Menseio Station, orbiting Veria
Menseio Station
13:41 Ship Time
September 18, 2019

[What is it?] I asked, recognizing the ghouls that began running along the ceiling, but not the two monsters that looked like a mix of a triceratops and porcupine, but made out of jagged bone.

“Bone horrors… they can launch the quills or whatever you want to call them like arrows and they’re very hard to kill. The dark mana matrix that keeps them going is located deep within their bodies too, making it very hard to get at.”

[Alright, I’ll take this one, Mace, you see if you can manage the other one. Ben, girls, do your best to deal with the draugr!]

If there was one thing I knew about bone, that is that it is a lot lighter than one might think. Putting my weapons away, I began walking up to the bone horror even as it lowered its head and charged towards me. Standing my ground, I reached out and grabbed onto its top two horns. The force of its push forced me back a few meters, but it didn’t take much effort to halt all of its momentum, and then it was my turn.

Making sure I had a tight grip, I spun in place, pulling the bone horror along with me. More than one draugr was unfortunate enough to be in the bone horror’s path, and each one of them was impaled on its many spikes. After spinning for a few seconds, I let go, sending the bone horror crashing into the nearest wall, exposing the area where its stomach would be, which wasn’t protected nearly as well.

Grabbing onto two of its spikes even as it launched some of the others in an attempt to impale me, I held it to the wall as I took in a deep breath of air. It wasn’t fire that I breathed this time, but was instead the frigid cold, all directed at one spot on its underbelly. The extreme cold spread out from there, and after my breath weapon had ended, I let go of one of the spikes which was immediately launched and bounced off my shield. Drawing my fist back, I punched the coldest spot, shattering the frozen bone.

Pulling my hand out of the hole I had made, it was easy to see the dark mana matrix that Ben was talking about, and this time I used [Arcane Bolt] 4 times, one after another. My little [Arcane Familiar] helped as well, and soon that matrix was no more. Spinning back around, I grabbed the two shield bearing draugr that had been trying to impale me and threw them onto the now dead bone horror, before turning back around and drawing my gauss pistols.

It was extremely nice not having to reload very often, and when I did it only took a second. As soon as that was taken care of, I began walking across the room to where Mason was dealing with the second bone horror. I took out as many of the draugr as I could as I walked, and that was when I realized that I was being an idiot. The gun-wielding draugr were wearing armor, but it was leather and not metal like the shield bearing draugr.

Reaching out with my mind while looking at one of the draugr, I tried lifting it up using telekinesis, and celebrated internally when it worked. From there, I focused on lifting it from its feet, and then repeatedly smashed it into the wall behind it. The first two hits didn’t do much, but soon little pieces of bone became big pieces of bone, and half of its body was strewn all over the place.

Trying something different, I picked up two of the lever action rifles that the draugr used and proceeded to fire at some of the other ranged draugr. My aim was absolutely awful, but I was able to cycle the rifle without any issue, and fire until both were empty. After that, I just used them as bludgeons to beat another draugr to death, and then turned back towards Mason.

He was doing a good job, but he was still having a bit of trouble with it. One of its horns was almost completely sheared off and over half of its spikes were gone, but he hadn’t managed to break through its armored body yet. Spotting a pair of bone spikes that were laying on the ground, I used telekinesis to pick them up and then launched them at the bone horror without so much as a gesture. It turns out that not wanting to get hit by small metal balls is a very good motivator in getting someone to not rely on their hands.

The bone spikes themselves weren’t enough to kill the bone horror, but one of them was enough to put a big crack in its underside, making it much easier to get at the matrix within. Holding it in place, I let Mason finish it off with a nicely placed [Earth Spike]. Rising up from the ground, a sharp piece of stone broke through the now weakened armor killing the second of the two bone horrors.

After that, the fight was as simple as killing the rest of the draugr and then dealing with the boss. He came out with his shield up again, but the next time we brought it down and he was drawn back into his phylactery, its protective shield didn’t activate. The phylactery was much weaker than we would have thought, taking only one shot from Sonja’s railgun before shattering into hundreds of little pieces. Not having time to recuperate its strength, the boss died for the final time a moment later.

Once again we were disappointed at not seeing a legendary or mythical item, but they were extremely rare, and for good reason. Since none of us could wear any of the gear we had earned and weren’t in any hurry to learn any of the skill gems that had dropped, we had no idea what to do with everything. We were already on our second pouch to store skill gems in and we probably would have filled our dimensional storages full of mana crystals, mana gems and mana crystal shards, that I was very glad to have the Beacon on hand.

