There were things I wanted to accomplish before they made the next attempt, things that I could only do by myself and not much time to get it all done. The first thing I did was go talk to the Magikist. After that, I found myself racing all over collecting what I needed. And once all that was done, I retreated into my inventory to do it.
Funny thing about my inventory: the food I stashed in there never spoiled. I had always wondered how that worked, and once I became Great Sage it had all become clear: time was different inside.
If you happen to possess a pocket dimension, and I highly recommend picking one up if you get the chance, you have the ability to control how fast time passes in there. The default is to make it pass so slowly that it’s almost like time is frozen, which is why any food is as fresh when you pull it out as it was when you put it in, no matter how long ago that was.
You can speed up time, too, like if you ever need to age something quickly. Just don’t forget to clear out the snacks first. Trust me, you don’t want to crank up the time so that weeks pass inside in the blink of an eye outside, only to discover later that you had left a ham sandwich in there to rot for weeks.
That was a purely hypothetical example, of course. I’d never do that. At least, not again.
You’d think that it would be an easy thing to disappear into the pocket dimension, slow down the time, and spend weeks, months, or even years inside while barely any time passes outside. You could go in not knowing, say, how to play the piano, then come out and all of a sudden you’re ready for Carnegie Hall. Nobody would know you’d spent years practicing in the pocket dimension, although they might wonder about why you suddenly look older.
This is what you’d call A Very Bad Idea. I don’t know the physics behind it, I don’t know if anyone does, but my Great Sage knowledge told me that farting around too much with time like that can do some peculiar things to your sanity.
But surely a little farting around couldn’t hurt, though, right?
Sigrid’s death in the dungeon had spurred me into wanting to make some items. I really wanted to have them done before the team tried the Shadow Dungeon again, but I’d had to spend a few days hunting down materials and there was no way I could get all the crafting done in the one day that remained. Not in real time anyway. But if I slowed down time in the inventory and did the work there, I could theoretically get it all done. It was a risky, ill-advised move, but I was determined. So that’s what I did.
I cloistered myself in my Fortress with all the mana crystals and potions I could scrape together, only coming out from time to time to make sure they hadn’t left on the dungeon raid yet.
On one such outing an unwelcome notification popped up.
System: Global notification – the Earth Dungeon has been solved and is now owned by Team Invictus
System: Team rankings have been updated
- Team Invictus 1005 points
- Team Player 1000 points
- Team Maple Leaf 720 points
- Team Spice 705 points
- Team N3m3sis 670 points
- Team Droogs 615 points (Tie)
- Team Legion 615 points (Tie)
- Team Overgeared 535 points
- Team Ninja 515 points
- Team Happy 505 points
- Team Karma 470 points
So much for being number one. Ah well, I think I did well considering I hadn’t been given a single point-earning team quest. Invictus should enjoy being top dogs while it lasts, though, because Team Maple Leaf should soon be toppling them out of the top spot once they beat the Shadow Dungeon. On the flip side, great to see Achmed’s crew rising in the ranks and Tiff’s bunch sticking close to the top, they must’ve earned a lot of points from the cult quest.
I couldn’t help wondering how news of the Earth Dungeon would affect the morale of my friends so I went to check on them. Good thing, too. They were not happy that Troy’s posse had won a dungeon before them and were raring to go raid the Shadow Dungeon again immediately, but I begged them to wait until tomorrow with the promise that it’d be well worth it. For some inexplicable reason, they agreed without asking any questions. Even Galahad.
Word got out that although not many of the team had survived to the end, nobody had actually died-died in the Invictus raid. Now that the Earth Dungeon had been beaten I was allowed to know its fatality factor: 90. My friends all took comfort from the thought that Invictus’ dungeon had been the easiest of them all, and I didn’t have the heart to tell them that the difficulty of the dungeon wasn’t necessarily reflected in its fatality factor.
By giving a better chance of respawning, a high fatality factor could mean it was easier, or it could mean it was so hard that you were expected to die a few times before conquering it, thereby making the odds of real death-death across all attempts a lot higher. And then there was the Void Dungeon, which was designed to kill you just once, permanently, with its crazy-low fatality factor. You weren’t likely to get a second chance, not that any rational person would want to go back into that ghastly place again anyway.
For the umpteenth time I struggled to understand why a lower fatality factor meant a lower chance of fatality. It should be called the survival factor if a high number means a high chance of surviving. I guess aliens have a thing for alliteration and a strange way of seeing things.
The next morning I emerged from my inventory feeling like utter crap. The first thing I did was take a bath; I may have neglected certain aspects of personal hygiene while I’d been working away in seclusion. I’d rather not say for how long. The dungeon raid wasn’t scheduled to start until later in the day so I had the time to indulge in the luxury of a long hot soak.
