New Mines of Pruzonia 1: Rocky Start

John blinked away the light spots Fortuna’s teleportation spell had left him with. The sensation wasn’t too dissimilar to when they broke into Detreye and an errant thought about all teleportation spells feeling the same crossed his mind.

‘Think about that later,’ he scolded himself. ‘Got to deal with being thrown underground.’

He expected Senka to remark on his wandering thoughts, but there was nothing. A probe of their connection quickly showed why. Their link was strained, a staticy sort of sensation when he tried to reach her. He summoned her vessel but that didn’t remedy the situation.

“Great,” John muttered as he stowed the knife. “Leave it to the goddess emulating a game master to fully split the party.” He paused for a second. “Well, not fully split up. Candle.”

The fox spirit manifested, her form disrupted by the teleport. The additional hit to his mana was a bit of a sour pill to swallow, but John wanted to have as many eyes and ears as possible. The spirit quickly picked up on the seriousness of the situation and comfortingly rubbed against his leg.

John reached down and petted the fox. “We’ll find everyone, Candle. Have to hold up hope that Fortuna just wants us to entertain her and isn’t trying to kill us.”

He had to keep that hope. He didn’t know if Verida was locked in combat with the goddess of luck or had been teleported with them, but if she thought they were in real danger, he knew she would fight to the end to save them.

Shaking away thoughts of things he couldn’t change the outcome of, John took in the area around them. They were in a rough hewn tunnel about twice John’s height, dimly lit by a number of glowing amber crystals that stuck out of the stone at irregular intervals.

Arcano Fluorite
Common
Fluorite crystals bathed in highly magical areas begin to radiate light.

“Well, at least I won’t have to cast a Fiery Pursuit to act as a torch,” John muttered as he summoned his great sword. “Okay, Candle. Let’s go find everyone.”

Candle let out a yip then began to jump down the corridor of stone before them. As they moved through the so far empty tunnel, John couldn’t help but think about how Anita was fairing. While he was worried about everyone, this had been her first time with them and it had gone off the rails. She didn’t even have a full idea of what she could do with her newly acquired human form. The only solace he had was the knowledge that she could throw out those anti-magic spores that would at least slow things down.

The sound of stone grinding against stone and rhythmic thudding drew John out of his thoughts. Something clearly was ahead and he didn’t like the idea of fighting something in such a tight space.

‘Might need to make it a ranged fight,’ he thought as he looked to his gloved hand. ‘I can throw out sixteen Pursuits before I exhaust the spell, not that I have the mana for all that.’

He was down to about ninety mana. Double summoning Candle and maintaining Senka’s manifestation had cut his reserve down by about forty percent. His max was one hundred and five so it wasn’t like he was too drained, but not having Senka near to offset his mana reduction hurt.

‘Maybe I can find a way to skirt around whatever’s coming up?’ he pondered. ‘Avoid fighting until I find some of the girls. Fighting as a team is a better idea than to try and go solo.’

That plan, of course, depended on just what was ahead. It sounded big and slow, but he knew well enough that first impressions could be wrong and there could be other factors at play. Long reaching or ranged weapons would make running harder and his impression of it being some lumbering thing could be way off the mark.

And the only way for him to know was to see whatever awaited him.

Keeping Candle on a tight leash, John inched down the tunnel, which was slowly turning to the left and growing wider by the meter. The number of fluorite crystals didn’t increase, making the area overall darker, which John took as a small blessing. Before long, the tunnel expanded into a full open chamber, at least twenty feet from floor to stalagmite filled ceiling and about twice as wide. On the far side of the space, two more tunnels stretched into the dark, one going to the right and one to the left.

And to the far right of the chamber, a massive thing of stone and gems mechanically struck the cave’s wall, slowly digging a new passage through the rock. John thought it looked like someone had attached smaller rocks to a large, craggy boulder to give it limbs and animated the whole thing. Its hands, if they could be called that, had massive metal claws sprouting from them, seemingly melded into the stone. Sparks flew as those tools slammed into the wall, chipping away at the stone. A somewhat strong orange light seemed to emanate from its chest, illuminating the passage it was making, but John couldn’t tell what was making it from his vantage point.

‘That’s a big guy,’ John thought as he watched for a moment longer before firing off an Observe

‘Of course the thing we need for the teleport gate is a rare drop from these things!’ John mentally complained. He should have seen it coming, but it still irritated him that it seemed like everything was a setup. Calming himself, he considered his options.

