The 41st floor appeared to be similar to the floors above, in that it was a like a crypt, but the feel of it seemed different. The architecture behind the design seemed more refined, with the appearance being cleaner. As he traversed the corridors, he noticed there were no longer corpses in the alcoves, and instead were coffins of various levels of quality. While some were simple wooden boxes, some were elaborately decorated. Evren had been walking for an hour and hadn’t come across anything yet.
He reached a room at the end of a corridor. In the center of the room stood a coffin on a dais. Since there were no exits to this room, Evren pulled his wagon inside it to turn it around and head back the way he came. As he was maneuvering the wagon, he bumped the coffin. Evren stared at the coffin to await a reaction, but none came, so he continued to move the wagon so he could exit the room. He was about to get the wagon out of the room when he heard something in the hallway behind him.
Staring down the hallway and waiting, he didn’t see anything. A few minutes later he turned back to the wagon to resume getting it out of the room and noticed something near the ceiling. There was a human there, hanging on the ceiling as if it were natural. Its skin was a pale gray, and its eyes glowed red. In its mouth were long fangs that stretched out hungerly. Evren jumped back as the monster leapt at him. It landed in front of Evren as he leapt back to avoid it. Evren heard a noise behind him and looked, seeing more of the pale gray skinned humanoid monsters coming down the hallway. They crawled on the floor, the walls and the ceiling as if natural.
Evren turned back to the one by his wagon, drew his sword and sliced the neck of the monster, its head falling to the floor. As Evren turned back to the group of approaching monsters, the head rolled past him. The body followed after the head, picked it up and put it back in place. The monster turned around and swung at Evren without hesitation. Monsters were crawling over each other trying to reach Evren. He cast ‘wall’ in place and that seemed to hold some of them back, but others just crawled around it on the ceiling and walls.
Evren cast ‘jet’ down the corridor, around the wall, burning the monsters and causing them to thrash about screaming. They beat the fire out against the walls, tore off limbs that still burned and rolled about on the floor. When the fire was extinguished, the rose and continued to pursue Evren. The wall wore off, and the monsters swarmed at Evren, he used ‘squall’ to push them away from him and that kept a majority at bay, but one of the more burned ones crawled across the floor towards him and bit him on the leg. When Evren looked down at the monster, he was shocked to see the burns healing rapidly, and all the wounds regenerating themselves. Evren kicked slashed at the neck of the monster, separating the head from the body and moved away. The head still biting into his leg.
Evren kicked the head away, causing a tear in his leg. He still fed magic to the squall but noticed that more and more of the monsters were crawling around him. Running low on options, Evren cast ‘deluge’ to summon a massive amount of water to wash them away and give him a greater distance to react. As the water hit the monsters, they screamed and thrashed around violently, their skin melting as if the water was acid.
Evren’s eyes widened when he saw this and swore, “Fuck! These things are vampires?!” Evren ran back to the wagon as the deluge would continue for five seconds and grabbed his bow and his hunting arrows. As quick as he could he began firing arrows at the vampires, aiming for their chest. He hit two in the heart, causing them to burst into flames, but the others, although they hit their targets, did not cause them to die.
As the deluge spell ended, Evren grabbed two adamantium arrows from his quiver, and using them as daggers, he approached the vampires that were writing about in the water. He stabbed the arrows into the chests of the vampires, eventually killing all of them, and leaving Evren kneeling in the water in pain. He used ‘cure deep cut’ on the wound on his leg a few times until it had closed itself off.
Heading back to the room he was in; Evren went to the coffin that was now open. Inside, the coffin was empty except for some dirt that lay in the bottom. Evren nodded and headed back to the other side of the wagon. He collected his arrows and the magic gems, putting them in their quivers, and the gems in the pouch at his waist. He walked back to the wagon and stared inside of it. “What was it again? Sunlight, running water and stakes through the heart?” He looked up at the ceiling and said, “I’ve a feeling that sunlight isn’t going to happen ever down here, so there’s water and stakes. I don’t have stakes. That wooden spear I made I used for parts long ago…” he sighed, “Damn it!”
Evren started rummaging through the wagon, looking for something he could use against the vampires. “Who ever thinks, ‘You know what I need to pack? Some stakes of wood that I’ll never use and will only cause additional weight for me to pull and take up space that could be used for something useful like food…’” Evren bowed his head for a moment before taking a quick breath to steady his mind and looked through the wagon for something useful.
Evren had packed away some spare parts for the wagon, so he had a couple replacement spokes for the wheels in case they broke. He had to repair the spokes before and carrying spares had always been a good idea to him. He broke one of the spokes using his knee and pulled out his dagger to sharpen them to a point. When he had two sharpened ‘stakes’ he put one under his belt in the small of his back and carried the other with him as he pulled the wagon.
