Stumbling Up: A Loser's Guide to Progression - Chapter 21: Teamwork Makes the Splat Work

Splat. My body bounced off taste buds slick with saliva. The room shuddered in pleasure because this dungeon could taste us. I had one life left, and was positive the dungeon wanted to finish its meal.

I was now in the dungeon’s holding tank, waiting for the rest of the party to wipe or succeed and leave without me. Respawning wasn’t painful, exactly, but I felt distant. Removed from the world. And as my senses and thoughts returned, I was more demoralized than ever.

I'd died again, and now I was on my last chance. My last life.

This time, the consequences were real.

Head hanging, I checked the quest status.

[Quest Update: [Trial Dungeon]. This is the final test to receive your [Adventurer] status. You have one attempt left in the [2 hours] remaining. Your continued choices will influence final classes and skills achieved, assuming you survive. Adventure Onward.]

Well crap, that didn't help. I peeled myself off the floor.

This might be my last two hours, ever.

Maybe less, I was the first one to die.

My pride was saved, as seconds later, I got a death notification for Tandy.

I ducked out of the way as the portal opened again.

A ball of shit appeared in the portal window. I thought the system had made a mistake for a second, but as the ball got closer, Tandy’s form was taking shape. The shit fell off into the ether, and she was clean and whole two seconds before she hit the floor face first. It looked like neither one of our deaths had been glorious.

For all my grousing, I believed we would survive the trial. I had this impenetrable belief that Tandy, Leo, and I could survive anything. Richard and Meredeath only added to my confidence.

But this was our last attempt, and it wasn't looking great.

Tandy sat across from me. We'd been dumped and dragged through so many body fluids that the stick didn't bother either of us anymore.

"Cole, we've got a problem," she said. No kidding. Are a sheep's tits cold after a sheering? Too tired to sass her, I just gave a nod.

The final leg of the dungeon was a doozy. It would have been impossible without the progress key, but none of us had seemed to do any substantial damage to the giant Golgathan.

Tandy continued, ignoring my lack of engagement, "Let’s discuss this pragmatically. Leo’s brute force didn’t work. He just lost his axe for the effort. Even as I died, he was trying to pull it loose. That goo blocked your hammer strike.”

“I tried to lay down a trap with what’s left of my rope, but it was taking too long. It killed me while I was placing it. Meredeath tried to protect me, but she kept getting bogged down in the muck." She shook her head. "Who knows where Richard ended up. I lost track of him when you took that first hit. Do you see the same problem I do?"

I raised my head to find two brow eyes boring into me. Reason number 145 why Tandy was our [Party Leader]: she wouldn't accept lackluster head bobs as a legitimate answer to a question. Also, her eyes could bore holes in lead.

"It depends," I tried to verbally duck out of committing. Tandy and I were dead weight. Saying it out loud to Tandy, however, made it too real. "On what you see is the problem." I finished with a ‘cute smile’, trying to get out of the question. It hadn’t worked on my last girlfriend, and it didn’t look to be working on Tandy.

Tandy just sat, unblinking, waiting for me to continue. Soft oozing sounds as the mouth salivated at its anticipatory snack, our only companion. I hadn't been dead for two minutes, and she wants answers from me?

Self-pity wasn’t good to indulge, so I started rambling. Every word trying to avoid what I didn't want to admit, "Well, this time we didn't know what to expect from the boss. The longer they hold out, the more they can learn. Meredeath and Leo are a deadly one-two punch."

There, that seemed reasonable enough. Maybe she'd turn off her soul-baring stare.

"You're right." She said it in a way that I knew there was a 'but' coming. I patted myself on the back for outmaneuvering her quest for truth. "But, the real problem isn't defeating the Golgothan, is it?"

I let out an explosive sigh. We sat silently for a few seconds before I admitted what I'd been avoiding, "No, it isn't. The real problem is us." Every ounce of defeat I felt came out in the tone of those words.

"Yeah."

