The Runic Artist

Nate displayed the Dungeon information for the team.

You have entered a Dungeon!

The Assessment Period will begin now. You have five minutes to choose to leave the Dungeon before the entrance will be sealed.

Dungeon Name: The Island of Jonguri

Dungeon Tier: Rare (Mid)

Dungeon Challenges: 3 + 2 Bonus Challenges.

Exit Conditions: Complete 1 Challenge.

Dungeon Limitations: 2 days until the volcano erupts.

Walk your Path. Reach your Goal. Become One with Mana.

In the corner of his vision a timer had begun ticking down.

47:59:35

Nate looked at the rest of the team. Kiri was there, along with Null and Britt. Kiri was back in a fresh set of leathers that he’d raised from Uncommon to Rare for her. She was of course, strapped with small blades and there were more held within her Soul Space. Next to her was Britt, in shining armour and sinking slightly into the sand of the beach, a bright and eager smile on the blonde haired Defender’s face. Rounding out the team was Null, looking as per usual, like some sort of sailor turned blademaster with his sword peaking over his shoulder and his casual lack of armour, excluding his bracers and vambraces, a sharp contrast next to Britt. The good-looking swordsman brushed his brown hair out of the way, his matching eyes surveyed the jungle before them.

“Don’t worry about it. The enemies and challenges change regularly but the Dungeon Curator, whatever it is, never changes the general setting away from an island or the timer for the volcano. We’ve got two days to complete all five challenges and I am confident we can manage it. This will be mine and Britt’s second time, like we said. Shall we get started?” he asked, punctuating his question by drawing his sword and striding towards the jungle of trees that lay before them.

It had been a week since his latest artwork and according to Deverell, who was waiting outside of the Dungeon for them, there hadn’t been much in the way of rumours. Definitely not enough to draw the attention of the guards again, which was a relief. He just didn’t want them to destroy another artwork if he could help it. The University subjects had continued without much of interest happening, except for the delay in the Enchanting subject kicking off. Since it was still delayed, and both he and Kiri had been doing decently well in class, they’d decided to organise a Dungeon trip, spending some of his Dungeon tokens.

He and Kiri had debated about whether it was worthwhile for the pair of them doing another solo job but in the end, the winning factor for asking to team up had actually been about the time it would take to do a Dungeon. With the two of them, they weren’t confident in completing a Mid Rare Dungeon quickly and they didn’t want to miss too many classes at the University. Especially since they had to travel outside of the Capital to get to one of the Guild’s Dungeons. They’d tossed up as to whether it was better to team up with Null and Britt or Coralie and Flash, the deciding factor being that Null and Britt already had a slot coming up for the Dungeon. They’d already made the offer once for Nate and Kiri to join them, so it was easy to agree and pay their part, bringing Nate down to ten Dungeon tokens.

The trip out to the Dungeon had taken two days and it would take them another two to get back. Deverell had played escort along with another two Gold Badges who seemed glued to Null, much to the swordsman's irritation. Clearly they had been sent by Prefect Raoult and it wasn’t surprising that the young man found his father’s protectiveness grating, even if Nate was quietly thankful for it. There hadn’t been another attack against him yet at the University, but he just felt like the guillotine was waiting to drop.

What had been an interesting surprise was the Dungeon location itself. The Guild had a fully staffed and set up fort surrounding the entrance, along with some fairly powerful mana gathering arrays pumping mana into the Dungeon. Apparently it was good enough to have the Dungeon available once every two weeks to a month, depending on how depleted it got after a run. Nate knew he was likely going to be inflicting the maximum on the Dungeon reset timer as he already had a mana gathering array out, being carried along by Frick, as he borrowed the fairly dense mana from the Dungeon.

Marching into the jungle, Nate followed second from the back. Britt led the way and she was already making use of her primary Skill, Adaptable Armour Projection. The fully empowered version was what she used to create her mech-armour in the Tournament, but it seemed she could also use it on a smaller scale, which she was doing now to project a part of her armour in front of herself as she literally bulldozed a pathway through the jungle for them. Null moved behind her, sword out and guarding her back, ready to slip around Britt to attack anything that accosted them. Nate left a couple of metres between himself and Null, not wanting to interfere with the swordsman if he needed space to move backwards. Finally, bringing up the rear and watching his own back was Kiri. It had not been lost on him that his best friend had seemed a tad more protective than usual of late. He’d caught her watching over him twice on the University grounds when he hadn’t expected it. Either the attack on his room had shaken her more than he’d expected or something else was going on. They’d have to sit down and chat about it soon, probably after he finished all the runecrafting he had been applying to his room. If there was a second attack on the place where he slept, whoever did so was liable to regret it.

