System Change

Derek patiently waited for Tyron to recover, the whole time wondering if Brandi’s style of crafting was going to be as arduous mentally for her as it seemed to be for Tyron. Then again, Derek didn’t pretend to have not heard Tyron call him a monster. He guessed that the person the smith was crafting for usually ran out of mana to infuse into their weapon well before Tyron tired out mentally.

Unfortunately for Tyron, and fortunately for Derek and his almost complete glaive, Derek’s mentality was tested against the void for all those years, and his willpower was pretty extreme, at least according to Alanah. That, plus his wisdom being even better now than it used to be, made Derek terrifyingly proficient for the task.

And thus, two days passed as the smith recovered, and Derek waited. He never once thought that the raid dungeon would have such long bouts of boredom for himself, but at least he was well prepared with beverages, food from Silvi, and Greater Meditation if he ever needed to pass the time quickly.

Finally, Tyron stood from his sitting position and nodded at Derek, who had noticed the smith’s movement out of the corner of his eyes. With a twinge of excitement, Derek watched the smith head back over to his temporary workshop. The man would be finished soon, and he would finally have a weapon suitable for his fighting style. At least, he hoped.

A few hours passed, and Edgar showed up and seated himself across the table from Derek. The young prince had a grim and contemplative look on his face as he stared down at his hands.

“What is it?” Derek finally broke the silence. It wasn’t like Edgar to act this way.

“We’ve had our first casualty,” the prince said sullenly.

“What?” Derek blurted. “Someone died in the puzzle dungeon?” Derek felt his heart fall to his stomach. Not because they lost someone, but because someone he considered a friend had gone into the trial.

The trial had been a seven-person, rare puzzle-type trial. Along with Elena Webb, the group’s number one healer, Cain Ibarra, the Adventurer’s Guild Master from the capital, had led the trial. With the two of them, they took Timothy Nash, a low level, by raid team numbers, support-type class, Scarlet Mason, a level 230 archer-type class, Louise Bonilla, another archer who had leveled up greatly from the first trial, Layne Marshall, a level 232 sword wielder… and Shae Holmes.

Shae was another that had leveled greatly from the first trial. It also made sense why Cain had chosen him to go along, as the two had a good level of trust and respect for each other. So, when Cain asked, Shae agreed. Of course, he would agree. The rewards were just too good to pass up.

It was also in agreement that whatever the next trial was, the Greenland cousins would take charge of it, as they still hadn’t had a chance to go into any trial, and neither one of them was that keen on a puzzle trial.

So, when Derek heard that someone had been killed in the trial, he instantly thought about Shae.

“The contract I have with Layne Marshall has disappeared. That he died is just about the only explanation for that, based on how the contracts are,” the prince explained.

Derek let out an audible sigh of relief, which caused Edgar to flinch slightly. “Sorry,” he said. “Not to take the death lightly, but I didn’t know the guy. I do, however, know Shae. So I was relieved when you didn’t say his name.”

“I know,” Edgar said. “I just hate losing a party member in a dungeon. I especially hate it because of the fact that I wasn’t there to prevent it.”

“Yeah, but there was nothing you could do about it. Everyone made up their own mind to join, and they all made their own decision to go into that trial. Besides, the Guild Master of the Adventurer’s Guild in the capital, and Elena went with them. Plus, it was only a rare trial. Who would have thought something like this would have happened?”

Edgar just sighed. “So, how’s the weapon coming along?”

Happy for the change of subject, Derek replied, “It’s going well. Great, even. Should be finished in the next day or two. I can’t wait.”

“I can understand that,” the prince said. “Even though my sword wasn’t crafted for me, I counted down the days until I received it. There’s nothing quite like getting a weapon after waiting for what seems like forever.”

Derek nodded.

The next day, the trial orb from the puzzle trial acted up, and Edgar and Derek jumped on Blitz and took off toward the main camp. There were still a good dozen or so hours before Tyron said he would be finished with his weapon, so Derek wanted to go check on Shae and the others. He also wanted to know what happened in the trial.

In next to no time, Blitz made it to the camp. The more Derek rode on the wyvern, the more he enjoyed soaring through the air. He wasn’t able to stand without anything to stabilize himself like Edgar and Avery could, but he figured all that came with them being Dragon Riders now.

When they arrived, they were greeted by a group of ragged adventurers. The entire seven… well, six-man squad looked like they had been through hell. Cain’s robe was in tatters, and Elena’s was singed terribly. Shae was sitting close to the trial orbs, meditating. He actually looked a little better than the leaders of the trial. The two archers weren’t too bad off, a bit more ragged than Shae. Timothy, the support mage, however, looked like he was on his last breath.

In seconds, Tristan left Ciera’s side, who he was still helping to grow back her limb, and rushed over to the support mage and began healing. Edgar and Derek hopped off of Blitz and the other bystanders split to let them through.

