Healer Book 4 -- Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Setting down just outside of the Descent into Darkness dungeon, Thaden unequipped Wyvern’s Flight and reequipped his Healthful Protection cape, before quickly casting a plethora of Support and Defensive spells on himself, going so far as to boost his Health pool to incredible heights and set up his Leach combination so that he was prepared for everything.  In case the Adversarial Elite monster was inside, he was as ready for it as he could get at this stage, going so far as to use some of his newest spells such as Exceptional Repeat, a channeled Exceptional External Stimulation, and Exceptional Internal Automation for the damage mitigation it would provide.

When he was as ready as he could possibly get, he took a deep breath as Sadia appeared by his side, the disapproval on the squirrel’s face the only indication that she still wasn’t happy about his choice to risk himself, before walking into the dungeon’s entrance.

After selecting the Minimal difficulty for the Intermediate dungeon, he found himself in a familiar hallway leading toward where he knew the stone platform would lower him down into the seemingly bottomless pit.  He froze after he took his first step inside, both listening for any hint that he wasn’t alone, and stretching out every sense he had, searching for any hint of the Level Compression he remembered from before.  He was poised to move as soon as he felt or heard anything out of the ordinary, ready to flee the dungeon in less than a second as the way out was directly behind him. 

Standing there for at least 5 minutes without any changes that he could sense, he stepped forward with Sadia keeping herself right next to him.  It didn’t take long for him to cautiously arrive at the massive pit leading down into the depths below, and he stood there for another couple of minutes in silence as he closed his eyes and just listened. 

“Nothing.  I feel nothing.  Do you feel anything?” he asked softly.

She shook her head.

“Well then, I might as well make some noise,” Thaden said before he trailed off.  The next second, he screamed wordlessly into the pit, the fear that he would actually encounter the Elite monster draining out of him as he let the emotion out.  He heard the faint echoes of his scream continued bouncing downwards after he was finished, before fading into the distance.

Stepping back from the edge, he waited to see if there was any sign of a response, but again, there was absolutely nothing to indicate that there was a Level 710 monster waiting below.

“You don’t have to do this, Thaden,” Sadia said as he glanced over at the lever that would start the stone platform’s descent.

He chuckled, shaking his head.  “I know, but I’m doing it anyway.”

A minute later, he was standing in the middle of the stone platform as it was lowered down, his hand on the central lever, prepared to send it back up at any moment.  It probably wouldn’t help all that much if that monster was actually down below, as he had no doubt that it could somehow find a way up the pit at tremendous speed, but it made him feel better.

It turned out that the glow from his equipment was enough to shed light on quite a bit of the platform, including the walls as he passed by them.  It wasn’t nearly as good as having Mages cast some light orbs everywhere, but it was more than enough for him to see by.  He didn’t really need it, however, as his third eye seemed to light them up even in complete darkness, unfairly (for them) revealing them even if they tried to hide.

When the first section opened along the walls, revealing the monsters lurking inside the darkness as they attempted to attack him, he had to rub his eyes a few times to make sure he was seeing them correctly. 

Level 165 (Perceived Level: 215) Deadly Mutated Dreadwings.

They were exactly the same as last time, but this time, there were no indications that what he was seeing was fake, a trick of the mind as it was influenced by what was really down there.

They didn’t survive very long, of course, as they fell almost instantly to his active Leach combination that he kept ready to go.  Before the last one managed to enter the range of his Wild Health Leach, and thanks to the 300-foot range of Exceptional Spiritual Reclamation, Thaden managed to tag it with the spell.  When it finally entered the range of his Leach, there was a mental prompt that wasn’t visible like a message or notification, but was real, nonetheless.  He instinctively knew that it was asking him if he wanted to claim a portion of the Dreadwing’s spirit; mentally accepting, he saw a tiny firefly-like orb depart the corpse as it fell, before it flew right into his chest, where it disappeared.

Now there was a small notification window that popped up temporarily before fading away.

Dreadwing Reclamation Progress: 1/34

If he was reading it correctly, then he needed a total of 34 portions of the Dreadwing’s spirit in order to get some mysterious bonus.

“You might as well see what it does, since you’re determined to keep going,” Sadia mentioned in a neutral voice.  He could tell that she was still disappointed in him for going through with this, and while it wasn’t going to dissuade him at this point, he was determined to make it up to her later somehow.

The bad thing about his Leach spell, which was normally a benefit, was its range.  As a result, not a single monster landed on the platform when they died, as they all fell outside of its radius and landed far down below.  He didn’t bother adjusting anything about his offensive abilities, however, as looting them wasn’t necessarily his priority; he could only hope that they could be found down below, where he could do them all at once.

