Maid with Necromancy

“Enjoy the dive, Eternal.”

There went the hope that her new title from The Ascendant Games would supersede that mystery one straight down the drain.  Why couldn’t she be Rebel, or Challenger, or even the full title of Rebel Challenger? Maybe after she cleared up the adverse condition, it would be fixed. Records of entering the dungeon would be kept private at least unless she didn’t return within a day.

Harmony snatched the complimentary bag of healing potions off the entrance booth for Oorty’s Tomb.  Both she and Adic had masks, and she’d increased her size to be a head taller than her pet, and they both wore long hooded robes. Adric was essentially naked under his, while she had Night on.  Armor and a weapon were some of the first things she’d buy for her pet. Hyacinth told her she’d pulled the man out of a wood nymph’s room at the stables. Maybe after proper clothes.

Harmony resized to school standard and removed her robe as they went down the stairs. The directions were simple. Every floor was five levels, and similar to old bones, they assigned you the oldest level to clear. If you completed the level and chose to go deeper, you had more freedom about which of the next five levels you could choose.  

The first floor started with a taste of the most common opponents you would face, one armored guard. After that, it would slowly increase, two, two again, three, and so on. They'd come out of hatches in the wall. After the fifth batch of five guards, you could face the floor guardian. The first floor didn’t even have any traps. It was spacious enough that you should see them coming as each floor looked like an extremely wide and long empty hallway.

Yet, the combat that killed most students was when teams first entered the dungeon and faced that lone guard. That was part of the statistics displayed in the seminar to scare people. That one in forty times, when a group of five students, with a month of training as a team before entering, had a member die on the first encounter.   Not counting the deaths, Harmony considered clandestine murders.  

Harmony, as the most protected, because she wasn’t naked, was the bait. Adric's protests that he was faster were shushed by the resized Bowe. “I’ve dreamed of danger here. Listen to your master.” He growled.

The coatl had the pair traveling along the ceiling of the level, the dragon's claws punching small holes into the metal to grip . Bowe couldn't stay in one place for long because the metal walls of the dungeon repaired themselves quickly. Adric’s rider skills allowed him to stay securely attached, leaving them as a scout who could drop down from above if needed.

The panel opening was utterly silent. A slight shift in the still air announced the change to the environment with the hint of a breeze across her cheek. Where? Hyacinth didn't have time to croak, but [Familiar Bond] relayed the general direction of the ambush, and that it was bloody fast.

Harmony twisted to adjust her leg and arm to manage the attack on her right blindside, a quick twitch before she managed to swing her head around.  

Crack!

Lessons from the seminar were taken to heart as she didn't need to see the blow to know it would be a blow aimed to cripple her arm or leg, so mechanical that the blind adjustment was enough to avoid the more fragile joints. Not all armors in the projected images survived those blows, even when they hit where the armor was heaviest.

Pain radiated through Harmony’s shin. Feeling a blow through Night was rare, and this one would leave a bruise. That was just the opening move.

Harmony danced backward from the second and third blows, not able to fully dodge the next punch and kick, merely deflecting their momentum. [Keen Investigative Awareness] broke down the guard's fighting style further with every strike.

These opponents were slightly faster than Adric's unboosted speed. If she wasn't used to training against that and didn't know how the dungeon monsters liked to fight, it would be hard to pick up on which limb it used to attack or what it was aiming for.

Annoyingly, there was nothing for [Manipulate Dead] to work on. It had no skin, hair, or nails as the biological and control components were all encased in the metal body. It was still living, with three yet-to-be-used skills, inside a rudimentary soul container.

“Sit,” it ordered in a tin-sounding voice.

[Command Sit] and the eight other possible skills guards had were in the supplemental documentation for the seminar. Fighting the command would be a mistake. Harmony dropped to the floor and rolled backwards, hopping back to her feet.  Eliminating the strong suggestion by acquiescing and immediately acting.

The follow-up attack wasn't as easily resolved. An ark of lightning crossed the distance she'd managed to make. Night’s slick black covering resisted it some. Her vital body gave a jerk, and her mouth tasted of a little bit of blood mixed with an odd, sharp, acidic taste.  Hyacinth and [Stride Before the Fall] were ready if this was worse. The skill negation that came with [Shocking Silence] was complicated by the physical disruption; there was no snapping back to perfect form based on memory or practice after that jolt.

The defensive dodge was more turtling, as Harmony took another bone-shaking, bruise-making blow on her forearm. But in that time, she’d accepted the silence and shook it off.  That meant she’d broken the effect in far less than the five seconds that came with the textbook definition of that attack.

[Cold Touch] mixed with [Mend] to lock the guard in a thin layer of super-hard ice as Harmony’s first attack. This was not to put the guard out of commission but to get a better picture of the final skill it had she’d seen in her soul sight. [Break Restraint]’s magical release shattered the covering so completely that the guard was shaking off fine, snow-like ice as it moved in for another attack.  Thankfully, the skills only worked on about a thirty-second timer.

