Dungeons of Strata (Deepest Dungeon #1) - A LitRPG series Read online

  Dungeons of Strata

  Deepest Dungeon #1

  G.D. Penman

  Contents

  1. Dissolution in the Midnight Sanctum

  2. Exile in the Lifeless Kingdom

  3. Decisions in the Darkness

  4. Ill Met in Beachhead

  5. Rebirth of a Riot

  6. The First Sin

  7. Wrath of the Ratmen

  8. Bane of the Beholder

  9. The Key of Culvair

  10. Blacker Than Night

  11. The Master and the Murovan

  12. Those Who Were Abandoned

  13. The Moss on the Morass

  14. Hero of the Quagmire

  15. The Tear in the Veil

  16. The Aquatic Engines

  17. Suffering of the Uprooted

  18. The Deep Rains

  19. The Great Divide

  20. The Waters of Strata

  21. The Awakening

  22. The Falling Star

  23. The Burdens of Triumph

  24. The Dark Descent

  25. The Executioner of Strata

  26. The Spoils

  27. The Final Boss

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  One

  Dissolution in the Midnight Sanctum

  Blue-hot flames boiled out from between the yellowed bones of the dragon’s jaws. Two tiny lights flickered into being within its eye sockets – pinpricks of cold in the darkness.

  Martin stood back and watched as Jericho and the other juggernauts clanked ahead, bellowing the guild’s name.

  “Iron Riot!”

  An answering roar from the ranged fighters behind them was so loud Martin almost snatched off his headset.

  “Iron Riot!”

  The undead dragon Ulkanthrax rose from the massive pile of bones, head swaying towards the roof of the Midnight Sanctum as sinuously as a cobra’s.

  Martin readied his weapon, but the boss was invulnerable as it rambled through its usual script of threats and insults. All around Martin, the other players were preparing themselves, drinking potions, gathering mana and using abilities to boost their damage in the first crucial phase of the fight.

  He felt a swell of pride as they all rattled through their tasks seamlessly, as they had a dozen times before. There was a reason Iron Riot was one of the greatest raiding guilds in the history of Dracolich Online. He’d trust any one of these raiders to perform their task perfectly, even in the hardest raid of the game. With a smirk, he aimed his bow and cast his own Hunter’s Mark just as the juggernauts charged.

  Hunter’s Mark 426 mana

  Increases ranged attack damage by 12.7% for 20 seconds.

  Increases critical chance by 31.4% for an additional 10 seconds.

  Prevents targets from entering stealth for the duration of both effects.

  A solid mass of arrows, bullets and spells hammered into Ulkanthrax as it spread its wings and belched flames that coated half the room. The healers on that side were forced to scatter, but Martin and his team had been lucky this time. They’d get a chance to rattle through another rotation of attacks before the flames died down and they had to make a run for it themselves.

  Adriel yelped out from the midst of the scorched healers in her helium-high voice, “Bloodmages, cast Vigor. Shamans, don’t stand in the fire!”

  The shamans leapt away, but it was too late for one of them; distracted by casting healing spells on everyone else, Dante hadn’t noticed his own health plummeting. Martin groaned. That was clumsy, especially so early in the fight.

  He caught a brief glimpse of Lindsay’s character in the midst of the melee, hacking away at the dragon’s side with both swords a blur of motion. She was the guild’s leader, but Martin wasn’t sure she had even noticed they’d lost a healer yet.

  Ulkanthrax was losing its own health fast; it was down to 75% by the time it turned to breathe fire on Martin’s side of the room and the ranged attackers had to make a run for it. He cast Arcane Accuracy as he sprinted to help keep the damage up.

  Arcane Accuracy 699 mana

  Increases hit chance for party members by 62% for 5 seconds.

  Increases critical chance for party members by 13% for 10 seconds.

  He fired off a barrage of arrows as he sprinted to his new position, each of them arcing around to strike into the tangled heart of dark magic inside Ulkanthrax’s ribcage, no matter how wild Martin’s aim. The monster’s health bar continued to shrink.

  Jericho tossed a grappling hook into its face to drag the dragon’s attention his way, protecting the other melee attackers.

  It was entirely accidental that Martin came to a halt standing on top of the crisp-fried remains of Dante, but he wasn’t exactly upset about it. They had been raiding the Midnight Sanctum every week since it was released. If someone couldn’t remember the first phase of the last boss in the game by now, they deserved to be burned. And stamped on.

  Ulkanthrax lunged forward, dragging its massive body free of the heap of bones. The first phase had been the easy part, but now the chaos really started. With its bare-boned wings tucked in against its sides, the dragon launched itself forward towards Martin’s group, fire trailing from its gaping maw and leaving a trail of blue death behind it.

  Gritting his teeth, Martin loosed arrow after arrow into Ulkanthrax’s face. He would get in one last bit of damage before he dodged away. He saw the warmages and the ironsights up ahead of him leaping out of the dragon’s path, but he held on till the last moment, hammering it with ensorcelled arrows.

