Book3 Chapter 15

15. The Rozen Guardian pt. 1

We emerged from the second portal into dry and desolate forest, but the forest bordered on a hedge.  The hedge was in poor health, with the leaves dead or dying and the brambles visible.  But this was undoubtedly where we were meant to be, judging by the swirling white mist that indicated we were at a dungeon entrance.

“Oh my,” Thena exclaimed.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Nothing, I think.  I think maybe your uncle did us a favor, or maybe he didn’t.  Hail, I’ve  cleared The Rozen Guardian before.  A while ago, on a different … what do you call it when a Traveler takes a new body and starts over, Hail?”

“I suppose I’d say they claim a new avatar,” I admitted.

“Yes, well, I’d call it making an alt.  Except now this character is my main, not an alt anymore.  Anyway, on my old main, I cleared this dungeon.  But I never knew that there was a second entrance to it.  The dry and dead portion of the hedge maze are hours inside the dungeon.  If this entrance lets us bypass them to get to the core, then we might owe Auroras a favor,” she explained.

I frowned, because the taste of that did not sit well with me.  “We’ll find out soon.  Don’t say anything when we get inside, please.  I want to see how the dungeon reacts to my [Dungeon Master I] title before we do anything else.

“Righto.  Zippo on the lippo,” Corinth said.

Stan looked at him.  “Does your mouth have an off button?”

“I just pressed it,” Corinth assured him.

“Are you certain?  Because you just--”

I stepped through the portal, and left that bit of banter behind.

Welcome Dungeon Master, To the Rozen Guardian.

Do you wish to challenge the unique instance?

Yes

No

I quickly selected yes.

Your presence has been noticed by the dungeon core.  It will react to you.

You may declare your intentions at this time.

Your declarations may impact direct interactions with the core.

Declare intent

Obscure intent.

This was better than I had been expecting.  “I am here on a mission from Marquise Jorva Peori to reclaim the core of this dungeon and return it to him.  I pledge not to destroy the dungeon core.  I also wish to preserve the hedge maze, if that is possible.  I will face whatever challenges are necessary to accomplish these goals.”

A moment passed as the others came into the instance with me, and then a third prompt appeared.

The Dungeon Core has heard your intent.

The dungeon core will respond to your intent according to its own will.

Reclaiming the Dungeon Core of The Rozen Guardian will grant experience towards advancing your Dungeon Master I Title.

Proceed

Withdraw

“Okay.  I told the dungeon why we’re here, and the message said that it will respond according to its own will.  I have no idea what that means,” I admitted, looking around.  We were in a desiccated hedge maze, with no real indication of where to go next.  “Thena?  You said you were here before, where do we go?”

“That was months ago, and we never discovered the hidden entrance,” Thena clarified.  “I didn’t even know that this place had one until just now.”

I was about to start heading down a random direction, when the hedge abruptly moved.  We had initially been presented with three passages, but we watched two of them close up, leaving only the middle way forward.

“I guess the dungeon wants us to go this way, then,” I said, stepping forward.

“Hold up a minute, Hail,” Stan said.  “I know it’s been a while since we partied together, but you’re a squishy, and squishies stay behind the tank.”

He was right, so I hung back and allowed Stan and Corinth to scout the way forward.  Even though I was a melee class, I was more lightly armored than either Stan or Corinth, and I didn’t get scaling damage reduction from my endurance as they did.  Not that Corinth was stacking endurance.  His class was a [Warrior] base, but it was specialized in DPS.  It made him more durable compared to me in a straight up fight, but far less so than Stan, who had geared himself as a proper tank.

Of course, they probably didn’t get two points of attack power and 0.4 points of spell damage for every point in dexterity, either.  Compared to them I was a glass canon, but that’s only if I actually allowed myself to get hit.

The monsters that attacked us as we followed the path – and with the hedge closing in on itself, there was only one path to follow – were a type of rodent which began the fight the size of a large dog and grew larger as the fight went on.  It was a standard type of berserker mob, according to Thena, and easily dealt with by simply focusing down the largest one.

I had learned my lesson about being complacent in my spell choices from my duel with Keithan.  Lightning bolt was still my highest damage single target spell, with chain lightning being my strongest AOE.

The same was true of Larissa, who had been ‘unspecialized’ from her original goal of becoming a storm mage when she’d apprenticed to Archmage Blancerathetera.  She had not lost her levels, but had lost some of the specialized lightning, wind, and water spells which she had been focusing on.  However, the skill levels in those spells remained, making her most efficient spells the same as my own.

Together, we applied [Wetness] to the enemy before zapping them with our [Chain Lightning].  With the extra thirty percent bonus lightning damage we dealt them from the debuff, which was otherwise useless, the Giant Voles never had a chance to grow larger than human sized, which is when Thena said they became dangerous.

