Cell One Zero T has been opened.
Prisoner escaping.
The mechanical voice had come from the darkness to his right. Merrick's cell seemed to be in the center of a long hallway that appeared to do little more than connect similar cells. The voice, even if the message was not positive, gave him a direction to move in. Before it broke the silence, he had simply been faced with the choice of walking toward the darkness to his left or right.
Merrick walked toward the mechanical voice and, after a few steps, a light started to glow ahead of him. It pierced the darkness quickly and it took Merrick's eyes a moment to adjust to what he was seeing. His first thought was that it had been a sort of motion activated torchlight, but as he took a few steps closer, he realized what he was seeing.
Some form of golem was powering up. None of his reading had prepared him for this. Merrick had scrolled through countless posts and threads of the Dungeons Below forums before loading the game. He had been trying to get a grasp on what types of enemies he would be coming up against and what they would look like. The only thing he managed to learn was that no enemy in this game could be taken lightly.
There was no user interface, notification, or pop-up that denoted an enemy in Dungeons Below. Even other players were only identifiable by their actions and not by some form of hovering text or gamer tag. Not only were the enemies themselves hard to identify, but they came in such a variety that made memorizing shapes, patterns, or avatars impossible.
One Adventurer had posted a screenshot of a goblin that they had encountered in a swamp-type dungeon. It looked like a stereotypical monster with its big head, even bigger ears, and tiny nimble goblin body. The screenshot was posted to highlight the weapon that the goblin had been using but the thread immediately devolved into conversations, with supporting screenshots, about how other Adventurers were seeing different types of goblins.
The thread had been locked by a moderator and from several context clues, Merrick could tell that some posts had been removed. There was mention of a Guardian's comment about the various lineages of kobold that they could place in their dungeon, but the Guardian's post was no longer visible. The last comment on the thread was by a moderator, presumably the one who had locked it, reminding players that while sharing information is encouraged they should explore more of the game-world before trying to come to some sort of finite conclusion.
Even with the locked thread and missing comments Merrick could infer the conclusion that the players had been trying to reach before the moderator stepped in. There may have been no way to tell the difference between enemies when first starting the game, but that did not mean the player's could not learn. After an enemy was defeated, information was logged for that player about the specific foe.
There was no cap or progress bar for the knowledge, just that as players defeated more and more, they could use their system menu to view more information about that type foe. Merrick had no way of telling what type of golem was powering up in front of him, not until he defeated it, but he could tell that it was in fact an enemy and not part of the architecture. To know more, he would have to take it down.
In the dark the golem had looked vaguely humanoid, but as Merrick's eyes adjusted to the new glow, he could tell that his assessment had been off. Instead of standing up, the golem hovered off the ground and spun length-wise to face him. It had a nearly perfect spherical body with two long hooks that protruded from its back, wrapped around underneath and pointed forward like tusks.
Merrick's first thought was that they were stabilizers that assisted the golem's levitation. As the golem continued to power up, though, the energy coursing through the tusks seemed much more aggressive than that. They might help with hovering, but Merrick was certain that they also held some kind of ranged weapon.
There was only a single golem, as far as Merrick could see, but he had no way of telling if reinforcements were on the way. It had announced that a prisoner was escaping and that may have been an alarm to pull nearby enemies into this battle. At this point, all Merrick could do was take care of this golem and then assess the situation.
Drawing the mage's journal into one hand, Merrick flipped to the page that outlined the lightning bolt. Following the instructions on the page, he cast the spell as quickly as he could. Form a mental image of the spell. Call upon the latent energy of the surroundings. Recite the incantation written on the page. Merrick followed the three simplistic steps to surprising results.
With each step, he felt power rushing through his body. As he formed the mental image, a surge of energy moved from that image into his outstretched arm. As he called upon the energy around him, it coalesced into a storm cloud in his palm. Then as he finished the incantation, the storm cloud discharged at his direction.
Merrick instantly knew something was wrong. There was no way that had been a starting spell. The lightning bolt snapped through the air, disintegrated the golem, and continued on to obliterate half of the door behind the golem.
The air smelled like a mixture of salt and charred wood. The skin on Merrick's palm was raw and he could tell that he had lost some health. There was no time to check how much damage he had taken. Through the gaps in what remained of the door, two more floating golems were headed his way.
Through the door, one of them announced: Prisoner ID One Zero T return to your cell.
Title gained: Prisoner ID:10T
Merrick swept the notification away and flipped a page forward in the mage's journal. The lightning bolt could easily deal with the next two golems as well, but getting held up in a standoff would only be to his detriment. From the first spell, he knew that he had little control over the flow of energy as things stood and since he had taken damage, he could not simply stand here and fire off bolt after bolt of lightning.
The next page in what he had been considering his starting spell-book contained details on how to summon something called a dust mephit. He was not sure how the minor earth elemental would do in a fight, but Merrick was certain it could at least slow down the golems while he retreated back further in the hall to find another route. After all, supposedly spells get stronger the further you get into a spell-book, and this one came after the overly powerful lightning bolt.
Summoning the dust mephit seemed easy enough. However, the golems were not going to wait for him to finish the summoning. As he was halfway through opening the portal for the minor elemental to come through, one of the golems floated through the door.
As soon as the first golem cleared the door, a beam of heat lanced from its tusks and nearly cut through Merrick's side. Before another lance could be released or the second golem cleared the door, Merrick finished his summoning. Fortunately the summoning spell required an initial order for the dust mephit to carry out so there was no delay between summoning and action.