  At the very last moment he leapt aside, rolling across the broken and scattered bones of the raiders who had come before him. He bounced back to his feet and readied his bow once again—

  —and the whole world went dark.

  Martin blinked. Then he cursed and yanked his headset off, reality reasserting itself in a horrid rush. He was sitting in his chair in front of his desk, the VR controls strapped to his hands and the shouts of his guild-mates and the wailing of the dragon fading away into the background. There was a baby crying next door, setting his teeth on edge. His view, once a riot of colors, was now replaced by the peeling plaster of his bedroom wall. Real life was ugly.

  He fumbled one of the gloves off and grabbed a tiny screwdriver from a drawer. His VR rig was so ancient that Martin suspected parts of it were fossilized; so old that he couldn’t even get replacement parts, even if he could afford them. Which he couldn’t.

  He yanked the front panel off his headset and felt around inside until he found the loose connection. The tiny spark that shocked his finger helped track it down. He jammed the screwdriver inside, forcing the connector back into place, then slapped the whole contraption – still trailing loose wires – back onto his head.

  It couldn’t have been more than twenty seconds, but somehow everything had gone to hell. Lines of blue fire crisscrossed the room. Five of his guild were down, including two of their healers.

  Lindsay was bellowing orders that nobody seemed to be following. Ulkanthrax still had the same amount of health as before. Martin groaned. Why hadn’t Lindsay just called it a failure and started the whole fight over again?

  He opened his mouth to suggest it when he spotted the clock at the bottom corner of his field of vision. It was two in the morning. If they gave up now, half the guild would just go to bed. They were probably running on nothing but adrenaline as it was.

  Ulkanthrax spun at the end of the cavernous room and lowered its horned head at Martin, ready for another charge. They were down three of their five hea
lers, and Martin knew there was no way they could push through the amount of damage Ulkanthrax was dealing out. It was time to switch gears. Martin thumbed on his voice-chat.

  “I need all the ranged attackers to switch target. Now.”

  He set his Hunter’s Mark on the massive stalactite dangling from the roof of the cavern, and with a level of trust that he probably would have found heart-warming if he hadn’t worked so hard to earn it, the guild opened fire on the spike of rock above them.

  “It won’t come down,” Lindsay yelled in his ear. “We already tried that, remember?”

  “We tried it back when we first started raiding here,” Martin shot back. “Not with all the top-tier gear equipped. We’ve got the damage we need this time.”

  He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.

  “And if we don’t?” Lindsay’s words were strained.

  Martin forced a smile, though nobody could see it. “We’ll all be dead anyway if it charges again.”

  There was a long moment of silence before Lindsay answered.

  “All right. Do it.”

  “You’re both idiots,” Jericho growled. “Some glorious day, I’m going to stand back and let you both die of your own idiocy.”

  “But not today?” Lindsay laughed.

  “Not today.”

  Martin watched as Jericho and his juggernauts threw their grappling hooks onto Ulkanthrax, dragging themselves behind it and slowing the gargantuan beast’s charge to a crawl.

  Martin and the other ranged attackers kept up their barrage, launching everything they had into the stalactite. Then, to his delight, it began to wobble.

  With a silent prayer to whatever gods protected MMO players, Martin cast the spell he’d been saving for the end of the fight.

  Worldbreaker 9,876 mana.

  Deals 32,800 spell damage to immobile targets.

  Mobile targets are immune.

  The arrow left his bow as nothing but wood and steel, but by the time it reached the ceiling it was surrounded by a near-blinding glow. It hit the stone just as Ulkanthrax broke its bonds and lurched forward.

  With a crack, the stalactite came loose and plummeted down. For a single, heart-stopping moment, it looked like it would miss. But their timing was perfect.

  The spear of rock hit home, pinning the dracolich to the cavern floor like a needle through a gigantic undead butterfly. Smoke belched out, obscuring Martin’s view, even as attacks from his allies whipped into the maelstrom.

  As the smoke cleared, the full payoff of their success came into view. Blue flames still boiled up out of the monster’s maw, but the lethal charging was over. It was trapped in place, skewered to the ground between the rows of monstrous ribs.

  The whole guild started whooping with delight in voice chat, even the dead ones. The survivors unleashed hell, hacking and blasting the trapped beast with abandon.

  Soon enough, the fight entered the final phase. The skull of Ulkanthrax drifted loose, surrounded by a nimbus of crackling power. By now, the guild was usually reduced to a fraction of its number. But not today.

  With the last phase turned into a cakewalk, momentum carried the guild through. They didn’t falter for a second. Every living member of the guild was like a moving part in a complex machine. And like a machine, they performed their roles seamlessly. Martin couldn’t have been more proud of them.

  Lindsay landed the final blow, setting off the long animation of the skull exploding in a shower of flames, but their victory had been certain from the moment the stalactite fell. Lindsay’s voice cut through the tail end of the ranting dragon’s death scene.

