Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Forty-Four

Underworld Grotto

Rio

I felt a little bad as we went down. On the one hand, the officer, who’d clearly been through hell already, was just trying to do his job. On the other, at least he had a good excuse to go get some rest now.

This was a point of no return. We were all in on this. My Master's Degree was falling by the wayside. My job. My future dreams. I… might be throwing all of it away for this. But…

I didn’t see any of them in those last moments before I’d escaped. I didn’t have time. I was afraid. It wasn’t even a conscious decision to abandon them. I saw everyone around me drop, and all I could think of was getting away.

My imagination was filling in the gaps. Todd looking at me with accusing eyes as I slipped through the door. Jody, spitefully watching me flee while he was caught in that nauseous wave. Emily, who’d carried gold around for me like a gopher before she’d picked up her stupid-ass fireball. Betrayed. Tessa, who had to be a martial artist of some sort. She might not even be eighteen yet.

They haunted me, and the absolute mind-numbing frustration as Todd failed to return and the Feds' efforts showed no results left me insensate.

For all I knew, Todd had died, but they’d already saved the rest of them. They’d never tell me of course, and I had no way to confirm if any of them had escaped since I did.

Maybe they’d all died already. Either way, if I didn’t come down here and find out for myself, I might never know.

So here we were. I’d dragged Theo and his friend into this mess when I was certain Theo would’ve preferred to be done with the whole thing. He’d saved his hostage. Both of them, technically, since he’d come down for me in the first place.

I hadn’t met Bethany, the girl Theo had saved before he’d found me. The police had been quick to reunite her with her family. They’d needed a win as kidnappings were becoming more and more common while the news of the underground invaders began to spread. As far as I knew, though, that girl had a class of her own now.

“So… what are you going to choose?” I asked Dane suddenly to distract myself as we walked. “You’ve seen a few of them in action now. Which class do you want to be?”

We didn’t really have a good direction in mind, but it seemed that all roads led to the same place, even if they somehow exited in different parts of the country or even the world. For now, we were just walking. We generally followed the leftmost hallways whenever the caves forked, but they were surprisingly thin here. The minute differences in the caves made me think we weren’t very close to the prison. Shorter stalagmites and stalactites. Less dripping water. Thinner halls and smaller caverns when they did open up.

Dane hardly pondered for a second. “Wizard.”

“That was fast. Don’t even need to think about it?” I asked.

“Wizards are all about raw destruction. They’re awesome, and they are also ranged, so I don’t have to get anywhere near these things,” he said with finality.

He might have a point. If this was the hells coming, as the prompt indicated, then perhaps I was being optimistic about always having bullets. The big demon inside the jail looked like he could tank a missile, and I doubted that anything we’d currently brought could penetrate its armor.

“Good a reason as any, I guess,” I said.

We had to depend on the abilities we’d gain down here. Guns for leveling, abilities for fighting things guns couldn’t handle, which, so far, was only the one demon. We had loads of ammo right now, but I could get behind the idea of magical ranged attacks, just in case bullets ever became scarce.

We needed defensive abilities that could protect us from that nausea attack. Or maybe just so much damn constitution that we could tank it. I wondered if Theo’s healing Aura might help, but I didn’t want to depend on it.

We also needed equipment. Theo said that some of it, most of it even, enhanced his stats in some way or another. The pants he had on registered to my eyes as an item. If I looked at them closely, I saw the ridiculous name they had as well as their effect. They were one of the few things the cops hadn’t confiscated from us upon our return.

Good Looking Trousers

Magic

Light

Armor: 1

+1 to Charisma

That wasn’t going to be enough. Not nearly enough.

As much as I wanted to storm the prison, I wasn’t stupid. We weren’t strong enough for that. Not yet. But I thought while we were trying to find the damn place again, we could gain the skills and stats that we needed.

Stats… Those were unusual. I knew for a fact that they did do something to us as we increased them. All I had to do was look at Theo to confirm that.

His body had become… tighter in the past few days. He hadn’t slimmed down, but his skin was harder to the touch. Wrinkles were a bit less defined, and flab from under his arms receded. He didn’t seem to have noticed any of this.

It was the same with me. Whatever changes happened when I increased my dexterity or constitution weren’t immediately obvious, but in retrospect, the tiniest bit of blubber had melted away from my hips. Small patches of cellulite that had been cropping up were miraculously gone, and I felt like a million bucks getting out of bed. That could only have been from the points I’d dumped into Dexterity. So Dexterity for tone, Strength for raw muscle. Constitution for… what? Strong bones and healthy teeth?

Name: Rio Tande

Class: Rogue

Attributes:

Strength: 4

Dexterity: 14

Constitution: 10

Wisdom: 11

Intelligence: 20

Charisma: 14

Silver linings to my life flipping upside down. I was getting fit! But my degree… I was at the damn finish line, but it wasn’t as if I could focus on my studies when a potential apocalypse was brewing in our backyard!

What would my parents say if they knew I was skipping school to go kill demons in an underground dungeon to save some people I barely knew? Traditional asshole that he was, Dad would probably blame Theo for not keeping me safe and taking care of the problem himself.

Dad loved me, and he’d never outright stated his dissatisfaction with my career, but I’d been born when he was already forty. He came from a generation where women were expected to have babies and the fact that I hadn’t rubbed him the wrong way.

