Mage Tank

It was frustrating that the System, the Delve Core, or whatever was running this place hadn’t given us an express time limit before we’d gone into our individual challenges. It also seemed arbitrary that we were suddenly facing a countdown a few hours after Nuralie and I emerged from the loop. Had we barely scraped out a victory just before we would have failed a hidden objective? Or was there something else going on?

It wasn’t normal, both Nuralie and I agreed. While Varrin, Grotto, and Xim were the resident Delve experts, neither of us were slouches on the topic and this didn’t fit the pattern. First, while Delves were filled with hidden traps, and evolving objectives weren’t rare, a fail condition that was completely obscured was unheard of. Usually, if there was some secret that needed to be uncovered, there were hints laid out for us to discover. As far as Nuralie and I could tell, at no point had we been presented with something that suggested we were up against the clock. If anything, this Delve encouraged us to take our time and be intentional, punishing hasty decisions.

Second, the nature of this new enemy was out of step. Delves were filled with mana monsters, machines, and other non-sentient foes. Those that were sentient were inside the Delve by choice, such as our old pal Hognay or The Mimic.

While Deletar had probably entered the Delve of his own free will, I doubted his transformation was at his behest, and the decision to attack us had seemed coerced. If the System existed to challenge Delvers, encourage their growth, and guide them toward ascension, why would it penalize a failure by warping them into corrupted pawns afterward? Delves certainly ‘recycled’ fallen Delvers–consuming their bodies for mana and other resources–but this sort of thing was beyond the pale.

That left us with a few theories. The most obvious was that we had no idea what we were talking about and Delves were sometimes malicious entities that did this sort of thing. Next was the idea that Deletar had not truly been the Delver himself, but a drone created based on his build and given his weapon.

It was still abhorrent to create a thinking being that believed it was someone who’d died and to lead it on with the hope of escape. In some ways, that was no different than having doomed the original to the same fate. It was possible that Deletar had been a convincing fake with no real will of his own, the few sentences he spoke being predetermined lines the creature recited from a script. That idea was less morally reprehensible, but why deploy such a scare tactic?

Finally, there was the theory that we were being manipulated to see a reality that wasn’t true. I’d already dismissed that idea back in the loop, reasoning that my Wisdom was so high that a mental attack would be a remote enough possibility that we could discard it as a possibility until given reason to believe otherwise. If a level 10 Delve had the capacity to break through my mental defenses, what Delver could overcome that level of attack? If I had the stats of a normal level 10, I’d need to have invested nearly half of all my stats into Wisdom to get to where I was. Certainly, the Delve didn’t expect challengers to dive so hard into a single stat. Our attribute diversity had helped so much, that I wasn’t sure how we’d have survived without it. So, mental boloney seemed unlikely.

Regardless of why the Delve was doing what it was, Nuralie and I had to handle it. The System message had implied that the next wave of bugmen would be a ‘group’, rather than an individual. We’d melted Deletar without trouble–a single grade 14 wasn’t a threat–but two grade 14s could be annoying. Any more than that might start to test us.

That is, if we hadn’t been given time to prepare.

We had 16 hours until the next Doomed Aspirants came knocking, and we used that time wisely. I initially tried to see if I could find a viable teleportation destination to the outside, but wherever we were, it was surrounded by at least a few miles worth of dirt and stone. Even if I had found an empty space to blink into, there was always the chance it was outside the Delve. I didn’t relish the idea of floating around through space. If we were buried in some geological body, it was also possible to teleport into an underground chamber filled with unbreathable or toxic air. Teleporting somewhere you couldn’t see was just a bad idea altogether.

We then tried our hand at digging out through the tunnel Deletar had made. It had mostly collapsed behind the bugman, but the dirt was loose and the stone wall was already broken. It was the easiest mode of egress. Unfortunately, that tactic was met by a System message.

Leaving the challenge room will result in the automatic failure of your party members in their group trials.

I hadn’t been surprised, but it was still good to explore our options.

