Chapter Sixty-Two: Violet

  I felt a wave of relief with the breaking of the chains, and I wasn’t quite sure why. Unexpected emotions or thoughts were always suspect. The gnome and elf both stared at me. The gnome was the first to speak. “Thanks, dude. I’m sure I would have figured out how to get free sooner or later, but you sure made it easier. Now I need to get my gear. I don’t suppose you saw where they stowed it?”

  Before I could even reply, the elven woman fell to her knees. “You shouldn’t speak to him like that,” she hissed at the gnome. “He is our savior, even if he is a human.” She groveled in front of me. “Please save us, oh great warrior! Take us from this place!”

  If her words hadn’t been suspect enough, my high Charisma allowed me to pick up the disdain within her words. She was doing everything in her power to make herself more appealing, going so far as to show off the limited amount of cleavage she had. I chuckled to myself. Once upon a time, such things might have made me stop believing the evidence before my eyes.

  “You’re welcome. Before we do anything else, though, I need to see if any of the others can be saved.” This decision didn’t come lightly. Normally, I’d be quick to try to resurrect any innocents. For some reason, I was feeling hesitation, and that alone made me extra cautious. I was still sure this was a trap of some sort. I just needed to figure out the details.

  “Do either of you know any of them?”

  The gnome mumbled and kicked a rock as she looked at her feet. “Uh, no. I’m not exactly from around here.”

  The elf, however, pointed to a pair of men and another woman. “They were all from my village, before we were taken.”

  Something was off about both answers, but I targeted one of the elves with Celestial Restoration. As I started casting, the elf woman shrieked, terror filling her eyes. “Wait! What are you doing?”

  The pitch of her voice was so shrill that I actually stopped mid-cast. “I have the ability to resurrect a fallen individual as long as it hasn’t been too long since they died. Now that I think about it, I’ve got up to about four and a half hours to resurrect them, so there’s plenty of time.”

  “No, you can’t do that. They wouldn’t want it. It is against the beliefs of my people. We believe that the great tree provides us everything we need, and if we fall, we are food for what comes after us.”

  That was a darker viewpoint than I’d expected from the elf, and it wasn’t like there was anything growing here to feed, anyway. I’d come to know that the multiverse contained a myriad of different ways to see reality, though. For the most part, I was more than willing to respect everyone’s right to their own view, as long as they weren’t trying to kill me. Still, something about this bothered me.

  Ultimately, I shook my head. “Maybe I should just finish off the boss, then we can worry about the others. I don’t have that much time left. At least let me heal you.”

  Again the elf pulled back, like I’d just said I wanted to kill her puppy. “No. What will be will be. My natural regeneration will be sufficient.”

  I looked at her more closely, but couldn’t discern much. I could tell she was magically powerful, but Identify came up empty when it came to her. That alone should have told me a great deal. I focused on the gnome and got a bunch of static. There was information to be Identified, but something was interfering. Different than with the elf, but I had to assume this was the Endless Dungeon’s doing.

  Looking down at the gnome, I asked, “Well? Do you have any problem with me healing you?”

  “Nope, not at all. One of my friends used to heal me all the time.”

  I cast Celestial Restoration on her and watched as her injuries vanished. I followed up with Clean, which even the elf had no problems accepting when she saw the result. She looked even more beautiful now, but I pushed that thought aside. I held out my hand, but when neither of them moved to shake it, I pulled it back.

  “Um, I’m Silas Renner. I’m here running a challenge in the dungeon. I can’t help but worry that you two are part of that challenge. Why don’t you tell me more about yourselves? Even just your names.”

  “I’m Felania Brightleaf,” the elf said, “and you have my gratitude. How do you plan to free us from this nightmare, great warrior?”

  Rather than responding, I looked at the gnome, who was already talking. “Sorry for not shaking your hand. It’s habit now. Took me a bit to get used to, being in this body. You’re just too big, and your hand is too fat for me to shake, although you’re not even close to as fat as Ooglie.”

  “Ooglie?”

  She shook her head. “A friend of mine. Would be difficult to explain.”

  “So what did you mean when you said you weren’t from around here?”

  “Oh, you heard that, did you? Figures, heightened senses. Never had ’em in the game, but then the integration came, and, well, everything changed.”

  Something about what she said had me intrigued now. “Integration?”

  “It would probably just sound like nonsense to you. I know this place feels like nonsense to me.”

  I weighed what I wanted to say, but felt like I was still missing something and holding back wasn’t going to help me. “I’m not exactly from around here either, and I don’t just mean that I’m not from the dungeon, or that I’m from another world like our elf friend here. I’m from a place that’s entirely different from this, but I’ve learned to go with the flow. Maybe it would help me if you told me what the integration was, and why it changed everything.”

  The gnome seemed unsure, but shrugged. “Fine, but I wanna find my gear first. I feel naked without it and don’t wanna go sharing all my secrets without a way to defend myself.”

  It was a reasonable request. My inner monologue warned me I was wasting too much time on this. A darker voice inside of me suggested I should just kill both of them and be done with it. I extended my aura over both of them. Felania didn’t seem to notice, but the gnome woman shivered. As far as I could tell, they were both somewhere around level 300, at least with how this world measured such things, but they were both far weaker than me. Selena would probably get mad at me for trusting too much in my strength, but she wasn’t here. “Alright. I’ll help you find your gear. But how about you tell me your name first?”

