The Dungeon Without a System

Chapter 81

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Temple of The Creator, The Ninth Floor, The Dungeon

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Wave paused as they passed through a circular room, just through the tunnel that led from the Tenth. This was a place the Procession had passed through quickly. He'd only glanced over the carvings, wishing to inspect them closer. A half-dozen Scorpans knelt before various carvings. Some were praying, while others replaced candles.

Though they were still on a time crunch, a few minutes spared for art wouldn't kill them. Wave moved around the whirlpool slowly, scanning the walls. Nine sections, each depicting a different floor's bosses. Some were singular, such as Mushu's carving. The Creator captured his intensity perfectly, in Wave's opinion. Other carvings, such as the Ratten and Bloodfish Sovereigns, represented dozens of different beings. Each was detailed and unique, proving once again that The Creator valued all His children, and the fallen were remembered. The Ninth carving was of Strikes-The-Air, the Scorpan King.

Wave moved around a Scorpan praying at his King's carving with a muttered "Excuse us" and passed through to the Palace. Aston followed closely behind him.

He emerged from the door to find the throne room packed with Scorpans. By all observation, it seemed Strikes-The-Air was holding court.

A plaintiff was just leaving, and another knelt before the King on his throne. Wave stepped to the doorway's side, allowing Aston to pass as the kneeling monster spoke.

"Oh, Holy King, I bring news recently arrived from the Ninth. The crazed guilder, Hallmark, has defeated Pyry the Thunderbird. As we speak, he enters the Desert." The Scorpan declared, prompting a wave of noise as courtiers exclaimed in shock and murmured to each other. The King sat stoically upon his throne, his twin tails hanging ominously over the deep orange carapace of his scorpioid half.

"That is... unfortunate, but not unexpected," the Scorpan King spoke, and all the Scorpans in the room hushed immediately. "This human has proved capable and resourceful to pierce this deep into The Creator's lands. I will send my Royal Guards to intercept him at the entrance to the Canyon. The rest of you return to the cavern beyond the Village. There you will remain until I come to retrieve you. This human is far too dangerous for any untrained Child to strike him down. Go, Court is adjourned."

As the Courtiers rushed from the throne room, Wave and Aston remained against the wall. The King briefly conferred with the guards that flanked his throne. One left, presumably to gather his fellows. Not long after, the King noticed the two odd monsters standing there. With visible curiosity, he waved them forward. They approached and bowed their heads, though neither knelt. Strikes-the-Air was not their King, after all.

"I remember you, odd Drake-kin. You are Wave, are you not?" The King asked, to which Wave could only nod.

"I am, though, do not consider myself a Drake-kin," he explained. "The Creator unintentionally elevated me from a Snowbold to my current form." The Scorpan King nodded and glanced at the minotaur beside him. "My companion is Aston, the eldest son of the First Bull Asterion."

"Well met, minotaur. I see the resemblance, though I only met your father briefly. Why have you come to my court?"

"I am on a quest, given to me by The Creator Himself," Wave declared. The King and the lone guard beside him froze. Behind him, Wave heard some stragglers attempt to remain in the throne room, though the guards soon evicted them. The King was quick to regain his bearings.

"A Quest? If so, this would be the first in our history. Please, relay to me what The Creator has sent you to do." Strikes-the-Air insisted. Wave explained, and when he was done, the Scorpan King nodded slowly.

"Most interesting. Though we've a few Cores collected from some particularly unruly Sunlions, none are among the 'largest.' Asterion did well to advise you to travel to the Seventh. The Creator has a series of rooms there he used to perform many experiments, and I have no doubt he would have some large cores there. However, you should spend the night in the Village and wait for the crazed human to either pass or be defeated. If I guess rightly, you are not bound to a Respawn Crystal, and encountering Hallmark would surely cut your Quest short. Such a thing would doom us all." Strikes-the-Air advised. Wave shook his head.

"I cannot. It has already been a day, and there is no time to spare. We will press on and hope our path doesn't cross the human's," he stated. The King was silent for a moment but quickly nodded.

"That is your decision. I only pray it is the right one. However, if you insist on this, please allow me to send a Royal Guard with you. He would guard your life with his own and, if nothing else, would Respawn in the case of your demise. If such a thing came to pass, we might still attempt to bring a core to The Creator, even if it isn't of the ideal size. Towers-Over-Others!" The King called. Over their conversation his guards emerged from their rooms, and now one stood forward.

Wave had no doubt he was the tallest of his kind, with the top of his head resting two feet above the next largest guard. Despite his size, his body was still proportional. It was as if The Creator had declared this one was to be a third again as large as any other.

