Chapter 1

  There were two levers. Dearth HATED when there were two levers, especially in this mega dungeon. They’d been inside for about three days this rotation and it was their second rotation in. They took the quest to explore and help clear the mega dungeon a month ago now and had been here three weeks. A week in and then a week out was the rotation and they weren’t the only team to take the quest. There were, at any given time, three teams active inside this dungeon – it was absolutely massive. There were also three teams on the week long rest portion of the rotation for a total of six teams, 36 adventurer’s tackling the place.

  The mega dungeon was located on the World Eater itself around year one fifty nine. Around the year one fifteen expeditions onto the World Eater started taking place, revenge for the Centennial attack. A great wooden bridge was built between Rivas and the World Eater connecting the two in a manner that humanity could traverse.

  Outside the mega dungeon were the support and defense teams, consisting of alchemists, crafters of various kinds, chefs, hunters and civilians all acting to support the six teams risking their lives inside. Materials were abundant and new solutions to new problems were needed constantly. Teams would have to backtrack mid rotation to get something made to help deal with some specific situation, be it a tincture, alchemical concoction, equipment such as thick pants and boots to deal with all the snakes, or accessories with magical properties to protect against specific debuffs and curses.

  Speaking of snakes, there were two levers. One would open the door forward and one would probably drop snakes from the ceiling. The snakes usually dropped from above the levers and was mostly predictable, but there was no indication on the seamless stone ceiling indicating where they would fall from. The teams had come up with throwing a bolas at a lever and pulling it from a distance, which made it easier to deal with the snakes most of the time.

  These two lever rooms were mostly uniform in nature, Dearth’s party had seen five of them now. The entire room was made of gray stone – the walls were stone with green leafy vines covering parts of them, the ceilings were smooth gray stone and the floor was also stone – even the doors leading in and out of this room were stone.

  Elven spoke up, he was the parties scout, trap detector/dis-abler, monster detector and more. “We going to stand here all day, or are we going to fight some snakes?” The party had had terrible luck with these levers, four of the five pulls left the party fighting the blasted snakes. They weren’t even that tough an enemy but the things were so small they were hard to hit. Ever try to hit something slithering half a foot on the ground with a sword – it’s awkward.

  “I think Dearth is traumatized from all these snake traps, wassamatter Dearthy, afwaid of a wittle snake bite?” Eostre teased.

  “Fuck off Eost, that venom hurts, I don’t see you up front getting yourself bitten.” Dearth snapped back.

  Eostre laughed at the response which only further annoyed Dearth, his parties mage liked to tease.

  “Hah huh huh” A giant of a woman named Leoma laughed heartily. “Do not worry puny Dearth, Leoma will purge your venom coated insides as she purges these snakes.”

  A shorter man that went by Wulf added “Common Eost, you got Leo started, you know she always hurts Dearths feelings.”

  “I’m growing bored, can we move this along?” A tall, shining man with heavy plate mail calling himself Chadwick stated with a monotone voice.

  “Why do I pay you people? Pull the damned lever and save me this torment please Elven.” Dearth pleaded while moving into position to deal with the many tiny creatures. Elven chuckled and threw the bolas, wrapping the weighted end around the right-most lever, pulling after it had connected itself. The rest of the party moved into position as the lever flipped as well, none of them expecting the door to open.

  It was as if all the negativity the party put out into the universe manifested as two square platforms on the ceiling lowered and slid ninety degree’s until the two panels were perpendicular to the ceiling, dropping – you guessed it, dozens of snakes onto the floor.

  “Snaaaaaakes” a deep voice rumbled out in joy as Leoma charged forward, breaking formation, and started stomping on the snakes. The reptilian assault began as soon as she got within range, dozens of hissing, angry creatures slithered towards her and struck out in rapid succession to absolutely no effect. The party having dealt with plenty of these traps by now had backtracked after the second similar trap to the support outside the dungeon and had some snake-proof pants made. A rare strike might bite through and pierce the flesh on one of their legs, but it was very rare.

  Eostre nearly broke down laughing at Leoma’s charge and subsequent wanton destruction of the creatures almost fully doubling over. Leoma didn’t notice this at all as she squished snake after snake, occasionally her entire body glowing with a bright yellow aura – akin to sunlight, as she stomped on one of the snakes. Now snakes, not being the smartest of creatures, had no real strategy in this very one sided battle. They kept hissing, slithering, and striking out ineffectively at the seven foot tall cackling woman.

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  After most of the snakes were struck down Chadwick repeated himself stating “I’ve grown completely bored now.”

  Dearth moved in after Chadwick’s complaint and helped Leoma finish off the snakes while the rest of the party shared in Eostre’s mirth back on the sidelines of the fight. As Leoma jumped to land with both feet onto the final snake Elven was moving towards the other lever, not needing the bolas to pull this one. The lever flipped and the stone door slowly opened accompanied by the sounds of grinding noises from inside the walls beside it.

  ---

  Elven

  *Guess I’m up then* the six-ish foot tall man thought as he headed to the door to inspect it for further traps. Finding none he stepped through the door waving the party to follow behind him, he glanced behind himself and took a quick look at Dearth, the parties leader, who had sidled in behind him. Dearth had a fairly standard set of equipment, better than the leather that most adventurer’s wore though, in that he was wearing half-plate armor with chainmail and a thick cloth gambeson underneath it. The armor was not adorned with any sort of paint and shone metalically in the sunlight that was coming from the end of the hallway, how there was sunlight here was anyone’s guess though.

