Chapter 7: The Only Way Up Is Down

  Raiden went down to the main floor and sat down cross legged in a meditative stance as he tried to focus on restoring his energy. Ever since he had gotten his class, he had felt an abundance of strength, and his mana was ever ready to respond to his call. His ventures through the tunnels and the ruins, though, had sapped much of his energy. Going on without taking time to recover would mean that he would likely run out of mana if he kept going like he was. He didn’t have any special abilities that helped him regenerate his mana faster. All he could do was wait for his body to recharge itself on its own.

  After sitting there for what felt like a few hours, he was ready to continue. He pulled out his pack and drank from his waterskin. Packed inside was a small amount of jerky and dried fruit, which were quickly consumed. He looked down at the simple metal breastplate to see the impact crater from the rat’s tail. It wasn’t impinging on his movements too much. Raiden couldn’t imagine the racket that trying to hammer out the dent would cause, so he decided to leave it as it was. Stepping closer to the hallway, he listened intently for any danger that might be lurking in the tunnels. There were no sounds beyond the door.

  Sighing, he decided to try his luck and test the rifle. He walked over to one of the empty rooms on the main floor and started charging up the weapon. It let out a soft whir, and to his surprise, it felt like the weapon was immediately ready to fire. As soon as he pressed his mana into the weapon, the energy reached a steady state that was ready to shoot out. His pistol, on the other hand, took at least a few moments to charge up. He wondered if the rifle was broken. He pulled the trigger, and a high pitched zap echoed out as a small mana bullet flew across the space to hit the far wall.

  Definitely not broken.

  Raiden kept the flow of mana going into the weapon and pulled the trigger a few more times.“Zap zap zap!” Echoed out, and three mana bullets hit the wall in quick succession. He aimed at a pile of junk in the corner and let off a single round. The pile of debris sprayed outward, but not overly so. It seemed to do a good amount of damage, but wasn’t as powerful as his mana pistol. However, it seemed like he could fire as fast as he could pull the trigger. He aimed at the wall again and fired four rounds as a “Zap zap zap zap” echoed out. Mana bullets hit the wall in a tight cluster.

  This thing is amazing; it’s so fast.

  Raiden turned back towards the main door that led out into the tunnel. He pressed his ear up against it and listened intently to see if his weapons practice had alerted any nearby enemies. After waiting for a full minute, nothing happened. He had to get out of the ruins and make it back to the surface somehow. Going out there, though, meant that he had to fight against the swarms of millipedes and whatever else this dungeon was going to throw at him. He walked towards the door and was just about to press his hand against it and open it when a sudden thought struck him. After reaching into his pack, he pulled out the mana light. Raiden had been in the dark for a lot of his time in the dungeon. It was paramount to ensure he could see clearly when he reached areas without working lights.

  As he was holding the light, wondering where he could put it, he finally decided to attach it to his metal breastplate. Putting it on his left shoulder next to his neck, he pressed the clamp against the armor and then toggled the lever to close the clamp shut. It held onto the metal easily. He put his thumb on the back of the light and activated it with his mana. The light flew out at a fairly straight angle, and wherever he turned, the light would follow. He shouldered his new mana rifle and then reached his left hand forward to touch the door access tablet. The door slid into the wall as he quickly took two steps back, ready for millipedes to come pouring through at any second. When nothing did, he got up to the door frame and looked both ways. The halls were empty.

  The soft amber lighting on the floor and ceiling was still flickering, but he didn’t turn off his own light. He stepped through the tunnels cautiously with his rifle up. His footsteps were sure and steady. When he got to the first crossroads, he checked left and right without seeing any millipedes. He kept heading in the same direction, walking past a few more crossroads, when a group of millipedes rounded a corner and spotted him from behind. They shrieked and hissed as they came towards him. He quickly spun around and charged his mana rifle. It whirred immediately to life, ready to fire. There were half a dozen of the insects, and he took aim at one on the ceiling. He fired, but his first round missed.

  He adjusted his aim, and the second mana bullet struck the millipede. It fell down to the ground, where it writhed and bled out profusely. The other millipedes grew agitated and came at him a little faster. He aimed at another of the millipedes that was scuttling along the wall and fired three quick rounds. Zap, zap, zap. One of the rounds missed, but two others struck home, killing the millipede. The millipedes were close now, and he unleashed a flurry of rounds. Half of the mana rounds missed their targets as he quickly tried to put the millipedes down before they got within striking distance. Raiden was able to take them all out. The rapid rate of fire that he was able to unleash was too much for the many legged insects. They died quickly to the onslaught.