They’d planned to congregate in the courtyard and go over strategy one last time before raiding, so after cleaning up a bit I waited there for them to arrive.
I don’t know if it was excitement, exhaustion, or maybe a tiny bit of insanity from farting around with time, but I was pretty jittery when they started showing up. By the time Sigrid arrived with Jane, I was positively giddy.
I rushed over to them. “You’re here. Finally.”
Sigrid took one look at me and frowned. “You look like dogshit.”
“Yeah, I haven’t really slept much for a few days,” I said.
“But we saw you yesterday and you were fine,” Jane said.
“Oh, right. Well, since yesterday I’ve spent a few days in my inventory working on some stuff I want to show you.”
“I thought you said it was dangerous to do that,” Sigrid said, frown wrinkling into a full-blown scowl.
“Never mind that, come see what I did.”
“It can wait,” Sigrid said. “Show me after you’ve gone and had a nice long nap. Like, for an entire day.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve spent weeks working on this.”
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Sigrid narrowed her eyes at me even further. “I thought you said days.”
Oops.
“I thought you’d get mad if I told you how long for real,” I said, feeling every bit like a guilty schoolboy getting scolded by his teacher.
“Dummy. Fine, what’s so important that you have to show us right now?”
My mood instantly rocketed back to excitement. “Okay, so you know that tapestry of Elda Wildflower hanging in the conference tree in the elf village.”
“I remember it.”
“So you’ll remember that in the image she was wearing your armor. Did you notice she also had some other stuff?”
Sigrid’s eyes went wide. “Don’t tell me...”
“Waaaaait, let me finish. I asked Salvia about the rest of Elda’s gear. As it turns out, she did have some other very special items.”
“Please please say there’s a quest to collect them.”
“Waaaaaaaait. So I thought wouldn’t it be cool to reunite all of Elda Wildflower’s gear?”
“Like in a quest!”
“Waaaaaaaait. So I asked her where all that gear was.”
Sigrid and the others looked at me expectantly.
“We’re waaaaaiting,” Jane said.
I put on my best poker face. “It turns out that her various possessions have been kept all this time in the Magikist’s vault.” That was a total lie. “And it turns out that because I control the dungeon, I effectively own everything in it.” That part was true.
“Including stuff kept in a vault?” Sigrid said.
“Including stuff kept in a vault, yes.”
“That’s exceptionally and improbably convenient,” Jane said, pursing her lips.
She was right, of course. I would have been seriously disappointed with the game if it had just dumped Elda’s stuff onto me like that. When I asked Salvia about the items shortly after Jane and Sigrid went home from our sleepover, I actually had triggered a series of linked quests.
I didn’t want to tell them about these little missions to find and liberate each of Elda’s items in individual mini-dungeons because I’d completed them by myself and I figured Sigrid would be upset if she knew how much work I’d put into all this. The weeks I’d spent in the Fortress enchanting them was bad enough. Although, since I’m being completely honest, it wasn’t all that much work. Those quests didn’t seem that hard and didn’t take very long, but maybe that was just me.
Sigrid would have been even more upset that I hadn’t invited her to complete the missions with me. I had thought about doing that, it would have been more fun to do it together, but I was worried about time and wanted to speed-run the missions and, since I’m being truly and completely honest, having other people tag along would have only slowed me down. Besides, I wanted it to be a surprise.
Fun fact: I strongly suspected that Elda Wildflower’s equipment didn’t actually exist until I asked about it, and that System had made them up on the fly then spontaneously generated the quests to collect them. I had come to believe that a lot of this place was like that and only some of it was planned out, like the dungeons and certain large-scale, story influencing quests, and the rest was just chosen from a sort of random encounter table or completely fudged as needed. A true sandbox gaming environment.
“Come on, dude,” Jane said. “Don’t leave us hanging. Reach into that inventory of yours and let’s see the loot.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you right now that there were four special items in Elda Wildflower’s possession: her sword, her spear, her shield, and of course her armor. Which do you want to start with?”
“The sword!” Jane said before anyone else could get a word in.
Thwup! A gleaming sword appeared in my hand, long and slightly curved with a single very very very sharp edge. Picture a katana as interpreted by an elf. Sigrid practically drooled as she reached for it, but I pulled it away.
“Waaaaaaaait. Now I could have taken Elda’s stuff and given it to you as is. I mean, each one came with a decent power. But I didn’t want to do that.”
“You’re killing me,” Sigrid said, flexing her fingers greedily toward the sword.
“I wanted it to be special,” I said. “Extra special, even. So I did a little customization.”
“The elves let you do that?” Jane said.