As he continued downwards, he remembered something that the Guild Leader had mentioned about the central lever in the middle of the platform.  Hoping she was telling the truth, he pushed it in the opposite way that would bring him back upwards, and the speed of his descent increased dramatically, moving at least three times as fast as before.  He pushed it a little further, tripling the speed again, until he was practically dropping in freefall.  The next section came and went within seconds, but as he passed by, he used those few seconds to tag a few more of the Dreadwings, who flew after him from above.  They flew faster than the platform dropped, so by the time he hit the next opening in the walls, he was able to hit about a dozen of them with his Spiritual Reclamation spell.

That was when the Essence Suckers showed up, and he started tagging them with the spell as well, and soon enough there were nearly a hundred monsters following him from above.  As they got closer to him, they entered range of his damaging Leach spell, and they started to rain down like horrific-looking hailstones, and he had to move a little out of the way to avoid one of them landing on him.

Soon enough, he’d collected two dozen Dreadwing spirits portions, along with the first of the Essence Suckers – which needed a few more than the Dreadwings at 38, but it wasn’t too much of a difference.

Thaden blasted past the first Mini Boss even as he continued to collect spirit portions; unfortunately, the Mini Boss died too quickly for him to hit it with Reclamation, but he wasn’t too disappointed.  Finally, enough Dreadwings managed to get close enough to die while the spell was active on them, and he hit the required number of spirit portions.

Dreadwing Reclamation Progress: 34/34

Dreadwind Reclamation Complete!

There was a growing warmth in Thaden’s chest as he read this, which was more pleasant than uncomfortable, and it lasted all of 5 seconds before it faded away.

Dreadwing Reclamation Bonus:

+3 Physicality

+6 Celerity

-2 Personality

The sudden change in his stats was surprising, but also a little worrying as it actually ended up reducing his Personality by 2 points.  He wanted to assume that was because the Dreadwings were hideous, but he couldn’t tell if that was true or if he might end up losing some stats for each collection of spirit portions he collected.  Sadia, when asked, didn’t know, either; these new spells with their Fortuity-based chances and requirements were beyond what knowledge she possessed.

When he finished up the Essence Suckers not too much after that, he gained fewer Physicality and Celerity stats, but also only lost a single Personality point.

Sucker Reclamation Bonus:

+2 Physicality

+5 Celerity

-1 Personality

He also discovered that he couldn’t acquire a whole new collection of spiritual portions from a monster type he’d already finished, as further attempts to get more from the Dreadwings and Essence Suckers did nothing.

As he kept going, encountering the same monsters that his Raid Party thought they were fighting the first time he was there, but with them being real this time, he ended up acquiring more stats from spiritual portion collections from the monsters he killed along the way.  It was only when he killed the last type of monster before he hit the bottom, the Fungal Launcher, that he discovered that not all of them reduced his Personality, so some of his worry about it being a useful spell in the future were assuaged. 

Fungi Reclamation Bonus:

+1 Physicality

+2 Celerity

+4 Mentality

With the collection of spirit portions taking his mind slightly off what he was doing there, which was actually welcome so that he wasn’t paranoid out of his mind the entire time, he ended up with a total of +12 Physicality, +17 Celerity, +4 Mentality, and -7 Personality by the time he reached the end.  The reduction of Personality wasn’t exactly great, but he wasn’t going to complain about the other increases, even if they were relatively small in comparison to what his stats currently were.

At one point, the dramatic drop speed of the platform automatically slowed as the walls fell away, and Thaden spent the time as it emerged into the same wide open dark space as before extracting loot from the monsters that had landed near him.  He was barely paying attention to what he was looting, however, as most of his senses were focused on what was going on around him, especially as he was trying to sense any hint of the Adversarial Elite anywhere in the area.

As had been similar to the rest of the dungeon thus far, there was not even a trace of it. 

When the stone platform finally settled onto the floor of the enormous, lightless cavern, he stepped off and discovered dozens of monster corpses splattered around, having fallen from high up above.  As soon as he stepped off the platform, he was alerted that the Assault Waves were soon to begin; before they started, though, he extracted loot from the bodies around the platform, clearing the space for what was to come.

Down in the depths of the dungeon, the illumination from his Healthful Protection set wasn’t that bright, which made the Waves slightly frightening, as the monsters swooped in out of the darkness as his third eye spotted them coming from all directions.  The only thing that made it slightly better was the fact that most of them died and slammed into the ground before he could physically see them, so he was basically left with just cleaning up the bodies afterwards. 

