The Lesser One: Arc 2: Chapter 10: Dungeons Again

Dungeons Again

There are now eleven conjurers who I am working with to produce Rearden Metal. The mood among then is subdued. I’m actually surprised that they all came to work today.

I take off my expensive suit before starting and don a lab coat, carefully hanging the suit in a closet.

I spend the day like usual, trying to teach these conjurers how to feel themselves. I’ve decided to take a different tack when showing them. Instead of going technical, I treat it as if they were playing an instrument. Posture, flow of spirit particles, and shaping techniques. One of the conjurers actually manages to produce type one. I congratulate her and tell her to keep doing it so she can retain the success.

At the end of the day I leave the lab and head to the entrance lobby. Sebastian is, again, waiting in the lounge area. He is holding a pencil and a newspaper crossword puzzle.

Rezolan is sitting across from him, eyes closed. He opens them when I approach.

“Ah, sir,” he says. “I was told you needed some expert help?”

I sit down in a plush armchair. “I suppose,” I say. “You went to school?”

Rezolan shakes his head. “All devils are self-studied. However, I have had centuries to refine my scientific technique.”

“You said you wanted something from me in exchange for your help, right?” I say.

Rezolan raises an eyebrow. “Yes. I need you to do me a favor.”

“What is it?” I say.

“Allow me to purchase a restaurant,” says Rezolan.

“Um, don’t you already have authority to do that?” I ask.

Rezolan looks a bit confused. “I thought you meant to direct all your resources towards your own goals,” he says. “At least, that’s what Jirgrar says.”

“Why do you want to open a restaurant?” I ask.

Rezolan shrugs. “Obviously, to be a cook and serve food.”

“Deal,” I say. “You can use as much of my money as you need to in order to start a restaurant.”

Rezolan appears to be surprised. “You don’t get anything out of it, right?” he says.

“I get, at the very least, your help with creating, um,” I look around to make sure no one is listening, “Antimatter.”

Rezolan smiles, though only a bit. “Then it’s a deal.”

“By the way,” I say. “What kind of restaurant do you want to start?”

“The cuisine from lawhell,” says Rezolan. “Cooked styxian eel, cockatrice egg, and basilisk foie gras.” He speaks with an energy I haven’t seen from him before.

“Where are you going to source your ingredients?” I ask. “There have to be import rules surrounding portal food.” I pause. “Most monsters puff into smoke when we kill them, though.”

“Lawhell is not a dungeon or a portal realm,” says Rezolan. “It’s an entirely different plane of existence. And I am going to source food from my contacts there. They do take human money. They’re devils, after all.”

I have to keep reminding myself that my minions associate with the “lawful evil” side of the alignment chart. From what I’ve learned in class, “chaotic evil” creatures from hell are called “demons.” Demons and devils don’t mix well.

But, as far as I can see, allowing one of my minions to open a novelty restaurant would only be a good thing.

Sebastian looks up from his crossword puzzle. “I have located an empty area some distance from any population in the north of Scotland. I have asked around and we may be able to mask most of the energy you release in the process of creating antimatter.”

“Will I create a lot of energy?” I ask.

Rezolan chuckles. “A whole lot. Comparable to a hydrogen bomb. However, if you work it correctly, all that energy will be emitted in a bandwidth no one will be able to detect. If you shove it all into a dungeon, it will dissipate.”

“I’m not even sure if I can turn my anima fluid into antimatter,” I say.

“If Biren believed you can do it, strangely enough, so can I,” says Rezolan. “Take two days off from your Rearden Metal work,” he says. “We can work at the location Sebastian found for us for that period of time.”

“One last check,” I say. “How dangerous is creating antimatter?”

Rezolan shakes his head a bit. “We don’t know. We don’t know what caused the explosion in Detroit. It may not even have been Daniel Washington’s fault.”

“So, you’re saying we know nothing.”

“Exactly,” says Rezolan. “The only other instances of produced antimatter happened in particle colliders, in nanograms or smaller. You could be able to produce the material without any danger at all. We just don’t know.”

“And that’s what makes it dangerous,” says Sebastian. “However, we do realize that if you don’t make this deal with Biren, your friends and family will be killed.”

“Probably tortured before that, too,” says Rezolan.

I cringe. “Yeah. I’m glad Biren gave me an out in this case.”

My phone rings. I pick it up.

“Markus, this is Carl. The Blue Dryads have been assigned to an A-class portal last-minute. We need you. Be at the main building in half an hour.”

I sigh. “Okay, sir,” I say. I hang up. “We’re going to have to postpone our plans,” I say. “Biren did give me an infinite deadline, after all.” I stand up. “Take me to the Blue Dryads’ headquarters.”

Rezolan remains sitting as Sebastian stands.

“I’m not needed, right?” says Rezolan.

“You can work on your restaurant project while we’re gone,” says Sebastian. He turns to me. “Let’s go.”

We leave the building and take the limo through the city streets to reach the Blue Dryads’ headquarters.

Blue Dryad adventurers are congregating around the building’s entrance.

I see Carl among them, and when I get out of the limo, I approach him.

