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  Dungeons kill people. Never lose sight of that fact.

  - Dorin Crimsonhammer, Ptinum Adventurer. Advice to novice adventurers.

  Vivian Ross

  Vivian rubbed her temples, trying to ease the throbbing that was trying to beat its way through her skull. She was enough of a realist to have expected someone in her program to die eventually, she had just hoped it wouldn’t be quite so soon. You couldn’t level up and earn experience as an adventurer without fronting risky situations, and with risk came a probability of failure.

  Throw the dice often enough and they’re bound to e up snake-eyes.

  Everything about her training program was aimed at keeping the novices alive, to reduce the cost of failure so that everyone could get up and try again with more knowledge ter. But there was always the specter of a mistake big enough to kill someone, and it had happeoday. She had been sure her program, her ideas, would work. That she could stave off this iability. Clearly not.

  She had privately interviewed all nine of the surviving novice adventurers. Actually, they’re bronze ranks now, she corrected herself. Even though Theon had died, the quick thinking of Sabri and the priest Belmar had prevented any more deaths and turned a disaster into a successful boss kill. She had nine graduates and a dead body in ste.

  By now, Vivian had a clear picture of what had happened after several hours of wading through the story from every aheon held quite a lot of the responsibility for his owh. It didn’t surprise her much, knowing hant arong the boy was. She had hoped pg him in that team would mellow him out a bit, but that had obviously not happened. She had several ats of how Sabri had been shut down when she suggested he use a shield but knowing that it was Theon who was mostly to bme didn’t stop the others from bming themselves. Particurly Sabri, who thought she was responsible for him not using a shield, Belmar who felt he let him die, even though Theon had been responsible for his own healing, and the group who was fighting the Kobold mage, all of whom thought they were responsible for letting it fire the stray fireball in the first pce.

  She sighed. She had been running damage trol all afternoon. In addition to a few bronze adventurers who seemed to be on the verge of quitting, she now had another major problem on her hands – she had oeam without a healer and therefore uo level up. That and she was certain Aliandra would be devastated when she learhat her dungeon had killed someone while she was out, and she had no idea what toll that would take.

  She took a deep breath and turo the mounting pile of unfinished paperwork on her desk. Damn, what a day!

  Aliandra

  Standing at the threshold of the great cavernous chamber, Ali took in the once-renowned domain of Thovir Emberfe, legendary bcksmith of Dal’mohra. inally a mining excavation, the back half of the chamber still reflected the raw, rocky walls and ceiling, and the massive ke of boiling va with the thunderous cascades of molten rock p down into it from somewhere far above. It roiled with potent mana, fire affinity for certain, but simir in appearao the intense yellow-white energy of the Inferno. The air above the boiling pool shimmered with radia, ing the appearance of the rod va falls in the background.

  The entire front half of the cavern had been reworked by the a dwarven stonemasons, a surprisingly smooth polished stone floor with pilrs of granite rising to meet the vaulted ceiling. The walls were decorated with ornate relief sculptures, creating an air of culture, now made a by the wear of turies.

  In the ter of the chamber, right o the ke of va and the fount of fire mana was a raised stone dais, upon which stood the magnifit fe, and the great bvil of Thovir Emberfe.

  But instead of the legendary dwarven smith wielding his glowing hammer, her eyes were drawn to the enormous recumbent drake lying oone floor before the dais. Several times rger than the Armored Drakes she was already acquainted with, this new monster seemed overwhelmingly powerful even in its fitful slumber.

  Corrupted Fire Drake – Demonic Dragon – level ?? (Hellfire)

  Even as it y there, dark fmes flickered across its impervious scaled body, leaking hellfire energy into the scalding air. Every couple of seds, a great wave of Living Fme rippled outward from the drake, a regur pulse expanding through the entire room like a slow heartbeat of fire. Aween the fe and the anvil, Ali’s eyes registered something else that had not been there before – a giant obelisk of rune-covered bck stone – a shrine, very much like her own.

  It's not… his? She stared at it – the first ‘natural’ shrine she had seen that was not her own. spicuously, it did not float. As terrifying as the drake appeared, she felt a ripple of relief as ay looses grasp around her heart. At least she did not have to stantly look over her shoulder expeg a Lich.

  “Now that’s a raid boss,” whispered, his eyes carefully studying the monster, noting and categorizing every detail.

  Ali released the breath she had been unsciously holding, an instinctive respoo her worries. But she still released it quietly.

