Penelope stood in front of the portal to the next floor. She’d spent the night in her room on the third floor instead of opting to stay in one of the dorms. While the beds were a lot nicer on the surface, a single night of luxury would spoil the next few months she was about to spend on the fourth floor.
Her bedding was folded neatly under her arm. Two blankets and a pillow didn’t seem like much, but it was a lot better than sleeping under one of the robes left behind after they killed one of the Shadows.
Cirdor, Ula, and Patrick were the first people there to see her off, though she wasn’t leaving until the other people going with her arrived.
“I showed you how to navigate the menus…” Cirdor pointed at the object strapped to her wrist. “You’re sure you know how to operate it?”
I’ve been using this exact wrist pad for half my life. Penelope kept her thoughts to herself. “Thank you for showing me yesterday. I know you’re busy.”
“Communication between the floors will make my job so much easier.” The orange man motioned at the other two people standing to his left. “All our jobs easier.”
“Once you see what the other floor is like, we can start sending materials through.” Patrick huffed. “I’ve got our building team on standby to go in there and start getting rooms ready for everyone.”
“Go ahead and set up the receivers for the floor portals as well.” Cirdor reminded her. “You’re going to need one in every square. I’m surprised you were able to convert the runes between floors into your own gates so efficiently. It takes most mages years to master that.”
“It’s just pattern recognition and mathematics.” Penelope shrugged. “I didn’t have to create anything new; just copying what I saw.”
“It’s still impressive.” Cirdor nodded slowly as he looked her over again.
“He knows there’s more to you than a simple Human from Earth, but he doesn’t know what it is.” Jeru warned her. “You need to be careful about how quickly you progress things.”
Everything I do from here on out is going to be progressing at regular speed. Penelope turned to watch Archer walk through the arch they’d made in the wall between 30D and 30E. He’ll lose interest once the Council has him making reports like he always does.
“Until you do something else that he finds out of place.” Jeru clicked his tongue. “Just be mindful.”
I will. Penelope looked over at where people were harvesting the monsters they’d slain the day before. Kingsley was barking orders, giving everyone their task to complete before he joined the group.
“Can you make a portal that goes from the fourth floor back here?” Ula walked over to the portal leading down to the next floor.
“The reason why this portal has a liquid interior while all the ones Penelope made are open to the area between them is that there is a barrier cutting the deeper floors off from us.” Cirdor shook his head. “We’d need someone who was much stronger than Master Jeru to be able to punch through his barriers to connect to one of the shielded floors.”
“Oh.” Ula nodded slowly. “I just thought it would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to set up living quarters all over again.”
“And it would.” Cirdor agreed. “But from what you’ve described, the safe area grows as you defeat the Demons within each square. If the barrier between floors was tied to the safe area, then the floor itself wouldn’t be isolated from the deeper parts of the Dungeon.”
“Meaning?” Ula raised an eyebrow. “I don’t follow.”
“Each floor is allowed to be stocked with a certain amount of power.” Cirdor waved his orange hands around at the Dungeon. “Each square can hold a maximum amount of power as well, which limits the defenses the Demons can stock each square with. The floor as a whole is cut off from the deeper parts of the Dungeon, which prevents stronger Demons from coming up to the higher floors.” He pointed at the portal. “But the Arch Demon on the lowest floor has legions of Demons that could flood this floor. If the floors weren’t cut off from each other, they would keep pumping the floors full of Demons into the boss rooms.”
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“Oh.” Ula nodded. “I see.” She let out a deep sigh. “It would have been nice to sleep in a good bed every night, though.”
“We get too comfortable; we get soft.” Patrick grumbled. “We’re already slowing things down too much for my taste.” He nodded at the people harvesting the corpses. “We already have a wing full of people who are going to take days to heal. Without our Healers, it could have been months and some of them might never have been able to fight again, or worse, they would have died.” He shook his head. “It’s a miracle nobody died yesterday.”
“Not so much a miracle as finding the right loop to fight in.” Jeru laughed.
It’s not funny. Penelope did her best not to glare at the floating Elf. He knows people should have died and they did. I just reset things so none of those deaths stuck.
