Seconds after Inara stepped through the portal, she felt James’s hand slip away. It was unfortunate that his plan hadn’t worked, but it was equally satisfying to be proven correct.
As soon as her feet touched down on the dungeon floor, Inara readied her scythe. It glowed with the holy light of Desiree’s skill, gently illuminating the space before her.
Her mission, first and foremost, was to find her daughter. The longer they were separated the more trouble Desiree could find herself in. Inara knew all too well what dangers a dungeon could offer, and it filled her with deep fear to think of her daughter lost in its clutches. Terror was too light a word.
She also understood her daughter’s capability, but that did little to alleviate her concern. Nothing could do that, except knowing that Desiree was safe. Such was a mother’s burden to bear.
Inara scanned the room. Stone walls and rough stone floors. No door. A tattered rug obscured some of the floor, and she counted one tile that was raised an inch above the rest. Pressure plates, perhaps. Trap? Or secret door?
She approached it cautiously, prepared for the worst. With the head of her scythe, she pressed down on the plate. It recessed easily enough and triggered something. No arrows fired from the walls, no axe dropped from the ceiling, no poison sprayed the air — but she heard the unforgettable sound of stone grating against stone and knew that a door had opened.
Secrets, then.
The once-closed room now had an opening. It was roughly the size and shape of a door, but it was closed and opened by a sliding stone controlled by a mechanism connected to the pressure plate.
And now that it was open, she could see the Magma Demon which stood between her and the next room.
Inara took a step toward it, but as soon as she released the pressure plate, the door began to close. She swore and backed up.
So that was the puzzle. Find the raised stone in order to open the door, but you can’t pass through it unless you have something else to hold it down. If she had to guess, she’d say there was a twin platform on the other side, and with a partner it would be simple work to leap-frog through the passageways.
That meant it would get easier later, but for now she’d have to figure things out. And hopefully it would take Desiree longer to piece it together, giving Inara a head start on finding her daughter before trouble did.
Inara considered her options. Anything she used to hold down the pressure plate would be lost when she went through the passage, and the room was stripped bare. Even if she folded up the rug, it was so thread-bare she doubted it would pack enough weight.
She sighed. She hated to lose the pre-combat strike advantage, but it didn’t look as though she had another option.
“Hey, ugly!” she called out. “Wanna dance?”
The Magma Demon turned. Its eyes blazed with internal fire, and it stepped toward her.
Struck by sudden inspiration, Inara stepped off the pressure plate. The stone doorway slowly closed, crushing the Magma Demon.
You are in combat!
Damn. Not quite enough to kill it outright; that was probably too much to hope for. Still, the current situation was heavily in her favor. The demon was trapped halfway in the room, and it was her turn.
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She sauntered up to it and swept her scythe across its exposed leg.
Critical hit!
She kept moving, drawing the scythe through its arm, then its head.
Critical hit!
Critical hit!
Defeated lvl 14 Magma Demon! EXP +0
Inara rolled her eyes at the notifications. Why the System insisted on announcing zero points of experience, she’d never understand. It felt like a passive aggressive reminder of her situation.
For the first time in a long time, she pulled up her status sheet.
Name: Inara
Race: Human
Class: Broken Reaper (EXP Gain: Disabled)
Level: 77
HP: 395/395
MP: 690/690
EXP: 0/2,500,000
Stat Points Available: 0
STR: 10 (150-140)
AGI: 10 (144-134)
INT: 10( 69-59)
WIS: 10( 69-59)
CON: 10( 69-59)
Skill Points Available: 0
Skills (Locked): Meditation, Mana Bolt, Vital Pulse, Tactical Dodge, Focused Strike, Identify, Endure, Second Wind, Reaper’s Reach, Harvest Step, Last Breath, Chilling Touch, Wax and Wane, Petal Storm, Sunder Veil, Reaper’s Grasp, Blood Rhythm, Lingering Echo, Scythe Memory, Crescent Rend, Gravewind Cloak, Black Petals/Red Snow, Reaper’s Tithe, Vow of Silence, Edge of Dusk, Unburdened Soul, Final Witness, Reaper’s Descent
Skills (Unlocked): Blood Price
Blood Price - Temporarily unlock a skill by paying double its MP cost in HP.
She closed it just as quickly. It should have stopped hurting by now. One would think that after ten years without her skills, she could stop missing them.
And yet. They were a part of her, even now. The fact that she couldn’t access those skills didn’t take them away from her — it only made it that much more painful to know they were out of reach.
Faced with her list of locked skills, she couldn’t deny that even if Desiree wasn’t mixed up with the Hero, she would follow him on his quests. Maybe in his wake, she could restore her class.
Inara closed her status and clenched her fists. She would never admit it aloud, but in a way, her daughter had done her a favor by summoning the Hero.
She touched the tip of her finger to the cooled stone body of the Magma Demon. It quickly dissolved in a shower of black and red sparks, leaving behind only a sphere slightly larger than a person’s head.
A monster core. This one was black with red marbling that glowed like magma.
Monster cores were useful things. They could be absorbed for EXP, and Inara would have loved to harvest a bunch of them and give them to Desiree. The cores were like a shortcut to power, and while under normal circumstances she would be opposed to such a thing, these were not normal circumstances. One level could be the difference between life and death, depending on the battle, and she wanted Desiree to have every advantage.
Unfortunately, this one would have to serve a different purpose. She carried the monster core back to the pressure plate and rested it in the center. The plate was just concave enough to prevent the sphere from rolling away, and the sphere was just heavy enough to hold the plate down.
Inara allowed herself a tight smile. Not a bad start.
Another quick look around was enough to reassure her that there was nothing else worthwhile in the room, and she continued on to the next.
She was greeted by a wave of heat so hot on her face that she whirled around in search of the Magma Demon which was surely generating it. Instead she saw a great furnace, large enough to heat an entire castle. It blazed to life, but fallen stones obscured the chimney which should have carried the heat through the rest of the dungeon. With nowhere else to go, the heat wafted towards Inara with such force that she raised an arm to cover her face.
She backed away. Her foot knocked against a piece of debris, sending it skittering across the floor, and all at once, aside from the roar of the furnace, the room grew deadly silent.
Inara cursed herself for her foolishness. Of course there were monsters in this room as well, and if they weren’t readily apparent then she could potentially have snuck past them without issue. Now, she’d have to fight them or they would follow her to other rooms and harass her until she finally engaged.
She backed as far away from the furnace as she could manage, keeping a steady hold on her scythe. Then, when it looked like they weren’t going to come out on their own, she reached down for another rock and tossed it into the furnace.
That was enough. First one creature, then another, poked their heads out of the furnace and glared at her with sharp, beady eyes.
You are in combat!
Little red health bars began popping up all through the room, hidden behind little alcoves and fallen rocks. Inara counted at least ten of them before they began to blur together.
She sighed. This was gonna take a minute.