  “Looks strong,” Malika said.

  “Yes,” Ali agreed, studying the way the domain mana flowed about the chamber, finding that she could quite clearly see how the domain itself was ected to the giant corrupted fire drake, infusing it with power, pulsing in time to the hemispherical waves of Living Fme. She familiarized herself with the anization and structure of the mana within the room, slowly getting the feel for why this was a raid boss and not a normal one. From the density of the domain mana flowing through it, she had no doubt that this would be the toughest challe, and by a rge margin, if she was reading the signs correctly.

  “Shall we go poke it?” Mato asked. “See what it does?”

  “Mato, this is not a game,” hissed.

  His casual attitude struck like a discordant note against the prevailing fear and caution that had taken root deep inside Ali, but she knew how to read him. Mato practically vibrated with intense focus, a potent blend of curiosity, and a burning desire to test himself against the stro mohere was no ce he would uimate their foe.

  The Beastkin said, “Never said it was.”

  After a long moment, puffed out his cheeks and said, “Yeah, alright. Sorry.”

  “Everyone have an escape potion?” Malika asked, and Ali nodded, grateful that they had formed the habit of following Lyeneru’s Dungeon Survival Guide.

  Rule one: Have an escape pn. “I’ll inscribe a fresh teleportation circle just outside the door,” Ali added, after cheg her own recall potion. “Left side.”

  Here owerful raid monster, but scarier was the fact that its abilities were almost entirely unknown. She reized the Living Fme from the structure of the domain’s mana emp it, but she could already tell it was substantially denser and more potent than the phoenix – and that was only one domain magic – it would likely have three.

  Mato advanced, entering the chamber, and Ali sent her minions in after him, fanning them out into the room. Each of them lit up with holy restoration magic as soon as they waded into the fmes. As she stepped foot into the chamber, the drake’s double-eyelids leisurely opened, revealing an enormous malevolent red glowing eye, shot through with flecks of bck as if the hellfire burned within. The ground shook beh her feet and it took a few moments in frozen terror before she realized it was a growl of warning.

  “You tiny creatures would challenge a dragon in its ir? Very well, e, let us see what you are made of.”

  The growling roars of the draiguage uttered from the maw of a dragon were nothing like her lessons with Kavé. Ali’s heart quailed in fear at the power of the monster before her.

  Malika’s steadying hand touched her shoulder, pulsing a little healing magic through her. “We’ll look after each other,” she said, and then stepped forward to join the melee.

  You have gained Crity.

  A strawisted formation of dark magic appeared within the great dragon’s eye, and it fshed momentarily before shooting outward to strike her invisibly.

  You have been cursed with Ruinous FrenzyA terrifying curse that exudes a dark demoniergy. -1% maximum health whehe duration of Ruinous Frenzy is refreshed. Duration: 15 minutes+50% haste+100% damageDemonic Siphon. (Lose 20% of your maximum life ahe caster for 20% of theirs when Ruinous Frenzy ends.)Curse – Duration: 5 seds.

  The giant drake rose to its feet, turning its head toward them as it pulsed with the power of its twisted fire mana and the domain around it. An enormous wave of fme billowed out in all dires and as it washed over her, she heard a chime along with the searing pain.

  Ruinous Frenzy has been refreshed. -1% to maximum health.

  Simultaneously, the twisted mana of the Ruinous Frenzy curse spread through the room like a wildfire of demonic fme, appearing on everyohere.

  “Curse Proliferation!” Ali yelled. She had easily reized the waves of yellow fme emanating from the drake as simir to the phoenix’s fire, but she hadn’t immediately ected the Curse Proliferation to the Ruinous Frenzy.

  “What?” excimed.

  It ’t be every wave, it? Ali thought as the implications slowly sunk in. About two seds ter, she had her answer.

  Ruinous Frenzy has been refreshed. -2% to maximum health.

  With a roar, Mato engaged, smashing his cws into the drake as its giant maw filled with tearing, rending fangs snapped shut a hair’s breadth from his ear. He turhe drake to face the left right as it roared back, bsting that entire side of the chamber with a torrent of midnight-bck hellfire dragoh. His health plummeted, but Malika and her healers had been expeg it, reag far faster than she had expected.

  Fifty pert haste, Ali realized. It must work on spells too! She had passed over that in her hurry to read the curse earlier, stu the health redu. Ruinous Frenzy granted both haste and damage but at su enormous cost!