The Scorpan knelt in the method unique to their people; his Scorpoid half tilted forward, and his large pincers spread wide, while his humanoid half bent at the waist and he spread his arms. "My King."

"Do you accept this duty, Towers-Over-Others?" the Scorpan King asked, though Wave knew this was a mere formality.

"Your will be done, oh Holy King." the Scorpan accepted, rising from his bow. He took a shield and five faintly glowing javelins from another Guard. Four of them rested on his humanoid back in a unique holster. The fifth he held in his hand. The guard turned to Wave and nodded thoughtfully. Aston snorted, amused.

"Well, we're a proper party now. Melee fighter, ranged fighter, mage... All we need is a healer," the minotaur joked. Wave smiled and shook his head.

"We're not guilders, Aston. We're monsters. Even if we could somehow leave the dungeon, I doubt they'd let us sign up."

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The Desert, The Ninth Floor, The Dungeon

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Hallmark emerged from the passage the happiest he'd been in a while. He'd done it! The Bird had fallen for his trick perfectly. He'd done as he'd sworn to do. He'd cut that damned Bird's head off and danced on the ashes! At that moment, he felt as if nothing could stop him.

But then reality returned. Hallmark had no idea how deep this dungeon went; or how many floors it had. He couldn't afford to get overconfident. It was a lesson he'd learned well in his time here.

He winced and brought a hand to his chest. He was becoming... increasingly concerned about this. His foot still twinged, but there was no doubt it was healed. After so many potions, this pain in his chest should have been healed as well. And the location... right over his heart... Hallmark shook the thought from his mind. There was no time for this.

He gazed over the dark dunes, lit only by the starscape above. For a moment, he stood there completely still, confounded. The sky didn't look like any he'd ever seen before. Familiar constellations were missing, as were particular bright stars. Even the shape was wrong! Where was the Ring of Heaven? What was this belt of stars that stretched from one side of the sky to the other? Why was there only one moon, thin crescent though it was, resting just above the dunes?

He entertained the thought that he'd somehow been transported to another world but quickly discarded the idea. He was in a dungeon. One that contained enormous spaces, but he was still underground.

The Desert before him was cold and dark, barely illuminated by the single moon. However... traveling during the day would be far worse. Hallmark's enchanted cloak was ragged and failing. He could even feel the biting chill of the night. He pulled it from his shoulders and discarded it in the sand. No matter. He'd do without.

He climbed the dune before him, which taught him a half-dozen lessons. Theona had few true deserts and then only one with any kind of dunes. Hallmark had been there, of course, but the dunes here were ten times the size. The sand had a different texture, and his breath was quite labored when he reached the summit. It also gave him some perspective.

Though he knew it wasn't true, the desert seemed to go on forever. It was merely an illusion. Just as the mist below the Mountains on the Eighth hid their 'bases' from view, the dungeon must have enchanted the walls of this cavern.

With the stars providing no clear direction, Hallmark walked eastward, regarding the entrance, along the ridge of the dune.

He walked over dune after dune for what must have been an hour, judging by the moon's movement, before he encountered something odd. Rapidly approaching from the north were... four small tornados? He could barely see them at first as they danced around each other, but even in the moonlight, their shapes were distinctive. After a moment, he put the crossbow back on his belt. It would be useless here.

He could only assume they were manabeings, but he was stumped on what kind. He'd never heard of anything like this. However, he supposed they might be more common in Hillia, largely deserts as that continent was. Still, despite their unknown nature, he felt the embers of hatred in his gut roar into life. He drew his longsword with a snarl and a burst of mana to activate the weight-altering enchantments.

If these were like all the other manabeings in this dungeon, they had a monster core within those swirling winds somewhere. All Hallmark had to do was hit that, and they'd fall to pieces.

The glow of his sword must have alerted them because they immediately changed course. To his astonishment, the four twisters merged into a much larger tornado. Their combined power was such that he could feel the winds pull at him, even though he stood at the dune's peak, and they were merely a third of the way up the side.

He raised his sword as the tornado approached, only to yelp in surprise as his footing disappeared. The sand beneath his feet slid down the side of the dune, replacing the sand the tornado had sucked up. He tumbled forward, rolling down the hill, right into the tornado.

He had to admit that he panicked when he lost contact with the sand. He flailed with his longsword, hoping to catch at least one of the cores. As far as he could tell, he had no such luck.

Hallmark had no idea how long he was in the air. His memories were a haze. He was spun through the air, rotating in all directions. It took all he had to hold onto his sword. He was thrown thrice by the tornado but couldn't get to his feet quickly enough to escape. It sucked him up again. He was sure he voided his stomach contents, little though there was in there.

