I ran through the door on the heels of a steam explosion. A notification popped up as I entered, but I ignored it. A quick look around and I chose a broken conveyor belt to aim for, near the door. I scampered over some rubble, unusually silent, and came home with a baseball slide, feet first, catching myself on one of its legs so that I’d stop underneath it.

One of the passives I’d been eyeing from the Stealth tree was called smokescreen. It let me enter stealth while in clouds of stuff, and it was my safe entrance to the dungeon.

> Quest: Secret in the Abandoned Factory

Danny explained the basic run down for the dungeon before I ran in. The entrance was one big room, which usually had most of the enemies in it. Then once we clearled it out we could explore back rooms for treasure and clues to solving a puzzle.

I assumed that the quest was for that puzzle, and it looked like it was. Looking around the room I could also see several places that set off my junk finder sense. Something to think about later, when there weren’t enemies to deal with.

They looked a bit similar to Nikola. Larger, some with extra limbs like shovels or painful looking grabbers, but just like him assembled from a hodge-podge of random parts. At least at first glance. Where they differed from Nikola were the places where they were brown and green. These machines had parts made of natural wood, looking a little like roots or vines were holding the whole thing together, with prominent flowers growing where sensors might be on Nikola. 

It actually gave me some interesting ideas for future drones, though I wasn’t sure I’d be able to implement those ideas.

The machines were spread throughout the large room, with the notable exception of the area where the steam explosion was settling down. Either they moved out of the steam or they just didn’t hang out by the door. They didn’t seem to move much at all, actually. They swayed in a way that could almost be like the wind, save for how it happened to point their flowers around the room in a scanning pattern.

I opened my wrist console and instructed Nikola to approach the nearest one that was alone. This one had four legs in a dog-like configuration, with wooden spines covering its back and the front of its legs. It seems to ignore Nikola, which was good. I didn’t know whether they just didn’t care about the machine or if Nikola had some sort of hidden stealth passive to make the drone less likely to turn into a monster magnet for its controller.

I pulled out my pistol.

I pointed it at the machine.

I took a deep breath, breathing out and holding it like that.

Then I pulled the trigger.

My pistol went zap-pop and a fork of electricity shot out. It didn’t go straight, towards my target, but when it turned it was towards it, and Nikola, as much as it wasn’t. Lightning Rod in action. The bolt hit the plant machine and seared some of its foliage.

Then it turned and started walking straight for me.

Nikola followed it and I let off more shots. Two, Three, Four. The fifth shot missed, but the sixth did the job. The plant parts of the machine started to rapidly wilt and, without their support, the electrics simply fell apart.

By now the other machines were starting to home in on me, so I whistled as loud as I could.

That was Dimm’s cue, still standing in the doorway, just out of sight of the machines. She threw her hand forward and released another explosion of steam.

We had decided on this strategy to, in her own words, get me more used to working as a team. Her character was a little more developed than mine, but she apparently had a lot of experience with dungeon crawls, so she wanted to give me the chance to shine. I wasn’t really convinced by that explanation to be honest. Why would I need to stand out?

But she was insistent and I had to admit that I liked the feeling of running around from place to place.

My next cover was behind a fallen rafter with a bed of vines growing on top of it. The machines were more agitated now and moving more actively, but they didn’t seem to know where I was.

I grinned.

Another command for Nikola and I repeated the last move with two more machines. Things got dicey when I ran out of shots and the second machine was still up; I had less luck with accuracy this time, but I managed to charge a couple more shots before it reached me, then whistle and scramble into a pile of rubble before anything else was on me.

The enemy numbers were starting to thin out now, which made it easier to find hiding spots that avoided them, but harder to actually hit them with my pistol. I was also picking off mostly the smaller ones, so the ones left were all larger and more dangerous then what I’d dealt with so far.

I picked another spot, near one of the larger remaining enemies, and whistled again. I dashed out and ran at a slight curve, so I wouldn’t get too close. I was almost there, inside of the mouth of an non-functional piece of assembly equipment.

Then I tripped and fell.

“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, trying and failing to scramble to my feet. Something was caught around my ankle. A vine? It was too tough for me to pull apart and I didn’t have anything to cut it with.

Or did I?

I scrambled for a piece of scrap metal in my inventory. It materialized into my hand and I used the edge to try and cut my way free. It wasn’t particularly sharp, but it was sharp enough to whittle away at the vine.

To slow!

Almost…

And I was free!

I stood up and looked towards my hiding space, only to realize that there wasn’t nearly as much steam around me as before. The machine I had been targeting loomed over me, like a giant daddy longlegs, only with a cage of plant matter instead of a body held high.

Secondary-arms moved from where they were mounted on its legs, reaching out with sharp appendages, and I scrambled back, shooting my pistol towards them. I was close enough to land about half my shots, but without Nikola in position my accuracy suffered. It wasn’t enough to stop the machine.

I scrambled some more and managed to stay away, but I was out in the open and the other machines were coming towards me now. I would be surrounded. Again. And would probably be killed for it.

Again.

Fuck that noise. I did the sensible thing to do.

“Help!” I screamed towards the door. “Dimm, help! Help help help help!”

Dimm must have heard my plea, because she stepped around the corner. She held a staff in one hand, gnarled and bent on one end, ashy and burned on the other, and pointed out her finger.

“Fire Beam!”

It was the same spell she used before. The cutting flame quickly set aflame the plant parts of one of the approaching machines. 

Then she pointed, tapped the burnt end of her staff on the ground, and did it again.

“Fire Beam!”

She unleashed 5 beams all told, tapping the ground each time, and destroyed a machine with each shot. Only a few machines were left now. Enough that I could keep myself away from them on my own, and I wound up my gun to help clear out the rest. Dimm, it seemed, wasn’t as mobile as I. It took her longer to cast her spells now, so she mostly just focused on the machines closest to her, while I tried to keep their attention on me. 

It didn’t take us too much longer to wrap up the rest. It honestly felt like a bit of an anti-climax compared to how we had started the room, particularly since I knew that this accounted for most of the enemies in the place.

Then again, it was a beginners dungeon. At least I wasn’t dead.

I ran over to Dimm, an uncontrolled giggle on my lips, and slammed into her body, giving her a hug around the waist (which was about as high up as I could manage without jumping). She froze up at the sudden contact, but after a few moments hesitantly returned the hug.

I let go after a moment, then set to looking about the place. We had loot to loot!

“That surprised me…”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I decided I’d start with the enemy loot before I scavenged for junk parts.

“It’s just, you’re usually pretty jumpy about physical contact.”

I thought about what she said, then shrugged. “I guess I just got carried away with the character? I didn’t really think about it.” I frowned. “Hey, what’s up with that staff?”

She frowned back, before catching herself and adopting a more neutral expression. “This,” She indicated her staff. “Is spell storage. It’s actually my reward for participating in the beta. Everyone who did got a piece of early-mid equipment. It can hold 5 spells in all, so I’m using it for burst fire. At least until my build is more mature.”

I nodded back. “What is your build anyway?”

She smiled back. “I think I should ask you the same thing. I’m a mage, pure and simple. I have fire and water magic, and a metamagic tradition. That is, a tradition that lets me modify spells.”

“Cool!” I looked around again. “I’m going to scavenge for parts, okay?”

At that she actually laughed. “Being a Trash Panda really does suit you. Go for it!”