The Hero’s Tomb

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“So, I’m guessing that’s the ‘right’ way.” John gestured at the mineshaft directly across from the one they had entered the larger cave by, which was the whole basis for his guess. Qhila’s ‘scout, set traps, bait’ strategy had continued working well even as the difficulty had been increased a nudge to two antlions.

“Guess that’s where we’re going then.” Qhila took a step towards the tunnel, clearly intent on scouting it out while John finished healing, but he stopped her with a gesture.

“That doesn’t mean we want to go there right away. While it’s likely the fastest way to clear the Segment, we do have two Bonus Objectives and the key to either could be down a side path. Or there could be a Secret or an optional Boss. It’s basically a question of whether we want to accept more risk, more resource consumption, or both, in return for bigger rewards. Or well, a chance at bigger rewards. It’s also possible that they’re just dead ends and the good stuff is deeper in.”

He’d known from “optional Boss” which way Qhila would lean, and he couldn’t exactly blame her. Between the cost of useful magic items in general, that the knapsack wasn’t even the best thing on the first Boss’ drop table, and the number of Abyssal niceties she’d mentioned off-hand that she couldn’t afford, it didn’t really matter that in sheer numbers Qhila was making significantly more than his mom. This was still the equivalent of a car camper getting brought on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, if the questions had claws and teeth. Though to be fair, she had still been dealing with the claws and teeth while making the Abyssal equivalent of a bit less than minimum wage.

“Is there anything to do with game logic that can tell us which side tunnel is the better bet?”

John gave them a second look but came to the same conclusion as before, “Not really, no.”

“Guess we’re picking a random starting point and going at it systematically then, because this mine layout already doesn’t make any bloody sense…” She groused for a moment, then picked one at random and got moving.

John finished up healing and started walking relaxedly in the direction she had chosen. That nonchalance died very quickly when the kobold’s HP dropped a few points, accompanied by a poison debuff appearing on her display.

Just vipermoths, according to the tooltip. With no secondary effects, low DPS, and a short duration, the poison was fairly mild. It was also stackable, and almost certainly meant she’d pulled aggro from a whole group of mutants.

He made it to the mouth of the mineshaft when he got Qhila in sight, running towards him. “Vipermoth swarm. Dozens.”

If it was a whole group of just vipermoths, there would be far too many to easily control with the burning fist trick. Even if they were all drawn to it, the continuous barrage would make things difficult. They had to thin their numbers, and quickly.

“Fireball!” It was, unfortunately, not the iconic Dungeons and Dragons spell. Instead, it was a shorthand he and Qhila had come up with for one of their alchemical combination attacks.

The kobold alchemist reached for the strap pocket of her new backpack, pulling out a vial and tossing it behind her. It shattered, releasing a yellowish gas, and as soon as John detected movement in there, he followed it up with a spray of alchemist’s fire from the water gun.

The gas ignited on contact, combusting in a display much like the “explosions” of Hollywood pyrotechnics. It didn’t burn quite as explosively as goblin knockout gas or plain old hydrogen, making it worse for burst damage. What it did do was create a few seconds of a fiery sphere enveloping the tunnel, which a lot of the vipermoths flew straight through, ruining their wings in the process. It also did, undeniably, look more impressive.

Mopping up the rest was a mostly trivial affair, with nobody taking any worrying levels of damage. It was, however, the first time Fred took any at all, demonstrating that unmanaged vipermoths could have become a real problem very quickly.

After healing, they took a look in the room where Qhila had run into the vipermoth swarm. It was a vertical, roughly cylindrical room somewhere between 2 and 3 stories tall and 10ish paces wide. John’s paces, not Qhila’s. It had a bunch of wooden support beams that were plainly too long to actually bring inside in one piece, but which were nevertheless there, as well as an irregular mess of nonsensical crossbeams that the airborne mutants had presumably been perching on.

“Well, this is certainly a departure from what we’ve seen so far.”

“It also makes no bloody sense from a mining or warren defense point of view.” Qhila was glaring at the room as though the nonsensicality of it was a personal insult.

“Which in principle makes it a prime suspect for a secret. Problem is, I’m not really seeing anything from down here that points to anything so it’s probably up there, ” he gestured vaguely towards the roof, “and we didn’t bring any climbing gear.”

Qhila shrugged and stepped towards one of the support beams. “What am I looking for?”

“Uh, hidden tunnels or rooms, mechanisms and objects that seem significant. Either because of value, having a story, or just being out of place. They may also be cartoonish-looking, like the chests,” he responded, uncertain of what exactly was going on.