  “All right folks, that is a wrap. Bring out your dead and come grab some loot.”

  Adriel, the leader of their healers, brought her own people and then the rest of their fallen friends back to life, and in the midst of the chatter someone touched the remains of Ulkanthrax, bringing up the loot table in front of everyone’s faces.

  Martin was about to wave it away without a second thought – he had the best gear in the game already – when he spotted the Heroic Bladedancer’s Cuirass on the list. It was the last item they needed from the Midnight Sanctum. The last excuse they’d had to keep coming back here week after week. It was over.

  Lindsay selected it from the list as her reward, and nobody challenged it. As they watched, her character’s outfit changed into the full matching set and she took on a purple glow as the armor’s passive effects took hold.

  The reality of the situation fell into Martin’s gut like a lead weight. Dracolich Online was really over. Sure, the servers might go on running for a few more years, but the developers had announced that there would be no new content and no future expansions. Lesser guilds might take that time to dawdle through all of the end-game content they hadn’t reached yet, but Iron Riot was finished.

  If he was being honest, they could have quit after beating the hardcore heroic version of the Midnight Sanctum for the first time, but there was a streak of completionism in Lindsay. She wasn’t ready to give up the game until there was nothing left.

  Iron Riot gathered around the crumbling heap of bones at the center of the cavern to listen as Lindsay said a few words, just like every other night.

  “All right, folks. We had one hell of a run. First to clear Anguish Keep. The fastest Forest of Flickering Flames run in history. First to clear the Midnight Sanctum, too. Iron Riot have done it all, we’ve done it first and we’ve done it the best.”

  “Hear, hear,” Jericho rumbled.

  Lindsay turned in a slow circle, looking at the assembled guild in all its bloodstained glory.

  “Listen. It’s late, and we don’t need to make any hasty decisions about what we want to do next. What do you say we take a day off, then have ourselves a think about where Iron Riot should go from here?”

  There were a few mumbled agreements, but the same sadness that had hit Martin as the boss died seemed to have taken root in all of them too. One by one, they began to blink out of existence. Jericho came over and patted Martin on the shoulder.

  “It’s the end of an era.”

  Then he was gone too. All at once, the rest of the raiders were snuffed out like the candles on a birthday cake.

  Lindsay mimed a salute as she vanished. Adriel blew a shy kiss. Martin tried to open his mouth and say something. Anything. But the words had escaped him.

  Without another sound, he opened up his menu and logged out.

  Two

  Exile in the Lifeless Kingdom

  Martin stared at the screen and let the numbers blur together into a meaningless gray smudge. Everything had felt drab and pointless since the moment he woke up, and it was still too early in the day for him to be feeling the impact of his 3 a.m. bedtime. He had to assume that he was depressed.

  Work wasn’t the happiest part of Martin’s life even at the best of times, and the last few months had become increasingly unpleasant. If his new boss had treated him with the same level of general malevolence that she inflicted on everyone else in the office, he probably could have tolerated it, but there was something about Martin in particular that seemed to bother Gillian.

  The fact that he did not make mistakes, show up late to work or break the rules in any quantifiable way seemed to indicate to Gillian that he was getting one over on her, rather than being a sign that he was a model employee. He could feel the loathing radiating off her, even when she wasn’t hovering around looking for some fault to exploit.

  To Martin’s mind, middle managers were necessary to a business in the same way that mosquitos were necessary to a functional ecosystem. They would both have no noticeable impact if they were removed. And they both sucked. He blinked and focused on the screen again, hands moving of their own volition to work through the orders.

  Since Gillian’s arrival, he had taken the time to read through the employee evaluation materials carefully. Martin and his colleagues were judged on their productivity in two ways: on a bell-curve with the other employ
ees, and on a year-to-year analysis.

  The year-to-year part was what concerned Martin. A little over a year back, in response to the inexplicable hatred of his boss, he had coded an automated macro to handle all of the simple orders, pushing his productivity through the roof compared to his colleagues.

  That had been great for denying her ammunition last year, but now he had to compete with his own numbers, and it was going to be difficult to show significant improvement – especially now that he had shared out the program with the rest of the staff. A reasonable boss would have been delighted with him taking initiative. Gillian was not reasonable.

  After a long miserable morning of forcing himself through the motions, he clocked out for lunch at precisely the correct time then slumped back into his seat to play with his phone. By force of habit, he went to open up DracolichNews.org. He paused, fingers hovering above the screen.

  This was the problem. Not his awful boss. Not his mindless job processing orders for an internet service provider. Not even his absent social life. It was the game. He’d lost the only thing in his life that he had to look forward to. He set his phone face down on the desk with a sigh.

  Even as he did, Gillian stopped by his cubicle and stared at him. He could feel her eyes boring into the side of his head. He silently counted to ten, then swiveled his chair to face her.

  “Can I help you with something?” he asked.

  “You’re meant to be on your lunch break.”