She sounded as dejected as I felt, which was somehow comforting. If the most put-together person I'd ever known was lost, then it wasn't just me.

"It's the splat factor." I heard myself saying.

"The splat factor?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

I held my two hands out, connected by strands of saliva. "Yeah, we're too easy to kill.” I clapped my hands together in a wet smack, demonstrating. “We have a high splat factor. It's way too easy to kill either one of us."

"Ah, yes, exactly. Maybe the three of them could defeat the monster if they didn't have to worry about keeping us alive. We're holding them back. And neither one of us has the damage output or any real utility to make up for our 'splat factor'." Tandy trailed off, losing herself in thought.

Splat factor. I absently wondered if it was a behind-the-scenes mechanic that the system tracked. We'd been the first to die in both our dungeon encounters, and I only survived the root canal uprising because I ran.

I was a little more death-resistant than Tandy, with 25 hit points to her 10, but I made up for it by thinking I could follow Leo onto the beast’s maw. She was right. The question was, what do we do about it?

We could sit out the fight. Let the heartier half of our party deal with the monster. Then waltz in afterwards and collect the reward. It was a lovely daydream, but I was sure the dungeon mechanics prevented it.

Just like the bogquackers, raiders, and widowmaker sent to hurry us along, it'd been evident from the beginning the system had an agenda and a schedule. The [Adventurer's] contract was tight. We gave up our mundane existence to join the elite, and the cost of entry was risking our lives in a [Trial Dungeon].

"What if..." Tandy spoke quieter this time, as though she didn't want to say what she was thinking, "What if I let you all go ahead without me?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, making my confusion evident.

"What if I just died in the final battle? Once I died, I'd fail the [Trial Dungeon] and you all would pass. You're all in this mess because of me. You and Leo always dreamed of being [Adventurers] when we were kids... I just..." The words caught in her throat as the reality of our situation took hold, "I just didn't want to be a [Weaver]."

It wasn’t any consolation that I’d considered doing the same thing. Even if there was a chance we’d take her up on it, her offering to sacrifice cemented in my mind why we wouldn’t allow it.

"Nope."

"No?"

"Correct. We walked into this challenge as a team, and we'll walk out of here or die trying as a team." I said it confidently, ignoring the twinge in my heart that just wanted to return to my mediocre life in Woodsten.

"That's just a useless platitude. Cole, we're talking about life or death." Tandy's voice had an edge to it. She didn’t want us to sacrifice our lives for her either.

"Maybe, but it's one I believe in. No one is sacrificing their life for mine. We’re in this together. Besides, you're always the one who says that our attitude limits our choices. If you're determined to sacrifice yourself, you'll never think of a solution where we all walk out of here [Adventurers]. We're not that desperate yet. Let's think."

So we sat in the warm, damp spawning ground for the dungeon, thinking and waiting for the rest of our party to die.

"We need to split its attention. It can't target us both if it has too many targets to focus on." Tandy wasn't wrong, but her logic had a critical flaw.

“But we can't protect both of us at the same time, and we saw it try to target the more vulnerable of the party.”

The problem is we can't split our protection. I wish we were more advanced, or had some real combat-based [Adventurer] skills. Back home, we'd talk about getting illusion or protection skills. Hell, I'd give almost anything for the ability to not breathe in that noxious gas like Meredeath.

[Your [Party Member] Leo Patch is [Dead].]

[Your [Party Member] Meredith Steele is [Dead].]

The portal runes began glowing, announcing the failure of our other companions. Meredeath and Leo fell towards the portal in four pieces. They'd been entirely sliced in half. I repressed a retch as their bodies stitched back together instantly, as they shimmered through the portal in a tangle.

The portals went dark. I watched Leo and Meredeath untangle themselves, seeing no telltale flash of yellow.

I’d forgotten about Richard. And now he was gone.

He was missing.

Frantically, I checked our bond only to find a cold echo where his presence should be.

And Meredeath’s name was Meredith? What in the frozen hells was going on?