  Raiden turned around to proceed in the direction he had originally been going, wary of any potential ambushes. After a few minutes of walking, he finally hit a dead end. Directly in front of him, the tunnel he was on ended where it met a cavern wall. He decided to take a left and had only gone a few steps when another swarm of millipedes appeared in front of him. They poured out of an open door in the tunnel wall. He immediately opened fire, and the first two millipedes that crawled out died instantly. More of the creatures continued to pour out from the doorway, and Raiden dispatched them one by one with a steady stream of fire. He took slightly longer to aim than he had with his last encounter to ensure that he didn’t waste mana.

  As the final two millipedes left the room, he fired two rounds at each millipede, putting them down. As he walked forward to see what was inside the room, one of the millipedes struck out at him from playing dead. He caught the movement in the corner of his eye and quickly dove to the side as he slammed into the tunnel wall. The millipede shrieked and lunged at him again. He didn’t aim, hip firing his mana rifle as fast as he could. One of the rounds struck true, and a spray of viscera flew out from the side of the millipede. It clicked its jaw at him in anger a few times before it finally stuttered and went still. Raiden looked at the other millipedes warily. He cautiously approached the door, ready to jump back, but all the other millipedes were dead.

  He peered into the open doorway and saw that the room was completely covered in debris. A number of holes had been haphazardly blown out in the ceiling. The room was completely dark, and Raiden didn’t venture inside it. After walking for a few minutes away from the scene of the battle, he saw a set of stairs that led downwards ahead of him. He really wished that some of the stairs would head back up towards the surface, but every set of stairs that he had found so far had only led further downwards. As he was approaching the stairs, he heard a rapid series of scuttling feet. He quickly spun around, looking for the danger. Not seeing any millipedes, he quickly headed over to the stairs, which were dark and ominous. The sound wasn’t coming from that direction. His mana gun whirred as he looked for the source of the danger.

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  From around the corner of one of the crossroads that he had just passed, a couple of millipedes slithered along the floor towards him. He took aim, and mana bullets flew. As soon as the first millipedes died, more came around the corner to take their place along the walls and ceiling. Raiden continued firing. Millipedes fell off the walls and ceiling as they were struck by the steady stream of mana rounds coming at them. The scuttling sound intensified, and hisses and shrieks reverberated even louder than before. The biggest swarm of millipedes that Raiden had seen thus far came into view.

  This is bad!

  He fired as fast as he could. The writhing mass of millipedes was so dense that he couldn’t tell where one millipede stopped and the other started. He just fired. A steady zap zap zap zap zap thundered out from his rifle as his mana drained alarmingly fast. Still, the horde of monsters pressed on towards him, and the thought of being ripped apart by the millipedes sent a jolt of defiance running through his veins.

  He looked back towards the dark stairwell and decided there was nothing for it. He turned around and raced down it as the millipedes poured in after him. Unlike the other stairwells that he had seen so far, this spiraling stairwell was open in the center. If he fell, he couldn’t imagine how far down he would go. He hung close to the wall as he raced down the steps that were in a winding square pattern. Every two dozen stairs, there was a landing, and he stopped just long enough to fire off a few rounds at the millipedes before racing down again. The mana light on his shoulder provided him enough illumination to see by in the darkness. He was grateful for it, but it was like a beacon to the millipedes; they scrambled to get at him like moths to a flame.

  The millipedes were jostling one another and shoving against each other as they raced down the stairwell, and Raiden could see dark shapes plummeting past him as they were shoved off the stairwell and fell into the depths below. The stairs went down profoundly far, and down he went, continuing to fire off rounds with the millipedes hot on his heels. He had thinned out their numbers considerably, but he was running low on mana. Raiden fired off one last flurry of rounds at the next landing. The millipedes died, and their companions scrambled over their dead bodies. Raiden slung his rifle over his back and drew his sword. A millipede raced next to him, and he kicked at it to send it careening over the edge. Another millipede was on the wall next to him, and he slashed out, scoring a lucky hit somewhere along its body. The blade connected with carapace. Raiden increased his pace, heedless of the danger.

  He raced to stay ahead of the rest of the millipedes. As he was getting ready to take the next turn on the stairs, he realized the stairs ended. They led to a short tunnel. In the center of the stairwell was a pile of unmoving millipedes killed in their fall from above. He ignored them and pressed on into the tunnel. He soon found himself in a large room and did a quick scan just long enough to evaluate that there were no threats in the room. The millipedes’ footsteps were right behind him. He spun around to face his foe.