‘Nothing about its speed or any other ways of attacking besides those claws,’ he recounted. ‘I wish I could count on it being more interested in digging than attacking me, but I get the feeling it’s not going to go that way. Sneaking might work if I’m slow and wait for it to dig a bit deeper, but I can’t stay put for too long.’_

The need to progress deeper into the tunnels and reunite with his party **** John’s hand. The longer he waited, the more chances they ended up in situations they couldn’t deal with alone. Deciding to aim for the left passage, John crept into the chamber, inching his way to the passage. He timed his steps to match the golem’s digging, the breaking of stone masking his movement.

Candle followed after John with slow steps of her own, the light scraping noise of her claws masked by the echo of falling rocks. He knew it was a risk to have her move out in the open, but he couldn’t waste the mana to unsummon her for this. And while he could carry her, having his arms occupied seemed like a poor idea at the moment.

John had reached the midpoint when the golem suddenly stopped its digging. He froze, body tense as the golem began to turn. Its front was just as featureless as its back, with one exception. A crevice stretched across its ‘chest’, wide enough that John thought he could get his arm in with little issue. Within that space, a glowing gem sat, putting off the warm orange glow.

‘That has to be the attuned geode,’ he thought as he waited to see if it was going to attack him. For a moment, it seemed like it wasn’t as it just stood around, leading John to wonder if it was resting or recharging. Then it began to march its way towards him, moving with clear hostile intent.

John bade Candle to dart away back towards where they had come from as he sped in the opposite direction, away from the wall. The last thing he wanted was to be pinned by the golem with no room to maneuver. The phrase ‘getting caught between a rock and a hard place’ ran through his mind as he tried to make a battle plan.

‘The geode is probably its weak point,’ he reasoned as he kept the distance between him and the golem. It didn’t seem capable of moving faster but John wasn’t keen on testing that theory just yet. ‘Maybe the joints are **** too. That’s why it can’t move fast.’_

His battlefield analysis didn’t give him much to go on. His best bet was to get close, which meant getting in range of its claws and heavy arms. Steeling himself, John shot a Fiery Pursuit at the golem’s chest.

16 DMG

John used the explosion as cover, the fire hopefully obscuring his change in direction as he raced to his right. The golem did not take the attack well, its arms rising up and swinging about in a manner that reminded John of what he might do to clear away smoke or a foul odor. But it had stopped moving to do that.

John waited for the arm closest to him to drop back down before he charged in, reasoning that it would take a good amount of effort to bring it back up to attack him. With the small amount of smoke and stone dust from his first attack lingering above his target, John's attack wasn’t perfectly aimed, but the great sword still dug into the crevice and struck the geode.

24 DMG

John wrenched his blade back and hastily retreated before reprisal could fall upon him. The golem did try to counter, taking a pivoting step in an attempted backhand, but he was already out of reach.

‘Wait a second,’ John thought as he watched the golem resume its approach. Leg up, leg down. Then the other moved in the same way. ‘It doesn’t have a waist. It can’t turn quickly and can’t use the arm of the other side of an attack to counter. If I can disable one of its arms, I can just keep focusing on attack from that side until it goes down.’

John reached out to Candle, ready to employ the spirit’s speed to further confuse the golem. The sense of excitement coming from her made John grin. He heard the scraping of her claws upon the ground as she ran towards the golem, before he saw her leap from behind the stone construct and on to it.

That wasn’t exactly what his plan was, but her clamoring up onto it was distracting it. Deciding to strike before it found the fox spirit was of little danger to it, John rushed back into the fray. He cast Verdant Surge, the boost in strength allowing him to close the distance quickly with a lumbering gait.

23 DMG

An overhead swing crashed into the golem’s ‘shoulder’, wood digging into the stone like some parody of roots breaking apart boulders. Cracks formed around the hard surface and John pulled back slightly to take another swing, not wanting to waste the buff from Verdant Surge.

15 DMG

The shorter wind up reduced the power of his attack but it still tore a decent chunk out of the golem’s arm. The golem was not going to let John make a third attack and brought its arm up to strike back. The moment caused the cracks to grow worse, small shards of rocks breaking away from the strain.

Still it lashed out at John with no care of its deteriorating condition and John brought up the flat of his sword to block the swinging attack. Even with his enhanced strength, the blow **** John back, his limbs shaking from the hit. A direct blow from it would be very bad.

John stabilized his balance, his thoughts on the remaining time of his Evocation. He didn’t want to have to recast it only for the fight to end right after. It was a smarter idea to keep his mana as high as possible.

‘Need to be a bit more aggressive,’ John thought as Candle dodged a languid strike trying to dislodge her, her claws just barely able to find purchase on the golem’s uneven body. ‘One more good strike should break that arm.’