Once we had everything gathered and stored, we headed down to the next floor to see exactly what we would be facing next. That turned out to be pretty much the exact same things that we had seen in the boss fight. The majority were draugr of both varieties, but there was also a new one with heavy armor and a long two-handed broadsword. Aside from that, there was the odd smattering of ghouls here and there, as well as the occasional bone horror. We didn’t see any liches, though it was absolutely possible that there were some present as well.

Ben once again summoned his fire elemental since it was off cooldown, and then we followed behind it as it cleared a path for us. We all had our guns out and trained outwards, so all we needed to do was not trip and we were good to go. While the heat produced by the fire elemental wasn’t felt much by my friends or by me at all, it certainly had an effect on the undead. It was enough to crack their bones at the very least, but few made it through without being a pile of ash and heated metal.

You can imagine our surprise when suddenly Ben’s fire elemental dissipated, but our plan was going too well for the dungeon to not throw a wrench into it. Looking the way we were going, it was easy to see the lich up ahead, even if it was less than half the size of the boss we had fought. Reaching out with my mind, I picked it up with my telekinesis and then smashed it into the ground, laughing when a trail of bone and cloth could be seen traveling away from us. It would be back, but we had a little bit of time.

After taking the lead and giving my friends plenty of warning, I breathed in and exhaled another wave of intense cold. Spread over such a large area it wasn’t nearly as effective, but a half dozen or so draugr were frozen solid and easily dealt with. One of those was one of the new ones wielding a broadsword, so I picked it up with telekinesis and began using it. Getting a ping from [Precognition,] I moved the sword and neatly cut the ghoul in two, before proceeding to swing it around by the handle almost like a lawnmower, cutting the heads off any draugr that got in its way.

Not even a minute after I had picked up the sword was my fun ruined once again, this time when the sword disintegrated entirely, but I had another idea. While sending a message to Abi and her telling me to wait a minute, I retrieved my pistols and once again began firing at every draugr that got close. I prioritized the ones with rifles first, but was indiscriminate as I sent rounds down range.

We had been fighting our way towards one of the bone horrors for a few minutes, and I finally decided that we were close enough so I put away a pistol and retrieved a sword. Making sure that my [Arcane Familiar] friend was still with me, I gestured towards the bone horror and began channeling [Disintegration Beam].

It crossed the distance at a speed slower than the speed of light, but still extremely fast, and crashed into the bone horror before it began boring a hole right through it. Each time the beam’s damage and mana cost increased, my [Arcane Familiar] did some damage on its own, but it was only really active to increase the damage of [Disintegration Beam], not that I could tell.

The bone horror had died in seconds, and anything that managed to enter its path was almost instantly vaporized. I attempted to rake it across the approaching undead, but they seemed cognizant of its destructive power so they stayed away. The mana cost was getting a little extreme anyways, so I stopped channeling just in time for Abi to get back to me.

[They’re ready,] she said, causing me to smile and take my Beacon out of my storage.

A second later, there were a half dozen marble-like metal spheres resting in my opposite hand, and I put the Beacon back in my storage. These spheres weren’t made out of any old metal, either. The inner core was tungsten to increase the weight, while the outside was warvynium to hold it all together. After picking two of them up with my telekinesis and storing the other two, I retrieved my pistols and went to work.

Every time I saw a ghoul rushing towards us, I would send one of the spheres rocketing towards it. In the blink of an eye, it would crack open its skull in a shower of dark red mist, and then I would draw it back in preparation for the next one.

“That’s it, as soon as we’re done here, I’m locking myself in my room until I figure out how to do that!” Mason yelled after witnessing what I could do with a little bit of practice, causing me to chuckle.

It was a real mental exercise, but one that wasn’t nearly as strenuous as manipulating several more spheres that were many times heavier. Still, I could make the small spheres go wherever I wanted them to go. The next time a lich popped up and began casting a spell, one of the spheres zipped between us and another lich was sent back to its phylactery.

About five minutes after we had entered the floor, most of the dvergr were dead and we were just dealing with the occasional ghoul. The only thing they really had going for them was their speed, but if one focused, then Precognition made it extremely easy to hit them in the head and send them crashing down to the floor. The phylacteries were another matter, and they actually took some effort to find. A lot of them were buried within collapsed buildings, which sucked, while others were hidden on top of the few buildings that actually had roofs. Surprising us was the fact that all three phylacteries we had destroyed left behind a mana gem, which was a nice plus.

