Ruthless: Path of Conquest

After James was gone, Mina wiped away her tears and waited for Yulia to return.

She planned for her next steps. Soon, the baby would wake again, hungry, and she would be there to feed him. Then Yulia would be back.

After that, Mina thought she could go train. She knew where.

She simmered slightly with impatience. There would only be a small window of time when she could get away for a little while. It would only work if Yulia was there.

We really need electricity, Mina thought. Then we could get a refrigerator, and I could pump, so I wouldn’t need to be here every time James gets hungry. It felt like an ugly thought. If she started pumping instead of feeding the baby directly, she had read during her pregnancy, he might get used to the bottle and stop wanting to feed from the breast. And given how well breastfeeding had been working out, she shouldn’t think of taking a chance on giving that up.

Mina had a powerful ability to ruminate and dwell on her own mistakes, but she resisted that tendency here. She would think about her training.

As she managed to shift her mind away from guilt, she heard a small cry coming from where the children were napping. And she went to baby James.

When she came back out, Yulia was there. The timing seemed to line up perfectly.

“I want to go to the new Dungeon that James installed in the warehouse,” Mina said, looking down at baby James and rocking him gently as she spoke. “Will you, um—”

“Babysit?” Yulia finished for her. Mina looked up and gauged Yulia’s feelings on the subject in a single glance.

It’s a good thing she likes kids so much. She did volunteer for the Child Rescue Committee before. When she looks at these situations, does she see it as practice for when she becomes a parent someday? Or does she just enjoy them for what they are?

Yulia had always been transparent in how she felt about children. She had been considering working with them before the System. Either a teaching job or daycare work, probably. She hadn’t yet nailed down the details. And now she had her chance, without even having to finish high school first.

I hope you still like it in a year, Mina thought. This logistical challenge wasn’t going away anytime soon.

“How are you, um, feeling about this current situation?” Mina asked.

“The babysitting situation?” Yulia asked. “Um, I like it a lot…”

“Well, not just that,” Mina asked. “I mean, yes, that, but how are you feeling about everything since being back? You’ve been a blur of activity with the babysitting, helping me with everything else while James was gone, and settling the new children in. Are you okay?”

Yulia avoided Mina’s eyes for a moment. Then she said, “I am a little more tired lately. It feels like we came back, and I’m suddenly working a full time job. It’s a lot more meaningful than going to school, but it’s also definitely harder.”

Mina nodded. “It’s a lot, isn’t it?”

“It is, but I can handle it,” Yulia said, nodding with assurance.

“You need a break, though,” Mina said. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“I’m okay—”

But Mina gave her a skeptical look, and Yulia stopped mid-sentence.

“Maybe,” Yulia finally agreed.

“Well, you don’t have to babysit right now—”

“Oh, no, I want to take care of the kids,” Yulia interrupted. “I’m just struggling with some of the other stuff. This will almost be a break. The kids are great, and Abhi helps out a lot with the younger ones.”

“Well, you should make sure you talk to James about ways your life could be easier in the other areas when you meet with him later, then. Just be honest. Don’t try to pretend everything is okay. I told him you wanted to discuss the committee. Are you sure you don’t want to just take a nap or something? It’s not urgent that I go out now.”

Yulia reassured her that she was more than happy to take care of the children. And after a little more conversation, Mina handed James off to Yulia and left for the Dungeon.

Even if she hadn’t known where the warehouse was, it would have been easy to find the Dungeon. The gaggle of two dozen humans loitering outside was a dead giveaway. There were even a handful of nervous-looking Goblins and a couple of Mole People walking up as Mina made it to the building.

Mina took a moment to appreciate what the Dungeon Core had done with the place before she spoke to anyone. Set down in the unfinished building they had been working on, Carol had actually completed the warehouse and put up a sign on the outside. “Carol’s Storage.”

It raised all sorts of questions in Mina’s mind. How do Dungeon Cores work? Is this place real? An illusion? A manifestation of Carol’s Will? An extension of her body? How much control does she have? What happened to all of the items that were stored in the warehouse?

