The room behind the metra door was a near replica of the ritual Serenity had disabled, the one that turned out to be some sort of odd summoning spell. It hadn’t really done much in reality, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a problem in a dungeon.

A group of four man-shaped shadows appeared over the center of the ritual circle. Serenity didn’t wait for them to do anything; he simply hit them with a Fireball. There was no one nearby and the Plasma Affinity that made up his Fireball seemed as likely to deal with the shadows as anything else.

The shadows weren’t there when the fire cleared. That meant they were probably about as challenging to fight as the Hollow Ones; no regeneration and probably vulnerable to energy of several types, but it was likely that they were nearly immune to simple physical weapons. Magical weapons might or might not work; a manablade was probably the ideal weapon to fight them with, while there was a decent chance that his ax would be terrible.

Fortunately, everyone in the group, even Raz, had a way to deal energy-based damage. Three of them could do it to an area.

The real challenge, then, was figuring out what the dungeon wanted from them. It might just want them to kill a certain number of shadows; that was the simple solution, and almost always worked eventually. It might want them to damage the inscription on the floor or even break the ritual; that was what they’d done in reality, after all.

It might also accept sneaking by the ritual; that wasn’t what they’d done, but it still seemed reasonable for a dungeon that was showing an area rather than the actual events. It might well lead to having shadow-creatures follow them, so it wasn’t a good choice.

Zanzital threw a shadowy field that felt like Death over the area when the next group appeared. He ignored the shadows and turned to Serenity. “Do we just stand here and kill them or do you want to try to solve the puzzle?” Zanzital seemed to have come to the same conclusion Serenity had.

Serenity frowned. “Puzzle, I think. The ritual isn’t identical; there’s no ring of monster cores around it. Everything else looks about the same. I doubt it’ll let me take control of it, and I’m not entirely sure that it’s…” Serenity trailed off and took a better look at the ritual with Manasight. The original had summoned one creature and used up all the available mana to make something relatively weak. How was this one making several at once?

It wasn’t. There was no mana or even essence traveling through the ritual at all. That meant that - if it was a puzzle - the ritual was a distraction.

Of course, it was always possible that it wasn’t intended as a puzzle after all. Maybe they really were supposed to just keep killing shadows as they appeared. There was no harm in trying to solve a puzzle that wasn’t there, though, so Serenity checked the rest of the room.

The walls were similarly clear of any sign of trickery, but the ceiling above where the shadows appeared had mana moving through it. Serenity watched two entire cycles and determined that there was essence, as well, but it was minor. The shadows were mana creations rather than true monsters; they weren’t real summons, either.

If his eyes didn’t deceive him, there was a pattern carved into the stone there. It was hard to see since the stone didn’t have the color variation that would highlight it, but Eyeless Sight said it wasn’t as flat as it looked. “I’ll take the next group,” Serenity stated. “There’s something I’d like to try.”

He wanted to see if he could damage the stone where the mana was moving. The pattern might be important and stone was generally easier to damage than metra. None of the attacks they’d used so far were likely to damage it; while his Fireball might eventually make it flake, it wasn’t going to do more than that unless the rock was already damaged or had water in it.

Serenity had more than one Skill that should be able to at least damage the stone. He’d try Cone of Lightning first; it was far less costly than Spot Nullification.

Blaze huffed. “If you want to. They’re weak enough that we can keep this up for a while. Does that mean you found something?”

“Maybe,” Serenity said. “The pattern on the floor is a decoy, there’s a pattern on the ceiling. I think it might be the real one.”

Raz laughed. “So it took the Viper’s deception and turned it into a literal decoy? Makes sense; a lot of dungeons like to simplify things but also hide them. This must be one.”

Serenity hadn’t thought of it that way. It took an odd twist of mind for the information the Viper gave Amily being not quite correct, perhaps more misleading than actually deceptive, to turn into the location of the ritual being in a different part of the room, but Raz was probably right. “You’re the one with training about dungeons,” Serenity admitted. “I’ve been in a lot but few of them were like this one.”

It wasn’t the first time he’d ever been in a Field Dungeon based on an event he lived through, but it wasn’t exactly common either. When it did happen, it was something like this - he needed something he’d missed during the previous visit and the Field Dungeon gave him a chance to fix his mistake. This time, it was as simple as having bad information; he’d based his plans on what Amily knew and it turned out to be wrong.

Another quartet of shadowy beings appeared. Serenity moved his hand forward and triggered the Cone of Lightning. The hand motion was a bad habit rather than necessary, but it did make his aim easier.

Half of the lightning splashed off the ceiling while much of the rest zapped through the shadows. The light was blinding and left severe after images, while the sound was momentarily deafening. It was lightning and this was an entirely-too-small space for it.