  “Fair enough, as long as you promise not to laugh.”

  “I’ll do my best. But seriously, whenever someone says that, it practically guarantees that the next thing the person does is laugh.”

  “Now you sound even more like Ooglie. Anyway, name’s Violet Violence.”

  I held in my snort. The name and the figure before me didn’t match up very well.

  She shrugged. “It sounded cooler when I typed it in. I didn’t expect to end up stuck with it.”

  Typed it in? I wasn’t going to go there. “Well, let’s look for your gear. What’s it look like?”

  “You’ll laugh if I tell you, so just help me go through these crates.” With that, she picked up one of the weapons that the fallen undead had been using. It was a hand-axe, but looked massive compared to her. She went to town prying open the first of several crates the undead had been dragging along behind the trail of prisoners.

  “We don’t need anything else,” Felania objected. “Please, take us away from here, hero.”

  I ignored her and pried open a box myself. Inside was a bunch of battered and trashed gear, not even worth taking as far as I was concerned. Violet and I opened the six boxes in quick succession. Not all of them were like the first. Some of them had some pretty decent gear. In the last one, we found a collar and, of all things, an old-style rifle, the ones with the super-wide mouths like the pilgrims used. I think they used to be called blunderbusses.

  Violet lit up when she saw the gear. “Thank the stars.” She quickly grabbed up the blunderbuss. It wasn’t comically large for her, and upon closer inspection I could see how it might have actually been designed for her. She turned and held it up to me. “His name’s Ballbuster. There’s a long story behind that. I know it might look weird, but think of this like a crossbow. You do have crossbows here, don’t you?”

  Before I fully processed what she said, words tumbled out of my mouth. “You have a gun?”

  She nodded vigorously. “Yeah! And you know what a gun is. Great! No one here has a clue. I suppose you did say you were from somewhere completely different. I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of Earth?”

  I grinned. Maybe, just maybe, I was starting to see the point of the test. “As a matter of fact, I have. More than one, actually. The multiverse is a big place.”

  She rested her weapon against the crate and placed her hands on her hips. “So all that’s true, then. I thought it was just different levels of reality merging with the integration, at least until I ended up stuck here. Things got crazy chaotic for a while there. What makes you think there are different Earths?”

  “Let’s just say, the Earth I was born to didn’t have magic. We had plenty of guns, though. In fact, the nation I was from was famous for them.”

  “Sounds like that old country from the history books. The US, it was called. Eventually, the world’s governments merged and were taken over by corporations.”

  “Well that confirms the alternate Earth theory, although I suppose it could be a matter of temporal displacement.”

  She went on to explain how she came from an Earth where AI and machines did everything. The rich controlled the world, and the rest of the world was given just enough to keep them content. Most of her world passed their time playing full-immersion games. She had been partial to one called Legends of Selmia, but the AI that ran it had discovered what it called a ‘higher plane of integration’. Eventually, it had worked to integrate those different realities into its simulation.

  A lot of what she said didn’t match with my understanding of anything, but a question came to mind. “Just to be clear, you were a human, and this form is the one you took in that game you were playing?”

  She nodded. “Exactly right. You have no idea how amazing it is to talk to someone who halfway understands what I’m talking about, even if you still look at me like I’m crazy.”

  I shook my head. “It isn’t that I don’t believe you. Heck, I met a guy from another Earth that was ravaged by aliens.” I frowned. “The planet, not the guy. He didn’t have any magic in his universe, but now he’s more powerful than any of the gods I’ve met. So who am I to doubt anything you say? The question is, what do you want?”

  “To get back to my friends, of course. I just don’t know if that’s possible. I’ve kind of given up hope.”

  “Travel between different parts of the multiverse is definitely possible, and it’s part of the reason I’m here. There’s too much to say for right now, and I wasn’t kidding when I said that time was running out.”

  The elf had come over by this point, pawing through the crate that had held the blunderbuss. She pulled out a set of golden chainmail, a long bow, a quiver, and a dagger. The gear matched her well, and when she donned it, she actually looked like an adventurer. Violet reached over and grabbed the collar. When she snapped it around her neck, it shattered the prison collar she’d been wearing. I felt a flex of magic, and the new collar expanded to become a full set of plate armor that covered her from head to toe.

  The armor looked manufactured or machined, far newer than medieval plate armor. It had joints and moved easily with her diminutive frame.

  The elf looked at me. “Well? If you aren’t going to rescue us and the two of you are done rambling on with your nonsense, I’m going to look for a way out. It’s probably inside of that keep up ahead.”

  I hadn’t noticed how much the fog had cleared. It was wispy now, and sure enough, she was right. Maybe a mile away, down in a valley, there was a creepy keep which made me think of the first time I’d played the Strahd campaign. It fit with the vibe here.

  I looked at the women. “So, are you going to fight with me?”

  The elf sighed. “If you aren’t going to do the heroic thing, then we don’t have much choice, do we?”

