After the End: Serenity

Each of the others appeared near Serenity as he looked around the dungeon level. It was a grassy plains with scattered trees. A sheer cliff rose behind him - he guessed that was probably the edge of the level. If he hadn’t known he was in a dungeon, he’d have thought he was outside. The Sun wasn’t visible, but it looked like mid-morning sunlight - and from the shadow cast by the cliff, it was probably ‘behind the cliff’. He wondered if it would move as time passed or always be the same time. Different dungeons - even different levels of the same dungeon - were different.

Serenity didn’t see any enemies. “Looks like the first plan we talked about. Lancaster and I are in front. Liuyedao next. Rissa, Moira, Echo and Nightwitch, stay in front of Doyle. For now he’s rearguard. Echo, you’re scout since this is an open area. We’ll have Doyle scout when we need to send someone ahead. This level should be pretty easy, we just need to figure out where to go.”

Once everyone was in order, they set off.

“Movement … sounds like a boar, but … with something on it. On the left!” Echo reported.

Serenity turned to face it. The boar came into view soon after her call, and the ranged people started attacking. The rider was a goblin, but it died almost as quickly as Serenity identified it. The boar didn’t last much longer.

Doyle was the only one of them with a ‘Loot’ style ability, so he headed over to loot the bodies.

Basic Looting

(Usable only in Dungeons)

Touch the body of a monster to cause it to dissolve into its creation essence and recover valuables created from the monster core.

It would turn the monster core essence into something that would hopefully be useful to them - or it could just make the monster dissolve and disappear. The decision of whether or not to loot a monster - whether to just extract the core for its value or go for the chance of a drop - was a decision they’d have to make later.

Serenity expected they’d have Doyle continue looting. Monster cores would take time to be truly valuable; pre-crafted equipment would be valuable immediately, even if it wasn’t as good as a skilled craftsman could make. For the Tutorial, almost any drop would be useful to either the party or the people on the surface.

Serenity watched Doyle loot with mixed feelings. Basic Looting only worked in dungeons, but there were versions that would work on any monster with a core. He never wanted to be looted.

But then, he didn’t want to die.

Doyle came back with a pair of boar-hide bracers. They weren’t anything special, but they would be good for an archer. Everyone agreed Doyle should keep them, since he was the only one who had a bow. They were similar in quality to what people in the Tutorial were making, but the leather was better cured - mostly because there simply hadn’t been time to properly cure the leather. While a couple of people had gained Path skills that made the curing and tanning process easier and less toxic, they didn’t make it faster.

Serenity had hoped to bring a bow, but all of the ones he could find were weak enough he was afraid he’d accidentally break them. He’d been able to use one of the ones from the Armory - but those couldn’t come inside the Tutorial Great Dungeon.

The group headed in the direction the boar-riding goblin came from. The next two boar-riding goblins didn’t have a drop from either the boar or the goblin. Doyle was actively starting to mutter about whether or not the skill was worth anything, so Serenity asked to check the next pair before Doyle looted them.

The goblin didn’t have a core, but Serenity felt a tiny sense of essence from the boar. Doyle looted both, and they were all surprised that the boar’s drop was a monster core the size of a grain of rice. It looked like most of the monsters here just didn’t have anything of particular value - at least, not unless you wanted boar meat - and Serenity didn’t really want to dig for a tiny, rice-grain sized core if Doyle could get something useful with his ability.

As they traveled, they decided that the tutorial dungeon probably had larger, more common cores as a teaching tool - both for the adventurers who would be gathering them and the craftsmen who would be using them. It seemed to line up with the way the Tutorial had been set up. Serenity considered the new, tiny monster cores to the boss cores he was carrying in case he saw something to buy. They were smaller, but didn’t seem weaker. If anything, they seemed slightly stronger. Maybe they weren’t very good, just easier to find and carry?

The plains started to look more like light woods. There was still light between the trees, but you couldn’t reliably walk far without running into a tree. That was when Echo alerted the group to three boars coming at once, together.

Serenity prepared, but the ranged attacks killed two boars before they could get to him - and Lancaster was closer to the one boar that did leak through. He killed the boar, while Serenity took care of its rider.

The other two goblins were finished off before they could even attack.

This time, one of the goblins and one of the boars felt like they had something to Serenity. The boar provided a pair of rather uncomfortable-looking leather boots that didn’t fit anyone in the party, but the goblin was the first monster to drop an uncommon item - it had something Nightwitch was able to Identify as a Stone of Loud Noises.

Basic Identify

See the basic properties of an item.

Stone of Loud Noises

Makes a series of loud noises when thrown against a surface or struck. Single Use.

