Project Seraphina [LitRPG, Magitech, GL]
2.41 Sky Island Dungeon I

“Brr!” I mutter under my breath once all four of us have stepped through the portal. At this high altitude, it’s a good thirty degrees cooler than down on the surface, and with a chilly breeze of maybe fifteen miles per hour blowing all around, it feels closer to forty.

We emerge out on a small grassy field, about sixty feet in radius. Just as the inscription said, we’re standing on an island suspended in midair. High in midair, I quickly correct as I walk toward the side of the platform. Not quite ‘airplane at cruising altitude’ high, but a good twelve to fourteen thousand feet based on a glance of the sprawling city to our northeast.

Before us is a pyramid or ziggurat or similar structure. It’s maybe four hundred feet tall and triple that on either dimension of its square base. However, I know from experience that space is twisted whenever the System wishes it to be such. I have to assume it’ll be much, much larger, with levels that go far higher and/or lower than the visual distance indicates.

My head grows light. It seems a bit of altitude sickness is setting in. Kristil in particular isn’t taking it well. Lindsey pulls out a canteen of water and orders her to drink, which she does. Chloe and I turn to one another and follow suit, downing a few ounces of water to help our bodies acclimate.

As we stand around the entranceway, preparing for battle, Chloe approaches me and latches her arms around my mechanical left arm, pulling me toward her. I turn to her, and as soon as I open my mouth to ask her a question, she stands on her tiptoes and plants a kiss upon my lips. Lindsey shakes her head, Kristil rolls her eyes, and I’m left blissfully befuddled in the middle of it.

“I’ll take the front,” I say.

I slip away from Chloe’s embrace and ready my [Mechanical Arm Cannon] for battle. Chloe taps me with her [Angelic Blessing] and walks just behind me, her hands grazing against my back as she flickers on her [Ethersight] to look around. Kristil follows, a thin glow of violet lightning at her fingertips, providing a bit of extra light to supplement my own. And Lindsey takes the rear, her bow drawn and an arrow nocked, her eyes always in motion.

The entrance stretches high, its rectangular maw like a monolith towering to a good twenty-five feet. And though I expect the inside to be completely dark, it’s not. Tiny slits in the walls let in just enough light that I can see vague impressions of shapes and muted colors without my [Ethersight]. With it, I can see perfectly, at least out to the edge of its meager range.

Upon the walls are statues and some strange stone structures that look like they might be sarcophagi. That is… odd. Why evoke the iconography of Ancient Egypt or maybe Mesopotamia here on a floating island in the middle of the United States? I dare not try to match wits with the System’s intellect, but ponder in the back of my mind what it might forebode going forward.

No creatures approach us in this antechamber of golden treasure. Save for our footsteps and the sound of our breaths, it’s eerily quiet. I approach the middle of the room, upon which a circular dais lies. Upon it is a pedestal, which I brush the top of and begin to read the glyphs thereon as best I can.

“Herein lies great… wealth, I think,” I start. “A monument to the kings of old who… coveted?” Maybe, based on context, I mutter. “Who coveted jewels and gold and the symbols of their divine annunciation. But like Ozymandias, all those kings of yore crumbled to dust, most forgotten in the annals of history. Do not relive their folly.

“Within these walls, you will find great treasure and temptation. Be forewarned, your wealth will weigh you down. Peril and calamity will befall you in proportion to that which you take. With empty pockets, walk through every room without fear. But those weighed down by the wealth found here may find themselves losing more than just the gains they seek.”

“So it’s a test," Lindsey says. “Do we want to just stroll to the boss, defeat it, gain our Experience, and call the dungeon cleared, or try for treasure and risk being strangled by it?”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Chloe says. “I don’t think we should take nothing, but taking too much is risky. It’s a question of how much risk we’re willing to tolerate.”

“I don’t like it,” Kristil says. “There’s no trying to value our lives against treasure. We should take only what we absolutely have to.”

“One other factor to consider,” I add, rejoining the others off the pedestal. “The amount of Experience we gain here is tied to the difficulty of the battles we fight. Take too little and we will deprive ourselves of more than just better gear for the battles ahead.”

“Can we lighten our load if we decide we’ve taken too much?” Kristil asks.

“Who knows?” Lindsey replies. “We’ve got a sample size of one dungeon to work with so far, and it didn’t have any such stipulation that I’m aware of. We should assume not until proven otherwise.”

I pick up a coin of silver off the ground. It’s heavy. Heavier than I expect of such a coin, but then again, silver is far denser than iron, let alone the alloy which makes up my left arm. I drop the coin, and it slips out of my hand and onto the ground below just fine. I check my pockets, wondering for a moment if such trinkets have a mind of their own, wanting to be taken and refusing to be let go of. A certain Ring comes to mind as an example of such sapient artifacts.

My pockets remain empty, and if it somehow slipped into my bag through the System’s power, I don’t notice the change in weight. A promising result to the experiment, but far from conclusive proof of anything.

With hardened resolve, we push into a narrow hallway leading into the next chamber. Immediately, I hear a click, followed by a whooshing sound and an arrow going just behind the back of my head.

“Floor traps,” Lindsey says. “One right here. Chloe stepped on it. Good reflexes, by the way, both of you.”

Gotta hand it to the passive effect of my [Bullet Time] skill, helping me dodge these projectiles even without being consciously aware of their presence. I consider activating it as well, but I’m stopped when I feel the regeneration-sapping effect of the dungeon in effect. Strangely, it doesn’t halve the bonus regeneration granted by my [Crude Ring of Regeneration], meaning I have close to three-quarters of what I should have, rather than half. That line about possibly backfiring on me hasn’t left the back of my mind, but the bonus it provides is too good to pass up.