  Dearth had a flanged mace in his right hand and his magically reinforced kite shield in the other. Dearth also wore the anti-snake pants and a pair of brown leather combat boots, which were more or less standard issue for adventurers.

  Refocusing on his task Elven ensured there was nothing weird in the short hallway and stepped out into an expansive room, covered in dirt, vines, and greenery. “Another jungle, it looks like.” He commented.

  “Another one? Isn’t this the third jungle expanse that has been found in this place?” Dearth muttered as he moved out of the doorway so the other four could follow behind him. Elven glanced forward through the vines and smattering of tree’s that increased in coverage the further into the room one looked, he could only see a thousand feet or so in front of him before the tree’s blocked everything out. “Are these magical tree’s?” Elven asked of Eostre expecting her to say no as he had heard the other two jungles were filled with mundane tree’s.

  “Hmm, there’s something there, give me a minute.” Eostre stated as she stepped past Leoma who had exited the room just before her. While Eostre was examining the nearest tree Elven glanced over her armor to make sure nothing had sneaked onto it while she hadn’t noticed. Eostre wore a simple blouse that was frilly at the ends of the short sleeves and along the collar line, she also wore the anti-snake pants and combat boots most of the rest of the party wore. She was holding a wooden staff in one hand while poking the tree with the other.

  “Need tree chopped?” Leoma asked Eostre.

  “I don’t think so Leo, it looks magical enough just from the bark. Dearth you should notate that this jungle looks to contain enhanced tree’s, they’ll probably give us a bonus for finding this.” Eostre chirped out excitedly.

  Dearth grunted affirmatively and pulled out his map, scribbling a note down in the margin and adding some squiggly lines to indicated a jungle room coming out of the previously marked snake trap room. “Got it.” He added after.

  “The tree’s are thick here, stay alert. I’ll go first” Elven informed the party who formed back up and lagged a little behind the scout. He leaned on his passive *Detect Monster* ability while scanning the area, it detected anything the skill flagged as a threat within roughly three hundred feet without anything to augment it, Elven however had a 0-cost booster skill which amplified the detection range to roughly five hundred feet. Nothing pinged his senses within the vicinity so he slowly walked forward keeping an eye out on the floor, tree tops and along the tree’s themselves, he couldn’t see the ceiling from here – it was blocked by the canopy, though he wasn’t sure what it would look like as sunlight bled through the treetops overhead.

  Elven moved the thousand or so feet ahead to where the tree’s thickened up and slid past them. Another hundred feet past thick tree’s and he started to hear running water, specifically very fast running water. One hundred feet past that the dungeon opened up in an impossible manner. These jungle rooms were large, but he hadn’t heard that the others were anything like it.

  A river ran out from under a large stone outcropping that appeared from no where after the tree’s ended, it was probably two hundred feet tall but it was only a thousand feet long before it sank back into the floor. A head of Elven the river dropped suddenly into a deep, deep waterfall that fell for two or three thousand feet onto a small lake that drained out into another river far below.

  The impossibly large room had a cloud system, sunlight and even birds flapping around everywhere. There were tree’s in every direction that Elven could see, miles and miles of tree’s. Stunned, Elven stood there long enough for the party to catch up and ask why he had stopped before stopping and staring themselves.

  “How?” Eostre asked?

  “Dungeons are odd.” Was all Wulf added.

  “No kidding! How the hell..” Dearth said.

  “Where to from here? Not even I could survive a drop like that.” Chadwick stated.

  “We’d have to climb if we went down” Elven explained.

  “Hate climbing” Leoma complained.

  “Me too! I am NOT built for climbing.” Eostre added.

  “It’s those spindly arms of yours Eost” Wulf teased.

  “My arm’s aren’t spindly! I’ll show you spindly!!” Eostre said as the diminutive mage squared up against the rogue, who was roughly the same height as her, coming in at a short 5’4 or so.

  Eostre’s posturing caused Wulf to laugh and say “Bring it on child, I doubt I’d even feel it.”

  “I bet that’s something you hear often Wulf” Eostre barked out causing Wulf to go a little red in the face and actually get his ire up. Wulf took a step towards Eostre who started bouncing on the balls of her feet when Dearth stepped between them and said “Hey now, we’re here to do a job, save the flirting for after we’re done.”

  Both Eostre and Wulf yelled back that they weren’t flirting at the same time, which caused to two to look haughtily at each other and then break into laughter.

  While the party discussed next steps Elven took the opportunity to climb onto the stone expanse and up the two hundred feet to take a look around the level they were on. Once at the top he noticed nothing of note – the expanse of tree’s continuing in every direction for many miles except in the one direction they came from, it was just a solid stone wall as far as the eye could see.

  “Alright, it’s settled then, we’ll head back to camp and see if we can get an expedition out here to build an elevator or a more secure way of down than climbing, not all of us have Elven’s grace on the rocks.” Elven overheard Dearth saying as he stepped back onto the dirt after climbing back down and rejoining the party.