Nightmare Realm Summoner

Alex’s back slammed into cold stone. He let out a grunt as two other bodies slammed down on top of him one after the other. The vile stench that had lingered in the air just moments ago had softened.

It was still there, but not nearly as thick as it had been. The scent of stale air and wet moss had replaced it. That didn’t stop Alex from grabbing for his power before his eyes had even fully finished opening.

He snapped upright, trying to unentangle himself from Alyssa and Claire as all three of them all attempted to scramble to their feet at the same time.

But nothing attacked them.

They were alone within a small stone room. Thick patches of yellow furry growth covered the walls and draped from the ceiling like swaying antenna. A single open doorway in one of the walls led into a tunnel that branched off to the right after just a few feet.

The room was silent save for their heavy breath. No breeze graced the air, and it was just cold enough to be slightly uncomfortable.

Alex swallowed. He scanned their surroundings once more, then extracted himself from Alyssa and Claire. The three of them all wordlessly rose to their feet. No trace of the portal that had deposited them here remained.

There was nothing but walls and the hallway waiting for them.

“Don’t touch the moss,” Claire said, studying the ground cautiously. “It might try to kill us.”

“Might feels optimistic,” Alex said. He threw one more glance over his shoulder to make sure nothing else was coming after them. “That was fucking insane.”

Alyssa’s knuckles whitened as her grip tightened on her paintbrush. “This is nothing like what I thought. So many people died before we even got through the first room. Nobody said it would be this bad. It’s definitely not going to get easier.”

“Definitely not,” Alex agreed. He wiped at his nose with the back of a hand, trying to purge the vile scent lingering within it. The attempt was ineffective. “Something tells me we might not be welcome here. Just an inclination, though.”

“You think?” Alyssa asked dryly. She shuddered. “God. That room was awful. What the fuck is this place? I thought it was meant to be a dungeon. I was expecting something from an RPG. You know, like this. Not some horror movie shit.”

“Don’t get too optimistic yet,” Claire said, still watching the moss suspiciously. “There’s more than enough time for this area to get just as twisted as the last one. But I’m not liking the discrepancy between the two rooms.”

“Yeah,” Alex said with a small frown. “I thought dungeons usually have themes. Also, unlike the dungeons I’ve been in, I didn’t get any information about the Ancestry when we entered it.”

“That’s probably because it’s not System-made,” Alyssa said.

“Which means this is probably someone’s burial ground,” Claire said. “It’s the grave-style Ancestry.”

“What kind of sicko sets up defenses like that?” Alyssa grimaced in disgust. “That room was rancid. Who wants to surround their corpse with rot?”

“Someone who really doesn’t want anybody seeking them out,” Alex said. He grinned. “Which means it’s probably someone with shit worth stealing. I love grave robbery.”

“Is he always like this?” Alyssa asked, sending a glance at Clare.

“Yes,” Claire said.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m into it,” Claire said with a shrug. “We’ll all be dead at some point anyway. Might as well have a good time while we’re at it.”

Alyssa’s cheeks reddened and she glanced away. “I still can’t believe you two went off in the middle of a bargain with Bridget just to… you know.”

Claire smirked. Then she jerked her chin toward the exit waiting for them at the side of the room. “Head out of the gutter, Alyssa. We don’t have time for you to be thinking about anything other than the here and now. The only way is forward — and I didn’t come here to sit around and let other people get all the good shit before me.”

Alyssa swallowed. Then she gave them a nod. “Right. Let’s go. We should probably expect more traps. Probably some monsters.”

“Definitely some monsters,” Alex said, mirrored glass growing out to form a sword in both of his hands as he started toward the exit. “Let’s go greet them, shall we? I don’t want to run away from our next opponent.”

***

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As it turned out, the next section of the Ancestry was a maze.

The hallway quickly branched into two, and that into a dozen more. Their only company was the glowing yellow moss that twisted along the walls and hung from the ceilings. None of them could find any real difference in the pathways they took. All of them just looked like the exact same stone.

That would have been a lot more frustrating if they’d known where they were going.

Fortunately for their sanity, they didn’t. The three just wandered through the halls of the Ancestry, picking every path largely at random to avoid getting stuck in a pointless debate. Some of them led to more halls, while others led to rooms.

Rooms that, to Alex’s delight, had some breaks to the monotony waiting within them. Monsters of glowing moss wandered the halls of this part of the Ancestry along with all the would-be tomb raiders.

They, fortunately, were nowhere near as horrid as the previous room. Most of them were in the Adept stage. But, despite being theoretically strong enough to possess a domain, none of them ever utilized one. They posed little difficulty, and the three of them wiped out all the monsters in their path without any real problem.