  Ali tuned Mato and the drake’s noisy frontation out, fog instead on the curse and the fme, studying the iion of the magic within the room. This was her role. This was how they would learn. Her brow furrowed as the wave approached, and she threw up a barrier, regaining a substantial burst of mana from the power of the magic washing by her. All her minions lost life, but her healers regained mana – and quite a bit more than from the phoenix. But her barrier protected her from losih to the curse.

  I block it!

  The sed wave crashed over her while she studied it and the curse expired. She gasped as a huge bolt of bergy burst from her torso and careened across the chamber to be ed by the drake, taking with it an enormous k of her health. She didn’t fail to see the drake’s health bounce back up to maximum in an instant, erasing every sirike they had nded so far. An Acolyte standing beside her yelped and frantically cast a big heal to recover her health.

  You have been cursed with Ruinous Frenzy.

  The pulse of the twisted curse magic came directly from the drake and passed through her barrier like it wasn’t even there.

  I block the fire only. It seemed that the drake’s curse would ignore barriers but was only cast infrequently. The Living Fme was read the curse and refreshed its duration every pulse. Relutly, she dropped her barrier, realizing that all she would aplish was healing the drake every five seds.

  It was less thay seds into the fight when her first shaman died, unleashing a familiar rge bolt of hellfire from its corpse to heal the frenzied drake shing out at Mato in the ter of the room.

  Her Acolytes were struggling – the sheer amount of damage Mato was taking, and the room-wide fme pulses took its toll. Every few seds everyone lost health, making healing her weakest minions progressively harder and harder. One by ohey burheir Devotion skill, hasted healing having little to no impa their rapidly regeing mana pools, but they simply didn’t have the throughput to keep up with the onsught.

  A sed shaman died, followed quickly by the st one, each shooting the infernal demonic fire to heal the drake. “My minions are dying!” she yelled.

  “Hang on,” answered.

  It’s the health redu, Ali realized. Some of her minions really didn’t have much health to start with. Sure, the redu ertage, but that fme pulse did a rge ft amount of damage. With such a vast level differeween the fme spell and their defeributes, some of her minioaking far more than their fair share of fire damage. At approximately the forty-seark, when Ali’s health redu reached twenty pert, her Acolytes began to die. First ohen the . And suddenly all the remaining healers keeled over with the rest of her minions colpsing in a rapidly casg disaster.

  “Run!” Ali shouted, terrified that Mato wouldn’t be able to make it out alive. She had no Acolytes left to save him. She flew as fast as she was able, heading for the doorway, but she threw barriers between Mato and the drake. The drake cws blurred, shattering her barrier, and she repced it just in time to have it melt ieflow of hellfire dragoh.

  To her intense relief, the drake gave up at the door to the chamber, and her friends all escaped alive, Mato just barely making it before the drake turned and sauntered back to its resting spot, gring at them before it y down once more.

  All at ohe curses began expiring, shooting bolts of fire that crossed the room to hit the drake, passing through the rock wall of the chamber as if it were not even there. And each time it expired; her minions lost a substantial k of health, several of them immediately colpsing. Her eyes met Malika’s as they both realized what was about to happen and Malika sprang into a, darting among them, searing Mato and with emergency healing before their expiring curses cimed their lives.

  “Well, that didn’t go too well,” Mato said, after shifting back to his Beastkin form.

  “What is that nonsense?” Malika wao know.

  Ali plopped herself down oone floor, propped up against the wall between Mato and , and breathed a sigh of relief. Probably they wouldn’t have died from the curse, but it would have been way too close for fort.

  “I need a few minutes. , while we wait for the life drain to wear off, I borrow your pen and some… fireproof paper?” she asked. She had spent the vast majority of the fight studying the mana flow, the spell iions, and how her minions had been affected and she wao quickly run some numbers.

  It took quite a few minutes for her to at for all the bonuses, elixirs, resistances, aive levels involved – some values, like the drake’s css level, were w guesses. But eventually, she hahe paper to with her clusions.

  “The Living Fme pulses are strohan the phoenix, probably because of the raid domain enha,” she expined. “I think this is pretty close to the numbers.”

  Living Fme+150 fire damage per sed.+25 stamina and maored per sed.Curse Proliferation (Whenever Living Fme damages a cursed target, it has a ce to refresh the curse duration or proliferate it to nearby targets).Skill – Domain Magic

  “That seems abht,” he said, studying her work.