  The first millipede lunged at him. He swung his blade horizontally, cutting through the head of one millipede and then embedding his blade in the head of another. He quickly pulled his blade back as the millipedes swarmed around him. Raiden slashed and stabbed as they grew closer. A few of the millipedes died to his blade, but one jumped up and bit at his torso. Its pincers deflected off his armor, and he punched at its head to knock it away. A downward strike of his sword killed it. He kicked to send another millipede sprawling. When a millipede latched onto his free arm, Raiden slammed his blade right through the millipede, and it let go as its body grew limp. He flung the millipede across his body, staggering one right in front of him. As his blade pulled free, he spun in a circle, slashing at the millipedes to leave huge gouges in their bodies. Another millipede bit down firmly on his thigh and drew blood before he rammed the blade downwards in a reverse grip through its head. He quickly pulled it free and dodged back when a pair of millipedes lunged for him. Two quick slashes ended them.

  Another millipede dove for his face, and he cut down, severing it in two as a spray of gore fell on him. He whirled around with his blade high, ready to strike, eyes wild and breathing heavily. The millipedes were dead. They were all dead. His shirt was cut open on his sleeve from where one of the millipedes had bitten him. Its pincers had cut into his skin. It hurt, but the wound wasn’t deep. His leg concerned him more. There, one of the pincers had punctured his thigh. As he examined it closely, however, he noted that the pincer hadn’t gone very deep thanks to the increase in his constitution stat when he had gotten his class. He put away his weapons and pulled out his water skin and poured it on his leg wound, and then some more water onto his hand to clean it off. He stuck a finger inside the wound to check for depth and was surprised that it didn’t go much deeper than about a fingernail.

  His new class had boosted his stats more than he had originally anticipated; he was a lot tougher now. He put his waterskin away and brought his sling around so his mana rifle hung in front of him. A large pile of enemies lay scattered around him, and the stairwell behind lay full of the dead insects as well. He could feel a slight increase in his attributes from the fight, but knew that he still had a long way to go until his stats hit the next grade from F minus to F.

  He walked through the large room. Its ceilings were high, and he couldn’t make out much detail in the room besides a number of broken statues leaning against the far wall. Another tunnel led out of the room, and he took it. His leg hurt, but that didn’t impede his movement. He figured he could trust it fully and not worry about it slowing him down. The tunnel was short and led to a large cavern, much larger than any cavern he had yet seen in the dungeon. He couldn’t see the far side or the ceiling above his head; all he could see was pitch blackness there. Down below, however, was a different story. An entire city was here. He was awestruck. He stood on a ledge a few stories above the ground below. Numerous buildings filled every part of the cavern that his light was able to reach. He assessed the city below.

  No millipedes in sight.

  He made his way down the staircase that led to the ground. Once there, he stood in the middle of a road that had stone buildings on each side. The buildings here seemed to be made out of the same natural stone that was in the rest of the dungeon. The buildings had windows, doors, and even the occasional sign with script so faded that he couldn’t tell what it said. He glanced down the road of the deserted city and up at its haunting buildings. He walked forward cautiously, scanning back and forth across the road. Many of the windows had been broken open, and glass lay scattered about the ground. Many of the buildings had doors that were ajar or sections of the walls that were missing. He could easily go inside, but he decided to skip entering the buildings and continue on. He was eager to find a way to get out of the ruins. The city reminded Raiden of a graveyard completely devoid of life. What had happened to the people who once lived in this city? What had driven them out?

  He knew that the Maw was a massive dungeon, but this far exceeded his expectations. He wasn’t even sure what section of the dungeon he was in anymore. The only illumination was the light on his shoulder. Whatever fate had led him to find the fallen knight had ended up giving him a chance to survive, one that he wasn’t going to squander. He kept his footsteps quiet as he wandered through the dark streets.

  After he had been walking for quite a while, he began to grow uneasy. He felt like he was being watched. He turned slowly in a circle, almost casually, so as not to alert a potential enemy to his awareness of their presence. There was nothing.

  Maybe I’m just being paranoid from being down in the dark for this long.

  He kept walking. Soon, a screech filled his mind, and he grew dizzy, and his legs felt like they were about to give out from under him. He managed to steady himself when a voice entered his mind. It was alien and harsh.