Eyeless Sight showed bits falling from the ceiling.

When his sight cleared, Serenity saw that the four shadows, apparently undamaged, had started towards him. He wasn’t as fast as Zanzital; before he could trigger a Fireball, Zanzital’s Death Affinity Skill covered the area. The shadows didn’t survive.

“The shadows survived the lightning,” Serenity blurted out. “How did they do that? It should be about as effective as plasma; sure, it doesn’t cover the whole area, but it is stronger where it does hit.” Most of the time, lightning and fire were roughly equivalent. He’d picked lightning because it could penetrate better, instead of just heating the top layer, but that shouldn’t affect whether or not it could hurt the shadows.

There was really only one explanation that made sense. Well, there might be two, but they both came back to the same thing. He’d misidentified the shadows’ weakness. “They either have to be enveloped or they can’t be hurt by stuff that will damage the stone,” Serenity added. “If this really is a puzzle, the second one makes more sense.”

“It has to be a puzzle,” Zanzital agreed. “This is far too easy to be anything else. Four creatures repeatedly dying to a single spell, no variation in how they appear? It’s designed to keep someone busy taking care of them.” He launched a spell of his own at the ceiling. Serenity wasn’t sure what it was immediately; it had a feel of the Solid Affinity and he wouldn’t have expected that to be useful in destruction.

The spell hit the ceiling. Nothing happened for a long moment, then it became obvious that a section of the ceiling was slowly bulging. At first, it looked almost like a water droplet forming, but it quickly became obvious that it was stone shifting and flexing like a liquid.

Then it fell.

Three groups of shadows had died since Zanzital cast his spell at the ceiling and a fourth had formed. The stone drop fell through them without affecting them at all, but Blaze quickly dealt with them. The droplet shattered when it hit, sending sharp shards of stone all around the room. Blaze was probably going to need to heal himself and Raz.

Serenity looked up at the ceiling. A stubby spike protruded from the stone, snapped off where the droplet separated from the stone above. It looked like it had frozen in place. The intricate patterns on the ceiling were warped and many were missing, so Serenity turned his manasight back on them.

No mana moved through them.

They waited and watched while Blaze healed Raz, but no more shadows appeared over the next few minutes and they relaxed a bit. Serenity turned to Zanzital. “That’s clearly not a combat spell. Some sort of Skill that affects stone?”

Zanzital shrugged. “Not just stone, anything that’s one solid material. It’s slow and imprecise, but it can move a lot at a time; it seemed perfect for this puzzle.”

Serenity nodded. He suspected it wasn’t quite as limited as Zanzital said; after all, Skills could be stretched. Even if it only did what Zanzital described, though, it could be very useful. A lot depended on what “one solid material” meant. He wasn’t about to ask; it would be rude to ask just because he was curious.

“Are we ready to move on?” Serenity looked over at Blaze when he said that. He was still healing Raz and Serenity wasn’t sure where his mana reserves stood. Serenity’s were still good and he expected Zanzital’s were as well, but Blaze had spent more than either of them and had lower reserves as well.

Blaze shook his head. “A short rest would do me good. An hour?”

The tunnel was once again filled with Hollow Ones. Just like the last time they’d cleared a “room”, there were usually more Hollow Ones than there had been before. They still weren’t any stronger.

This time, Serenity and Zanzital took care of most of them. Blaze insisted he could handle some, but Zanzital insisted on handling the ones that should have been Blaze’s as well as his own by the simple expedient of doing it, even when asked not to. He insisted that the healer “shouldn’t waste his mana on offense,” and none of Blaze’s arguments got through. Serenity tried as well, but it was clear that Zanzital thought he knew better than both of them.

Raz kept quiet during the debate. Serenity thought he wanted to speak up, but he was clearly more impressed by Zanzital’s Tier than either Serenity or Blaze.

Eventually, Zanzital told them both to “stop arguing with your elder.” Both Serenity and Blaze gave up after that; it was clear Zanzital wasn’t going to listen until something happened to show him the problems with his command. However much Serenity wanted to see that happen, he hoped it didn’t happen on this delve. It wasn’t worth it.

A few minutes of resentment was enough for Serenity to want to change the subject. “What do you think the dungeon has in store for us next?”

“The barracks,” Zanzital stated dismissively. “Obviously.”

“It’ll be the Viper,” Raz disagreed. “It’s doing this in the order things happened, and that means the Viper should be next. It could be the teleporter room, but I bet it’ll combine them. That should make for an interesting fight.”

“The Hollow Ones aren’t in order,” Zanzital countered. “And the Viper makes for a much better end boss, so that’s what the dungeon will do.”

Everyone seemed to relax a little. Serenity was happy that worked, though he didn’t think it would last for long.

Lillene

Which do you think it will be? Or will it be something else?