NOVEL SIMPLE Chapter 6: The Best of Bad Options
With Drake comfortably back inside the mirror shard within his Interspatial Ring, Hiral activated Foundational Split. Solar energy lifted off his skin and coalesced at his sides as Left and Right took form, each in their own Second-Skins of Ur’Thul.
White tattoos on black covered Left’s left side, while Right’s Meridian Lines glowed with purple, infernal flames on his right side. Both of them stretched like they’d just gotten up from a nap, then said their hellos to the group.
While they let Hiral’s sisters run their hands up and down the unbelievably soft fabric, Yanily came over to stand beside Hiral.
“Hey,” the spearman said.
“Hey, yourself,” Hiral said. “How tough is this going to be for them?”
“The dungeon? Should be a walk in the park,” Yanily said. “I solod most of it for the party I took through here.”
“Will it give them a chance to test out their abilities?”
“There’s a few good spots for it,” Yanily said, tapping his own chin while he thought about it. “Yeah, two or three will be perfect for them – like the entry hall – without much risk. I’ll explain the Mid-Bosses and Boss before we get to them.”
“Wow, I can’t believe we’re not going into a dungeon blind for once,” Hiral chuckled.
“Guides? As in, what the monsters do?”
“And any traps or anything to watch out for.”
“That… somehow seems less fun…”
“Right?”
“Probably… less risky, too.”
“Yeah,” Yanily nodded. “For the people new to dungeons, they’ll save a lot of lives. Not what I came over here to talk to you about though.”
“Oh, something on your mind?”
Yanily tilted his spear towards Hiral’s doubles. “Why are they back to being half again? In the fight against the Fallen, they had all their tattoos and lines.”
“Ah, yeah,” Hiral said with a shake of his head. “A quest.”
“Eh? Those are usually good things,” Yanily pointed out. “What’s it say?”
“Better I just share it with you, one second,” Hiral said, opening up his status window and going to the special section marked ‘quests’. With another thought, he shared the window so Yanily could see it.
Dynamic Quest – The Price of Power
Combining Terminal with Foundational Split has stressed the skill to the point of breaking. Using the two together again could permanently damage Foundational Split, rendering it unusable. Still, there must be a way to bypass this limitation…
Find a way to unlock Foundational Split’s full power: 0/1
“Huh,” Yanily said after reading the window of floating yellow text. “The quest actually has a name. Haven’t seen that before.”
“I know,” Hiral said. “I got it after we saved Fallen Reach. Maybe the PIMP has some new features it hasn’t shown us yet.”
“More quests – and their rewards – can’t hurt,” Yanily agreed. “Any idea how to complete this?”
“One, actually. An ability merge like we got for Eloquent and Enraged.”
“The one that made them Eloquently Enraged+?”
“Exactly. When we got that, it removed – well, lessened – the downsides of using the abilities, and combined them into one. Thinking if I can do the same thing with Terminal and Foundational Split, maybe I can give Left and Right full access to their abilities without having to worry about System Shock.”
“Won’t you lose Terminal completely then? Can’t use it with any other abilities…”
“It’s to balance giving Foundational Split more power,” Hiral said. “Part of the reason I think it’s the answer – the whole balance thing, I mean. Besides, the downside of Terminal is usually too big of a risk, despite how powerful it can be, so I don’t mind losing it.”
“Which means… more dungeon runs!” Yanily said, and held out his fist towards Hiral.
“More dungeon runs,” Hiral agreed, bumping his fist against Yanily’s.
“Hey, you two finished rekindling your lost love over there?” Seeyela asked from where the rest of the party stood in front of the arch.
“I mean… almost?” Hiral called back with a grin. “One of us just needs to find flo…” he trailed off, looking down to find the spearman holding a small bouquet out in front of him. “How?”
“Interspatial Ring,” Yanily said with a wink.
“And why do you have flowers?”
“For the next time I need to suck up to Seena. Lilies are her favorite.”
“Oh?”
“I heard that,” Seena said, the flowers vanishing from Yanily’s hand. “And you’ll need a much bigger bouquet for it to work.”
“But it can work,” Yanily said as he left Hiral’s side to join the others.
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Hiral could only shake his head as he followed, Left and Right falling in beside him.
“Hope you were listening,” Right said quietly. “Lilies.”
“Got it,” Hiral replied seriously.
“Arty knows a guy,” Left added.
“Perfect,” Hiral said as he crossed the threshold of the dungeon arch, a slight shiver like ducking through a curtain of water passing over his skin. Just like that and it was gone again, and the party moved down the carved-out stairs.
“Anything living down here?” Seena asked Yanily.
“Nothing,” Yanily said. “Those worms outside are a little too efficient.”
“Surprised something that big wasn’t Elite,” Seeyela said.
“There are already the Rocs in the area,” Hiral pointed out. “Too many Elites would make this zone a deathtrap.”
“I wonder what decides if something is Elite or not,” Seena pondered. “Is it the PIMP, or maybe just a gauge of their natural strength?”