Of course, I couldn’t simply sit back with Thena and Larissa and chain cast my magic.  That’s not how my class works.  My spells are extremely expensive to cast, while my imbue abilities are dirt cheap.  Meanwhile, I regenerate a fixed percentage of my mana every time I connected a sword strike with my enemy.

The result was that I could do extremely high burst damage through magic, or pretty high damage in melee range, but only my melee damage was sustainable.  Having spent so much time on earth researching the strategies used by endgame Travelers, I used this opportunity to begin exploring methods of maximizing both aspects of my fighting style.

One of the Giant Voles grew to be taller than me, and so I dashed back and struck it with a [Water Jet] spell.  I followed this up with a [Piercing Lunge] while my sword was imbued with lightning, causing not only extra elemental damage through the [Wetness] debuff, but a half second [Paralysis] from the synergy.  That was enough to interrupt its attack which would otherwise have landed on Stan, but that wasn’t enough for me.  I followed up with [Slash] and [Thrust], then Dashed backwards again to cast [Empowered] [Lightning bolt] three times in a row.  By the time they were cast, I was almost out of mana, but my cooldown on [Piercing Lunge] was refreshed, and I used that to finish off the enraged creature.  I dashed towards the next largest one and began attacking it to regenerate my mana.

Incorporating this strategy of keeping my mana pool half empty rather than allowing [Battle Trance] to overfill it cost me considerably more effort than I had been putting in to maintaining my damage before.  But the results were paying off, as I was pulling further and further ahead of the others on the damage charts, which I could actually read now with my improved interface instead of simply estimating.

On the whole the dungeon didn’t seem overly challenging, despite the fact that we were in the core instance.  With the labyrinth closing off the dead end paths – or at least I hoped that’s what it was doing – we proceeded as quickly as we could kill the incoming waves of enemies.  Which was relatively quickly, and I gained a level despite having begun the instance with very little experience pooled.  I was level 39, still a level below the recommended minimum level, and yet I was out-damaging everyone present, even though they were all being synced down to level 45 by the dungeon.

How exactly could Uncle Auroras claim that my current class didn’t fit me?

For that matter, how had he witnessed the duel?  Was it something to do with him being the gray man?

I got distracted, and sort of accidentally stabbed Stan in the back with a [Thrust].  It was a critical, but Thena healed him back to full in no time.  She called for a break afterwards, despite my protests.

“Everyone is making mistakes now, Hail.  Even you.  We need to take five to ten minutes to reorient ourselves,” she explained.  “And I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m going to need a bio break once we reclaim this dungeon.”

“Yeah,” Larissa agreed.  “At least a few hours game time.”

I sighed, but accepted their judgment.

“You know, it’s really unusual to see you make a mistake like that, Hail,” Corinth said.  “Hitting the tank on accident, I mean.  Is something wrong?”

“Everything is wrong, Corinth,” I said.  “I only have two days before the recursion begins, and Travelers who are not my friends begin making their way into The Recent Past.  My enemies will realize what I have planned and seek to stop it, and if they band against me, victory will not be assured.”

The teenager nodded.  “Well, yeah, put it like that and I can see why you’re concerned.  Also, why are you talking in epic quest mode all of the time now?”

I blinked.  “What do you mean?”

“It’s just, before you got stuck on Earth, you were more, I don’t know, relaxed.  Now you’re all ‘I’m the savior of this world and I need everyone to do everything they can to save it with me or they’re not good enough,’” he explained.  “I mean, it’s awesome, but you used to be more fun.”

I turned to Thena and Larissa, who had known me for the longest of anyone present.  “Have I changed again?”

“Again?” Larissa asked.

“Some of my friends noticed that I had changed after the actions of Nial Kingslayer,” I explained.  “They say I was more short tempered and demanding.  Have I gotten worse?”

The women considered the question, and it was Thena who answered.  “You’re very driven at the moment, Hail.  It’s obvious.  But I think you’re treating everyone with the respect they deserve.  Nobody is helping you because you’re forcing them to, they’re all very excited to be a part of this recursion event.  I know that I am.”

“Yeah,” Larissa agreed.  “Although, well, you might be a little more serious now than you used to be.  Maybe try mixing in a joke now and then.”

“You’re also getting more references and looking a lot less confused than you did when I partied with you last,” Stan mentioned.  “So, yeah, I think you’ve changed.  For the better.”

“Yeah,” Larissa agreed.  “I like assertive Hail.”

I nodded, although I wasn’t quite put at ease by their words.  I spent a few moments contemplating the problem, and whether or not it was a problem, while the others rested.  Once they had, we resumed our party formation and continued delving deeper into the maze, which continued to guide our passage by closing off the errant paths.