  “It’s a bit worse than that because the damage is not delivered per sed, so it es in spikes of probably close to three hundred damage per wave. I haven’t seen any n of domain magic skills yet, but this one seems simir to Mato’s Sanctuary – a spherical domain aura that propagates the magic.”

  “And the curse proliferation works the same as the phoenix?” he asked.

  “I tested most of the cases,” she answered. “I block the fme from refreshing the curse with my barrier by simply blog the fire damage.”

  “So you ighe curse the whole fight?”

  “No, he directly cast it, and that ignores my barrier. I only block the proliferation, which means I just heal the boss.”

  “You mean we have to take the redu to maximum health, or the boss heals by stupid amounts? We ’t go lohan two hundred seds or we die?” Malika asked, peering over her shoulder to look at her notes.

  “It’s a lot less than that in practice,” Ali answered. “When your health gets close to the amount of damage caused by the fme waves, you just die from that in a single shot. Even with their racial and elixirs helping their fire resistance, my healers reached that threshold at about forty seds in. They really don’t have much health.”

  “That’s nasty,” Malika said, sg her fato a frown.

  “Yes.” scribbled a few quick calcutions in his notebook and then looked up. “I estimate we will o kill him in just a bit less than two minutes. Any lohan that, probably Mato will die from attack damage.”

  “The hing is that it restores a ton of mana and stamina. And there’s the haste buff, so we should be able to do a lot of damage if we stay alive,” Ali said, adding, “No mana potions for you, .” That at least made him grin.

  ***

  Ali flopped down onto a cou the library, exhausted after fighting the Corrupted Fire Drake until the room behind them had begun to respawn. The only good thing about the drake was that they could simply run outside the room to reset the fight, and with a little careful healihe curse expire. They did have to wait for the life drain to wear off, but this one had a fifteen-minute duration. It meant they had made quite a few attempts at the fight – hehe exhaustion.

  had set a limit of one minute per attempt – if they couldn’t get the drake below fifty pert by the one-minute mark, they were supposed to flee. Their best attempt had beey-seven pert – not eveely close. Every siry had been ruined by her minions dying, and the ohat went the full minute seemed to be entirely luck. She had tried every bination of minions she could think of, but the bottleneck came down to her healers having too little health, and way too little healing power for what she was asking of them – even with the substantial bes of the Ruinous Frenzy curse.

  “If I could just level my Acolytes up, that would be something,” Ali grumbled.

  “Yes, that would be nice,” agreed.

  Most of her damage-focused minions were also low enough that it wasn’t reliable to have them in the fight past thirty seds, and even if they had been able to reach fifty pert by the one-minute mark, they would still have been doomed to fail simply because they cked the health to survive the full two minutes.

  She slumped on the couch, depressed. At the two-minute mark, which had calcuted was the absolute lohey should even sider staying in the fight, they would be down to forty pert of their total maximum health, and would he right bination of total health, magid fire resistao survive the waves of fme every few seds.

  “Cheer up, Ali,” Malika said, flopping down beside her. “It was our first try.”

  “I just don’t think Kobolds are going to be able to do it,” Ali said, not quite cheering up as Malika wahe horuth was they were simply ie. “They’re far too low-level to be fag monsters like the drake.”

  “Maybe not,” said, sitting doulling out some arrows to do maintenance. “If we really ’t win, we’ll go questing for better minions. I think we should try it again soon though, and, besides, I want to kill the Demon Hunter again a few times.”

  “What? Why?” Ali excimed. She had had nightmares of the hordes of demons p from the rift the st time they had been there, and he wao go back?

  “This bow is crazy good. If we get awo, you make them,” said. “I’m sure Lyeneru will want some for the Pathfinder guild. I think we avoid the dungeon-break provided we stay away from the rift itself, and you leave some monsters io mop up the extra demons. Perhaps grinding a few levels iher wings will help us with this st fight too?”

  She had to admit what he said sounded reaso least more reasohan she had initially imagined, but she was simply too tired to really think it through. She had felt something from her Kobold boss while she was in the middle of that st fight, and she o check it before she did anything else. She pulled up her notifications and then gasped in shod horror at what she found.

  Your Kobue has defeated Padin – Human – level 9 (Holy).

  Your Kobold Warrior has beeed.

  Defeated? Huh – oh… “No!” With a low scream, she curled up into a ball. “No, no, no…”

  ----------

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