The floor boss itself was something different, and that was a skeletal mage. Just as physically weak as a regular skeleton, but they had powerful shields and spells. If there was a word that described them perfectly, it was glass cannon. As long as their shield was up they were pretty formidable, but the moment it fell, they were done for.

Just like floors two through four, floors six through nine paved the way in showing what we should expect for the boss fight. The dvergr actually began employing tactics as the liches behind them got more powerful, the ghouls were even faster, the bone horrors were armored up, and the skeletal mages caused havoc.

Compared to the lich fight which was basically just completing the phases until we could destroy the phylactery, the second boss fight was actually interesting, and was similar to the four horsemen fight from a few weeks beforehand. The room itself was hexagon shaped and was divided into six different sections. The first section was the one we entered on, but each of the other sections had a different undead monster on it. The one to our immediate left had a longsword-wielding draugr, the one next to it had a ghoul, the one opposite us had an armored bone horror, the far right had a lich, and the immediate right had a skeletal mage. It was clear that we would each need to take on one of the bosses by ourselves, so we got started on figuring out who would take what.

“I’ll take the draugr,” Sonja said. “I don’t just need to rely on [Ride the Lightning] anymore, so it shouldn’t be able to get close.”

I nodded and looked over to Anja.

“The ghoul, I guess? If the ones we just fought are any indication then this one is probably a hell of a lot faster, and I’m the only one really suited to go up against it. I mean you could probably just stand and then grab onto it, but I think you’d be better against the bone horror,” she said before looking at Ben and Mason “Even with Precognition, you two would probably have a hard time hitting it.”

“That’s fine, I wanted one of the other two anyways,” Mason replied. “What about you, what do you want, Ben?”

“I’ll take the lich, it should be easier for me to deal with since I can drain its mana with [Chaos Bolt], and my mana regen is a lot higher in case it can drain mana like the last one could.”

“Fine with me,” Mason said.

[Alright, let’s get to it then,] I said, walking across the thin walkway to the section the bone horror was in.

The moment all of us were in position and ready, I used [Blink] and then crashed into the bone horror before it could even react. Aside from the holes that held its bone spikes, the rest of its body was almost entirely covered in metal plates, including its underside which was no longer a weak point. After retrieving my swords and casting [Curse of Pain], I chopped at the join on its front left joint. It took three chops before I was able to get all the way through and cut off half of its leg, so I moved around and did the same thing to the other side.

I didn’t feel pain from any of those strikes, but that wasn’t the point. I just wanted to limit its movement so I could finish it off and watch the rest of the fights. Using [Blink] to appear in the spot I was in when the fight began, I once again channeled [Disintegration Beam]. The metal plates helped a little bit, but soon the majority of the bone horror was no more, and what was left was a burned mess.

Looking around, I saw that the girls were having the easiest time of it, but that was simply because they didn’t have to fight their way through a shield like Ben and Mason did. Anja was faring the best out of everyone though, as she had cut off the back leg of the ghoul she was fighting, greatly reducing its movement. Greatly reduced still wasn’t zero, and it was still pretty speedy without it. All it took was a use of [Omnislash] and its other leg and an arm was gone, leaving a single arm as the only way it could get around. Or I thought so until a tongue shot out, reaching for her leg, not that it was allowed to connect. A quick wave of her katana and its tongue was cut in half, and then she finished it off with a quick shot to the head.

Sonja was next to finish her boss off with a [Triple Shot] to the chest. The first two rounds weren’t able to penetrate, but all three shots hit in the exact same spot, eventually punching through and destroying its dark mana matrix. That left Mason and Ben, and they were going all out. Both had their respective elementals out as they pounded on the shield, but other than that their approach was very different. I had expected Mason to use his halberd, but he decided on his railgun instead, which was probably a good choice. While he did a lot of damage with his halberd, it just couldn’t compete with the rotary-like railgun when he had the time to use it.

Ben did exactly what he said he was going to do though, and was casting [Chaos Bolt] after [Chaos Bolt] while evading the spells that the lich was casting, making a good use of [Blink] to do so. I saw the moment the shield collapsed, but the lich was immediately sucked back into its phylactery, while three draugr, a ghoul and an unarmored bone horror entered through a door in the back.

He was stationary for a moment before using [Blink] three times in quick succession as the five undead ran around trying to catch him. Eventually they were close enough together that they stacked up, and he instantly cast [Meteor Shower] thanks to his [Mageband]. The ghoul was too fast to be hit, but the other four were quickly smashed to bits by meteors repeatedly crashing down onto them.