Oh well, it’s likely to only cost a hand, which wouldn’t be so bad. Except it’s the only one I have left that can properly caress Chloe’s cheek when she needs comfort. My mechanical arm meets or exceeds my previous one’s capabilities in nearly every regard, but it doesn’t quite provide the same comforting human touch. But maybe it doesn’t have to. Chloe accepted me for me, alien, cyborg, and everything else included.

My musing is cut short by the roar of a monster in the next room. I suppress a sigh. What will we be fighting today? A sphinx? Mayhaps a manticore? I try to cycle through my admittedly lacking knowledge of Egyptian and near-Eastern mythology, scrambling with possible ideas for what we’ll be up against, along with any weaknesses or domains that those creatures might possess.

What we see is something I am unfamiliar with. A creature sitting on a throne in the center of a large room. Its body looks vaguely humanoid, but with two pairs of wings off his back, talons for arms, and… gross. As it stands up, I shudder. Why does this naked male creature have to be anatomically correct? And why can’t he put on some goddess-damned clothes already! Adrenaline keeps me from hurling from the disgusting stench, but only barely.

He’s about twelve feet tall, with a mouth snarling like a rabid dog’s. Wind whips around him like a tornado, likely capable of deflecting projectile attacks. Like those all of us use. I don’t doubt for a second that his wind can deflect lightning and even light, despite plenty of experiments confirming that light travels through space independent of a long-debunked luminiferous ether.

Another roar bellows out as we emerge into the main room, a rectangular chamber comparable in size to a football field, and at least fifty feet tall. Two large skylights high above shine sunlight down upon the central dais. The creature raises its right arm, sending the gale about him into a raging tempest.

He attacks with swiftness belying his size. Lindsey rushes in front to defend, but the residual tempests still damage Chloe and I, the wind like dozens of swirling razors that find purchase in our skin and flesh. Chloe’s healing is keeping the damage superficial, but it doesn’t keep it from stinging to the high hells.

I go for the [Attraction] setting of my [Mechanical Arm Cannon], reasoning that it might counteract the natural repulsion tendencies of this monster’s wind barrier. After sidestepping out of the way of Lindsey’s aegis, I launch my blast, aiming a bit to the left of the creature to take advantage of the counterclockwise rotation of its barrier. The attack connects as I’d hoped, but it doesn’t do much damage to the creature.

I ready another round, this time Manifesting the [Impulse] glyph to push extra forward momentum into the attack. I have to adjust the trajectory ever so slightly to accommodate the faster velocity and decreased time in midair, but not too much that the blowback falls in Lindsey’s face. With [Bullet Time] briefly active to give myself another split-second to properly aim, I release my attack.

It does some damage this time around. But not nearly enough. And, despite my attempts to aim properly, Lindsey does suffer a modest amount of blowback damage, which Chloe quickly heals.

I grit my teeth in frustration. How do I move forward from here?

My options are to dispel the wind somehow, or try to launch an attack from above, where the rotation will focus the blast upon the monster rather than deflect it. But I can’t fly. Not without invoking [Seraphina Overlimit], which I can’t do right now. And it’s not like the System is going to provide me that information, considering it was a power concocted specifically to fight the System itself.

That leaves dispelling the wind or– There is one other option. My [Bandana of Swiftness], goofy though it may look, does give me some resistance against Wind-type attacks. And I bet my left arm is more structurally sound than most flesh and blood beings.

I leap into the fray, activating [Bullet Time] once more to slow down the effective speed and force I feel as I charge directly into the heart of the storm. My face is in pain from the razor wind and it’s a struggle to keep my eyes open as the excruciating pain of a scratched cornea fills my consciousness. But I power forward, embracing the pain, knowing that it fuels me and my drive to become strong enough to carry out the tasks I was meant to accomplish.

Once I’m in the wall of the eye, with winds so strong I can barely keep upright, let alone moving forward, I channel every bit of my meager [Strength] together and force my left arm into the eye of the storm. One barrage of [Repulsion Bullets] later and the winds have been completely vaporized. I fall back to the ground, my body cut and bloodied in a hundred places and my [Health] down to about one-third.

But I did my job, the four of us each doing what we could, and before long, the System notification confirms that we’ve completed the dungeon’s first trial.

[Your party has slain a Spawn of Pazuzu (Level 32). You have gained a boosted 8,100 Experience.]

[You have gained enough Experience to reach Level 28. [Vitality] +1, [Mind] +1. Please assign free stat points. (Remaining: 4).]

I put two of them into [Strength] and two of them into [Mind], reasoning that I’m going to need considerably more offensive capabilities to properly balance this party. The out-of-battle benefits improving my ability to haul larger quantities of gear— and in this dungeon especially, loot— influence my decision as well.

[Maximum Health increases by [Vitality] x2 + Current Level + Rand[1, 3] = 159]

[Maximum Ether increases by [Mind] + Current Level + Rand[0, 2] = 118]

[Level: 28; Experience: 177,495; To Next: 23,685]

[Current Stats: [Health]: 1,047 / 2,757 ; [Ether]: 1,047 / 1,775]

[Current Stats: [Strength]: 34 (27); [Speed]: 31 (25); [Vitality]: 81 (64); [Mind]: 111 (88)]

[Your [Ether Bullet Barrage (Rank I)] has upgraded to [Ether Bullet Barrage (Rank II).]