Merrick knew that he needed to get moving but he risked slowing down for a glance at his summoned creature as he moved. A cloud of dust rose from the ground and took the form of a grayish-brown imp. The mephit rushed forward toward the golems, long dust claws extended, and happily covered its master's retreat.
A heat lance grazed Merrick as soon as he turned away from the golems. It felt like someone had struck him with a four hundred degree football right on his shoulder blade. Ignoring the damage and hurrying back toward his cell, Merrick kept an eye out for alternate paths he could take.
Even if this was his dungeon to explore, it was also a prison. The game's lore made it clear that there was more going on here than just one Adventurer trying to escape. Historically speaking, prisons like this were not set up as a honeycomb of dead ends. It was more likely that he was in the middle of a path that the guards could patrol.
Merrick was also betting on his experience as a gamer that the system would not drop him on rails that required him to fight through waves of golems right off the bat. There was another way. He just had to find it.
It sounded more like gears grinding than fighting. Both the golems and the mephit were silent, the only sounds were the hiss of the heat lances and the collisions of rock and metal.
Back at his cell, Merrick knew what he would see inside. Instead he looked at the cell across the hall from his and kicked himself for missing it before. Unlike his starting position, that cell had a window. In the history of the Elemental Cage, the window must have been securely shut but now the grate hung loose on one side. The opening was large enough to fit through. The only thing between him and escape was the cell's door.
The key from his cell did not unlock the door. It had been a long shot, but he knew he had to try. A quick look back toward the fighting revealed a cloud of dust swarming from golem to golem. The mephit was keeping their attention by batting at their tusks with its dagger-like claws and forcing the heat lances to fire harmlessly into the floor or the ceiling.
Merrick opened up his status window quickly, clicked through to his skills list, and read through the first few to see what he could do about this door. Just like he remembered from his pre-reading, the Mage had three starting skills and he had unlocked a fourth when he summoned the dust mephit.
Two caught his eye immediately, they were the skills that had allowed his lightning bolt spell to work: Arcane Control and Minor Incantation. They were the Mage's ability to give form and function, respectively, to spells. With that in mind, Merrick did not bother coming up with a complex spell.
Instead he formed an image in his mind, called upon the latent energy around him, and spoke in the same tone as the incantation. "Arcane blast!"
It was not a proper spell but it was enough to release the gathered energy. His arm snapped back sore immediately as a blast of force struck the door in front of him. The cell's door shattered under pressure, the blast continued onward and knocked what was left of the window grate outward.
That was when he overheard one of the golems:
Reprioritizing. Escaping prisoner has found egress from the patrolled route.
The dust mephit did what it could; it held one of the two golems back, but the other one slipped through. In his mind, the encounter suddenly shifted from a battle to a race. With the golem trying to catch him before he could reach the finish line outside the open window.
Merrick darted through the open cell door and lifted himself up through the window as the golem sailed toward him. The window grate earlier had not made a sound when it fell outward so Merrick had exercised caution as he climbed. The window opened up to a narrow ledge that wrapped around to either side but did not offer much of a path for him to head along.
There was nothing ahead of him and a chasm stretched out into a void in front of his feet. His only choice from here was to climb and there was light shining down from above. Merrick took his chances.
His shoulder ached where the heat lance had struck him and his palm was still raw from the lightning bolt. It was slow going but Merrick forced himself to climb. After getting halfway up to the next ledge, Merrick realized his mistake.
The golem had followed him out the window and unlike him, it was able to hover alongside the wall just as easily as it had moved over the ground. Now, a pair of tusks were rising on him like spikes. Energy was pooling as the golem readied its heat lance. He had no way to dodge completely. Merrick did his best to avoid the attack without loosening his grip.
The lance burned up his back and for a moment Merrick forgot it was a game as his brain lived the pain of third degree burns. Taking one hand off the wall, Merrick stretched it downward toward the golem and cast the same improper spell as before.
The arcane blast broke the golem's tusks from its body and sent it spiraling into the void below. However, now Merrick could barely lift his arms steadily enough to climb. It took every ounce of his strength to lower himself back down to the floor he had just left.
Merrick did not hold onto his mistake for long. Even a professional gamer makes mistakes, especially when trying out a new game. He needed to test the boundaries of the game to see what was capable.
Instead, he wondered what kind of penalties would be imposed by the game based on his actions. Would more golems be summoned? Would the broken window merit further inspection? The more pressing matter at hand was the remaining golem that his dust mephit had been holding at bay.
He had taken down two of them so far, Merrick wondered if that was enough to learn some kind of weakness about them. According to what he had read, the bestiary was stored inside the game's system menu as a Knowledge Archive. In the relative safety of the cell adjacent to his own, Merrick opened up the system menu in the same way he viewed his own status window.
There were options for settings, friends lists, logging off, and finally the Knowledge Archive. Not surprisingly, Merrick's Knowledge Archive was mostly empty. To his understanding, the archive served more as a reference or index of what he had already experienced or learned in the game. It was a way of translating character knowledge to the player without some form of exposition or narration.
In Merrick's Knowledge Archive, there were only two categories: Constructs and Magic. A system notification popped up in front of the Knowledge Archive.
The Knowledge Archive cannot be accessed during combat with a feat such as Battle Plan or as a class such as Field Scholar.
Merrick swiped the notification aside and his Knowledge Archive closed with it. He tried to access it again, but got the same result. It seemed like he would need to deal with the remaining golem before he could learn more.