“What happened?” Edgar asked. What he really meant, which Cain knew, was ‘what happened to Layne?’

“It was a maze,” Cain answered. “Each of us was put in a different starting position, and we had to make our way to the center. Then, from there, we had to race to the end within a time limit.”

“But it was a rare trial. Was it that hard?” Derek asked. He had personally experienced a legendary trial, and though it would have certainly killed most people, this trial was two ranks below that.

“At the beginning? No,” Cain explained. “It wasn’t bad at all. Just a maze filled with hundreds of traps. Scarlet and Louise had it easier than the rest of us with their scouting skills. They avoided most traps easily. Elena tanked through the first part of the maze, healing herself along the way. Shae was too fast for most of the traps to do anything, and like you said, it was a rare trial.”

Derek and Edgar nodded along with the Guild Master’s explanation. So far, everything he said made sense.

“For myself,” Cain continued. “It was a little harder. I’m not very tanky, and I don’t have the speed of Shae. Actually, I think I had the most difficulty out of the bunch in the first part of the trial. But I made it through fine, with only superficial wounds. Nothing Elena couldn’t deal with. Layne also made it through that part easy enough.

“Still, the first part of the trial took us eleven days to all meet up. I was the last one there, embarrassingly enough. I was hoping the puzzle trial would actually be us solving puzzles. That would have been easy. I hate that it threw us in a cage full of traps. Just because it’s a maze doesn’t mean it’s a puzzle.” Cain spat.

“Doesn’t sound very puzzle-like to me,” Edgar commented.

“Anyway, once we made it to the center of the maze, we received a notification. Once we moved forward, we couldn’t go back, and we had five days to complete it. For myself, that seemed like a death sentence, considering how long it took me to get through the first part.

“So, we rested up, got to one hundred percent, and began. We moved fast. With Scarlet and Louise. The second part of the trial wasn’t too bad. At least until the maze started collapsing onto us. The floors all around us fell, leaving nothing but giant holes of nothingness below. With a single misstep, Layne fell. I dove to try to get to him, but I’m not fast enough with my flight skill. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like Layne had such a skill.

“We weren’t even sure he was dead until we made it to the end of the trial. As a warrior, he would have been able to survive any such fall, as long as he didn’t land on a trap or something. Unfortunately, when we activated the orb, it verified that the entire party was there. And when we warped back here, he didn’t come with us…” Cain sighed and looked deeply at Edgar. “I am sorry.”

Edgar stepped forward and put his hand on Cain’s shoulder. “It seems like an accident, on top of the trial not being what any expected. Don’t blame yourself. Ultimately, it falls on me.”

“Still… for a puzzle trial to be like that. To have such a random possibility of death…” Derek muttered. What he didn’t say was that if he, Edgar, or Avery had been inside the trial with them, even if someone had fallen, based on what Cain said, they could have easily caught them. Vanessa would have been able to, too. Apparently, flying-type skills were quite rare.

“We’ll have to rethink our lineups,” Edgar said. “Put someone like Vanessa in to cover more weaknesses. We also know that we can’t trust the description of the trial.”

Everyone nodded. The crowd seemed much less enthusiastic about going into a trial now that they had their first casualty. Edgar should be able to use this, even as morose as it may be, as an excuse to send those powerful back in, even if they have already gotten great rewards.

“What about the rewards?” Derek asked. “If you don’t mind sharing. If you want to keep them to yourself, that’s fine.”

Cain snorted and flicked his hand, causing a small pile of potions to appear on the ground. Edgar whistled. Derek just looked at the potions, he was disappointed for them, but they didn’t seem all that disappointed.

“They were pretty much random, but are all the highest quality I’ve ever seen. No permanent stat increases, but plenty that could get someone out of a bind, along with high-quality resurrection potions, experience and skill increase potions, and much more. It’s quite the haul. They will work as great mission rewards at the guild.”

“Experience and skill increasing potion?” Derek asked. He’d never seen or heard of one of those, at least not in anything other than games he used to play. But a potion that increased the rate of skill increases would be worth a pretty penny.

“Yes,” Cain said. “The experience potions are great and all, but the skill increasing potion can be considered rarer than rare. Other than something that permanently boosts stats for someone who is already at max level, I can’t think of another potion that could compete with it.”

I can’t either, Derek thought. He was currently considering doing some trading now.

“We can talk about all that later,” Edgar said. “We need to see what’s next and prepare for it. A lot of time was spent on that trial. We’ve been in here for almost a month now, which is a year outside, yet we aren’t even halfway finished.”

With that, Edgar walked over to the newly active trial orb and placed his hand on it. “Fuck!” he said.

“What is it?” somebody asked.

“It’s a duel. One person, epic trial…”