Chapter 77: The Gauntlet (Patreon)

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As the team stalked down the dimly lit corridor, Marvenal leading the way, Cayden was reminded once again of an undeniable fact: dungeons were weird.

It was something he'd learned over his dozens of delves in Avernon. Researchers did all they could to classify dungeons into neat categories: open-air, maze, underground, and the different rankings. Yet at the end of the day, every dungeon was unique and could defy whatever laws people tried to set on them. And that 'uniqueness' only increased as the dungeons increased in rank.

Case in point: the Gauntlet was an underground dungeon with no light sources, yet they were still able to see. The entire dungeon remained in a constant low-light state, with every section of wall, floor, and ceiling equally visible without a single shadow. Many teams elected to bring torches or glowstones anyway, simply because the ambient lighting was dim enough to be a hindrance for anyone who didn't invest heavily in perception, but their team elected to go without. It would make it easier to see, but carrying a light came with its own set of pitfalls – namely attracting monsters and casting shadows. Marvenal was unhindered by the low light, and Velic could light the corridor up like the sun if it was needed.

The Gauntlet was a C-ranked dungeon, a higher rank than Cayden had ever attempted in his delves around Avernon. Not that he didn't think he was strong enough to kill the monsters in C-ranked dungeons; he was comfortable against pretty much any D-ranked dungeon, and the jump in strength between monsters in the D and C ranks wasn't that significant. No, what separated C-ranked dungeons from the D-ranks wasn’t their power – it was their complexity.

F- and D-ranked dungeons were fairly straightforward: kill the monsters before they killed you, and you'd be fine. There were of course some curveballs like the zepples which could hurt you in unusual ways, but for the most part, it was simple kill-or-be-killed. C-ranked dungeons, however, introduced twists: monsters with immunities to certain damage types, environmental hazards, and – worst of all – traps. Cayden was great at taking hits, but he was a bit of a one-trick pony. C-ranked dungeons would often challenge delvers in more ways than a single adventurer could counter; they required teamwork.

So when Marvenal suddenly raised his hand in a call for them to halt, Cayden froze in place. He had no idea what the rogue might have sensed – to his perception, they were in a square, dimly lit section of corridor identical to what they'd been walking in for the last few minutes – but he trusted his teammate's perception more than his own.

"Esprit," Marvenal murmured, just loud enough for them to hear, and Cayden withheld his groan. Of the six options of monsters to encounter, it wasn't the worst...but neither was it in Cayden's top four.

"Test it, Marvenal. Cayden, be ready," Velic called, and Cayden and Marvenal both nodded. The words were unnecessary; they'd been planning for this exact situation since Velic had been able to uncover the nature of the test and the identities of the monsters they might face. But for once, Cayden didn't begrudge their leader his unnecessary commands. For their first encounter, it was doubly important that they all remained on the same page.

Marvenal unsheathed his sword, his other hand held up in preparation to cast his skill, and deliberately knocked the hilt against the wall of the corridor with a dull thunk.

From its invisible position pressed against the wall – at least invisible to Cayden's eyes – the esprit rose. Even after abandoning stealth, Cayden found it hard to spot the monster. Between the dim light and the uniform grey walls as a backdrop, the esprit looked like nothing more than a greyish blob with an amorphous, blurry outline.

Marvenal wasn't impeded in the slightest, though, and he raised his arm and shot his skill at the esprit with perfect aim, the monster recoiling as the black webs draped over it and adhered to the wall behind it. It made a creepy sucking noise, like the sound of an old man struggling to gasp his last breath, and the outline of the esprit turned even more ephemeral as the web passed through the monster, dropping to the ground beneath it.

"No good! Switch!" Velic called, and Cayden hurriedly squeezed past Marvenal and cast [Taunt] as the esprit surged forward. He brought up his claws to intercept it, but the esprit floated through his upraised weapons just as it had floated through Marvenal's skill. It lashed out at Cayden with a shadowy tendril turned into crooked claw, which passed through his armor with hardly any resistance.