Hiral tapped his lips as he reached the bottom of the stairs, a large stone-cut room expanding ahead of him, with the familiar dungeon interface sitting next to the far wall. “That’s a great question, actually. Maybe Dr. Benza can tell us. Is there a Tutorial here?”
“It… doesn’t work,” Yanily said.
“Huh?”
“There’s an option for it on the interface,” Yanily explained. “But, when you say Tutorial, nothing happens. Like it’s broken.”
“Did you break it?” Seeyela asked.
“Probably not,” Yanily said with a shrug.
“Awww, the Tutorials don’t work?” Milly whined. “I wanted to see this Dr. Benza guy you were all talking about.”
“Let’s give it a try, just in case.” Seena walked over to the dungeon interface and waved her hand above the crystal. “Tutorial.”
Nothing happened.
“He’s right. The option is there… but… Hiral, you want to see if you can figure out what’s wrong?”
“This place isn’t in bad shape like that last Asylum we were in,” Hiral said, giving the room another once over for any sign of damage. Nothing significant, as far as he could see. Then again, maybe one of those worms broke something deep underground? If that was the case, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. Still…
“Try activating it again,” he said, focusing his attention – and Cycling – on the interface.
“Tutorial,” Seena said for the second time.
Hiral watched as energy… sputtered within the pedestal, as if it was trying to activate, but there wasn’t the power to actually get it going. “Again.”
“Tutorial.”
Same thing. The channels were lighting up with the faintest dredges of solar energy, barely more than wisps of it, but it wasn’t anywhere close to filling them. And, worse, the second time looked even weaker than the first. If he even saw anything on a third attempt, it would be a miracle.
“Can you open the dungeon portal?” he asked, honestly a little worried.
“Are we ready to go in?” Seena asked, then seemed to catch on to what he was saying. “Enter Dungeon.”
Instantly, strong lines of power hummed to life within the interface, connecting entirely different channels than the Tutorial had tried to use. Just beyond the interface, an oval of blue energy spiraled open to reveal the portal leading into the dungeon.
“That seems to work fine,” Seeyela said hesitantly. “Hiral?”
Hiral studied the surging channels for a few seconds before replying. The energy was consistent – and strong. Completely normal, as far as he could tell. But, what could be…?
“Ah,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “I have a theory.”
“That’s why we were asking you, you know?” Seena said, though she had a small smile on her lips. “Is it a good one or a bad one?”
“Little of both, actually,” he said with a shrug. “The Tutorial and Help options aren’t getting any power. I saw a little when I was looking at it with Cycling, but I bet that’s just… leftover energy.”
“Leftover from what?” Yanily asked.
“From when we had eleven towers supplying power to the PIMP,” Hiral said. “My theory – my guess – is that the PIMP had to cut down on some of its functions with the loss of power, and this is one of them.”
“So, no more Dr. Benza?” Seena asked.
“Damn, I’m going to miss that guy and his long-winded ramblings,” Yanily said.
“The Tutorials were pretty helpful,” Seeyela added. “A lot of information in there, and we’d only seen the first few tiers of them. How much could they have told us about the Enemy. Or the rest of the world?”
“There’s still a chance Dr. Benza and the Tutorials will work at the Asylums,” Hiral said. “Or maybe a wild dungeon. But, honestly, if we were going to lose anything, I feel like this is one of the best options. Imagine if we lost the dungeons? Or rewards from them?”
“Or our entire PIMs,” Seena said with a small shudder.
“Exactly.” Hiral pointed at the woman. “Losing the Tutorials is the best of bad options.”
“Too bad we had to lose anything,” Seeyela said, though she just shrugged, “but I guess you’re right.”
“All because somebody had to go swinging around their sword to prove how big it was,” Yanily said with a chuckle.
“Men,” Nat said gravely to Milly, who only just sighed and nodded.
“Hey, I don’t think either of you are old enough to make that comment,” Hiral said to his sisters. Maybe it was true – or maybe it was just his big-brother hope for their innocence – but he didn’t want to hear it from them.
Half-proving his point, Milly stuck her tongue out at him.
As the adult of the family – the present family – Hiral responded in the most mature way he could, his two doubles joining him at his sides to likewise return the gesture. Hah, three against one.
“Getting back on track,” Seena said, fingers massaging the bridge of her nose. “We have an hour before this portal closes. While I don’t expect it to take this long, we’ve got new people we haven’t fought with before, along with new abilities since we ranked up. I’d like to take a few minutes to review what we can all do, so we don’t have any surprises.”
“Training?” Yanily asked.
“No time for that.” Seena shook her head. “Just a quick status window review, and an explanation of any new abilities. This is a D-Rank dungeon, so we shouldn’t face anything too surprising…”
“Disoriented,” Hiral reminded her about the ability the Boss of the Endless Tunnels had used on them.
“Ugh, just thinking about it makes me want to throw up,” Seena admitted. “Still, the priority is keeping the girls safe, giving them a chance to experiment with their new abilities, and getting us all the RecallTokens within the three-hour window inside.
“On that note, let’s see those status windows.”