[Keen Investigative Awareness] had seen enough. This first taste, with limited skills and support, revealed a physically dominating foe that she didn’t want  to see land a solid punch on either Hyacinth, Bowe, or Adric.  Tangling with more than one would be difficult. One needed to be methodical and have a solid plan.

The seminar hadn’t only been about trying to scare students away from diving into Oorty’s Tomb, they also informed you on how to efficiently decommission the guards. They were powered by a control crystal and a pseudo-brain as redundant systems, so you needed to take out both to put them down. The Pseudo brain was in the head, so simple decapitation would take that out, but the control crystal rested in a heavily armored block in its upper right chest.

Chronostasis kicked in, so she’d have ample mental time to remove this mess.  Deflect the blow and get in close. [Mana Rotation] boosted [Disintegrate] into a static field around her hands. It only needed to soften the metal. Her right hand gabbled and softened the humanoid guard's neck while her left hand punched into its shoulder, grabbing the control crystal. Separating the brain and crystal was as difficult as pulling them apart with all of her strength.  

The head came off, but the crystal stayed anchored in despite the softening. The force cracked the crystal inside the casing, causing the garud to slump over while her hand was still inside. “Rotting bad luck.” Harmony cursed. An intact control crystal was one of the more valuable things you could harvest.

Bowe dropped from the ceiling, doing a flip mid-air to land on his feet. “I think you did pretty well for your first attempt at fighting one.”

“Taking one of those punches really hurts. I don’t want you taking a chance at soloing until we get you a weapon and armor.”

Harmony prepped the corpse for processing. At some point, she’ll figure out a way to non-suspiciously harvest the other skills it had. [Claim the Remains of Power] pocketed [Shocking Silence]. It was nice to feel more whole.

Harmony did the gruesome task of hollowing out the guard.  There were plenty of undamaged nerve tendons she cut to match what had been recommended for harvesting. The gooey guts, which included swallowing the degrading container with the remaining skills, along with the flesh, were swallowed by Bowe. Returning to a bigger size made him hungry.

The armor, despite its solid quality, was sold at scrap prices due to the abundance, though one as intact as this one could be sold at a slightly better price to artificers, puppeteers, and golem masters so they could make the kind of workers you saw in The Wardens Rest.

Harmony had a different plan. “Ahem.”

Adric turned around so she could remove Night and resize herself to put on the armor while using [Disintegrate] to create a little extra space in the areas where it was needed.  No one could ever mistake her for one of the guards, but Night swallowed the whole bloody set as it re-equipped and began feeding off the metal.  Maybe if it weren’t so hungry, those blows wouldn’t have hurt as much.

“Plan A or Plan B?” Adric asked as he gathered the harvested materials and strapped them to Bowe.

If she hadn’t been able to handle one, as rough as that went, they wouldn’t have either option. They needed money. The safest plan had her taking the first solo encounter on each of the five levels of the first floor, leaving them with five guards' corpses total to harvest for money. Getting the command crystals wouldn’t be that easy.   “Plan B”

They resumed their formation, Hyacinth lurking about, and the prince and his dragon on the ceiling.  The sudden air shift was enough warning to summon [Stride Before the Fall]. Moving the combat from one-on-one to two-on-two was a planned, well-matched situation. Or should have been. The second Harmony couldn’t draw its guard’s attention. It swung wide, and  the first Harmony found herself pinched between two guards quicker than she could pull one off.

[Final Silence] shot out to the individual targets, but not before. [Energy Restraint] from the first guard shackled her feet together, and [Summon Club] gave the other a weapon.

[Shadowed Graves] attempted to pull focus back to the free version of her. Nothing.

The clean strike for harvesting their components was off the table. Even as the club smashed into her elbow, her free palm left a stored [Disintegrate] print on one guard's chest. Together, they crippled the other one even as it sacrificed its whole body to cave in her knee. She ripped off the head of the mobile guard with the club, but that didn’t slow it down as Harmony watched the club cave in her skull.

Hyacinth leapt in, getting large and pinning the headless guard down as Harmony finished it off, grimly looking at the corpse of herself left behind.

Where the first battle was quick and efficient, this one was faster and messier.

“Harm!” Adric cried in horror as he and Bowe dropped down.

“I’ll live,” Harmony responded even as the memories of that death were fresh. Her pet prince hadn’t been in Nae’s Garden. He’d never seen her die again and again in a fashion this brutal. He’d been there for the ambush at the Harvest of Talents, but even that kill had been clean and contained. “Back to plan A.”

They left the dungeon with what they could gather from seven guards total and deposited the spoils at the guild for the standard rates. It was enough for some spending money as well as a few purchases before heading back to catch the last couple of hours of sleep. A sword rated for the first three floors for Adric, at his insistence, and shoes along with a good pair of pants for him, at Harmony’s.  

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