With our “run and hide” plan foiled, we adjusted the terrain to better suit us. The room was more or less a flat expanse with some meager cover provided by the ferns growing throughout it. There were some shadows Nuralie could use to hide, but once she was discovered she wouldn’t have many places to fall back to. We still had several fortification packages like the one I’d used against Yaretzi, along with some basic construction materials, so we set up a series of defensible locations with a variety of orientations. Deletar had come from the northern wall, but that was no guarantee that the rest would also come from the north. We destroyed the glowstones lighting the room as well, and harvested all the bioluminescent mushrooms, since Nuralie and I both had excellent darkvision. It might cause trouble for intruders without any sensory upgrades.

Next came the traps.

Alchemy was only one piece of Nuralie’s capability to orchestrate the painful death of her foes in advance. The loson also had the Machinist intrinsic, which augmented her ability to work with mechanical gadgets. It was the skill she’d used to create timed launchers for Dazzlers and poisons when we assaulted the Littan camp, among other devices. It had also seen substantial growth throughout the maze at the beginning of Deijin’s Descent where she disarmed trap after trap, disassembled them, and kept the remains. The skill was on the precipice of an evolution, and as she worked to install the deadly instruments around the room, she finally reached level 20.

“Easy choice,” she said.

Mana Triggers (20)

You can create runes that allow for your traps to be triggered on contact from up to 2X feet away, where X is your level in Machinist. You may have these runes ignore allies.

Now Nuralie didn’t need wires, pressure plates, or switches for her targets to stumble into. She summoned glyphs that melted into the ground, invisible to the naked eye and undetectable without some form of mana sense or revealing ability. It cut the work for installing traps in half, and she could even set a glyph off herself to remotely activate a trap in a different part of the room.

The traps we had on hand included a variety of elemental devices, a couple of traps each dealing Spectral, Force, and Dimensional damage, potion launchers, and good old-fashioned crossbows. My contribution was mostly limited to manual labor–mainly digging–and 2 uses of Sage Advice to help Nuralie accomplish some fine-tuning of the traps outside the expertise of her own magic schools.

We didn’t set everything up at first. We wanted to hold some traps in reserve in case we were faced with multiple waves of foes, which both of us were certain would happen. It would have been unfortunate if our fancy, non-renewable magic traps all got triggered by the first few enemies running circles around the room. We set up five kill zones, one around each wall and one in the center in case enemies decided to emerge from below or–as a superior tactician would advise–from above us.

That left us with an established route leading around the space and between the kill zones that was clear of traps or crossfire and gave access to fortified cover. It was also organized in an asymmetric pattern so that it wouldn’t become immediately apparent to our enemies what was safe and what wasn’t. I couldn’t accidentally set off the runes, but I could activate a few of the mechanical triggers that Nuralie had mixed in to diversify the challenge our enemies would face.

After all of that was said and done, I kept watch while Nuralie caught some rest. There wasn’t enough time for me to get any sleep, but hopefully, there would be another long break between waves. I was a long way off from suffering deprivation symptoms, but any good Delver knew to grab some kip anytime it became available.

Finally, we were set up and ready to go, waiting for the last few minutes to countdown. Nuralie was well hidden, and I waited for her signal telling me that there were enemies at the gates. I stuffed some earplugs in and slapped on my helm. Nuralie called out two enemies approaching from the western wall, and I started channeling Explosion!.

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The pair of hostiles emerged at the same time, their entry separated by a few yards. As Nuralie and I had agreed, we’d designed the triggers to give the enemy time to consider their actions, and for me to try and get them to talk. One was a masculine, mantis-looking person with curved blades melded into his body. The other was stocky and feminine, with a large pair of pincers attached to a bulging tail that made her look like an earwig; the most repulsive insect known to man. Both identified as Grade 14 Doomed Aspirants. The woman carried a staff, and so I silently oriented Explosion! to detonate next to her. Always kill the squishies first.

“Hey folks,” I said with a smile. “We’re not looking for any trouble. Do either of you care to negotiate?”

Despite the earplugs, my hearing was sensitive enough for regular conversation.

The pair of insectoids cast a glance at one another. Mantis was the one to reply, his voice sounding like someone took sandpaper to his vocal cords.

“No,” he said.

I cast Explosion!