When the torture finally ended, the stars were fading, and the sky lightening on the horizon. The manabeings must have grown bored because, when Hallmark was thrown from their tornado the final time, the tornado split into four twisters again. Hallmark struggled to stand as they circled him, no doubt taunting him, before they rushed off behind a dune and into the desert.

He pushed himself to his feet, stumbling and falling again and again. Once there, he stood, one hand on his head and the other held out to steady himself. He opened his eyes only to close them immediately. The ground had shifted in his vision, and he felt nauseous again, contrasting with the ache of hunger in his gut. It wasn't a pleasant feeling.

Once he'd finally regained his bearings and eaten most of two sets of his rations, he squinted against the rising sun.

This... wasn't ideal. But he would persevere.

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The Seventh Floor, Drake-Kin Village, The Dungeon

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Huea Rockscale stood to the side of the hall, awaiting her turn to approach the council. They were in full attendance, each in their finest robes and adornments, as they argued and debated over things that would decide the course of their people. The shaman sitting at the middle of the long table, Fire Shaman Blaze, banged his gavel.

"In a landslide of eight votes to one, this council has decided that the price of 'iced cream' imported from the Minotaurs will be judged as a luxury good and taxed as such," he declared, to some polite clapping. Some of the things they debated were... less important, yes, but that didn't mean the other, more vital decided upon were less so in comparison. "Next on the agenda. Huea Rockscale, you are summoned to stand before the council."

With a gulp and fortifying squeeze of her best friend's hand, Huea moved from the crowd. The murmurs that filled the room were hushed as she approached the center of the semicircular table. "I have been summoned, and I have come. What does this council require of me?"

"We have received news from the lower floors," the Air Shaman, Cumulus, announced. "The Creator stirred, briefly, and gave the monster known as 'Wave' a quest." The hall was suddenly filled with excited exclamations. "He has been tasked with gathering the largest monster core in the Dungeon. Huea, you are familiar with the recipient of the Quest, have performed tasks for The Creator in the past and, most importantly, have access to His experimental chambers. This council has decided that you will be the one to find and deliver the core to Wave when he arrives in three days."

For ten long seconds, Huea could do little but blink in surprise. The Creator stirred? Wave, her old clutch mate, had been given a quest? As the silence became awkward, Huea took a deep breath and bowed. "I humbly accept this task. I must beg your pardon, but there is little time to waste. I will depart immediately." She straightened and turned to leave, catching Kata's eye as she made a beeline for the exit.

The court burst into noise, cutting off as the door swung shut behind her. Huea moved to the nearby railing, looking down over the Village, lost in her thoughts. She was only broken from them when Kata put a pale hand on her shoulder. "Talon for your thoughts?" the human asked. Huea snorted.

"Just never thought I'd hear that name again," Huea admitted. She pushed off the railing and walked towards the nearest staircase to the next ring of the Village. Kata followed closely, obviously curious.

"What name? Wave? Who is he?" she asked. Huea took another breath and began to explain.

"We grew up together as Kobolds, on the Third. Kobold juveniles are raised communally, so we aren't sure who our parents are. It meant that all the adults in the Village were our parents. That all the juveniles were our brothers and sisters. Despite that... I was almost certain Wave was my actual brother. He had the same grey scales. The same arrangement of horns. We grew up close as any two monsters could be, as fast as that childhood was. He was sent to start a new village when ours grew too large. I remained behind."

They'd reached the stairs and descended them in silence. At the bottom, they turned left, and Kata spoke up again.

"What happened after that?" she asked politely.

"I was asked by The Creator to descend to the Seventh along with the rest of the Village and evolved into a Drake-kin. Until now, I was certain Wave was still on the Third... Obviously, I was wrong about that," Huea mused.

After another few minutes, Huea stopped at an otherwise blank wall and placed a hand on an unassuming brick. She smirked as Kata blinked and stepped back in shock. Huea moved into the revealed corridor, her friend following closely behind. Huea lit a small manalight in her hand, the pale white light only illuminating a few yards of the pitch-black darkness.

"What is this place?" Kata asked. Huea gave her a severe look.

"This leads to an isolated part of the Seventh. The Creator used it to perform experiments somewhere out of the way, where He wouldn't disturb the daily life of the Drake-kin. The Courts received their first bodies here. The first Respawn Crystals were made here. I haven't been here since you were allowed to roam the Village," Huea admitted. Kata's eyes widened, and she glanced between Huea and the dark beyond their light. Huea nodded.

"This is also where He kept His prisoners."

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