“My dungeon, my sword,” I said, smacking myself in the chest like a caveman. “Anyway, Salvia liked the idea of Elda’s gear being reunited with the armor in the hands of a new hero, so this was all done with the elves’ blessings.”
Jane snorted. “Hero.” Sigrid stuck her tongue out.
“I now present you with what was once Elda Wildflower’s Mithril Sword and is now Sigrid Sorrensen’s Lightning Blade, one piece of the Winds of Change gear set.”
I held it out and Sigrid took it with trembling hands. I watched her closely, I wanted to see the moment she checked out its Status. It wasn’t hard to tell exactly when that was, her mouth dropped open and her eyes went as big as saucers.
“Daniel...holy shit.”
“What?” Jane said. “Come on, tell me what it does!”
“There’s too much. Just see for yourself,” Sigrid said, and shared the sword’s Status.
Sigrid Sorrensen’s Lightning Blade
This unique weapon was customized for the Shield Maiden herself from Elda Wildflower’s Mithril Sword, to help her protect her allies and punish her foes. It is part of the Winds Of Change unique item set, along with her armor, shield, crystal heart, and spear.
Powers:
Miracle Blade – Exceptionally sharp and unbreakable
Sizzle – Imbue the blade with lightning; Requires Competent mastery of Air Affinity
Thwup – Equip from or stow into pocket dimension
Set Powers:
Whoosh – Greatly increases defense when used solely to parry and block; Requires 3 of 5 set items
All Charged Up - Transform owner into living lightning; Requires Expert Air Affinity; Requires 5 of 5 set items
“Holy shit is right,” Jane said. “Well now we know who Daniel’s favorite is.”
“Daniel, it’s too much,” Sigrid said.
“Don’t say that now, we’re just getting started. We’ll do the spear next, but first, use Thwup.”
“What’s Thwup?” Sigrid said. “Oh I see.” Instantly, the sword vanished with the thwupping sound. “This is like your inventory, right?”
“Yes, but only for items in this set.”
“So I can do this?” Thwup! The sword reappeared in her hand. “Oh, me likey. It goes well with my item recall power.”
“Then you’ll love this.” The spear appeared in my hand, a long shaft made of polished mithril wood with a razor sharp mithril metal spearhead on the business end. I held it out to her. “Here, Sigrid Sorrensen’s Lightning Bolt.”
Sigrid Sorrensen’s Lightning Bolt
This unique weapon was crafted for the Shield Maiden herself from Elda Wildflower’s Lightning Spear to help her protect her allies and punish her foes. It is part of the Winds Of Change unique item set, along with her sword, shield, crystal heart, and armor.
Powers:
Crackle - Transform the entire weapon into a lightning bolt; Requires Adept mastery of Air Affinity
Thwip - Equip from or stow into pocket dimension
Was It Always This Big? - Extend or retract length of shaft
Set Powers:
Boom Booms - Shoot forked lightning from spearhead to strike multiple targets; Cooldown 1 minute; Requires Expert mastery of Air Affinity; Requires 3 of 5 set items
All Charged Up - Transform owner into living lightning; Requires Expert Air Affinity; Requires 5 of 5 set items
“Wow,” Jane said. “Make it Crackle!”
“Okay,” Sigrid said, and the entire spear transformed into a crackling shaft of electricity. Nasty when used as a melee weapon, but when thrown? Awesomely nasty.
Jane clapped her hands. “You’re like that guy. Whatshisname.”
“Who?” Sigrid said.
“You know, that guy.”
“Can you give me anything else to work with?”
“The god. With the lightning bolt. You know.”
“You mean Odin?” I said.
“Who’s he?”
“Zeus?” Sigrid said.
“Yes, him. That is so cool.”
Several others had noticed the crackling lightning bolt and had come over to see what was going on.
“Don’t just stand there,” Kay said, looking wide-eyed at Sigrid. “Give that sucker a toss.”
Sigrid turned to me. “Can I?”
“Sure, but I’d be careful where you toss it. Hey Morgan, can you make a nice solid target for Sigrid to hit?”
Morgan grinned at me. “With pleasure.” She trotted over to a clear space across the courtyard and used her power to create a human-shaped dummy made of clay. “How’s that?”
“That’s perfect,” I said.
Morgan scampered back and I gave her a high five. Then we all moved back behind Sigrid as she stood there with a six-foot long shaft of pure electrical energy crackling in her hand.
She lined up the target and hurled the lightning bolt at it. An instant later, there was a flash of light as the dummy blew apart into a thousand smoking shards of clay, and an instant after that the lightning bolt reappeared in her hand and transformed back into a spear as though nothing had happened.
“Yeah, that’ll work,” Jane said.
Up next: Siren’s song