The creaking sound of small trees being toppled as Britt continued to bulldoze them a path gave him a moment to focus on the area around him. His sphere of awareness was still at a range of nineteen metres, and through it he could sense the small and not so small insects crawling through the trees above. They had no levels so he assumed they were not part of the Dungeons challenges. They were odd though. It was hard to tell, but he thought they felt more like plants than insects, despite clearly having legs, wings and antennae. Either way, they weren’t his problem as they’d chosen to completely ignore the party below them.

As though his thoughts on the insects not being a problem was a signal, the jungle in front of them started rumbling as something started moving towards them. Britt backed up a few steps and the group prepared for combat. Within moments they finally got a look at what they were going to be fighting.

Plantarius Caticus

Overgrown Guardian (R) (34) / Overgrown Hunter (U) (11)

There were five of the beasts. Clearly pack hunters. They looked like trees, the wooden skin and leaves for hair covering otherwise sleek bodies in the shape of large cats. Or so he judged it. He couldn’t see eyes on the creatures, but the monsters could clearly see them, as the five beasts stalked back and forth slowly, watching the group and occasionally baring their fangs. Their levels were also higher than what he’d expected, given that the kobold Dungeon had had the so-called trash mobs at around level thirty-one. He’d thought, since this was a Mid-Rare Dungeon, that the trash mobs would be around the same, but they were already halfway to fifty, which should in theory be the maximum for the Dungeon. Perhaps it was because of the lower number of enemies?

His thoughts, though fast, were interrupted as the monsters launched their attack. It was his first time seeing how Britt and Null functioned together and he had to admit, it was impressive. Britt activated a Skill that let her shield be projected into three places at once, knocking back three of the Caticus as they tumbled loudly but unharmed into the jungle trees. The remaining two crashed into a barrier of his own making. Kiri and he had agreed to limit their Skills to what they had shown in the tournament. That meant he wasn’t going to be using anything like Conceptual Automation. Not that he thought they’d need it. These things were only ten levels above them, except for Kiri, and their rarities were in line with a Rare dungeon

The difference in power was obvious as Kiri and Null got to work. Britt continued to defend the group, holding off two of the Caticus on her own. He in turn was acting as support as he deflected attacks from the remaining three with his Barriers. That left Null and Kiri free to carve into the monsters, with mixed success. Wood chips flew as the pair carved into the creatures, taking them apart methodically. The Caticus bled onto the ground, their orange blood thick like sap. The simple fact was that the team arrayed against the monsters vastly outclassed them. No matter the angles, or teamwork the pack used, it was an uninspired grind that slowly ground the beasts down.

Nate wasn’t idle as he watched Kiri flash about and Null dance amongst the monsters. It was clear that neither Null nor Kiri focused on Strength and so while they were never under threat due to the vast Class Tier disparity, the fight was dragging on longer than he liked. Taking out his Powerful Wood rune, he copied it into his robe. After that was done he combined Runic Creation, Empowered Runic Artistry and Imbue Intent to create a runic array that combined his Powerful Wood, Powerful Fire and Gathering runes. The Intents made Wood the focus with Gathering aimed at Fire. He then tagged the five monsters as the targets with his Intent. Once the runic array was done he created a second runic array above him as he called out a warning.

“Watch out!”

Kiri and Null disengaged as the ball of fire bloomed above them. Immediately the fire started to become attracted to the Caticus, balls of flame peeling off to launch themselves at the monsters. They tried to dodge but the balls of flame kept coming as he continued to feed mana from his reserve into both runes. One of the interesting effects of his runic array was that even as the monsters rolled around on the ground, trying to put themselves out, they set small fires of their own in the underbrush. The fires they set ended up just adding to the amount of fire attracted back towards them. Within a minute they were all burned husks, with a few scorch marks on the jungle floor and trees where they had tried to put themselves out.