The final Boss of the dungeon was a bit anticlimactic, as the Horrific Terror of Ultimate Darkness was covered in shadows to the point where could barely see it.  Even as he was bombarded with inky tentacles that unsuccessfully attempted to cut through his protections while the rest of the monsters were killed, eliminating the invulnerability bubble that covered the Horrific Terror, he wasn’t too scared since it was fairly indistinct – and therefore fairly non-threatening.  His third eye gave it a general outline that he could vaguely make out, but even that was obscured by the shadowy nature of the monster itself.  In the end, it died before it could really do anything to him, and he was left to extract its loot without ever getting a clear sight of it; even in death, it was basically just a pile of gooey shadows.

Despite not seeing it very well, he was able to get a Reclamation spell on it, and he received a portion of its spirit.

Through it all,  

Horrific Terror of Ultimate Darkness Reclamation Progress: 1/87

Of course, it didn’t do much good, considering that he was going to need to kill this thing 86 more times in order to complete the collection, which wasn’t something he necessarily wanted to do.  Even if the bonus reward was spectacular, which it almost had to be due to how many spirit portions he needed to accumulate, he had no desire to repeat this dungeon so many times just to do that.

All through the Assault Waves, Thaden’s attention was only half on the battles themselves; the other half was still on the environment around him, still searching for any sign of the Adversarial monster.  When the Waves were complete, he was 99.5% sure that it was no longer there, as he would’ve expected it to have made its presence known by that point.

Still, he wasn’t entirely convinced, so he made his cautious way toward the glowing door in the distance once he finished extracting loot from all the dead monsters from the Waves, remembering his last desperate flight toward safety in this same dungeon.

“It really isn’t here, is it?” Sadia asked as they approached the treasure room – or so he hoped.  The last time he went through it, the room had been empty.

Thaden shook his head.  “Nope.  I’m not sure if I should be relieved or worried.”

“Probably a bit of both,” she replied after a few seconds, watching the Omenic Drifter open the door to the – fully stocked – treasure room.  “But I can’t help but think about what you asked earlier,” she continued.  “If it isn’t here, then where did it go?”

“That’s the million-dollar question, alright.  Did it escape?  Did it disperse back into random amounts of Adversarial energy?  Is it even now hitching a ride with my Raid Party somehow, keeping itself hidden until it can strike?  I hate not knowing, and even though it’s been proven to my satisfaction that it’s no longer here, it doesn’t help my suspicion of them all.”

Thaden wasn’t even looking at the stuff he stored in his Inventory, wanting to leave as soon as possible.  Sadia watched him work for a while before she finally responded.  “I guess that’s fair.  I think you can reasonably trust them for now, but a healthy suspicion of them is probably necessary given what happened.  Still, give them the benefit of the doubt, because until they give you a reason to question their motives, they’re good for you.  Being part of Raid Party has already given you valuable experience working with other people, and while you are more than capable of steamrolling through as many dungeons as you want, that might not always be the case.”

He absently nodded at her words, knowing that he hew was already planning on doing just that.  “Change of plans, then?  Since we don’t need to go all out and increase my Level as quickly as possible?”

Sadia’s squirrel form smiled.  “Why change it?  It’s a good idea, either way.  We can definitely play it a little more cautiously than the original plan, but it should still be fine.”

Finished with clearing out the treasure room, and after not even seeing any of it before it entered his Inventory, he headed for the exit.  Pushing the stone door forward, revealing the familiar spot where he would emerge from the cliff face, he took a few cautious steps out, all while imagining the Adversarial Elite waiting for him to exit.  As he should’ve expected, though, nothing horrible happened as the door in the cliff face closed behind him. 

Looking around, dusk had fallen over the land, indicating that he’d been in the dungeon for a while.  Yawning and stretching after the stressful delve, he indicated for Sadia to load up in his equipment again.

“Alright, then, let’s get back.  Like the rest of my Raid Party, I’m taking the rest of the night off.  And this time, I’m taking advantage of the Diamond-Ranked room, regardless of the consequences.  Perhaps I’ll tell the Region Leader to make it rule that no one can use spells or abilities within the Coalition building?”

“That might work.  Or it’ll cut down on accidental deaths a bit, at least.”

Nodding, he equipped his Wyvern’s Flight cloak again, and took off into the darkening sky, heading back to the city and the potential hotbed of mind-controlled Guild members.