“What’s going on?” she asked the nearest person. “Is there a line?”

“Um, no, not exactly,” the man said.

“Who’s next?” asked one of the Goblins who had arrived at the same time as Mina.

The man Mina had spoken to seemed to feel obliged to explain, but also unable to actually do so. “That is—I, um—”

“There’s no line,” another man said. “I would say a few of us were trying to get our courage up to go in after the last group came out, but everyone who had the guts has already gone in and left.”

“That’s perfect, then,” Mina said. “I’m next.”

“You?” the Goblin looked her up and down with narrow, suspicious eyes.

“Hey, do you guys recognize her? I think she’s the Queen!” another Goblin pronounced.

Mina couldn’t tell the male and female Goblins apart from each other that well yet. Their skin coloration and hair growth were roughly the same across sexes. Only slightly more delicate facial features seemed to distinguish the women from the men. But she was fairly certain that both of the Goblins who had spoken were males.

“That’s right,” she said.

“Well, I guess we cannot object to our new Queen going first,” said the first Goblin reluctantly.

“She beat us here anyway,” commented another Goblin with a feminine-sounding voice.

“I’ll only be an hour at most,” Mina promised. The baby can’t be apart from me for too long.

“Are you going in by yourself?” asked the Goblin who had recognized her.

“That’s right,” Mina said. She had to live up to the image that James had established in these nonhumans’ eyes. “I’m more dangerous than I look.”

The Goblins’ faces seemed to shift to a more respectful cast immediately.

“Of course you are, Your Majesty,” the first Goblin said quietly. “I cannot imagine the King choosing a weak mate.”

“Thank you for your willingness to keep it to an hour, Your Majesty,” the feminine-sounding Goblin said. “We need to train ourselves thoroughly so that we will not be left behind the next time the King needs fighters to accompany him.”

That remark summoned thoughts of James and the peril he might be in even now—images of him bleeding, crying out in pain, enduring broken bones—but Mina forced the images to the back of her mind.

Those thoughts weren’t helping her, and they weren’t helping James either. The best way she could support him was by finding a way to get stronger. A way to develop new abilities that might assist her in fighting the thing in the forest.

Mina drew her Alder Wood Wand from her Small Bag of Deceptive Dimensions and entered “Carol’s Storage” with her mind firmly focused on what she wanted.

[Dungeon entered! You have arrived in Dungeon: Carol’s Storage!]

The room just seemed like a large, dark warehouse to Mina’s eyes when she came in. Almost empty, except that there were some generic-looking wooden crates placed in strategic locations around the room.

How does this work? she wondered. Can the place adapt to what I want? Hey, is this area larger on the inside—

“Hi there!” came a woman’s voice from above.

Mina almost jumped at the sound of what must be the Dungeon Core speaking to her.

But she forced herself to speak. “Hello back to you, Carol. That’s your name, right? Not just the name you put on the sign outside the building?”

“That’s right!” Carol’s disembodied voice was chipper. “What’s your name?”

“I’m Mina,” Mina replied.

“Oh, are you James’s wife?”

Mina nodded. “I guess he mentioned me?”

“You’re almost the only person he mentioned. I had no idea I’d get this much traffic. Welcome to the Dungeon! We’ve got fun and games.” Carol laughed at her own slightly odd joke, and Mina smiled too. “Now, are you here to train or retrieve items from the warehouse?”

“Right now, I’m here to train,” Mina said. “I actually had some specific requests in mind. I don’t know if that’s possible. As for retrieving items from the warehouse, um, I should probably set a password with you or something so that you know, when someone other than me or my husband comes in, if they have permission to take items out of here. I assume you can keep stored goods pretty secure in this place?”

“Oh, security’s getting better all the time, for sure.” Carol’s voice rang with pride. “Signing on with you guys was like the best decision of my life! We can set up a password or something for the stuff in the warehouse. I should mention I also have prizes for people who clear the Dungeon. And I have some flexibility on the types of threats you face in this place, the environment, et cetera.”

Mina started explaining the little information she had on the spooky forest, and Carol listened in silence.