“Yep, so everyone is happy!” Jeru chuckled as he floated around her head. “Look, you’ve got to start enjoying the wins, because if you focus on the losses you wiped away, it’s going to eat you alive.”
I’m just wondering what we’re going to have to go through on the next floor. Penelope closed her eyes so she wouldn’t be tempted to follow the floating Elf no one else could see.
“Hey.” Archer called out as he approached. “Eldri and Circe are finishing up breakfast, and then they are headed this way.”
Penelope opened her eyes to look at the older man. She hadn’t worked with him a lot, but he was a solid Tank and with an earth affinity, he had joined Patrick and Oakley in building the walls and buildings everyone had lived in since the second floor.
“KING!” Patrick cupped his hands to yell. “YOU’RE LEAVING SOON! GET TO A STOPPING PLACE!”
The brown-haired young man wiped his hands on his clothes, gave a few instructions to the people around him, then ran towards their group. By the time he got there, Circe and Eldri were coming through the arch Archer had just walked through.
As soon as the two women reached the group, they all moved to the portal.
“Remember, I gave you a list of things I need to know about the next floor.” Cirdor tapped the wrist pad on his left arm. “Once you send me your report, we can send you any extra supplies you need.”
“I’ve got it.” Penelope nodded at the Elf, then looked at the rest of the team. “Let’s go.”
She stepped through the portal first, walking out onto a rocky, uneven floor instead of the soft dirt that had covered the previous floor.
Unlike the previous floor, which had an artificial sky that kept the whole floor illuminated like it was daytime, clouds covered the entire ceiling. Flashes of light were followed by rumbles as thunder growled overhead. The barrier illuminated things to an extent, but the light from the barrier was almost half a mile away. The only thing showing her what was around was the glow from the portal around her and that only stretched for about twenty feet.
Standing in front of the portal would only get her run over by the others when they followed her through. Penelope cast
“It’s dark in here.” She spoke into her wrist pad. “The ground is uneven and made up of sharp, black rocks.” She kicked one, watching it shatter into smaller, sharp pieces. “Almost like shale.” She picked up one of the sharp pieces of rock. It was flat but with sharp edges. She tossed it back on the ground.
“Do we need to send someone to level the ground?” Cirdor’s voice came out of the device.
“You’re going to have to before Archer can build anything.” She jumped when a bolt of lightning struck the ground in 32E. It was over half a mile away, but it was still startling.
“Well, this reminds me of the second floor.” Eldri looked around as she entered the floor. She spied Penelope and walked over to the other woman. “It’s open, but we’re going to need people with
“The monsters here are electric affinity.” Penelope looked around. There were lightning strikes everywhere in the squares. Some of them had multiple strikes going on at once. “We’re going to have to figure out some way to navigate the storms. Because it’s going to hurt if we get zapped while we’re trying to fight.”
“Are there any strikes happening in the safe zone?” Patrick’s voice came out of her device.
“Not yet, so I kind of doubt there will be.” Penelope watched Archer flinch as the older man heard the strike in 31D near their barrier. “It’s going to take some getting used to because this is happening constantly.”
“I HATE THUNDERSTORMS!” Circe screamed at the clouds. “Why couldn’t it have been something nice?”
“They’re Demons.” Kingsley dropped his bag. “I’m just glad we haven’t run into nightmare fuel yet.”
“You haven’t had nightmares about what we’ve seen so far?” Circe’s eyes bugged.
“This isn’t too bad.” Kingsley shrugged. “I’ve played games with a lot creepier things.”
“Let’s be thankful for what we’ve got so far.” Eldri cut in before either of the younger people could continue the conversation. “What we need to focus on right now is where we’re going to put the buildings and what we need to have to be able to do that.” She pointed with her finger and the area around them lit up, but only in a thirty-foot radius, which didn’t do much considering Penelope’s
“Looks like we’re going to have to enchant something to make streetlights.” Eldri sighed as she looked at Penelope. “People are going to need lights in their rooms as well.”
“I guess we know what we’re doing for the next week.” Penelope flinched as another peal of thunder echoed across the safe zone. “We’ve got lots of work cut out for us.”
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