“We’re going through an A-class today, right?” I say.

Carl nods. “We’re joining with the Greenbottom guild to clear it,” he says. “We’re certainly glad to have you with us.”

The members of the Blue Dryads climb aboard several vans. We drive as s convoy to the outskirts of the city, to the west. A portal has opened in an old, abandoned warehouse. It’s a tall one, half of its height sticking out of the collapsed roof of the building. Our vans stop and adventurers pour out into the parking lot. Two more vans, painted green, arrive just a minute later, and more adventurers stream out. There are over a hundred adventurers and apprentices in the lot. I know that the average death rate for an A-class portal is between four and eight. Some of these people won’t be making it out alive. A-class portals make up less than one percent of total manifested portals, however, so we aren’t losing too many adventurers.

Carl Stevenson stands up on a makeshift stage to address the crowd.

“As you all know by now,” he says, “A-class portals are dangerous and deadly environments. That’s why we’re here, and that’s why we are receiving hazard pay.”

The crowd is silent.

The Greenbottom guild’s commander is also on the stage with Carl. He makes a few remarks and then Carl wraps us up.

We mill about for ten minutes before we arrange ourselves into our given ranks. As a DPS (damage per second) actor, I get to stay in the middle of the ranks. Behind the tanks and in front of the healers.

We advance into the portal as a block, the Greenbottoms on the left and the Blue Dryads on the right. The portal itself is almost as big as a family house, so there’s plenty of room.

I catch sight of a familiar man with an eyepatch sitting on the rafters of the warehouse. Deeve, one of the members of the Dark Silverbones. Before I can call out, his figure is gone.

“What’s wrong?” says the adventurer next to me.

“Nothing,” I say. “Just nothing.” I turn to face the portal.

We enter into a hot, sweltering jungle with purple foliage. The color is so intense that it hurts my eyes.

“Contact!” yell the front tanks. Two gigantic T-rex monsters, probably high B rank, come roaring out from between the trees. Dozens of C-class raptors flow between their feet.

The raptors hit the line of tanks. Our formation flexes to take the blow. I conjure my bow and arrows and start firing.

The front line of tanks splits to allow a gigantic fireball from one of the A-class adventurers to fly through. One T-rex takes a hit to the face and is blown to bloody bits. The second T-rex is downed under concentrated fire. We clean up the rest of the raptors and allow the two adventurers who dealt the killing blows to absorb the B-class rings, probably between one hundred and two hundred years. After which we continue onwards.

I catch sight of Deeve again, sitting in the canopy of one of the tallest trees. He smiles at me and winks with his one eye. I also think I can see Ronald, the man who attacked me at the restaurant.

The fact that they are following me is making me uncomfortable. I can’t do anything to change it, however. I continue onward with the rest of the guild and hope we can be done with this quickly.

A gigantic A-class monkey, the boss of the first floor, drops from the fronds of a tree the size of a skyscraper.

“You dare trespass on my sacred jungle?” It says, its voice echoing through the forest.

“Attack!” yells Carl, and we engage in battle. The monkey sweeps aside our entire front line of tanks in a single motion. Dozens of armored men and woman clatter against the tree trunks. Some get caught in the vines.

“We’re exposed!” yells one of the adventurers. The monkey readies for another swing.

Carl throws up a barrier of clear material, upon which the monkey’s hit bounces off. The monkey staggers, put off balance by the strike.

I take aim at the monkey’s vital point and fire. So do about a dozen other DPS members.

Concentrated fire causes the monkey to cover its face. Just in time for our tank line to reform and deal the finishing blow.

The monkey falls to the ground and the tank who dealt the killing blow absorbs the spirit ring.

A portal opens that leads to the second floor. As a group, we march through and enter an ancient lost city, complete with a ziggurat temple covered in vines.

The enemy in this case is a gigantic sky whale, floating above the lost city. It takes a heading towards us and opens its mouth. A laser beam shoots from between its baleen and incinerates two of our tanks. One of them dies, and the other is saved by a quick action by our healers.

We move into combat formation. Tanks won’t be much use in this case, but shield mages should be able to contain the whale laser.

The whale does another dive and sweeps our forces with its laser. Three separate shield bubbles form in the laser’s path, reflecting the laser beam so that it cuts through the forests behind our forces.

“DPS!” yells Carl. “Full output!”

I start firing conjured arrows at the beast. Most of them hit their mark, but the whale is sucking up a lot of damage. It fires a new color of laser, bright blue in hue, that creates pillars of ice wherever it hits.

Two DPS members freeze to death inside of gigantic ice crystals.

The whale finally moans its last breath and plows a furrow in the ground. Since it’s probably a spirit worth over a thousand years, the choice of who gets to absorb the ring may be difficult.

Carl and the leader of the Greenbottoms converge after we’ve made sure that the surroundings are clear. After five minutes of discussion, we decide who to give the spirit to—a famous London adventurer who I, being American, have never heard of until recently.

With everything wrapped up, we arrange ourselves to leave. I catch sight of Deeve, sitting at the temple’s apex, giving me a slow clap. He winks again and is gone in a wisp of smoke.