“So you have some spirit-type enemies waiting for you, and you want to train and study to prepare for those?” Carol summed up at the end. “And you have a little less than an hour in which to do this right now? But you might be able to come back another day. You’re especially hoping I could get you a spellbook as your prize for winning.”

Mina simply nodded.

“I’ll go back to my settings and see if I can exchange my current monster type for something more spirit-like. That should be easy enough. You wanted a spellbook that would help you deal with a whole forest of spirits, though… If I’m being honest, I don’t know if I have access to anything like that yet. No, I’m pretty sure I don’t. Um, would you prefer more diapers instead? Your husband seemed really interested in those.”

Mina scowled.

“Maybe a set of upgraded Mage robes?” Carol asked.

The scowl deepened. “There’s really nothing like the spellbook I need available? No way to get it through the Dungeon?” Mina asked.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to say I can’t get it,” Carol added hastily. “It’s just that there are conditions, and I’m not sure how you’re going to feel about them.”

“Please tell me what you mean, and hopefully I can work with you,” Mina replied.

“Well, in order for me to get prizes that are that valuable, like decent spellbooks, I would have to expand this place to a multiple floor Dungeon. That would allow me to increase the threat level of the Dungeon. If I do that, then you can get better prizes. I was planning to save up for expansion, so I can try to present an adequate challenge to anyone who comes in. Obviously, if it’s someone like you or your husband, I’m a pretty weak Dungeon…” She sounded sad and let her voice trail off before she snapped back to attention. “Anyway, I’ve already gotten a couple of levels out of the people who tried me earlier, which makes Dungeon expansions cheaper and easier, and I have some System Credits saved, but it’s not enough.”

“How much do you need?” Mina asked.

“To get a five floor Dungeon, I would need about ten thousand System Credits, unless I get an unexpected jump in levels. I have two-thousand saved after my rewards from Orientation and every group that’s been through both the Dungeons I ran. I know it’s asking a lot…”

Mina thought about it. She didn’t have enough System Credits to afford this herself, but when James was back, she thought it might be worthwhile.

“How long would this take you to afford just by leveling up and earning credits?”

“A couple of months? Based on the level of traffic you guys are giving me, even assuming it slows down a little as people get less excited about having the Dungeon, we should be able to get there in three months at the outside.”

“Alright. I’ll see about getting the funding together.” Mina would really have preferred to do this without asking James, but she knew that he had been rewarded more for his Orientation victory than probably anyone else in their new nation. And he had saved it. He was careful that way. “For now, could you just get me the most challenging spirit-type monsters you can on this floor?”

“You’ve got it! One sec…”

The Dungeon seemed to grow even darker for a few seconds, as if there was an energy source somewhere that was temporarily powering down.

Mina waited, and the darkness settled over her like a warm blanket. It almost made her want to go to sleep.

Then the room half-lit itself again with a soft, ethereal purple glow. The lighting seemed to emanate from the walls—or almost from the walls. As if there was a light source reflecting off of the surfaces that came from just out of view.

Spooky. She’s definitely getting the mood lighting right.

“I guess the experience is starting,” Mina said aloud.

There was no answer.

No verbal answer, anyway.

A timer appeared in the corner of Mina’s vision and began counting down.

[00:40:00]

[00:39:59]

Then a glowing, translucent figure appeared, hovering at the border separating the area that Mina could see and the shadowy undefined space beyond.

Investigate.

The species was a Mischievous Phantasm, which seemed to explain the translucent glow.

Mina wasted no time before blasting it with a fireball. Casting with the Alder Wood Wand was both quicker and more impactful than using magic without it had been. The weapon seemed to fit her hand almost perfectly, and it even amplified her precision.

The fireball erased the Mischievous Phantasm in an instant, but the release of tension was brief.

In the back of the room, a column of Mischievous Phantasms appeared and began advancing toward Mina as if they were taking her more seriously than the first one had.

It seems like normal magical attacks work just fine against them, Mina thought. Maybe there was nothing special to worry about.

As the spectral creatures drew closer, she took aim and tried to carefully calibrate how much energy she needed for the killing blow, adjusting with each fireball she launched.

