“… Ah yes, that would be called a banshee.” Sergei said, “Tell me, do you know about the way to get back to the surface quickly?”
Evren’s eyebrows perked up, “Quickly? How quickly are we talking about here?”
A smile came to the vampire’s face, “Instantaneously.”
Evren looked back at the wagon he had been pulling for a few months now through the dungeon. “If I would have known that there was a way to exit quickly, and return I assume?” The vampire nodded, “If I would have known, I wouldn’t be dragging that thing along with me.”
Sergei smiled and pointed to the exit door. On the back side of those doors is a glyph carved into the door. If you feed magic to the glyph, you can go to anywhere else in the dungeon you have been to previously, including the entrance, where there is a glyph on the floor that can take you back. The glyph is only on the back of the door, and only on floors where a champion is present.”
Evren nodded, “I see, thank you Sergei.” The vampire nodded and rose elegantly from the box it was sitting on. It walked to the coffin and opened it, climbing inside, “Now, to pass this floor you must finish me off. That stake you have should do the trick. The only way the door will open is when I am dead. Don’t worry, my consciousness will return one day, and I’ll remember our chat. We don’t really die in a dungeon. But then again, it isn’t really living either. My death here will give me a break of the maddening torturous existence that consciousness brings.”
Evren nodded and went to retrieve his stake. When he returned, the vampire said, “Oh, and if you get to the 151st floor, do say hi to the lich there for me. He has been conscious since the beginning and has had nobody to talk to in all these years since birth.” Sergei shrugged, “He may be mad though, so if you do get there don’t immediately expect to strike up a conversation.”
Evren grabbed the stake with both hands and looked down at the vampire, “Thank you, Sergei.”
“Thank you too, Evren Bozdag. May you find what you are looking for.”
Evren swung the stake down at the chest of the vampire, piercing it and causing the vampire to turn into flames and disappear into ash. A wooden and iron shield lay in its place in the coffin, along with a milky white mana gem. Evren picked up both and brought them back to the wagon. He retrieved the wooden boxes and re-attached them to the wagon, pulling the wagon towards the exit in the back. He took one last glance at the coffin as he passed, then looked back forward, pulling the wagon through the exit.
When he exited, he turned back to the door and ran his fingers along it. He could now see the glyph that was engraved there. He looked to the wagon he always brought along with him and wondered if it would go with him to the entrance or not.
He put his hand on the glyph with the mental image of the entrance. He was surrounded by a bright light and when he opened his eyes, he was in the room with the collapsed table and overturned chair. He could see the tunnel leading to the exit, and it appeared dark. When he exited the tunnel, he looked out at the darkened Aernide Fortress. He only stood there for a moment before returning to the room with the table and chair. He stood where he had arrived and bent down to the floor. After searching through the dust and dirt, he finally found the glyph on the floor. He placed his hand on it and poured magic on it, imagining the place outside of the vampire lord’s chamber. Light assaulted his eyes again and when he opened them, he was at the back of the door of the chamber, near his wagon.
He grabbed his wagon and headed down the passage pulling it along with him, “Now, let’s go see what these unicorn things are.” The passageway changed from the dark and dismal crypt environment to an open field with grasses and flowers. The sky was dark and there was a moon in the sky, and he seemed to be exiting from a cave instead of a crypt. He thought that since it was dark outside the dungeon, that the day/night cycle here inside the dungeon may be similar, so he decided to rest here, even though he hadn’t done anything.
Sergei had told him what to expect in the few levels leading up to what he called the field. First would be unicorns with a bicorn as the boss. Next would be pegasi with a winged unicorn as the boss. Following that were hippogryphs, next are nightmares and then gryphons, manticores, minotaurs, and centaurs. Each would have their own special boss, which in some way would be stronger than their respective breeds.
One thing he mentioned of interest is the ones with wings, the pegasi, hippogryphs and gryphons would sometimes drop feathers, and manticores would sometimes leave behind their spikes which he could then make into arrows. Evren would be hunting with his adamantine arrows until he could get to the manticores and make something that would be able to pierce the hides of the monsters. His limited number of adamantium arrows did make things a little difficult for him, but he had melee weapons he could fall back on. The ones that flew typically had softer hides, so he could use his hunting arrows, if he puts magic in the bow.
There are people living on the 86th floor. Sergei didn’t say how many or how well their lifestyle was, only that they are there. He said they had been living there for years, but since neither Sergei, nor Evren knew the typical lifespan of a human, he didn’t know if there were any of the original humans from the town still alive.
