I was standing in the rain outside of a beastkin strip club in the middle of the night.
It started at the beginning of the day, I was still trying to figure out how I was going to cross some of the quests off so I could finally get some answers and decided to start with the hardest first. But Steven had to deal with some last minute notice stuff at the association before he could leave so I had to move onto the next hardest on the list, Skinny.
"Hey Skinny! You ever think about becoming a warrior again?" I asked Skinny as nice as possible.
"No! I couldn't go back to that." He said dismissively.
"Even if I did want to… I mean look at me!" He said slapping his huge beer belly.
"Hey there's nothing wrong with being plus size. I might not have always looked like a skeleton."
"Haha I guess that's true maybe you fell into a food coma!" Skinny joked. Usually I would have been upset but I could get a whole 10 seconds of time just by sticking to this conversation.
"That's true. Please can you become a warrior again? I mean what would it take for you to even consider."
"Why do you care so much all of a sudden?"
"Well we're not exactly swimming in credits right now and it would be useful if we could have more than one team able to do jobs. Also we can't exactly send Steven right now he isn't exactly the dungeon clearing type." I said still plotting in my head how I would turn Steven into a great warrior.
"Argh! Fine I'll give it a try but you have to do some stuff for me to even begin to consider it." Skinny said turning to me and trying to put his best business face on.
"Ok you name it!"
And that's how I ended up covering his shift as a bouncer in the middle of the night outside of a beastkin club. I tried to look on the bright side of the situation like at least I was seeing more of the city, at least I managed to find out what work kept making Skinny disappear every night and at least I would get 10 seconds out of this eventually.
But the more I had to stand there letting some of the most slimy individuals I've ever seen walk inside, because according to Skinny 'the nice looking ones are the worst', I struggled to keep optimistic.
It made me wish my ability allowed to me fast forward time instead of re-live it so In could just keep fast forwarding to the end of this shift.
When I was finally able to leave my post I didn't want to sleep I was ready to work Skinny as hard as I could.
Skinny's 3 conditions were: I needed to cover his shift, we needed to train and practice so he could get used to it again and finally just me and him needed to enter a dungeon and destroy it together.
I guessed he wanted to experience the process for himself or something.
So when I got back to the headquarters (basement) and saw that he was passed out on the floor after I had been covering his ass all night I was a little angry.
I kicked him a few times to wake him up and went to grab my cleaned (and stolen) gym clothes, it was time to break him down so I could build him up again.
We needed to go to a training room in the association that Skinny had blackmailed the use of for us. So he was surprised when I woke him hours earlier than we had scheduled for but it was time for me to get payback.
I told him that we weren't taking a bus or train he was going to run us there.
We got outside I climbed onto his back like a certain jedi master and told him to run to the association.
Every time he would slow down or began to take a break I would activate time loop and find either the right words to motivate him or where to hit him to make him go.
We ran for over 3 hours, we should have been waking up to get on the bus right now and instead we'd arrived at our destination.
We immediately had to go to the 3rd floor and buy him some sports drink and some breakfast.
However, after an hour's break we headed down to the basement to head into a free training room. I was a little worried that Skinny wouldn't be able to move let alone train but once he grabbed a heavy training axe he completely changed.
He switched from looking like a stiff breeze could take him out to a world class warrior. He destroyed one of the robotic monsters for training in less than a minute.
"Holy crap Skinny you're incredible!" I exclaimed bounding over to him after he had defeated his third monster via a high jump in the air and a crushing blow to their skull.
"Really you think so?!" He said embarrassed whilst scratching the back of his head.
"Umm yes! How did you ever become a porter with skills like those?!" I asked without really thinking.
Skinny looked a bit taken aback once I'd said this and gazed off to a far corner of the room, "I killed someone."
"Listen, Skinny, if you don't want to tell me you don't have to."
"No it's OK. I haven't just been out of the association for 10 months it's been 4 years actually."
I didn't know how to respond so I just decided to shut up and wait for him to finish his story.
"I was in a party with the chairman's granddaughter, Ella and she had this black hair, these dark blue eyes and everyone seemed to love her. She had just moved up a rank in the guild so we were put into a clearing party together. She was a beast tamer so she was looking for a new monster that she could use to get even stronger."
He really seemed to remember her I got the feeling he'd thought about this a lot.
"She wanted to tame this dragon boss but because of my inherent skill 'Blood Rage' I was raring to kill it, that's one she tried to jump in front of the monster to save it but in my rage I couldn't stop myself and I cut her in half."
"Holy shit Skinny!"
"I'd been working just a bouncer since then until Karson and Clarisse tracked me down. At first I wanted no part of it but they basically begged because they needed someone with good experience. I didn't want to join until they told me it was a guild of losers, a paladin who no one had any faith in, a witch who couldn't cast magic and I figured a fat ex-berserker would fit in great."
I saw a smile come to his lips when he said that last part.
"I didn't realize it until you destroyed that theme park dungeon but I missed clearing dungeons. Now that we can destroy them maybe I could finally make sure that what happened to Ella isn't able to happen again."
I slapped him on the back, "You're damn right we can! But not if you're gonna keep that impressive belly!"
Skinny burst out laughing, agreed and went back to completely decimating every training monster.
We ran back which was just as much of a slog as the first time and I finally got to sleep.
For the next 3 days we repeated this cycle, I would work as a bouncer, we would go to the association, we would come back and I would sleep.
