panic. Bags under her eyes belied the perfectly crafted makeup. She looked like she'd entered the dungeon a decade ago.

He's not dead. I said the words to myself. The system hadn't given us a death notice, but the bond felt cold. Lifeless, like something vital was missing from the air. What if he stayed gone?

My heart spasmed. Not for the first time, I had to admit I was getting attached to the jerk.

As though sensing my heartache, a warm thrum twanged through our bond. Richard was alive, but busy. And a little annoyed at my doubts.

"Okay, but did you read the death notifications?" Leo asked with a grin, "Meredith?" Leo was full of energy, which the rest of us were missing.

"It was a system error. Look at our Party interface." She shrugged off the comment. The [Party] interface had her listed as Meredeath. Leo's grin dropped as he confirmed as well. I hadn’t heard of that type of error before, but Leo and I could intimately attest to the system’s brokenness.

"So, how'd it chop the two of you in half?" Tandy brought everyone back to the conversation at hand.

"It sliced through us with a high-speed torrent of sewage. Did you see its eyes glow? I didn’t even know it had eyes." Leo addressed Meredeath, the only person in the room who had an inkling of what he was talking about. However, I was starting to get a clue.

Meredeath propped herself up against a tooth, using it as a backrest. She shook her head, "Yeah, that was creepy as hell. The stream was thin but powerful. I'm guessing it has some emergency [Cornered Rat] skill when it takes significant damage."

Meredeath’s words seemed to inflame Leo, rather than calm him down, "We almost had it! I could see its death coming! I just needed one more strike, and it would have been down!"

"Woah, you guys almost killed it?" I was impressed. I hadn't lasted more than a couple of minutes. They’d almost taken it down. Impressive. "What was your trick? Last I saw, your axe stuck to the creature, and my hammer did nothing to it."

Meredeath waved at Leo to answer, "I figured it out. My slices weren't working. Either it did minimal damage or it'd suck my axe in and I'd be stuck and open to a counterstrike.” He looked at me, “Cole, those counterstrikes are pretty weak to me. You’ve got to stop trying to save me, man, it’s only going to get you killed again. The next time I swung, I saw it tense up. Like it was making its body denser to grab the axe blade, so I twisted my blade in the last second. The head smacked into it like I'd done with the oozes. The blunt damage worked as long as I tricked it."

"He was awesome," Meredeath said, patting Leo on the back, "Leo hit it like a freight train, and a chunk of the guy's shoulder blew right off." I squashed my jealousy. The battle had brought the two of them together. We were a stronger team for it. It was good, right?

"What's a freight train?" Tandy asked.

Meredeath shook her head, "Not important. He hit the thing like a battering ram." Leo mimicked his overpowered swing in the background. It sounded epic.

So the monster braces for slashes, allowing a smash to deal tons of damage. But if you just flat out try to hit it with a bash, it’ll give way and let you through with no damage. I looked down at my hammer, feeling useless. I had no way to ‘trick’ it like Leo had.

“It takes more than one hit to kill a monster.” I glanced at Tandy, then asked the question we both needed answered, "How'd you stay alive long enough to figure all of this out?"

Leo pointed at Meredeath, "It's her. She's been holding out on us. Meredeath can absorb sooo much damage. She was everywhere, taking hit after hit. I've never seen anything like it."

"Yeah, I have an heirloom from my mother." Her voice dipped as her fingers brushed the amulet, like the memory of it burned. "Ironically, she was the one person who saw me. Said it fit my aesthetic. Never tried to make me into something else."

Meredeath shook her head, as though banishing the past. She said ‘was’ like her mom was gone. I wasn't going to press now, but if Meredeath stayed with us and we survived this, I would ask about her family.

"Anyway, I had no idea it was enchanted. But yeah, it absorbs a considerable amount of damage. It takes and stores 50% of any inflicted damage aimed at me. I have to... I have to release the damage later. This place is all about balance. But it's a convenient tool in a fight."

Her eyes had grown hard as she talked about "releasing the damage later." I couldn't help but wonder how that was accomplished.

"Why'd you die? Is there a limit to what it can absorb?" Tandy asked, I'm sure she wanted to file its capabilities away in her team’s list of tools.

"Not that I know of, or at least I haven't hit it yet. But," she paused and tried to hide it, but her body began to shake. She was afraid of pushing it too far. Her voice was flat as she finished saying, "The price is high. My [Analyze] skill is still low, so it hasn't told me much about the amulet."

"Then why did you die with Leo? It sounds like you were close to beating the Golgothan." Tandy was insistent.

"He died first, and there's no reason to go on without the rest of you. This exercise is a party pass or fail. My surviving the fight alone wouldn't help any of us. I already did that, and it got me here." Malyc's promise that she would be motivated to help ensure we survived together came floating back in my memory.

"So this isn't the first time you've attempted a [Trial Dungeon]?" Tandy asked quietly.

Meredeath's voice dropped to an icy note, "Yeah. My original team died. The benevolent system," her words thick with sarcasm, "gave me a month to try again with a different group. Malyc didn't tell me the Ursine Wall entrance isn't heavily trafficked. If you hadn't come along, I would have failed my contract." We all winced.

The contract we all signed was clear: Failure to attempt the [Trial Dungeon] was an ‘abandonment of duty.’ And as a magical contract, it punished those with a gruesome form of death. It's why none of us had tried running away. "My timer is just about out. There are no more [Trial Dungeon] attempts for me if we don't win collectively. This is it."

I leaned back, trying to grasp the ramifications of her revelation. On one hand, I was glad that if we failed, and Leo survived, he'd theoretically get another chance with another team. However, the stakes had grown higher. If Tandy and I didn't make it out alive, Meredeath would end up forfeiting her life, too.

"I've always thought it wrong, the penalty for not succeeding." At least dying in here wasn't considered 'abandonment of duty.'

In the end, the system didn't tolerate dropouts. Fail the [Trial Dungeon] and you die. Try and fail, you die. Don’t try at all? You die slower. Uglier.

Meredeath nodded, "Yeah, it's twisted. I don't understand it either. In my last team, we had a weaker member. He wanted to be a mage, like you, Tandy." I glanced at Tandy as we shared a look. Meredeath must have assumed since her mana was so high. "Mages are at such a disadvantage, so we tried to protect him by leaving him behind in the run. I only found a few pieces when I returned to collect him."

I imagined the root canals popping out on an unsuspecting Tandy and fighting over her body. No, thank you, we were not going to tempt that fate.

The system had internal rules about how it wanted parties to progress, and wasn't above violently enforcing them.

My eyes glazed over as they continued bantering back and forth about tactics. I already knew the truth: we were doomed. Or rather, I was doomed. I began hoping that I would die first, so I didn't have to see Tandy go down. Or watch Meredeath become a walking undead husk.

"Cole, how are your acting skills? Do you think you could... pretend to be dead? Meredeath, what do you think the average intelligence of a shit demon is?" Tandy's voice made me lift my head. She had an idea.

"Pretend to fail? Please, I can do that any day of the week." I'd been pretending to be a successful [Adventurer] all day. That hadn't gone so well. But pretending to fail? Failing would be easy. It was pretending that was hard.

My mind checked the [Party] listing, Richard still hadn't returned. I couldn't shake the feeling that something was desperately wrong with him.

I sent another mental note into the abyss, Richard, you better come back soon. We’re planning something stupid.