Saga of the Soul Dungeon

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.”

-Oscar Wilde

==Sevso==

I wasn’t sure exactly how large Gnaeus’ pouch was; it certainly felt endless at times. Part of that was simply the large number of emblems he could pull out for any situation. I found out, shortly after I had climbed down the cliff, that he had an emblem that let him fly.

He had spotted a rare plant living on a craggy rock off to one side of the road.

“You see that plant,” he said, pointing his finger upwards.

After a moment, I did. It was a simple plant, a green rod with a flat purple flower in an arc covering part of the top. I said as much.

He nodded.

“It is a rare plant, has a number of medicinal properties. Not much I could use it for on its own, but useful to sell.”

Immediately I started to feel a craving for it, which made me sigh.

“Not that that does us much good,” I said. I pointed up toward it, waving my hand vaguely. “The top of that crag is all dirt. Even if I could climb up the rocky section and get to it, I could never get to it without bringing down the top.”

“True,” he said, a his lips pursing slightly, “I suppose I’ll have to go get it.”

I cocked my head at him, “Uh, what?”

He had started to rummage in the bag and was ignoring me.

“Ah! Here it is.” He said, as he pulled a necklace out of the lip. The charm itself was a simple polished golden wood, though the silver lines embedded into it had to be folerth, making it ridiculously expensive. He put it on and paused for a moment, before turning towards me.

“You’ll probably like this,” he said. “It is quite impressive, if I say so myself. It took ages to get the runes exactly right. It kept triggering at inconvenient moments. I still don’t wear it all the time, since it can cause unintended problems.”

Then, Gnaeus took a step up and onto the air, and then his other foot followed, as though he was climbing an invisible staircase. Up and up he went, and then just a bit across until he reached the crag’s peak. Very carefully, he crouched and dug up the plant by the roots. With swift steps, he returned, walking back down the way he had come until he stood before me again.

“So,” I said, my voice slightly strained, once he was solidly on the ground and had put away the emblem he used, “does that emblem have limited uses or need to charge up?”

“Nope,” he said cheerfully, his eyes focused as he carefully turned the plant as he inspected it. “I made it, so it can run continuously without any issues at all.”

I gritted my teeth.

“Then why, in Otga’s burning cleft, did I climb down a cliff to grab the water the other day?” I shouted.

“Well, that was something for you, wasn’t it?” he said, as he flashed a cheeky smile at me.

“And when I went back down to grab things for dinner?”

“Well,” he smiled, “I could say that this kind of training is good for your new body skill, because it is. However, truthfully, I just thought it would be funny. And I did retrieve this one for you. I’ll take the parts that I can sell off it. I’ll leave the rest for you and your dungeon; it shouldn’t have any trouble recreating the rest of the plant from a decent sized chunk.”

I sighed.

“I don’t think it counts as my dungeon,” I said. “If anything, I think I am its person.”

“True, true,” Gnaeus muttered absentmindedly. With expert hands he trimmed the roots with a small knife. Then he grabbed each petal near the base and pulled it off, careful to get the entire thing. The roots and the petals each went into their own separate cloth bags and were tucked away. He handed the plant to me.

What remained of the plant was only small scraggly roots and a thick green stem. Near the top of the stem it changed color and a yellow dust coated it.

Gnaeus came up to me as I was looking at it. He pointed towards the top.

“It’s called a Magenta Feather. Named for the color of the flower, obviously. You can see the yellow up at the top, that tells you it is a male plant. Obviously the petals and roots have the most valuable parts. If you want a good quality healing potion, the petals are perfect for that. The roots can be used for a number of things, mainly to strengthen things or increase fortitude. Sadly, the most common use is to enhance the libido, since the nobles will pay ridiculous amounts for it.”

That raised the obvious question.

“How much is it actually worth?” I asked.

He gestured to the rest of the plant in my hands, which promptly disappeared into storage for Caden.

“The rest of this has some low grade medicinal uses. So, maybe a gold at most. The parts I removed should go for about fifteen to twenty-five gold. If the plant had been female you could have sold the entire plant for…”

He waved one of his hands back and forth.

“Eh, anywhere from seven to nine dungeon gold. Sadly, you really only need one male, no matter how many female plants you have.”

“You know,” I said, my voice dry, “a gold used to be an inconceivable amount of money for me. Now… I have far more than that. And talking with you, it seems like even less.”

Gnaeus just smiled at me before he replied with a quiet laugh.

“Oh, I know, what you have is just a bit of spending money to me. Building emblems, when you are as good as I am, is immensely profitable. With skills I need less materials and mana, less time, and my experience lets me create a much wider variety of effects. And, people pay a lot more for anything I am willing to make than when I first started. It pays to be one of the best.

“You know, people always talk about how hard the magical languages are. I never really saw it. Of course, I also worked my ass off.”

He flashed a grin at me.

“Well, we got the plant you wanted,” I said, rolling my eyes at his bragging. “Are you ready to go?”

Not quite” He said, pulling a wooden staff out of his pouch. The way it extended out from the pouch was both fascinating and somehow wrong.

“Here,” he said, tossing the staff toward me, “you’re going to want that when the monsters get here.”

I caught it reflexively.

“Ri… wait, what!”

I was interrupted by the arrival of said monsters.

There were four of them, each green with purple eyes. They mostly resembled toads, though their backs were marked with jagged protrusions of bone.