Evren used his sensory field to not only find future paths without dead ends, but also to check the interior of any coffins he came across to ensure they were empty. He found that if he moved quietly, he could get past a lot of them, but if he woke one, all the vampires in the immediate area would come seek him out. Evren would find spots where there were several vampires and would kill them as fast as he could with his wooden stakes, while they were still in their coffin, or as they were getting out. He had to be proactive in finding them, which wore him down mentally.
On the 42nd floor, there were vampires that were walking the corridors. They would wake the sleeping vampires when they noticed Evren. He tried to shoot them with the bow from distance, but their perception range was very large, and usually before he could get a shot off, they would notice him. The 43rd floor had larger groups of vampires walking the corridors together. Evren had to use deluge quite frequently until he got better at fighting the vampires.
The 44th floor was very taxing to Evren. It seemed there were no vampires in the coffins, and they kept coming in droves when they noticed him. One of the wheel spokes had shattered on the third day of the 44th floor, leaving him not reserves if the one remaining shattered as well. He could use arrows, but they were thinner than the stakes and would be easier to break. Evren hoped that if his current stake shatters, he’d be able to get a moment to make some more from the one remaining wheel spoke.
Nineteen days after entering the 41st floor, Evren made it to the 45th floor. He had found one of the torches he made under the hidden floor and converted it to a stake. He sat on the floor outside the majestic looking crypt that was the boss’ room sharpening his stake. He had rested in the passageway after the 44th floor, so the only thing preventing him from entering now was him. He wracked his brains trying to think of what vampires could do. The ones he had fought to this point never did much besides crawling on the wall and biting, and he knew they could do more. Maybe the one on the other side of the door could do that.
“Let’s see, they don’t cast shadows or reflections.” Evren frowned, “That won’t help me any. Umm, they can’t enter a home unless invited. Still not useful. They can… change into a bat!” Evren nodded as it was coming back to him, “OH! They can charm too! I think. Is that vampires or something else?”
Evren sighed. He pushed open the great doors of the boss’ chamber and pulled his wagon inside. There, in the center of the room sat a coffin. He had originally thought the coffin would be elaborately decorated as it is the boss of this floor, but although solidly made, was of a simple design. Evren walked towards the center of the room and reached down to open the coffin. When he did, he found it empty. He quickly searched the room with his sensory field but found nothing in there except for himself and the wagon.
As he scanned the room, he saw the shadow of a man by his wagon that seemed to be looking in the back. “You carry quite a number of items with you. Yet, you are alone. Why?” he heard coming from the shadow. Evren replied with, “If there were someone alive out there who could have joined me, I probably wouldn’t have come in here in the first place.
The shadow walked into the light. It was a distinguished looking man in a fancy outfit, “There is no one alive who could join you? It has been some time since I have had a visitor, but I didn’t think they had all died. How have you survived?”
“Ahh, I was summoned to this world. I’ve been alone since arriving.”
“Summoned? Wouldn’t the summoner be there as well?” it asked.
Evren shrugged, “I guess something happened with the spell and I didn’t arrive at the right spot.”
“Interesting.” It said as it stretched out the word. “So, all of those in the town above are dead. You must be going to the field then.”
“Field? Ahh, I’m not sure to be honest. I read there was a place on the 86th floor that there might be people at.”
The man nodded, “Yes. There.” He walked forward to the opposite side of the coffin from Evren. “I could let you pass unharmed if you would do something for me.”
Evren squinted his eyes at the man, “What would that something be?”
The man smiled, “A conversation.” He said as he stepped away, holding his hands out to the side as if to show he was not armed. “You see, sometimes intelligent monsters summoned by a dungeon will gain a sentience. Normally this would be a short-lived thing, but since I have been down here so long, I’ve been aware of only this room, nothing of the outside. I know of the town outside the dungeon, because the dungeon knows of the town. I know of the humans living in the field, the 86th floor, because the dungeon knows of those people. While the dungeon is a thing that lives,” He sighs deeply, “it isn’t a thing that talks.”
“I have known about your travels through the dungeon for a while, and I was so desperately hoping you would be civilized enough to talk.” It lifted its chin up, “An exchange. Information for information. I shall tell you about the dungeon and its secrets. You shall tell me about… Well other things than the dungeon.”
Evren stared at the monster for a while thinking, then walked back to the wagon. He disconnected two of the boxes from the side of the wagon and brought them back, setting them down on the ground near the coffin. He sat down on one of the boxes and said, “My name is Evren Bozdag. I come from a different world than this one.”
The vampire lord smiled and sat down opposite to Evren, “Sergei. Good to meet you, Evren Bozdag.”