Mom… might not be too dissimilar. My safety would be her primary concern, and damn everything else. She’d always been more supportive of my career goals than Dad had been, and she didn’t seem to mind that I hadn’t started popping out kids the second Theo and I got married. It helped that my sister had taken that bible line “Be fruitful and multiply” quite seriously, with three kids already at only twenty-six.

I swore if I had twins like she did, I’d kill Theo.

My mood plummeted at that thought as I remembered that wasn’t something I had to worry about now… Then again, Theo did have that healing aura. Not to mention Chester. Maybe where medical science had failed, magic would succeed.

I’d ask him about it when we got the chance.

“I kind of expected to run into a few of the little bastards by now,” Theo said, holding up his flashlight. “I really wish I had that damn mace. Holding these flashlights is going to get old. We need some sort of new glowing item.”

“Think they’re wising up?” I asked. “It seems like they expected us to have swords and pitchforks. Maybe they're a little shocked at how effective guns are. We aren’t the only people killing them after all.”

“Even if they were, I don’t think they could control the imps. They seem pretty dumb. Dangerous as hell in a mob, but prone to disobey the smarter ones, even when it gets them killed,” he replied. “After I beat one of them, I saw another kick it and laugh at him like it was all some playground bullshit. That was the very first time I encountered them.”

“You’re… talking about the little red guys, right? The ones on the news?” Dane asked awkwardly.

“Yeah, the imps. You should see some of them soon. Get a kill and then haul ass back. Pick your class, and get a defensive skill first. You should level pretty quickly early on.” Theo said before his tone hardened. “Don’t be cocky. The little bastards have gotten the drop on me more than once, and we don’t have any potions right now.”

Dane scoffed. “Worry about yourself, man. I got this. As soon as I kill one of these I’ll be a fucking wizard. After that, you all can sit back and relax while lightning bolts do all the work. I… would say fireballs but your lady has strongly discouraged that, ya?”

“You’d better believe it,” I said. I considered pulling up the wizard tree. I hadn’t spent much time looking at the other classes, but we were down in the dungeon. It wasn’t the time to be reading.

Oddly, the place didn’t fill up with imps. We didn’t run into any of them. We didn’t see any of the zombies Theo mentioned either. We didn’t feel the ground shake either. Giant worms?

“That’s odd,” Theo said suddenly.

“What?”

“Look,” he said, pointing.

There was… moss growing on one of the cave walls. Beside it were mushrooms. Glowing mushrooms.

“What else is new…” I said. “Bioluminescent Mushrooms. Since we’re criminals now we could probably become drug dealers.”

Dane snorted. “N-no we’re not! He didn’t know any of our names or anything! We didn’t hurt him! Don’t say shit like that! I’m in this for the superpowers, but I’m not going to fucking jail for it.”

I blinked at the vehemence in Dane’s voice. Did he believe that? Hell, our only chance was finding survivors down here and rescuing them. Public outcry in our favor might keep us from jail time if that cop decided to ID us.

Well… That or the apocalypse rising up and becoming a bigger issue than covid or something, which I frankly didn’t see happening. These demons were definitely dangerous… but my money was on the US Military if push came to shove, and I hadn’t seen anything in the demons’ arsenal that had come close to dissuading that opinion. Not yet anyway.

That left us… probably fucked. The cop seemed like a pretty good guy, but I didn’t know if that meant he’d keep quiet about us on principle. I doubted it.

If we managed to get even one of those people out alive, though, it would be worth it. To me anyway… And Theo cared so damn much that he was willing to risk his own life for it.

The stupid doof.

Still, it wasn’t like we’d murdered anyone.

“It was a joke, Dane… Calm down,” I said.

“Right… right, sorry. So… where are all these little bastards anyway? The way you two described it, I thought the place would be swarming with them?” Dane asked, still seemingly nervous.

“I don’t know… but I don’t think we’re going to find any of them. Not here anyway,” Theo said.

The glow from the mushrooms continued brightening. The moss was also beginning to glow the further into the cave we walked, and soon it was bright enough for Theo to turn off his flashlight.

“This… doesn’t feel demonic,” I said, touching the moss and feeling its softness. “Where are we?”

"Don't touch that!" Theo barked. "It could be poisoned! Or some sort of trap!"

I scowled. He was right, but... this didn't feel like anything the demons could've created.

We could all see a bright blue glow at the end of the tunnel. Turquoise, green, and blue all melded into a sight reminiscent of a coral reef. The mushrooms were as bright as a Mario game, and the rocks of the walls seemed to sparkle.

Theo entered the cavern first, but I followed shortly behind him. Running water echoed through the small clearing, and a shallow moat, only a few inches deep, surrounded a flat island that was too flat to be natural. A small plateau, two steps higher than the rest of the cave's floor.

“Every time I think I know what’s going on…” Theo murmured, and I privately agreed. What the fuck had we walked into?

In the middle of the island was… I could only describe it as a gravestone, but it had to be taller than a giraffe. A tall tablet, like a gravestone for a giant, carved with artistic holes that the moss had grown into and around.

Two pedestals were arranged on both sides of the gravemarker, strangely untouched by the moss.

“Yes! It’s… it’s a waypoint,” Theo said, pointing at one of the ornate pedestals. Upon it was a grey symbol made of swirling light that hovered in the air. “This place… the demons must not be able to come here for some reason. The ones they've claimed are usually the blue, like their blood.”

“Huh… so… a safe zone?” Dane asked. "That's kind of anticlimactic."

“Seems like,” Theo replied.