Risen World

"Well I think we've all got a good idea of what's behind each path." Henry said getting everyone's attention. "We'll most like have to clear each of the paths before we can go into the boss room and for each path to have an image of a beast on it means the challenge down the path will probably have something to do with the beast."

"Yeah I can see that the beast we fought in the canyon are probably weaker versions of what we'll end up facing going down these paths, but we don't know what else we might be up against." Joshua said with a frown as he looked over each of the doors.

"Well then we should start with the door we feel is the easiest. It'll give us a good idea of how difficult this dungeon can get." Isabella said as she turned to look at the door with the bat and beetle on it. "If I had to compare the beast we fought on the way here I'd say the bats and the beetles are the weakest creatures since they rely on numbers to fight more than anything else in comparison to the other creatures. There might be some other things to make the path difficult, but the beast themselves shouldn't be too hard to take down."

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. Even if they are the same types of beast as the ones outside of the dungeon they are usually of a higher level with some sort of new trick that we have to deal with." Madalyn said with a frown.

"Who's to say the beasts will even be the things we have to worry about the most going down that path." Laura said while looking over to Joshua. "Up to this point the only traps we've had to deal with were the trap doors by the spiders and we just avoided those. We're in a dungeon now so I highly doubt the traps will only be the ones like that."

Joshua thought over the words of everyone and realized that he'd have to come up with a decision rather quickly if they wanted to get started while they were all refreshed and ready to go. "Alright I think we'll take the path with the bats and beetles first. I highly doubt any path is all that weaker than the other, but the bats and beetles are the creatures that we are most used to fighting at this point so they'd be a good group to test the dungeon out on. We've only faced the other creatures once or twice and I highly doubt we will be able to use them against each other like we did with the spider and snake before." Joshua explained before he pulled a sandwich out of his inventory. "Go ahead and eat so that we can be at our greatest strength before heading in."

The rest of the group started eating a meal as Joshua walked around the room and inspected the designs on each of the doors before finally stopping outside of the boss room. Since there was no creature depicted on the giant door he had no idea what the boss could be. It probably wasn't one of the five other creatures that they had come across in the canyon since they all had their own doors that they'd have to explore before being able to open this one. The pathways that seemed to lead to the lock on the boss room looked like they could be triggered by something, so Joshua assumed they'd have to defeat something in the other paths to unlock each one of the four locks on the giant door. It was a fairly simple design for a dungeon, but even so it could be extremely difficult if they ended up having to face four boss level creatures before they could even get to the boss room. Joshua was having a bad feeling that was going to be the case and his intuition about these things had been on point so far.

After a few minutes everyone in the group had finished eating their meals and were now waiting outside the door with the bat and the beetle on it. Some of them looked excited to get things started while others had a more serious outlook as they prepared to look out for any signs of danger. Joshua was the first one to step forward as he walked up just in front of the door. Before he could reach out to open it another message popped up for everyone to see.

[The gate way of the bat and the beetle shall challenge your senses in combat. Be prepared to step into darkness and watch out for traps around every corner. In the end you shall have to face off against the terror of the night sky and the earthen warrior that always rises to challenge it.]

When the message disappeared the door started to open on its own letting everyone see what laid beyond it. The hallway on the other side was even a little larger than the door way, but it was hard to tell since they were all basically looking into nothing but darkness. They couldn't see much more than a few feet into the hallway as if some magic was making it so that it was impossible for light to penetrate the area. From that alone they all knew what the message meant by the fact that they weren't going to be able to rely completely on their senses. Before they had always faced the bats with at least a little bit of visible light, but now that would no longer be an option. The only light they could rely on was the one created by Light and that was something they wouldn't want to use at all times since it could attract a lot of unwanted company.

Joshua took a deep breath to calm his thoughts down before turning to look at the rest of the group. "Alright since we won't be able to rely on our sight like usual we'll have to rely on Natalie and Becca's to give us some vision down this path. Becca you will also be out front until we come across enemies. We will need you to check for any traps and since you're the one with echolocation it will be easier for you to pick out the traps instead of Marcus at the moment. Marcus you will make sure the rest of the group at the back avoids any of the traps that Becca points out." Joshua said getting nods from the both of them. "Well then form up and let's go."