If John’s life had been a cartoon, he would have then proceeded to pick his jaw up from the floor. She had done some fairly impressive climbing already, considering her height. But it had been stuff with plenty of handholds. And aside from ladders, it had been stuff that was scarcely taller than John. But up she went on the support beam with a certainty and speed that a monkey could’ve been proud of. Apparently, her claws dug into wood well enough to make handholds optional.

After a few minutes of Qhila crawling around on the topmost crossbeams, she yelled down, “I’m not really seeing anything. If it’s a well hidden mechanism, it’d take an hour or two to be certain though. Do we want to spend that much time on it?”

“No.” John didn’t really need to think about that one. “If it’s that well hidden, there’ll probably be clues elsewhere in the Segment. Putting things in places where you’d have to be that meticulous to find is usually done for subsequent playthroughs if at all, and I don’t think that applies to Instant Dungeons.”

“In that case, catch.” It took a moment for John to realize that she meant for him to catch her, as she jumped off the crossbeam she had been perched on. Fortunately, he still caught up in time to actually do what she had asked him to, almost falling on his ass in the process.

Once he’d recovered his balance a bit, he gave her a squeeze, claiming a quick cuddle as compensation for the surprise. Qhila melted into his embrace, burying her face in his chest. When he relaxed his hold a little, however, she pulled back and cleared her throat. “We should keep moving.”

John let go with a chuckle and followed her out. “So, are we adjusting our strategy further, or where are we on that?”

“No. I, err, made a foolish mistake. Won’t happen again.”

“Fair enough.” John shrugged. No need to dig more into it if she didn’t want to explain.

A few moments later, she explained anyway, “I could smell they were in there, but I couldn’t see any mutants. I wanted to get a look at them, to better decide what trap to set. So I broke cover and got spotted.”

“Makes sen- wait, smell them?”

She nodded with a grimace. “The mutants smell like a lab that hasn’t been cleaned properly for months. You can be happy that humans aren’t very nose-conscious.”

They proceeded to check the other side paths. One was another group of mutants with nothing notable. The last one, however, had something new. Instead of more enemies, the tunnel held a large crate and otherwise ended abruptly.

“Well, I doubt a secret is going to be as easy to get as ‘open the obvious box’, but it probably has either a clue to a secret or something that ties into one of the Bonus Objectives.” He reached for the lid, but Qhila put a hand on his side causing him to stop.

Then she proceeded to examine the crate in detail, tapping in various locations on the sides and lid, slipping the blade of a pocket knife into the gap between the lid and the side, and so on. After a short while, she stepped away. “Go ahead.”

The crate turned out to contain smaller frame-only boxes with bottles in them and a pickaxe. The bottles and the pickaxe were all cartoonish in appearance.

“Okay, so either the hidden Bonus Objective or at least one Secret is about figuring out the right place to spray with this stuff and tap with a pickaxe. And there are probably also some spots that can be tapped without spraying, or having multiple attempts at invalid targets would be pointless… Did any of the sections of wall in the vipermoth room stand out?”

“Not really but… 2 seconds.” Then she started sniffing the air. First over the crate, but then she turned towards the wall at the end of the tunnel. After a few sniffs, she scratched at it causing some white powder to come loose. “This wall has already been treated with the mining solution. For decent depth of effect, it would probably about match the amount that could fit in one of the smaller frame boxes, which is what’s missing to make space for the pickaxe.”

“Nice. I would totally have missed that.” He gripped the pickaxe and stepped to the wall. “Now let’s see what’s behind door number one.”

Strictly speaking, neither wall nor pickaxe actually shattered. Instead, they faded out of existence in the same way defeated enemies did. Beyond lay a single chamber with its proper entrance blocked by a large boulder.

The chamber itself was very obviously deliberately carved with much more attention and care than the mineshafts and rough rooms connected to them, as evidenced by the straight lines and symmetric shape of the room, and the smooth walls. The corners had warrior statues saluting the center, featuring an unnaturally tall human, an orc, a draconic humanoid, and a male kitsune with 7 tails. The center, meanwhile, held what was very clearly a sarcophagus.

The sides of it were decorated with relief carvings of a Conan-like guy standing between some small women and a monster that looked like a large, half-melted bird. The top of it was entirely flat and blank, but held a cartoonish-looking shield and spear, the latter tipped with blue crystal.

The Hero’s Tomb
Secret Boon
Discovering this secret grants you 25 Dungeon Points, as well as the ability to switch to the Warrior Class Pack, with your choice of the Champion, Elemental Spear, and Guardian Subclass, for one Boss Fight during the Dungeon.

Class Pack
Temporarily replaces some of your Skills and Skill Perks with a set of Skills and Skill Perks fitting the Class Pack and the chosen Subclass if applicable. It may also come with bonuses and penalties to your Ability Scores. Generally speaking, Class Packs will usually be more powerful but also more focused and narrower than your regular build.