She attempted using water projectiles, as well, but it didn’t seem to work. They passed through the bodies harmlessly.

So only some types of magic work on them. Maybe because fire emits light or something?

As Mina tried to figure out the best techniques for erasing the Mischievous Phantasms from the Dungeon, a few of them crossed an invisible threshold in the floor. Mina couldn’t tell exactly where it was, but they reached a certain proximity to her, and the environment changed. The walls seemed to begin closing in.

Mina felt a sense of discomfort that she didn’t remember feeling since childhood. When one of her older cousins locked her in a tiny closet as part of one of her cruel games. Such a dark, confined space… It was frightening for reasons she couldn’t grasp.

As she froze up, the monsters inched closer. Four of them drew to within six feet of Mina. She blinked, took two deep breaths, and forced herself into action.

She charged several precision fireballs on the end of her wand and shot them almost rapid-fire. The closest monsters shattered on impact with the flames. And she kept going until all those in the room were dead. The sudden sense of claustrophobia faded with the Phantasms’ destruction.

For a few seconds, there was a silent emptiness.

This threat is not so different from what that forest seems to present after all.

A double column of Mischievous Phantasms appeared in the back of the room, and Mina refocused on getting the most she could out of the situation. Beating the Dungeon’s monsters was only part of what she was here for, after all. She wanted to develop her tactics for facing this type of enemy more than anything else.

Mina created another rapid fire group of fire balls, and she held them suspended around her body with her Will, waiting for the monsters to try some new trick. Hoping they would show more of what spirit-type creatures could do.

As she stood waiting, a few of the Mischievous Phantasms began to flicker in and out of view.

So they can turn invisible for brief periods… That definitely upped the threat level.

Mina aimed one of the fire balls toward where the closest Mischievous Phantasm was floating invisibly—or should be, based on its momentum before it turned invisible. There was an impact! The Mischievous Phantasm flickered back into view and then disintegrated.

The other Mischievous Phantasms accelerated, suddenly moving at the speed of human sprinters. Half of them turned invisible as they did this.

Now this is more like it!

Mina tracked them with her eyes and memory, targeting the invisible creatures before the ones that remained in view. It was great practice in dealing with invisible enemies, at least.

She had to launch her fireballs based on where the Phantasms should be rather than where she knew they were. But she eventually got into a rhythm where she knew their patterns well. They couldn’t become completely intangible, so there was no danger of defeat. The only slightly scary thing, besides the effect they seemed to have on her if she let them get too close, was the occasional unpredictable, jerky movement.

One of the Mischievous Phantasms was particularly difficult to track with her mind’s eye. It bobbed and weaved like it wanted desperately to survive and make it to within touch range. Mina ended up just hurling a dozen fireballs at it from multiple angles so that it could not escape. Killing that Phantasm required more intense effort than fighting the others, but besides that Phantasm, the rest were predictable. She was able to spare her energy.

The minutes passed quickly.

When the timer ran out, Mina was surprised.

The figures vanished from all around, and the room brightened. Just a warehouse again. She realized her heart was pounding, but as her pulse settled, a smile crept over her face.

I did it!

[Congratulations! You have cleared Dungeon: Carol’s Storage!]

[Sufficient experience accrued. Witch of Thessaly leveled up!]

“Congratulations on such a strong performance!” Carol chimed in. “I was a little scared at one point, when they were getting close to you, but then you blew them away!”

“Thank you for the opportunity,” Mina said. “You were scared, though? Why?”

“Oh. Well, I guess I never explained to your husband, so you don’t know either. When I start the Dungeon working, I don’t really have the ability to stop it. I might be able to interfere a little bit, but I don’t control the monsters.”

Mina swallowed as she considered the implications of this. In theory, this was as dangerous as anything I could have faced outside, then. I mean, Carol might have tried to avoid sending more dangerous threats than I could handle, but she had no way of knowing what that was, right?

“Well, I’ll have to keep that in mind next time I come,” Mina said finally.

Regardless of how dangerous Carol made this place, she would certainly be back. Mina was not going to fall behind.