Even though he had broken through the shield before Mason had, that didn’t mean that Ben would be done before him. In fact, right as Ben finally finished off the ghoul, the lich reappeared and he had to take down the shield once again, while the skeletal mage was already dead. It didn’t take nearly as long as the first time, however, as even without his fire elemental, the shield dropped in under a minute. As soon as he destroyed the phylactery, the shields between the five sections dropped, and a chest appeared in the middle of the room. Gathering up the mediocre loot within, we continued on.

The next fifteen floors and three bosses were in a similar vein with the undead getting smarter and more capable as we delved deeper, but there wasn’t really a challenge until we reached the twenty-sixth floor. It was there that things slowed down, and that was because we were introduced to flying undead. Specifically, something called an undead tibave, which was rather bat-like.

It wasn’t that they were strong because they were quite weak, but they tended to pick up phylacteries and fly away from us, and seemed to be able to fool our [Precognition] somehow. Sonja would see one bank to the left so she would compensate and slowly squeeze the trigger, but the tibave would suddenly bank in the other direction and she would miss entirely.

To get around it, we had to hit both the spot that we saw it going to, as well as the only other spot it could go, and while that worked, it wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes it just kept flying straight, and we would need to try again. Eventually I got tired of it and used [Blink] until I was in range before casting [Curse of Pain], which would kill it after an indeterminate time of waiting. It was hard enough for us and we had a significant advantage over other adventurers, so I couldn’t imagine how difficult it was for them. Or maybe it was just the dungeon’s way of fucking with adventurers, but who could say for sure.

The most annoying part was that destroying all of the phylacteries was suddenly required when the tibave showed up, otherwise we couldn’t fight the floor boss. Without fighting the floor boss, we couldn’t advance down to the next level. It pretty much turned into ‘hurry up and wait’ which almost tempted me to go through my skill gems so I could find something that would help. Fortunately the last tibave died sending the phylactery it was holding crashing down to the floor. A quick tungsten-warvynium marble later, and the door opened allowing us to fight the floor boss.

Unfortunately I couldn’t stand how much time was wasting, and while I could certainly switch to a form that could fly and chase the little bastards down, it was much more efficient to use a spell instead. The spell of choice? [Magic Missile]. If you’re not familiar with the spell, once cast, you can actually control where the missile goes, allowing you to adjust its flight path depending on how your target moves. If a tibave jinks right and I miss, then it’s a simple enough thing to circle back around.

Not only that, but I was able to control three missiles at once, making it even harder for the tibave to avoid them, and even then, I didn’t need to go for the tibave itself. A single hit from [Magic Missile] was enough to destroy a phylactery, making it extremely easy. It was only afterwards that my friends made me realize I was still an idiot, when I could’ve done the exact same thing using my marbles and telekinesis. I had a dozen of them, and it turned out to be a hell of a lot easier using six marbles than three little magical missiles.

The boss though… that was easily the most fun I had had all night, simply because it was an actual challenge. In the previous boss fights we still needed to be careful, but in the sixth boss fight so many different things were happening that you had to be on your toes. It was sort of like a boss fight from a raid in World of Warcraft in that regard, as messing something up could make things a lot harder than it needed to be, but if you executed well, then it was easy.

For example, once every thirty seconds or so, we found that two pulses of energy would slowly spread throughout the room, and they were always different. Sometimes a pulse would reanimate undead that is passed over, while other times anyone hit by hit would take a big chunk of damage. Then there was the one that completely drained your mana if you were hit, which would cause [Mana Shield] to drop. If you were hit by the mana draining wave and the one that dealt damage to you, then you were in some serious trouble.

Thankfully there was a way to avoid all that, which was the six different pillars that were spread around the room. They raised and lowered over the course of the fight, so you always needed to make your way to another pillar, which helped, but did have the side effect of slightly increasing the difficulty. Sometimes your best option was just to eat one of the energy waves, as one of them wasn’t very deadly on its own. Except for maybe the one that put a curse on you that stacked the longer you remained in it, but [Cleanse] solved that little issue.

Aside from that, the little tibave bastards were back. They didn’t fly around with phylacteries this time, but instead they dropped amphoras containing some absolutely horrid-smelling liquid, which was also extremely sticky. Mason had the misfortune of one just landing near him, and had to remove his left boot just so he could use [Blink] in time to get to another pillar.