Earwig was launched away, her left arm blown into chunks by my spell. She landed on a rune triggering a flamethrower that sprayed liquid fire down onto her from above. The trap was a one-time use, filled with a substance that caused the magical flames to adhere to their target. Earwig screeched as the fire ignited her, either lacking the magical means to extinguish herself or forgetting that she could do so in her panic. I gave it even odds as to which.

Mantis stumbled forward, catching the front side of one of our barriers to keep from falling, blades scraping along the fortification’s metal edge. He wasn’t close enough to the spell to take any serious damage, but he stumbled into a pressure plate and three crossbows fired poisoned bolts into his carapace. One bounced off, but two found soft spots along his abdomen.

Before he could recover I hurled a quadruple Void Hammer at his chest. He managed to parry one, and a defensive skill protected him from the second, but the third and fourth landed. Two chunks of his chest were reduced to a pulpy mess, his Dimensional resistance keeping some of his body from being warped away, but not enough for the remaining tissue to retain structural integrity.

As the contents of Mantis’s chest emptied out and dripped down the barrier before him, an arrow appeared in his eye. His head shot back from the force of the projectile, then he slumped to the ground.

Amazingly, he wasn’t quite dead, but he wasn’t getting back up. Nuralie’s poison quickly finished the job.

The room was filled with the scent of bug guts and burning flesh.

“Not too bad,” I said. “Though it’s a shame the flamethrower got spent. Probably overkill.”

“There is no such thing,” said Nuralie. She was already moving to reset the crossbows that had fired.

I dragged the bug bodies to a pit we’d dug for corpse disposal and hucked them in alongside the desiccated remains of Deletar. The Delve would soon drain the corpses of the new arrivals down to blackened shells, but they would’ve still created a tripping hazard. It was important to keep the workplace clear of any debris.

Soon after we received our kill notifications and rewards, each of us netting 14 emerald chips for our efforts. It was an obscene sum of money, enough for a sensible person to retire young and live out the rest of their days in luxury. Before I could review the rest of the loot, the System kindly informed us of our adjusted timeline.

Time until you are challenged by the next camp of Aspirants: 8 hours.

“Lovely,” I muttered after reading it. “The timer’s been halved.”

“I expect there will be 3 bugs next time, as well,” said Nuralie.

I bit my lip but didn’t worry about it too much. Two bugs had practically been easier than one, after all of our prep. Three bugs shouldn’t be awful. However, If it kept escalating–with four bugs in four hours followed by five bugs in two hours–I wasn’t sure how far we’d get, even with all of our advantages. I tried not to let the thought get to me, instead saying a silent prayer that the rest of the party would arrive soon, and went on to check out the weapons we’d received.

Earwig had dropped a staff that boosted healing a bit but had no foreboding lore or house identification attached to it. Xim might use it, but it wasn’t really her style. Mantis had dropped a pair of blades the System identified as Twin Kukris of Devastation, though I questioned their classification as kukris. They were curved forward, slightly smaller than an average shortsword, and did an extra 50% damage on crit when used alone, or 100% extra when wielded together. The handles were made out of the remains of Mantis’s arms but shaped well enough for a good grip. Nuralie had a level of competency with compact blades, so I handed them off to her.

We also got 2 more insectoid essences and Mantis dropped a Brooch of House Spyreling that allowed for long-range voice communication with another brooch that was linked to it. As expected, the item did not function inside of the Delve.

I considered the name of the brooch, but House Spyreling wasn’t a Hiwardian house. I didn’t know enough about the nobility of other nations to recognize the name, so I set it aside to show Varrin. We finished setting the room up for the next group and I grabbed a nap while Nuralie toyed with her new weapons, which she’d decided were very big knives, as opposed to very small swords.

I dreamt of a pair of eyes the size of planets watching me, impassive and unblinking.

I awoke wondering whether I should be thinking harder about accepting that Luck evolution. I moved the matter up to the top of The List, ate breakfast, and got ready for the assuredly violent day ahead of me.

The third group came from the south wall and was, as expected, comprised of three bugs. I didn’t bother talking this time, instead activating Explosion! the moment I saw a wasp in tattered green robes who was holding a wand. He’d obviously forgotten the importance of Fortitude, as my spell reduced him to giblets.