Kiri laughed as Britt stared at Nate, mouth slightly agape.

“Err, sorry, that might’ve been overkill,” he joked, rubbing the back of his blond hair as he glanced between his three teammates.

Null just smiled, “I liked it. Saved me chipping away at them for the next ten minutes until we finally got deep enough to destroy whatever passed for a heart in them.”

“That was amazing,” added Britt, bouncing a little in excitement. “It’s something we’ve always lacked a bit in our Dungeon runs. Even when we had Gregory, he was more of a single target kind of archer and Null, despite how well he does in duels, is also a bit of a defensive build. I’m obviously heavily defensive! It meant that while we were often very safe, we also completed Dungeons slowly. Having an actual Mage with us is amazing! Best team-up ever!”

Kiri slipped behind Britt and waggled her eyebrows at Nate before mouthing the words ‘too young’, tilting her head like it was a question. Null didn’t miss the antics and Nate saw him roll his eyes with a smirk of his own.

“Happy to be here, Britt,” Nate said, trying to keep himself from laughing at the group's antics. “So, we got two Orbs out of that.”

He pointed at the two burnt husks in question as Frick stepped forward to fish them out. He could’ve teleported them to himself, now that the creatures were dead, but he had never revealed that capability in the Tournament and so refrained from doing so.

With the two Rare Endurance Orbs in hand the group set out again. It was likely to be an easy two days.

*************

Nate ignored the splatter of more venom against his barrier as he saw Kiri blur past him, slashing at the giant Carnivorous Hydra Hydraneum. The monster looked like a multi-headed venus fly trap with stems for each head thicker than tree trunks. Despite their thickness the stems remained very flexible, as Britt found out for the third time. One of the heads launched the Defender, fully encased in her magically projected mech-armour, off into the trees. He had to admit, even her scream was cute. Over the last day Kiri’s hints about Britt had become more and more overt. He wasn’t completely opposed. He just didn’t think he had time for a girlfriend. Not if he wanted to be a good boyfriend. Between his art, his schoolwork and his development, he wasn’t likely to be available often and that just seemed like it would be neglectful of him. That said, he supposed, he should give Britt the choice as well. Maybe she wouldn’t care, because she had been slowly making it more and more clear that she was interested.

He sighed and used True Teleportation to shift out of the way of a hail of envenomed spines shot at him by one of the heads. The problem, he thought, with a high Intellect, was that he was perfectly capable of overthinking things in the middle of a battle when he didn’t feel that threatened. The challenge monster was level forty-eight, but it still didn’t threaten the team. It was just, dare he say it, annoying? The Carnivorous Hydra Hydraneum was still only a Rare Class. Sure, the monster was fire-resistant, as that was the first thing he’d tried. Worse, it seemed to be able to regrow its heads, as they’d found when Null had used sequential mana slashes with his trademark nullifying effect to cut off one of the monster's five heads. It had of course regrown, as it continued to shoot envenomed barbs at them, or spray venom directly at them. So why was it not threatening them?

Well, Kiri’s regeneration from Soul Imbuement could outpace any damage it dealt with its poison, and honestly, it’d only gotten specks on her so far. Britt was safe inside of her armour projection. For Null, the venom seemed to have a mana component and so his nullification field kept him from the worst of it, though out of all of them he did seem to be having the worst time of it. That left Nate, safe inside of his barrier and casually avoiding attacks.

None of them were idle though. He was maintaining a Life Drain rune on the creature and was slowly sapping it. Already its attacks were becoming slower. The second, and arguably the most effective, was Kiri. Her Soul Drain and the soul energy leaking from the monster caused by her enchanted dagger were draining the creature as well. They just needed to keep it up, he guessed, for another ten minutes. Either way, he knew one thing for certain. He was never coming back to this Dungeon. It wasn’t exciting, it was just a slog. This was their second challenge for the day, and the first had been just as bad. They’d agreed on Britt getting that reward and she’d gone for a Skill Tome. This one would be Null’s. With a put upon sigh he teleported again to avoid a few barbs as he waited for the fight to finish. They still had another day of this after all, before the volcano would erupt and put an end to their Dungeon run, or so he suspected.