Thankfully, Cayden's flesh provided a bit more resistance than his armor, but it wasn't able to stop the claw entirely. Cayden could feel it as it pushed into his chest, slowly moving under his skin until it latched onto something and then retreated. Cayden wasn't idle during this time, frantically slashing at it with his claws, but each strike passed through its body with only a minimal amount of resistance, faint wisps of darkness dropping from Cayden's claws after each attack. In contrast, the esprit finally extracted its claw from Cayden's chest, and from it dripped a dim, white light, which it casually carried to the center of its body where a gaping black hole appeared, a maw born from children's nightmares.

Cayden's attacks increased in frequency, and more and more black sludge that made up the monster's essence fell to the floor, but the monster didn't seem hindered in the slightest – until Velic attacked.

His laser cut through the dim corridor and into the shadowy monster like a knife through butter, and the gasping breath increased in pitch and intensity as it writhed in a frantic attempt to dodge the light-turned-weapon. But its attempts were fruitless, as Velic tracked the squirming shadow perfectly until whatever was holding the monster together collapsed into a puddle of black goo, a small splash of white all that was left of whatever the monster had pulled from Cayden's chest.

Cayden reached down to the puddle and attempted to grab the white section, only for his claws to pass through it in the same way that they had through the monster. Which was probably for the best; he wasn't sure what he might have attempted had he managed to pick it up. His claws did find something solid in the esprit’s remains, and he stood up straight with the small experience crystal clutched in his claws.

He turned to pass it to Marvenal, who would be carrying their haul of loot from the run, only to find Delphia hovering just behind him.

"How do you feel? Any weakness?" she asked.

Cayden shook his head. The esprits' attacks were reputed to drain their victims, leaving them weaker and weaker until their hearts ceased beating entirely, but despite the glowing white substance pulled from him, Cayden didn't feel any particular weakness. He wasn't sure if that was because of adrenaline or just [Resistance] doing its job. "I feel fine," he explained to the healer.

Delphia, however, didn't seem convinced. She extended a single thin, pale finger from the voluminous sleeves of her robes and touched Cayden on the elbow before stepping back with a nod. "Let me know when you start feeling its effects."

"Cayden, you're in the lead now," Velic called from the back as Delphia and Marvenal did an awkward do-si-do around each other. They'd been hoping that Marvenal's skill would bypass the esprits intangible defense, being a skill-created substance, but unfortunately that didn't seem to be the case, and Cayden braced himself for an unpleasant delve.

Esprits were a nightmare for physical attackers like Cayden to deal with. They could eventually be worn down with physical attacks, but it would take a while, and the esprits would have free reign to conduct their own weakening attacks in the meantime. Elemental attacks, as Velic's laser demonstrated, could destroy the esprits easily. Even something as simple as a torch waved through the esprits body would take it out faster than a sword, which prevented a single or even a group of esprits from being a true threat to a prepared team.

The real danger that esprits presented came over time. Though fragile to the right kind of attacks, they were extremely stealthy, and without someone on the team invested in perception they were guaranteed to be able to get at least a few attacks off before themselves being destroyed. And for someone wandering the maze of the Gauntlet for an hour or more? The weakening attacks would add up, allowing subsequent esprits to get more and more attacks in until eventually, the adventurers would succumb.

Obviously, that wouldn't be an issue for them. Marvenal could spot the monsters in advance, Cayden could ensure they never targeted any of his more fragile team members, and Delphia could heal any of the monsters' accumulated attacks on Cayden. Overall, their team was almost a perfect counter to the shadowy monsters, and now that they knew what monster they were dealing with, they resumed their trek down the corridor with renewed confidence.

Confidence, but not enjoyment.

Their team expertly countered esprits, but Cayden's contribution was to simply stand there and be a punching bag. It wasn't unexpected, given his skillset, but he'd have liked to have some way to fight back. Simply taking the hits from a monster he couldn't touch was incredibly frustrating.

"On the left," Marvenal growled.

Which was why, despite the attacks being next to useless in comparison to Velic's lasers, Cayden still clawed at the esprit after drawing it from its hiding place with a [Taunt]. The tiny amount of resistance he felt in each attack made him feel as if he was contributing more, regardless of the truth.

"Let's keep it moving," Velic called after blasting the monster with a laser. "But stay aware. No mistakes."

Cayden stepped over the puddle of monster remains, pausing for a second to let Marvenal grab the experience crystal before continuing.

The pattern repeated every minute until they encountered the first fork in the corridor, finally entering the maze proper, and Velic took out his map of the Gauntlet.

