Chapter Forty-Three - Mapping it Out

Chapter Forty-Three - Mapping it Out The goal of my next loop, the tenth, was two fold. First, figure out undead combat. There were plenty of undead monsters to fight in the dungeon, and I needed to get a hang of them. Second, I needed to map out the rest of the dungeon. So, I made my way back, got changed in the taxi, then repeated the same steps to get past the kidnappers as before. Jumped into the portal, did a roll to land, tied a rope to the batteries that I yoinked aside, then basically felt my way through with See Darkness to help. The exception was that I walked right past Ojou's cell and into the deeper parts of the portal dungeon. This time, I was armed with knowledge. Also, a hammer. It was from my closet, and I honestly wasn't sure why it was there in the first place. According to everything I'd read online, the undead were dealt with in two ways. Blunt force, and magic. Since I lacked any sort of offensive magic, it was blunt force or bust. I stomped through the first corridor, whistled to get the attention of the nearest zombie, then bashed its head in with a swing that had all of my weight in it. The zombie's squishy head burst apart. I worked past the smell, then bashed it in the knee, sending it down. Then the next. Then the skeletons. They were tough. Both of them had some skill with their weapons, and while they weren't as fast as even a moderately fit person, they wouldn't tire out from a bit of fighting. Still, they both settled into a specific set of moves. One good hammer blow to a joint was enough to make either one much weaker. Break an elbow, then a collarbone, maybe crack the knee. It was about quickly and efficiently breaking them down. Then I had a choice. Keep going towards the boss room... or explore. For now, exploration, that's what I was here for. I went 'down'. The prison cells that Ojou was in felt like they were far to one direction, so I called that the 'north' in my head, and aimed for the 'south' exit. The rooms leading to the boss room, then, were 'east.' South was a long, suspiciously empty corridor. I think the fact that it was so empty twigged me to the fact that it was trapped, because I discovered that some of the blocks on the floor were slightly elevated, and touching them with a toe revealed that they felt wobbly and loose. I returned with a long chunk of wood from the room with the torture deviced and smashed one of the blocks. A pillar of green fire roared out of a tiny spout in the ceiling. Cool... cool cool cool. Loved that. I'd been injured in all sorts of new and interesting ways recently, but immolation in magic necromantic fire was a new one. I decided not to test it. Instead, I navigated the corridor to its middle, where I found a small passage leading to a barred gate. There was a lock in its centre, a tarnished, silver one, and the bars around it glowed very faintly with some sort of magic. Beyond that was an armory. This... might have made the dungeon somewhat valuable, actually. There were three racks with longswords, some sabers hanging off the wall, then a rotting old barrel with a bunch of rusty halberd heads around it. Some armour, as well. Plate and like, old knight stuff. A heavy load of iron and steel. Not so much metal that scrapping it would make a fortune, but if the dungeon was somehow repeatable, a company could make a tidy profit melting it all into ingots every time the portal respawned. More interesting than all that was a case in the middle of the room. No, not a case. A chest. Ah... I was going to need to find the key to this one, wasn't I? Hadn't there been a skeleton with a key in the room just before the boss room? I pulled out a notebook I'd brought for the occasion, sat down with a flashlight to see what I was doing, and drew what I'd seen so far. After a few minutes, I got up, and continued 'south.' I almost missed the fake wall to my left. Almost. It was steel painted to look like stone, and very convincingly done, but the metal had flaked in places and left the paint to chip off. It only took a few moments of searching around to find a handle that, when I pulled aside, slid the metal wall away to reveal a thin, narrow passive hewn out of the rock. "Great," I muttered. Another portal world with hidden passages. I ear-marked that for later, and instead continued. There were more traps along the way, but still just pressure-plate activated, and a door. This one opened to a narrower corridor, with shelving along the wall. A pantry? One that had gone unused for a few decades at least. There were jars with... things. Some dried stuff, some desiccated. I didn't poke around too much. The corridor led to another door, and this one I could hear through. A radio? No, someone was listening to music. Carefully, I opened the door and discovered it partially blocked by a chair. But what I could see of the room was telling. One of the kidnappers, the one who'd run into the courtyard if I made noise, was laying on a blow-up mattress on the floor, staring up into a cellphone. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation. I flicked my flashlight off, then glanced around the room. A pile of bones in one corner, some stuff moved around... yeah, they'd turned this one into a rest area. I retreated, added to my map, then went back to that hidden passage. There was nothing for it but to check it out. It was narrow, with a few sharp turns. The entire time, I had my finger on the 'trigger' of my Reload ability, but other than a long, uncomfortable squeeze, there wasn't much to it, at least until I reached the end. A metal wall. Frowning, I shoved at it, then discovered that it was on rails, just like the one to enter had been. Pushing it aside.... Yeah, this was the corridor with the gurneys and the skeletons hidden under old blankets. What a stupid shortcut. Not wanting to be ambushed, I moved over to the nearest blanket with the warhammer that one undead had, then bashed its head in with all of my strength. That destroyed the gurney, but it spilled the skeleton on the ground, where it was easy to keep smashing. Very cathartic, that. Taking them one one by one made the passage a breeze. Arriving in the morgue room, where twelve undead waited, was less so. I backed up, added to my map, and let my muscles cool down. How to get past this one? There were eight zombies, four skeletons. The skellies weren't as tough, but they felt smarter. The zombies stank, were slow, but a pain in the ass to 'kill.' One or two? Even four? I could juke around and take on. Twelve? Well, there was one solution. "Oi! Deady deady deady... hi there! It's me, your girl Deadline. Also got dead in my name, but I'm very much alive. Hey, hi. Yup, it's me. Come on. That's right, juicy living person." The dead followed. They... weren't clever. I led them back, walking just faster than they could stumble. Back into the room with the torture devices, then around the bend. I made sure all twelve were there before jogging down the corridor, and then... yeah, they were very not smart. I watched a zombie step on a plate, get cooked, fall over still on fire, then crawl its way onto the next plate on the floor only to burn some more. The rest walked into the flames. Somehow, the skeletons were better about it, walking around the fire, but they weren't that much brighter. I ducked into the shortcut and ran my way through. At the end, I shut the metal doorway and moved a gurney over to block it. Now... where to? There was a door left to check in the torture room, and I wanted to see if all of them had died. They hadn't, but they were all at the far end, semi-cooked, and not looking so great. I think a few had gone into the shortcut passage. The door I'd missed... led to the + shaped junction just after the courtyard. No point in using that one, but I added it to the map all the same. So, what was left? I checked out the morgue, curious, but other than massive jars full of what might have been formaldehyde and some containers of dubious liquids, there wasn't much here. I kept moving. The pre-boss room. Two undead. One with a bow, one armoured with a halberd. This was going to be a tough one. So I walked in and shot both of them in quick succession. The fact that they wore armour actually made my gun worth using. It spread out the force of the shots, breaking bones and sending them reeling. When the one with the halberd fell, I ran over and smashed its legs in. Then the other knocked an arrow only to miss as I smashed the bow aside with my borrowed hammer. Almost easier than the undead in the torture room. I yoinked the key, took a moment to cool down, then glanced at the boss door... well, nothing for it. I opened the room, and discovered that it led outside. Like the courtyard, only this was the exit of a cave into a space with seer stone walls. In the centre-rear, a portal. Sitting before it on a camp stool, a seven-foot tall undead in plate armour who slowly stood and grabbed a rusty sword that was almost as tall as I was. "Okay, cool." I said. No way I was going to get his dude to step onto a trap. So I shot him in the face and chest four times, taking my time to line up each shot. Guns... were awesome. Loved me a good gun. The boss wasn't down from that, but he was hurt... and I had more ammo. I retreated, though. First, time to see what was in that chest in the armoury. Then I could think up a way to really take the boss down. Maybe I could come in with something like a magical molotov? Or... hmm, there had to be some sort of solution, right? ***