“Can I use that? I want to see what it does!” Everyone turned to look at Echo.

“It’s single use. We should save it.” Liuyedao didn’t speak up often, so everyone took him seriously when he did.

“But if I hear it I may be able to duplicate it!” Echo wasn’t going to give up that easily.

Liuyedao looked at the stone, then picked it up and handed it to Echo. “That is a good reason.”

Serenity nodded, and noticed several other people were as well when Echo threw the stone sharply into a tree.

POP Pop pop

It was … sort of loud. Loud enough to be easily heard, at least. Serenity could see how it could startle someone, but he didn’t think it would deafen anyone, even temporarily.

“Awww. I was hoping it’d be louder.” That was Echo, for sure.

They hadn’t walked much farther when Lancaster’s stomach growled. “Uh, Serenity, I don’t think we’ll be finishing this level before lunch.”

Doyle snickered at Serenity. “For once it isn’t you asking to stop for food.”

Serenity actually wasn’t hungry. He’d been eating well lately, and hadn’t been injured. A check of his Tutorial timer did say it was getting close to lunchtime. “Yeah, we can stop. What’d you do, skip breakfast?”

“Nah, I had extra. They had pancakes today! With honey,” Lancaster claimed. “Just didn’t stick with me I guess.”

After the lunch break, the group headed farther in, looking for the rest of the goblins or boars. The tree cover meant they couldn’t kill the groups with ranged attacks before they reached the group, so Serenity, Lancaster, and Liuyedao were able to contribute more. The boar were not nearly as tough as the ones in the Dungeon Trial had been. Serenity was grateful for that; he still only had one knife, which was emphatically not what he’d prefer to use against boar.

If it hadn’t been for the constant threat, it would have been a lovely walk in the forest. The trees became closer and closer together, and eventually Echo said she couldn’t reliably detect the boars anymore.

As she was saying that, an arrow bounced off Serenity’s chest armor.

“In the trees! Goblin archers! I see … three!” Echo hadn’t noticed them until they fired.

The other two arrows didn’t even make it to Serenity.

He just had to stand there and wait while the mages took care of the archers. One hit each was all it took to knock them out of the trees.

There was no loot.

If Echo couldn’t hear them coming, maybe Doyle could find the objective. Doyle headed forward. Serenity was able to follow him, but not at the distance he’d have preferred - Doyle simply disappeared into the shadows if Serenity let him get too far ahead. After the second time he lost Doyle, he told Doyle to check back in periodically and redirect them if they headed the wrong direction.

It was slow, but Doyle was able to point out three more goblin archer ambushes - allowing the group to ambush the goblins instead.

Soon after the last set of goblin archers, Doyle returned to the group. “They have a camp. There’s a useless wall around it, and a bunch of terrible huts. I saw sixteen goblins and six boars. One of the goblins has a mask with feathers and a wand, six are archers, and the other nine have daggers.”

“My turn then.” Nightwitch grinned. “Get me close enough. I love this part. Fire from the sky!”

They snuck up on the goblin camp. On the way in, they found that Doyle had cleared out a couple “guard” goblins between them and the camp. They stopped at the edge of the sort-of-a-clearing that held the camp for Nightwitch to call out [STARS FALL!].

She was loud, but it was fast enough it didn’t matter. Small meteors fell from the sky like hailstones.

The surviving goblins rushed towards the group, followed by the two surviving boars.

“Mages, kill the boars! Melee, charge!” Serenity followed his own orders and charged past a dagger-wielding goblin that had somehow managed to hide under a tree. As he went past, he slashed the goblin and it fell.

As he ran towards it, the masked goblin pointed its wand at him and screeched [Bolt]. The bolt impacted his chest armor, burning a small hole in it and damaging the skin underneath. Serenity felt the skin itch as it healed. He stopped his charge in front of the masked goblin and swung at the mask. He hit and the mask cracked. The goblin staggered backwards, and its next [Bolt] came out as “Bo-awk”. The spell didn’t go off.

Lancaster swung around the masked goblin to handle the rest of the normal goblins, while Liuyedao skewered the masked goblin. The goblin collapsed on Liuyedao’s sword, trapping it.

Serenity checked the battlefield. There were no more enemies visible. The group spread out and checked the camp while Doyle looted the bodies.

In the middle of the camp, Moira found a larger hut. When she stepped into the hut, it appeared to be a cave with a pedestal near the back, a pea-sized clear crystal floating above the pedestal and a plaque on the back wall.

The plaque read:

Leave the stone and monsters will return

Remove or destroy the crystal to descend

Keep it for its value, destroy it here for a benefit on the next level