The boss itself was rather interesting, and it was one might call an abomination. Comprised of hundreds if not thousands of corpses that were sown together and then animated, it was incredibly durable, and a lot faster than one might think. We found out that guns weren’t particularly useful against it since it would just push the rounds out and regenerate, which meant that we were back to fire as the good old equalizer.

Ben and I would switch ‘tanking’ the boss while everyone was doing damage and then everyone except the person tanking would hide behind a pillar until the energy waves dissipated. As soon as they did, we would go back in. Occasionally, random undead would enter the room from one of three entrances around the room, but they were easily dealt with. It was never more than one of three draugr, two ghouls, one skeletal mage or one bone horror, but it definitely kept things interesting.

The fight was also extremely long, with it starting at 23:04 according to Abi and ending sometime after midnight, with none of us having the slightest clue. There were some mishaps including Mason being a big dummy and getting hit by two of the waves, but the combination of Mason having high constitution and Ben actually having the mana to keep [Aura of Health Regeneration] up, it wasn’t too big of a deal. By the time the boss finally fell, over half of the room was covered in the smelly black gunk and more than one of us had lost a boot. Thankfully, that gunk completely disappeared when the bosses’ corpse did, so we were easily able to pick up our boots and then our loot.

Even though we technically outleveled the boss by a fair margin, those were the types of boss fights we liked, not the ones where it was basically a tank and spank until the boss fell. It was the sort of fight where Precognition would help, but not so much that it carried a fight on its own, and it meant that you had to be observant of your surroundings otherwise you might get seriously hurt, level advantage be damned.

Since the fight had taken so long, after we gathered up yet another pile of mediocre loot, we stepped in the waygate to head back to the surface. Zaszi was a lot happier than the night before since she didn’t have to hop all over the place, and instead she could just sit back and relax while she waited. She also seemed to notice how upbeat we were, and commented on it.

“That was easily the best boss fight we’ve ever been in,” I said, going over some of the things from the fight. “Everything else up to this point was just incredibly simple in comparison, and I think the only time we were ever challenged was when we fought the boss that broke Mason’s leg.”

“There does seem to be a long tutorial-like stage,” Abi replied as we climbed up the ramp into the back of the Grasshopper. Level 500 is the sweet spot though, and is when the difficulty really ramps up. I imagine that the first handful of monsters were easy to deal with, but things got harder as you went on?”

“Aside from the boss there wasn’t that big of a change as long as we dealt with the liches early on. The really annoying thing though was the tibave; they would come in, pick up one of the phylacteries, and then fly away with it, all while magically avoiding all of our attacks. Is that just a counter to [Precognition], or is it something else?”

“They actually have what could be considered an upgraded version of [Precognition],” she answered. “You probably noticed that they look like bats, and they carry some of the same traits, when they’re living, of course. Echolocation and extreme reflexes are two of those, and they actually become enhanced when they become undead. That enhanced echolocation can cancel out [Precognition] sometimes or make it show something that isn’t going to happen, but it’s likely because you were a much lower level than it was.”

“I was an idiot by not going with these to start with,” I said, causing the six marbles to float in front of me. “At first I tried just getting close enough so I could cast [Curse of Pain], then I tried [Magic Missiles] when that was taking too long, but these made it extremely easy.]

“I imagine so, though [Magic Missiles] aren’t a bad second option,” she replied as the ramp finally rose, signifying that all of the Watch Dogs were on board. “So, I guess you didn’t get a legendary or mythical item?”

“Not even an epic,” Ben said. “Really poor luck all around, it seems.”

“Well, keep trying. Some people go a hell of a lot longer before finding one. I, myself, have never seen one drop, but I’ve heard it’s one of the absolute best feelings around, especially if it's a good one.

“We will, but I don’t think the dungeons on Earth will be anywhere close in terms of fun. We’ll also rapidly outlevel it as well, so that sucks,” I groused. “Hey, Abi… do you know any way to increase the level of dungeons?”

“Unfortunately not,” she replied with a chuckle. “If I had, I probably would have told someone how to do it, and a bunch of Spectres wouldn’t need to stay here to get stronger.”

“Was worth a shot,” I replied with a shrug of my shoulders.

---

We touched down a few minutes later, and after a quick bedtime snack, my friends and I headed to bed. More so than any day previous, that was easily the most taxing day we’ve had, particularly because of the final boss. Never before had we fought for over an hour straight, but it was good to know that muscles could still hurt.

After taking a quick shower, I climbed up into bed, turned off the light, and was out in moments.