World Sphere - 216 - Secrets of the Goblin Vault

Chapter 216: Secrets Of The Goblin Vault

The expedition to the Goblin Vault took three days to pull together. I worked on the Bacon and Eggs, getting the skiffs ready and artificing six swivel aether cannons. I also attended classes and weapons training at the Dungeon Academy. Erin was shocked to see me back.

“Where have you been, Tarrant? Everyone thought you got kicked out.” Erin whispered to me in my ear low enough that Instructor Abraham couldn’t hear. “You know you can get kicked out if your attendance or evaluations are too low!”

I set up an invisible privacy screen around us so I could talk normally. “I have been working on imprinting some new spells.” Erin’s eyes bulged in fear until she realized what I had done.

“Tarrant! Wow!” Her head moved wildly around, causing the instructor to look at her table, and she froze, focusing respectfully on the professor. She talked while concentrating on the lecture. “We can hear him and he can’t hear us?! How many times did you evolve your spell?”

My privacy spell had reached level twenty-one, but it would take most mages a lifetime to evolve it so high. “I hit level three a while ago,” I said nonchalantly. 

“Two evolutions? One must be a one-way direction sound. What is the other?” Erin asked excitedly. I was impressed she was aware of the spell’s evolutions. The privacy spell was one of the core spells Sana liked all her students to learn.

“Anchor,” I replied. Erin punched my arm excitedly, once again drawing Abraham’s eyes.

“I bet you are making some silver on the side with that!” she whispered, even though it was unnecessary. Anchor allowed the mage to cast the spell and leave it unattended. I guess you could pay a mage to cast a fixed silence sphere—I could imagine the applications. I nodded, which Erin took as a yes. “You could be a real help at the parties. We had the city guard break up the last one because we were too loud.”

“Even in the dorms?” I asked.

“Have you not been paying attention to me? Autum lives in a loft near the south gate,” Erin said irritably. No, I had not been paying attention.

“I am going to drop the privacy screen. I want to ask Instructor Abraham how he dealt with fog in the dungeon he is talking about.” Abraham’s tangents were more interesting than the lecture, and there were a lot of types of dungeon fog, some very dangerous. I think I liked the effort Erin put in trying to befriend me so I put up with her.

While preparing for the expedition, I used the gold and platinum I had taken from the Bruton skyships to craft feather fallrings for the Skyholme Navy. Since the rings were so small, the runic script was tinyis, and most artificers could not attempt even simple artifacts. A stylus with a fine point could be used, but one mistake would ruin the pattern. That meant that only artificers capable of manipulating metal had a chance at making enchanted rings.

There were four other artificers in Skyholme who could make the rings, but their limited spellcraft made it intensive work that took them days. Having made so many, I could make four or five every hour, depending on how focused I was. Still, my time was limited, so I only handed off forty of the rings to Admiral Sebastian before the Bacon and Eggs lifted off. Bleiz, Neoma, and Thibault were shadowing us in the Maelstrom. 

I was on the Bacon and Eggs for the moment, but I only planned to hunt some bulettes and see if the bread cured the goblins of their affliction. Sana and I talked on the top deck during the trip to the dungeon frequently. “I love the new skyship smell,” she teased. “I was expecting it to smell like greasy bacon.”

“You can always walk to the dungeon, Sana,” I replied with the same humor.

“It is a sturdy ship. Perfect for its intended purpose. I think you will be impressed by the students we brought,” Sana said. She was using this dungeon evaluation as a field trip for some of the more promising students in the Academy.

“I don’t have time to watch them. I will be leaving on the Maelstrom after we test your theory about the bread,” I informed her.

Sana sighed, “Don’t get your hopes up. Most likely, the bread will heal the plague, but nothing will change much in the dungeon. Maybe something unique would occur if the dungeon were more extensive than just two levels.”

One of the skiffs shot out from below us, and I groaned. Bekah, the wolfkin pilot, was taking the gunners out for some more target practice again. We didn’t have trained crews on the Bacon and Eggs, and the attack skiffs were a new concept for Skyholme. This was her fourth practice run, and every time she came back, she wanted the runes on the skiff altered.

The first time she wanted to perform a corkscrew flight pattern while keeping the skiff facing the target during the maneuver. This meant I had to increase the grav-runes so the passengers wouldn’t fall out. The second time, she wanted the ability to break instantly, which required me to add another series of inertia runs. The third time, she wanted her own swivel gun mounted fore—I told her to focus on flying and let the two gunner crews handle the attacking.