It was incomplete, with only a few of the paths leading from each of the six entrances drawn in, but it was the best he'd been able to find. Even for someone with Velic's connections, a complete map of the maze dungeon was not something so easily acquired. It was better than nothing, though, and Velic marked something on the paper before directing them down the right fork.

"Take up the rear, Delphia. We can't afford for me to be weakened if something comes at us from behind," Velic said, and Delphia squeezed behind him without comment.

"Call if you want me to throw out a [Taunt]," Cayden added, and they resumed their trek.

For the next forty-five minutes, they progressed at a slow but steady pace. The speed of their clear would certainly factor into their overall grade on the test, but speed wasn't nearly as important as avoiding stupid mistakes or injuries from overconfidence, so they chose not to rush. Cayden would lead the way down the corridor at a normal walking pace with Marvenal, Velic, and Delphia trailing behind. Marvenal would call out when he spotted an esprit, Cayden would [Taunt] it, and Velic would kill it.

Despite their efficiency, each esprit usually had enough time to get one attack off on Cayden before being killed by a laser, and after fifteen minutes Cayden was finally starting to feel the fatigue. He wondered what type of damage the attacks from the esprits qualified as – was it the curse type he and Elise had been searching for so long ago? – but it was obvious that [Resistance] and [Resiliance] were helping him to endure. The one time Marvenal had missed a stealthed esprit and it had popped out to surprise Velic in the middle of their formation, Velic had reported feeling much more fatigued than Cayden was feeling even after dozens of attacks and had demanded Delphia heal him immediately.

For her part, Delphia insisted on healing Cayden every fifteen minutes, regardless of Cayden's claims that he could keep on for longer, annoying Velic with the wasted time and trouble of her squeezing past each of them to touch Cayden. For being such a doormat in so many other areas, Delphia would not budge when it came to decisions on who needed healing, the one area she'd flat-out refused to cede to Velic's, or anyone else’s, leadership.

Delphia would slump after each healing, chugging a potion while Cayden felt his energy return to him. Cayden wondered what it was Delphia was drinking, as regular healing potions weren't supposed to work against esprit attacks, but the middle of a delve wasn't the time for him to ask.

Delphia finished her latest healing and squeezed back to the rear of their line while Velic looked over his map.

"We should be nearing the end of the maze, so stay on the alert. We're in the right area, we just need to find the path that takes us there," he said, folding up the map and placing it in his pocket. The end was in the center of the maze, a larger room with an exit shared by each of the different 'regions'. If the dungeon were left to respawn its monsters freely, this 'boss room' would contain a stronger version of each of the different monsters for them to fight, along with a bounty of experience crystals to serve as a final reward.

Unfortunately, such a finale wasn't feasible when they had six teams running the Gauntlet at the same time, and an instructor was waiting in the room to clear out the boss monsters whenever they respawned. An anticlimactic end to their test, but one Cayden was eager for after an overall unpleasant experience.

"Take the right fork. That'll take us the right direction as long as it doesn't tee," Velic called, and Cayden dutifully led the way down the new path.

But he’d only made it a few steps before Marvenal stopped him.

“Wait! Something’s behind us.”

Velic spun on his heel and conjured a light orb, preparing to fire his laser. “Delphia, take the hit. It’ll take too long to turn everyone around.”

And they waited in silence for the esprit to arrive.

They hadn’t yet been flanked in their time in the Gauntlet, one of the benefits of being in the esprit’s region. The creatures were ambush killers, relying on stealth until adventurers were too close to flee. Which was why it was strange that one of them was wandering the halls behind them now…

Cayden barely heard a noise echoing from the corridor, a soft clang clang clang that was decidedly not the sound of an approaching esprit, and his eyes widened.

“Not an esprit! Switch!” Velic called, but Cayden was already moving. He wasn’t sure what Marvenal was doing, why he didn’t warn them of what was approaching, but right now it didn’t matter. Cayden pushed through the narrow corridor, uncaring of the elbows he was throwing into his teammates’ sides to squeeze his broad frame by them, Delphia squeaking as he practically threw her over his shoulder in his rush to get to the front. And luckily, he was just in time.

The monster came barreling down the corridor they hadn’t chosen, heavy, with blade upraised, and very much not an esprit. And with his own claws raised and a smile on his face, Cayden met it.

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