"Wait one thing before we head in." Henry said getting everyone to stop for a brief moment to see what he was up to. Henry pulled out a torch and brought it up to the darkness just beyond the door. When he stuck it in it lit up the hallway for a moment before something surprising happened. The light being generated by the torch started to get eaten away by the darkness slowly. The whole group watched as the torch light faded away until the fire itself was snuffed out and the hallway once again returned to its quiet darkness.

"Damn, can't even use a torch what kind of creepy magic is this?" Adrian asked with a frown.

"I thought that might happen." Henry said with a thoughtful look. "It was unnatural how the light from the room wasn't able to light up this pathway at all so I figured there must be some reason behind that. Let me try something else real quickly." Henry started casting a small spell as he created an orb of light in his hands before sending it floating down the pathway slowly. Everyone watched as the orb of light started to brighten up a small area of the hallway, but it was barely enough for them to see the floor and some of the area around it. It didn't last for long as the darkness seemed to engulf the spell and snuff it out within moments. Henry sent out another orb of light but this time he maintained the spell and kept feeding it mana. With the added support the orb of light was able to fend off the darkness, but it still wasn't nearly enough to light up the entire hallway.

When the group looked back to Henry they noticed that he was expending quite a bit of mana to keep the orb of light going. When he eventually let the spell die he was breathing a little heavily as if he just finished a long struggle. "Did it drain that much of your energy?" Aito asked a bit surprised at how tired his friend had gotten just from having to use one simple spell.

"It wasn't just me using the spell that was draining my energy, but the fact that I had to continuously fight off the encroaching darkness around the light. I think it will be like that for any attempt to light up the area." Henry explained after catching his breath. "It will make fighting any enemies we come across more challenging and will probably weaken flame spells a bit especially if they are long lasting." Henry said looking over to Laura and Julia."

"Good to know, so we'll have to stick to quick and fast hitting fire spells so that we don't drain to much of our energy." Laura said with a nod.

"That's a shame, I won't be able to control the flames like I usually do for long periods of time." Julia said with a shake of her head before she seemed to simply except the fact and move on. She'd have to stick to smaller scale attacks for this path to be effective. Joshua would also be effected by this fact since he couldn't have Light generating any light while fighting. If he did that then Light would start draining through his aura rather fast trying to keep the light going and that wouldn't help at all.

"Alright let's head in. Everyone stay close to each other since we can't see. Don't fall behind." Joshua said before being the first person to step into the darkness. It was odd for everyone to see him walk in since it looked as if his entire body had been devoured by the darkness even though they knew he was only a few feet ahead of them. They all followed along as Natalie created the mental link and connected Becca's mental images for everyone to see. Although they couldn't use light Becca's echolocation worked just fine in the darkness as it bounced around the halls giving everyone a clear picture of what was up ahead. Natalie was able to continuously feed in the images as they moved forward so it wasn't to jerky looking and instead seemed more along the lines of what you'd usually see, but that would change during a fight with so much motion going on. If an enemy was moving around to quickly than it would look like they were jumping from place to place since the mental images couldn't keep up with the speed of their movements. At that point Joshua was going to have to rely on his aura sense to get the best picture.

Becca walked cautiously alongside Joshua as she looked around the hallway for any traps. At first things seemed fairly clear as if the dungeon was allowing the group to get accustomed to having to move through the darkness the entire time, but eventually things started to change. The first thing they came across was a branching path and that immediately let everyone know that this path wasn't going to be a short trip. It could end up being an entire dungeon in its own right. Since they were in a dungeon Joshua didn't mind using his aura pulse to see down the paths, the monster would know they were coming either way since they were the only knew sources of mana or aura in the area and would end up attracting a lot of attention.

When Joshua sent an aura pulse down one path he noticed that it proceeded on for a long ways and went well beyond the range of his aura pulse. However the other path didn't go nearly as far and actually stopped at a decently sized room. Of course the moment Joshua saw the room with his aura pulse he could feel three aura signatures within it telling him there were creatures in the room. That fact alone meant there was probably a reason to go down the path if not just for the experience and to test the group against what the beast in the dungeon had to offer.