Alex couldn’t help but note that the magical energy that came from killing the monsters wasn’t quite as much as he would have expected. It wasn’t bad per se, but it was just far less than an Adept tier monster should have given him.

Even the reduced challenge of fighting them with three people shouldn’t have reduced their rewards by this much.

But he wasn’t bothered. There was nothing to be gained by sitting around and wondering about what he couldn’t control. The real prize of the Ancestry wasn’t the random monsters. It was the treasure within it.

They just had to figure out where to look.

And it didn’t take them long before they got their first lead.

As they finished off a few monsters that had attacked upon their arrival to a new room, Alyssa called them over to a moss-covered wall.

“Take a look at this,” Alyssa said, squinting at the stone.

Alex looked.

It was a wall.

He said as much, earning him a flat stare from Alyssa for his troubles.

“I think I might have to side with Alex,” Claire said, her brow furrowed as she squinted to try and see what it was that Alyssa was looking at. “What did you find? I only see a wall.”

“Are you kidding?” Alyssa exclaimed in a sharp whisper. “Look at the bricks! The pattern is wrong! There’s clearly something off about this section of the wall.”

They looked like bricks.

“Er… right,” Alex said. “I’d ask you how you can tell, but I get the feeling I won’t get it. You think there’s a secret passage or something?”

“I don’t know,” Alyssa replied.

They all stared at the wall for a second. It still looked perfectly normal to Alex, but Alyssa was so confident that he was starting to doubt himself.

“We could try to poke it,” Alex offered.

“That would mean we’d touch the moss,” Claire said with a small frown. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I get the very strong feeling something will happen if we do that.”

“Probably,” Alyssa agreed.

They were all silent for several seconds.

“So… we’re poking it, right?” Alex asked.

“Yeah,” Alyssa said. “We’re poking it. We can’t not poke it. We came here for power, right? We’re not going to get that by sitting back. Anything hidden behind a secret wall is going to be worth the effort.”

“How do you think a secret wall got here in the first place?” Claire asked with a frown. “Isn’t this some guy’s grave? Did he spend time putting in cool puzzles before he died?”

“Probably the System,” Alyssa replied, still studying the wall intently. “I think it probably took the bits the guy left behind and ran with them.”

“Seems like a reasonable enough guess to me,” Alex said. He approached the wall cautiously. “You think that means the cool stuff in here is actually some dead guy’s? Or is the System seeding it with rewards of its own?”

“Maybe his ghost will be wandering around somewhere and we’ll be able to ask him,” Claire said. “I wouldn’t be all that surprised. Feels like something that could happen.”

“That’s definitely too contrived,” Alyssa said. “There’s no way, right? If there are ghosts, doesn’t that mean there’s no afterlife?”

Claire shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Maybe you can leave a ghost behind when you die and still go to an afterlife. I’m not the philosophical type.”

“I’m going to touch the moss,” Alex said. “Where was the door thing again, Alyssa?”

“There,” Alyssa said, pointing to a patch of the moss in front of her. It still looked exactly the same as all the others to Alex.

He walked up to it. Claire lowered into a fighting stance. Alyssa raised her brush before herself.

Alex touched the moss.

A rumble rolled through the room.

He took a step back, a glimmering mirror blade forming from his palm as a section of the wall peeled backward. Bricks tore away from the moss and furled in on themselves until a passageway had formed before them.

Dim green torchlight flickered from deep within the hallway. And, before any of them could say anything, a flash of red cut through the darkness.

Alex looked down as a floppy crimson carpet rolled to a stop just before them, leading through the hall and toward the light.

Huh. Alyssa was actually right. I wonder how she saw that.

He glanced over his shoulders at the others.

“Trap?” Alyssa guessed.

“Definitely,” Claire said. “Most obvious one I’ve ever seen.”

“But they did roll out a literal red carpet for us,” Alex pointed out.

“We’re going in, then?” Claire asked.

Alex grinned. “It would be rude to do anything else, don’t you think? We did poke the door. What if there’s something cool waiting for us?”

The carpet twitched slightly. Almost as if it was trying to make sure they hadn’t somehow missed the giant gaping pathway right in front of their noses.

None of them missed the motion. They all looked down at it, then back at each other.

“You think it’s gonna try to kill us?” Alyssa asked.

“Trying to kill me is just foreplay,” Claire replied, the corner of her lips curling into a grin. “And the trap is asking so politely. Alex is right. It feels rude to say no, doesn’t it? Let’s go see what we can loot from the dead guy.”