The other two put up more of a fight. There was a stink bug person standing seven feet tall, weighing something like 600 pounds, and swinging a two-handed spiked mace that crushed everything it encountered like a musical theater student’s hopes of a lucrative career path. The other was a flea of indeterminate gender who hurled javelins at a constant, consistent pace like a moving turret.

Our crossbow traps clinked off Stinkbug’s shell and Flea leapt around the room with such speed that I couldn’t land a hit. I had to use Gravity Anchor to keep from getting slung around the chamber by Stinkbug’s mace while I soaked enough Javelins to the back that after a half minute of fighting my porcupine cosplay was coming along quite well.

The tides turned when Nuralie let loose with a charged Hunger Shot that placed three broadheads just below Flea’s tiny head, and their whole cranium popped right off. Stinkbug grew enraged after that, but it only made him sloppy. I Shortcut around the room, kiting him into traps while Nuralie lined up shots at his joints. Eventually, I opened up a hole in the armor along his back with a Void Hammer, and Nuralie deposited a lethal arrow through the hole and into Stinkbug’s raging heart.

More chips, more insectoid essences, a Wand of Spectral Bolt, a Ceremonial Javelin of Infinite Revenge–which came with an ammo counter that slowly replenished over time–and a Giant Spiked Mace of the Bloody Jubilee.

The wand was okay, but neither I nor Etja had the right attunement for it. The javelin was a cool throwing weapon, but its governing intrinsic was Pierce so it didn’t fit my build. Besides, I didn’t have any nearby Diablos to slay with it. The spiked mace was by far the most interesting.

Giant Spiked Mace of the Bloody Jubilee

Two-Handed Mace

To Spike,

In commemoration of the day we feasted upon the life’s blood of our foes.

With love,

Dru

Requirements: STR 40, Blunt 40

Effects:

1) This weapon deals an additional 100% damage when wielded with two hands.

2) Whenever this weapon deals damage it applies Bleeding/minute equal to your STR plus level in Blunt. Critical strikes apply twice this amount.

3) Once per hour you may increase your health regeneration by an amount equal to the combined Bleeding/min of enemies within a number of feet of you equal to your STR. This regeneration increase lasts for 1 hour.

It was a Blunt weapon, it increased regeneration, and it even came with a sweet note attached. I was nowhere close to being able to wield it, and I still preferred Somncres, but it might serve as a nifty backup weapon. I also remembered that Grotto could share my intrinsics through the new evolution my Traveler’s Amulet had attained. Seeing the little guy swinging a six-foot mace of blood-soaked devastation would be pretty cool, but I wasn’t sure he’d ever have the Strength for it. Either way, I tossed it into my inventory for later assessment.

Time until you are challenged by the next camp of Aspirants: 4 hours.

“As irritated as this ‘challenge’ makes me,” I said, “at least it’s consistent.”

“We will not live another 8 hours at this rate,” said Nuralie.

I did the depressing math in my head. It checked out.

Undeterred by the impossibility of surviving exponentially growing danger, we reset the room and got ready for the next wave.

This time, they came from above like properly sophisticated villains. However, the four insects did not land amidst our thoughtfully curated and arranged traps of sundry death.

They collapsed the ceiling on top of them.

Mechanical triggers activated, arrows fired into piles of dirt, and the runes for our Spectral and Ice traps were buried deep enough that they’d never be triggered unless one of our enemies was an enthusiastic–and evil–gopher. Then again, plenty of bugs dug into the ground. I still had hope.

There was a pause before the new Aspirants revealed themselves, which gave me time to keep charging Explosion! I had over 100 mana wrapped up in the spell when the bugs showed their faces. Though there were four of them, one in particular was impossible to ignore.

It was half woman, half fly, its body distorted into a tall, curvy humanoid with furry, black skin, compound eyes, and a squirming proboscis in place of a mouth. Its wings buzzed as it descended, dark robes flowing around it like a wraith’s death shroud. It sat atop the back of a spectral, skeletal horse that glowed with lazily winding tendrils of cobalt energy, misty and ethereal.

It fell through the hole flanked on all four sides by its allies. Before their feet–or hooves–had touched the ground, I snapped my fingers and activated my spell.

Death Fly’s hand twisted. She cast Dispel. Explosion! fizzled.

It’s amazing how one small act can reshape an entire battle.

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