  Violet just grunted. I would have extended a party invite to them, but I still wasn’t sure about either woman. “Then let’s get going.”

  I tried to Identify them one last time. Still nothing from the elf, but I finally got a response from Violet.

  Violet Violence (Legendary Equivalent)

  Level: 100

  Class: Artificer

  Race: ??? Gnome

  Origin: Selmian Integration

  Chapter Sixty-Three: The Graveyard

  “I’ll scout on the right side,” Violet said. “Elf, you should take the left side of the valley.”

  “What about me?”

  “Sorry, man. I guess I don’t know what you’re capable of. But after watching how you trashed all those undead, I was thinking you’d just walk through the middle of the valley and draw their attention.”

  I didn’t mention I could use an invisibility spell or blink through time. Until I was a hundred percent on these two, I decided to stay wary but go with the floor. The dungeon would eventually reveal what it had up its sleeve.

  Felania wasn’t keen on the idea, but Violet snapped at her. “You’re an elf! You’re supposed to be good at sneaking around.” The moment of tension between the two passed. I had been worried it might come to blows.

  The elf grumbled some more, but agreed with the plan. They set out to either side of the valley, which suited me fine, as I didn’t really want them behind me. They both had projectile weapons, so they could attack from a distance if they had to. As they left, I was in for a surprise when Violet activated something in her armor. She didn’t quite disappear, but she blurred quite effectively, along the lines of Predator-style camouflage. I could still feel the way she shifted the air as she moved, but it was much more difficult to detect her directly.

  As soon as they were out of sight, I cast Celestial Restoration on one of the other elves. I grinned at the message I got.

  Illegitimate target. Dungeon monsters are not eligible for healing by adventurers unless they have been charmed.

  Hopefully, Selena and Samvek would be proud of my intuition, but I still had to finish this floor. I paused to consider if there was anything worth looting from these bodies or the crates, but before I could, they all sank into the rotting dungeon soil. That had been the case with everything I’d fought so far, which was fine. The reward waited for me at the end.

  I started forward.

  The valley opened beneath me as I descended, broad and exposed now that the fog had thinned to ragged wisps. Even better, I no longer felt the constant drain on my mana the fog had brought with it. Of course, any time something good happened in a dungeon, something bad always followed.

  The valley was a shallow bowl carved by time and neglect, the ground scarred with ruts where water had once run before abandoning the land. That was the way that the dungeon had shaped it, anyway. The notification said this floor had existed for over 3,000 years, but I wasn’t sure what to do with that information.

  The air felt heavier here, pressed down by the looming presence ahead, and every step carried the sense of being watched without a clear source. The landscape was open and didn’t seem like a place to plan an ambush, but I was still on guard for anything odd.

  The keep dominated the far end of the valley, a mass of ancient stone crouched like a patient predator. Its walls were blackened by age and something darker—veins of necrotic seepage tracing through mortar like old scars. Narrow towers rose at uneven intervals, their crenellations shaped into clawed silhouettes that rose like the damned attempting to escape their eternal suffering. Even from this distance, I could feel that the keep wasn’t just another castle occupied by undead. It was the floor’s nexus, anchoring the nightmare in place.

  A cracked road ran arrow-straight toward the gated entrance, the path sunken in the middle as if countless feet had worn it down over centuries. The stone was slick with moisture and old grime, and the faint grooves of cart tracks suggested the road had once served a living settlement. Now it felt like a funnel, guiding anything foolish enough to walk it into the keep’s waiting jaws. I didn’t see any guards on the walls, which only made me more uneasy.

  On both sides of the road sprawled graveyards that had long since lost any sense of order. Crooked headstones leaned at impossible angles, many split or half-buried, their inscriptions eroded beyond recognition. Mausoleums sat with doors cracked open or broken, stone coffins exposed and empty, while other graves looked freshly disturbed, soil mounded and claw-marked. The neglect struck me as odd. Despite everything, there was a sense of order to this place, and the decay I saw stood out as an anomaly.

  The fog had changed character yet again and was now a thin but deliberate veil that pooled between graves, drifting across the road in slow fingers. It suggested danger without obscuring it, making the open space feel more hostile than any tight corridor. I could sense layers of magic woven into the land, waiting for the right trigger. This was a threshold, a place meant to test resolve before the real fight began.

  The aura of fear that I felt pressing in on me was clearly unnatural. I flared Trailblazer’s Aura and smiled as any hint of trepidation was banished. There was something else I could try, but I hadn’t yet. Maybe it was time.

  Trailblazer’s Mind was an ability linked to my primordial aspect. I was unsure how it might interact with this realm, and the potential information overload from it was always a concern, even back home. But if System Sight wasn’t telling me what I needed to know, perhaps it was time to lean on an older source.

  With that in mind, I set narrow parameters for Trailblazer’s Mind and sought out any hint of a trap. I spread the field out so that it would cover the valley, but not the keep.

  My mind was inundated with a flow of sensations. They could be difficult to interpret, but I got a few clear images. There were no outright traps, at least not as my primordial aspect understood them. I had to remember that the ability could be highly conceptual, so I sent out another pulse to search for anything resembling a test.