John tensed, readying his charge. He had to make this count before his buff ran out. As the golem’s arm swung back after its attempt to swat Candle away, John sprang forward, putting all of his weight and power into his attack.

26 DMG

The sound of the impact echoed through the chamber terribly, like an avalanche. The arm snapped like a tree branch in a hurricane and fell to the ground with a loud slam, breaking into several pieces. John reeled back a step, ready to take advantage of the disarming to strike at the core. Before he could spring forward, the geode, his target, flashed with a greater light. The earth shook slightly, throwing off John’s balance.

Before he could fully regain his footing, the ruined remains of the arm began to float off the ground, arcs of orange lightning passing between the chunks of stone. The shattered limb ascended to about four feet into the air before one of the larger chunks, the one with all five of the metal claws still embedded within it, flew at John like a cannonball.

- 25 HP

The claws pierced into John’s abdomen and the **** of the blow knocked him back and off his feet, landing on the ground with a thud that took another few points from his heath bar.

‘Fuck, that hurts,’ John thought as his left hand grabbed the improvised weapon and moved to pull it out. More pain and another point off his health and John wrenched it free. The pain lingered for a moment before fading into something more like he’d been struck with a rubber band several times. Stinging, but nothing debilitating.

John quickly made his way back to his feet, seeing why the golem wasn’t closing in on him. Candle was racing up and down its body like a wild animal, keeping it distracted. John wasn’t sure if the golem thought he was down for the count or not, but he wasn’t going to let Candle’s efforts go unrewarded.

Verdant Surge had run its course, but the unexpected rock blast had changed the equation. He couldn’t beat this thing without increasing his power. And the others didn’t have the luxury of Gamer’s Body to patch them up after getting hurt. He had to finish this and find them before anyone was picked off by being alone.

With a thought, his wind spirit manifested above him, the swirling mote of green a wild tempest. He activated Verdant Surge again, followed by Rushing Winds. With the resonation effect triggered, his strength and speed soared to new heights and he wasn’t going to waste it. He darted back into the fray, his body feeling so light he felt like he was flying.

The golem noticed his rapid approach and launched another piece of its broken arm at him. This time, John was ready. With deft movement only possible thanks to his boosted stats, John brought up his blade to parry the projectile. He batted it away with surprising ease, ready to do it again if it fired a third time.

It did not before John got in striking range and he wasn’t going to give it the chance to rectify that misstep. With a roar, John thrust his blade into the golem’s core, the blade digging into the stone like a drill, fragments of rock and crystal flying out of the crevice.

67 DMG. Critical Hit

187 (10) EXP Gained

John let Rushing Winds end as the golem crumbled into dust. By how his mana had depleted, that whole attack took five seconds, but it had left him with next to no mana. He fully dismissed the wind spirit and looked over to Candle as she pawed the loot from the golem.

“At least we got the big prize,” he breathed out as he watched Candle investigate the lump of crystal that had to be the Attuned Geode.

Attuned Geode
Rare
A crystal noted for its ability to be synchronized to multiple mana signatures. A key component in many pieces of arcano tech and traditional golem crafting.

Beside the crystal was a small pile of money and John quickly took everything into his Inventory. He then looked at the two passages out of the chamber, then to his mana bar. He wanted to rush forward and find everyone, but his cautious mindset won out.

“Need to take a break, Candle,” he said aloud as he sat down. “Keep an eye for anything coming.”

Candle let out a yip and began to pace around him. Smiling a bit, John let the rhythm of her claws on the stone ground calm him as he activated Bask. The mana around him felt cool, not cold but far from warm, and had a certain grainy feel that made him think he was being buried in dirt. He ignored the dark thought about that being appropriate due to being underground and focused on the flow of mana into him.

Around two minutes later, he opened his eyes and looked down at the mana bar on his HUD. Between Bask and his natural regeneration, he was sitting at forty-four.

“Not so great,” he muttered. “I didn’t think we’d be in a situation where having spare mana would be needed, so I don’t have any of the backups. Okay, can’t fire off spells at will and have to be careful of them using any bits chopped off as cannon balls. At least it seems like they can only fire a piece once.”

He glanced down at his ruined shirt. While his body had mended with no sign of getting stabbed five times, his clothing didn’t have such a luxury. Beyond the jagged tears, the blood he lost before his body returned to its pristine state stained his shirt, causing it to stick to his skin.

Shaking his head, John focused his thoughts. He needed to find everyone and get out of here. And that meant moving on.

“Okay, Candle,” he said. “Left or right?”