The aether crystal powering the skiff had plenty of surplus capacity for her desires, and I only acquiesced to her demands because I thought they were a good idea. For most navies, all these upgrades would be cost-prohibitive for a small craft that could be destroyed with a single strike.

I added as much defensive capability as I could: a light aether shield, a simple chameleon effect since I didn’t have enough room for true invisibility runes, and a thermostatic envelope that should greatly mute heat or fire attacks. Given that the skiffs had a completely exposed deck, being stationed on them was a dangerous proposition in traditional sky combat.

We watched the skiff twist and turn as they dropped targets and then dashed after them, trying to hit them with the aether cannon. Rebekah had been lucky to find two gunner crews just as crazy as she was. One consisted of a pair of young brothers who had just finished their first year at the Academy. The other pair were old guard veterans Mia had recruited. I think she said they were looking for any job that would get them off the islands and away from their wives. 

When the skiff returned to the belly of the Bacon and Eggs I waited on deck for Rebekah. She came skipping up to me, her wolfish smile ready to make a request. “They are getting better,” the young Wolfsguard said of her gunners.

“And?” I asked as she rocked back and forth on her feet, unable to stay still.

“I was thinking about your practice yesterday. When you throw those stones and they burst into light,” Rebekah said. She was referring to my stones that had an alarm spell on them that flashed when they struck the ground. I could add a loud sound as well. I had been practicing against the academy instructors that had come to chaperon the 

“And?” I asked.

“You said you couldn’t give me cannons as the pilot. What about a bright light to blind the enemy?” She said excitedly. 

That was actually not a terrible idea. Some type of dish to focus the light forward, and it would not take a lot of aether to affect something of intense brightness. Very few navies in the Sphere would have a defense against it. “I will consider it.” She bounded off happy and knew not to press me on it.

We reached the black sand desert around the dungeon entrance, which was covered with hundreds of square miles of dead trees. We tracked one of the bulettes, and I let the skiff try its swivel cannons against it. Rebekah flew upside down because she could as she shadowed one of the creatures. Its dorsal fin barely showed as it searched for prey. A monstrous scorpion erupted from the sand and tried to run. It stood no chance as the land shark closed. 

When the bulette launched itself in a spray of black particles, Rebekah dropped the skiff rapidly, and the cannons opened fire. The two gunnery crews quickly locked onto the bewildered beast. Holes were burned into the hard shell, and flesh was blasted away in chunks. The creature stood no chance. It failed to get under the sand to safety, and the blasts focused on the head until they were sure it was dead.

“Send the skiff after the scorpion and get the second skiff in the air to cover the harvest crew!” The captain bellowed. The captain of the Bacon and Eggs was Pakkam’s first officer on the Night Wraith, Balken. It was a temporary transfer, and he had twenty Skyguard under his command to make sure the expedition was in good hands.

After the harvest, we landed at the dungeon entrance on the rocky ledge. It would just be Bleiz, Sana, me, and the cats entering the dungeon for this first run. The thick fog and dead trees greeted us on the other side.

“Hunt?” Kiara asked through our link.

“Not this time,” I said but thought she would have figured it out.

I produced a massive bag of rolls we had backed with the floor and the mashed up grubs from the dead trees we now looked at. Bleiz looked skeptical, “How are you going to get the goblins to eat them? Hold them down and shove it down their throats?”

I smiled at him, “actually I thought you and me could wander the woods invisible and drop them like bread crumbs.” Bleiz groaned as I handed him a bag of rolls.

The cats didn’t like being left behind, but if we got into any trouble, they could reach us quickly. Bleiz circled right while I went left, and it took me an hour to empty my bag and avoid the patrols. “What took you so long?” Bleiz asked as I returned. I ignored the question, as he was just trying to brag about how fast he had been. I could have used lightning reflexes and finished quickly, but I wouldn’t have been able to sustain my invisibility.

“Now what?” I asked Sana since this was her plan.

“We wait,” she said, like it was common sense. “Maybe half a day. Then we hunt and see if the goblins have changed.”

While we waited, I harvested some of the grubs from trees near the dungeon exit. They were gross things the size of my forearm that wiggled in your hand when you extracted them. I was shocked they made the bread taste somewhat good.

“Do you smell that?” Bleiz asked. I couldn’t smell anything. “Is the creepy fog thinning?” He added.

“I think he is right,” Sana said, intrigued. We started to head into the woods, and I held the cats back from rampaging. I could smell the difference now as well. The air didn’t smell rancid and like rotting meat. A pale green goblin raced through the trees ahead of us and didn’t attack. We all looked at each other, confused. 