As Evren thought about the dungeon, while pulling his wagon, a unicorn came into view. Evren stared at it for a while, before commenting, “Ok, so a horse with a horn.” He shrugged and pulled out his bow, nocking an arrow on it. When he turned back around to the unicorn, he saw it charging at him with hatred in its eyes. As he aimed at the unicorn’s chest, he said quietly to himself, “Why so angry, Mr. Horse?” and let the arrow fly. It struck the unicorn in the chest, causing it to fall on the ground and roll until it finally stopped on its side. Evren watched it to see that it wouldn’t get back up and pulled his wagon over to the fallen unicorn.
By the time he reached it, it had died and dissolved leaving behind a yellow mana gem. He pocketed the gem, picked up the arrow and continued pulling his wagon across the field. Whenever a unicorn saw him, it would charge at him immediately. There would usually only be one or two unicorns at most, so his travel time was rather quick. The only difficult thing was that there were rolling hills in the field, causing him to have to exert more energy going up and down the hills.
Evren felt bad about killing the unicorns after a while, because the wagon he was pulling was made originally for a horse. If they were somehow tamable, he would love to get one to drive across the dungeon quicker. But these are monsters and dungeon monsters at that. They wouldn’t have the intelligence to follow orders, and they couldn’t go from floor to floor either.
Along the way there were patches of flowers that Sergei had told him were safe spots he could rest at. When he finally crossed the 45th floor to the entrance to the next level, only two days had passed. On the 46th floor, there were groups two to four unicorns at a time. Evren could sometimes kill three of them before they arrived but would usually have to finish them off with melee attacks. When Evren reached the 47th floor, the packs that unicorns rode in were now four to six. Evren spent more time working on his shooting a bow in melee, because the unicorns’ reaction speed was considerably lower than previous monsters and he could use that time to get a shot in from his bow. On the 48th floor they were now in packs of seven to ten. Evren didn’t have enough arrows to kill the entire pack of unicorns, so he had to resort to melee weapons. For this, Evren used the magical spear he had gotten from the beholder to finish off the unicorns that remained.
The 49th floor had packs of twelve or more, plus it had groups of one to three that would run around between the groups that would join in the battle. All in all, it took Evren eighteen days to get to the 50th floor where the bicorn resided. The bicorn stood taller than the tallest unicorn he had come across and had two horns on its head that were one before the other. When Evren entered the boss’ chamber, which looked like a small field in a cave, the bicorn was already pawing at the ground waiting on him. As Evren moved to get into a position away from the wagon, the grasses under his feet grew up and coiled around his legs
Evren looked down at his legs and then up at the charging bicorn and swore. He was leaning to the left to try to get his right leg free as the bicorn approached. As the bicorn neared him, he dove to the right, dropping his bow to the ground, his legs getting trampled by the bicorn. He pulled out his dagger and cut through the grasses around his legs as the bicorn turned back around toward him. Evren threw his dagger at the bicorn in an attempt to give him a moment to grab his spear, but the dagger bounced off an invisible shield that appeared around it.
Evren gave an incredulous look and ran to grab his spear. As he ran, Evren cast ‘fire arrow’ at the bicorn, but again it was blocked by the shield. As Evren grabbed his spear, he dove to the right, feeling the bicorn directly behind him, again getting kicked in the legs by its hooves. Evren rolled to his feet and limped a little bit as he gained some distance from the bicorn. As the bicorn turned back towards Evren, he cast a telekinetically enhanced ‘skewer’ at the monster, striking it in the shoulder. The rock caused a scratch on the shoulder of the bicorn, nothing more, but it gave Evren an opportunity to get his feet under him and a better control of the situation.
Evren charged at the bicorn, as it charged at him. When they met, Evren dived to the side and rolled back to his feet, charging after the bicorn who was turning around. Evren ran past the bicorn to get around behind it, but not too close as the rear legs would most likely hit him. As the bicorn turned towards him, he dashed forward, putting magic into the spear and stabbing it in the side of its chest. Before the bicorn could rear back on its hind legs and pull the spear out of his hands, Evren pulled back on the spear readying to thrust again.
The bicorn kicked at him with its front hooves, but it wasn’t mobile enough to get closer to him as Evren was just out of range. As the bicorn was preparing to get back down on the ground, Evren thrust the spear into its chest and pushed the base under it, letting the weight of the bicorn drive the spear the rest of the way in. As it landed, Evren quickly dove away looking around quickly for the wagon and getting ready to run in that direction. But it was not needed as the bicorn collapsed on the ground, eventually dissolving away and leaving a yellow mana gem and a horn in place.
Evren retrieved the gem, the horn and his spear and returned to the wagon. He placed the spear in the back of the wagon with the gem and went to retrieve his dagger and bow. He left the boss’ chamber and headed down the passage to the 51st floor. The passage appearing as a path between two fences with a forest behind, as if leading from one field to another. The sun was beginning to set, so Evren stayed here to rest before fighting the pegasi.