“Don’t worry about me,” Gnaeus said, “they can’t even see me.”

“Trust me,” I growled, “I wasn’t worried about you!”

“Well, dealing with monsters is an essential part of adventuring, especially in dealing with dungeons,” he said, far too cheerful. “Best of luck!”

My body was better coordinated than it had ever been, thanks to my new class, but the fact my brain had no idea how to use it in a fight became quickly apparent.

The first toad leapt, its back aimed for me, and I was keenly aware of the sharp spikes. I swung the staff toward it, but I was too fast. The staff huffed through the air, missing it and pulling me off balance. Fortunately that also pulled me out of the way though I almost tripped and fell over.

“Well, its a good thing we are doing this with something pretty harmless,” Gnaeus said.

“You can deal with this anytime you want!” I shouted.

“True, but that would deprive you of valuable experience,” he replied.

That was not at all what I meant-

My thought was cut off and I had to jump out of the way when two jumped toward me at the same time.

My arms wheeled awkwardly as I slipped on the moist ground, trying to avoid falling over. I accidentally hit one with my staff as I was waving it around. Unprepared, the staff was knocked out of my hands.

“Crap,” I lunged out of the way of another toad and fumbled for the staff, almost dropping it again before I managed to hold onto it.

I backed up, trying to keep all the monsters in view. When the next one jumped toward me I managed to hit it sideways with the staff. It went bouncing off like a leather ball, traces of blood gleaming on the rocks it scraped along the way.

An angry croak presaged the attack of the next one. I smacked it out of the way, like the last, only to get hit by the next one when I tried to smack it out of the way. I misjudged and the sharp edges of its spines gouged into my side when I tried to deflect it.

I yelled and sucked in my breath, trying to work through the pain. My heart was racing, even as blood started to run down my side.

“Ooh, that looks painful.”

I grit my teeth.

In the background, I could hear Gnaeus humming as I swung for the first one I had hit. For a bare moment, I was tempted to smack him with the staff. I didn’t seriously consider it though. For one thing, I was sure he was better at fighting than I was. He would probably knock it out my hands and proceed to beat me up.

Probably use it as an excuse to show me the proper form for using the staff, too...

I hit the monster, smacking it away again. This time it didn’t get back up again, blood pooling around it as it lay twitching.

The others followed soon afterward. As long as I kept track of them, they were not that difficult to hit in midair. Soon enough, four toads sagged on the ground, each dead or dying.

I let myself collapse, one of my hands holding my side where the blood was running out of it. I sat on the ground.

“Well, that wasn’t the worst I have ever seen someone do. You’re still alive, after all. Otherwise… that was utterly disgraceful. You are lucky that you seem to have injured them well enough, though. Plenty of adventurers have been killed by a monster they thought they had killed. A critically wounded monster can still kill you.”

I glanced over to Gnaeus. He had pulled another staff out and was prodding at one of the toads. It squished wetly against his staff, stained the end with various fluids.

“Lucky for you, these things weren’t very bright. They really only used a single attack.”

“Damn you and your attitude,” I gasped out between labored breaths.

The combat had lasted only moments, but I felt like I had been running for miles. My body was sore, and my side hurt. I trembled as the need to fight drained away.

“Why in the everlasting hells did you make me fight them?” I asked. “You could have dealt with them in instant, I am sure.”

Gnaeus looked at me slyly, “What did you gain from the combat?”

The feeling of the system trying to talk to me had been overridden by the tremors until he asked me. I pulled it up.

You have gained experience from killing four level five monsters!

You have gained the skills:

Staff Wielding I (Weapon)

One of the simplest weapons, the staff, can also be deadly. This skill increases your ability to wield one effectively.

Pain Resistance I

Pain is omnipresent, but at certain times it can be deadly. Helps prevent you from being distracted by pain. And, while you will be aware of pain and injurys, this will reduce the impact of the pain when you need to force yourself to function anyway.

I glowered at Gnaeus.

“That good, huh?” he said. “Did you get an ability with the staff?”

“Yes,” I muttered, “and Pain Resistance.”

“Ah, that is a good one to have. Really important when you are fighting monsters. You know, I could have trained you for weeks outside of combat to get you that a skill for staves. Even then, you probably wouldn’t have gotten a skill to deal with pain. That one is almost exclusively gained in combat. Though, when I was younger, I met a lovely young lady in a pleasure house…”

“I don’t want to know, old man!” I shouted, trying to save my sanity.

“Ah, yes, I suppose I was getting myself distracted,” he said. “Oh, do you know how to sew?”

“Nope. Tried it, but I was awful at it.”

“Really? That is a pretty essential skill for repairing clothes,” Gnaeus said. “Well, I suppose I am correcting your absent education in many ways already.”

He gestured toward my bloody side.

“Go ahead and get that armor off.”

I sighed, wincing as the pain flared, even if it had dulled down somewhat. The armor came off, and then my shirt. The cloth was pulled out of the blood, scraping lightly against the open wounds. I looked somewhat morosely down at my shirt. The holes in it were not that large, the armor had mostly covered that area, but it had been a very expensive shirt.

“I suppose you want me to repair my shirt…” I said, sighing but resigned anyway.

“Well, yes, but only after you sew up your side first,” he said. “The stress will help you gain the skill, and it will help you train your new Pain Resistance.”

I only bothered to glower a little.