“Looks cured,” Bleiz remarked as the goblin disappeared in the black trunks. “We should have encountered more goblins by now, though.”

“Maybe they all retreated to the hobgoblin chieftain,” I speculated. The last time we took on this dungeon, the floor boss was a plagued goblin chieftain who cursed us before the battle started. His attendants turned into rapid wolves in support. “Let’s go straight there,” I decided, and led my group through the woods. We could see much further into the black forest with the fog gone.

“I don’t see any bread,” Bleiz noted. The goblins had collected everything we had dropped. We discussed the implications, but even Sana did not have a good answer about what we might find.

The hobgoblin on the throne had raw skin but was still obese. The last time I fought him, he had a short monologue. He didn’t disappoint this time either. “You cannot pass Invader. But you have cured my people of the blight, for that I am grateful. You have not killed a single member of my tribe. If you wish to continue, I will fight your champion—if he—or she—defeats me, you may pass.

His harem of females studied us but remained behind. Other goblins flitted around behind the throne as if seeking the chieftain's protection. “This is fantastic! I think this is a puzzle dungeon!” Sana said. It has to be—an unusual puzzle dungeon, but a puzzle dungeon.

“Do we kill him then? He seems almost friendly,” I asked her.

“Noticed he stressed we didn’t kill his people after they were cured. I think we subdue him,” Sana said confidently.

“Do you think there will be a codex page reward for this?” I asked her.

“Probably not—but maybe if we are the first one to complete this dungeon as intended.” She winked at me, indicating that mentioning the codex page was smart. The dungeon could understand us and now knew what we truly wanted.

I stepped forward to accept the chieftain’s challenge as his bulk rose from the wooden throne. I would like to say he presented a challenge, but with my lightning reflexes maxed, I beat him down until he couldn’t move. “Do you wish to continue? Or will you let us pass?” I asked calmly.

“You would spare my life?” He said as he spat teeth and blood. Even cured of the plague he was ugly.

“If you let us pass, yes.” I replied after getting a nod from Sana.

“They may pass,” he said struggling to his feet and addressing the assembled goblins. There were a lot more now than when we started the fight. They parted and allowed us to proceed. A dungeon reward chest was at the top of the stairs to the second level. 

With giddiness, Sana opened it, and she was disappointed. “No spell book, just a dungeon essence and some silver.” She handed me the essence, and I read the runic script.

Sana snatched it back and read it to confirm, “A tier one essence, but a good one. A tier one aether core awakening.”

“From this dungeon?” She said, amazed.

Most people didn’t awaken an aether core, so they never had a spell matrix to inscribe spells on. This dungeon essence could allow people to form a core. This dungeon suddenly got much more valuable. The question was if it was repeatable and if this dropped at a decent rate. It would still be worth the effort if it only dropped once every hundred clears, but the dungeon would be less valuable.

We descended to the second level, and the bright faux sun illuminated the golden fields of wheat. I had the scythes ready, and we started to harvest the wheat. I put a time limit on our time and even used lightning reflexes when Bleiz challenged me to harvest the most. The cats prowled the wheat, hunting the rabbits and snakes as we moved toward the dark tree in the center of the room.

I noticed the difference first, “The treant has a green leaf on one of its branches.”

“Was that not there last time?” Sana asked.

“I am positive it wasn’t.” I replied. “Do you kill it?” I wanted the dark treantwood for skyship construction. Sana debated in her head for a long time before she nodded.

A short battle later, an artificed saw in hand, we rolled the massive trunk into my space. The reward chest didn’t contain a spellbook, just a black wooden club and coins. This was the most common reward from this boss, if I remembered correctly. The club inflicted a slight necrotic effect when you struck a creature. After enough hits, the creature would become a plague carrier.

Sana was disappointed as we left the dungeon. That quickly changed when the skiff picked us up to bring us to the Bacon and Eggs above. As we lifted off, Rebekah asked, “Is that suppose to happen?”

We looked where she had pointed, and a small patch of black sand had turned white. While we hovered over it to examine it, the black was slowly consuming the white sand. Sana was grinning madly, “Now I do say this is one of the most interesting dungeons I have ever studied. Affecting the space outside its domain? Or maybe the black sand is part of its domain. It is obviously an invitation to purge the black sand.”

“Then maybe we get a codex page?” I asked.

Sana grinned, “Maybe, then.”

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