Skinny's belly had shrank by a few inches and I was quite shocked by the insane improvement in such a short amount of time.
"Well Orc's bodies change faster than humans, it's how we're able to stay so strong!" Skinny explained as we walked.
We were headed to a job that Steven and Skinny had worked together to get us. The association specifically requested for us to destroy this dungeon as it was more profitable to be a functioning building.
The golden pyramid bank was our destination and it was a dungeon that had turned sometime around a year and a half ago and it was infamous nearby for being insanely difficult to clear.
I could see as we stood outside the doors to this large 2 story banking building that Skinny's ears were drooping the same way a dog does when they are afraid.
"Hey chin up! Nothing to be afraid of Zane and Skinny are a dream team right?!" I said slapping his back with large ferocity.
"Hell yeah lets do this!" Skinny said running to the glass doors for the bank.
On the outside through the glass it looked just like a regular bank that had been evacuated but stepping inside there was quite a large amount of sand on the floor but looking up I could see it was much the same on the second floor. Some of the sand from the second floor was falling onto the first floor just behind the teller's desks, creating a large waterfall of sand so that we couldn't see what was behind it.
Then my focus skill detected a large amount of creatures coming out from behind that same waterfall and all me and Skinny could do was just stand there and wait for something to come out so we knew what we were dealing with.
A slender boney hand reached out at first covered in something but then a horrible ghoulish face came after and we could see what enemies we would be facing, mummies.
Time to get a clue about what I'm supposed to do:
{Gather all the pieces of Osiris' body (0/6)}
{Rewards: Skill upgrade (permanent)}
Wow so a scavenger hunt huh?
That was the only OTO quest for this dungeon so that was all we had to do today.
I'd always been bad at escape rooms and scavenger hunts but hopefully I could redeem myself here.
According to the blueprints that Steven had pulled up on his stolen Association tablet, there was the lobby which we were in, behind the teller's desk was a vault and up above there were 5 offices each for different boring bank things.
"Skinny you head upstairs and look for any parts of a dead body I'll hold some of the mummies off and search down here!"
"What are you talking about?"
"There's mummies and each dungeon follows a myth or legend and this is Osiris."
I knew he didn't fully understand but he ran upstairs anyway.
The story of Osiris goes like this, he was king and he was with a wonderful woman named Isis, however he was killed by Set and cut up into different pieces, Isis found those pieces and put him back together creating the first mummy. Osiris then fathers a child with Isis but is brought down to the underworld to become it's king.
So if I'm right all we need to do is find the pieces, bring them to Isis and then have her breathe life back into him.
I had one pretty great guess about where she would be, the vault. The place that spewing out mummies right now.
I got down on my knees and looked under every chair, inside the plant pots and near the desk which was when I had to fight my first mummy.
They were very resilient and regenerative, but they were also slow, dumb and weak. I basically just had to run from them until I tripped on some of the sand. Mummified hands were now coming out of the floor and grabbing my ankles. I turned around to kick it off and that's when I saw it.
A head stuck in the chandelier above me.
Why can't the stuff I need to find ever be easy I rose to my feet and started moving around via the chairs and rugs like the most deadly game of 'the floor is lava'.
I had no idea how Skinny was doing but I was hoping he would find the 5 already and come down and help me.
I took the golden thread off of my broken hand and tied it around the Arrow of Mistletoe. This head was coming down whether it liked to or not.
I threw the Arrow up and clutched onto the thread. A direct hit. After a couple loops, that is.
I was always terrible at climbing but I didn't have a choice when I tried to tug the chandelier down it didn't budge never mind the fact that I was still having to hop about the place avoiding the now army of mummies and hands coming from the ground.
I managed to shimmy all the way up after my fourth attempt and I grabbed the head putting it safely in my inventory.
"What are you doing all the way up there?!" I heard Skinny call out from the stairs on his way down to me.
"Oh you know just hanging around! Hey can you catch me?" I appreciated my joking nature even in this horrible predicament I had found myself in.
Skinny shoved the growing mob out of the way as much as he could whilst I got the arrow and thread into my inventory.
I fell into Skinny's arms like a princess from an old fairytale but quickly got him to help him quell the army of undead surrounding us.
"Did you get the body parts?"
"Yep but it cost me an arm and a leg haha!" His joke wasn't nearly as good as the axe swing he made that managed to push back a large radius of the mummies.
"Quick we need to get to the vault!"
"You mean where the mummies are coming out of?"
"Yup that would be the one."
We ran together in the large space made by Skinny and I launched myself through the cascading wall of sand ending up inside a vault filled with safety deposit boxes and large amounts of money. Skinny did a forward roll when he landed on the other side, showing off all the training we had been doing I guess.
We saw a large Egyptian picture on the wall of a beautiful woman who I imagined had to be Isis. We both placed the pieces into a man shape and before long golden rays shot out of the painting and onto the corpse and in a blinding light it was all gone.
{Osiris – King of the Egyptian underworld- acknowledges your victory}
{Isis – Lover of Osiris and Mother of Horus – acknowledges your victory}
Well I'm glad that's over.
{Observation (Bronze Rank) permanently ugraded}
{Osiris gifts Skinny a skill: Killer (Iron Rank)}
{Isis gifts you a skill: Intelligence (Iron Rank)}
"Err it says I was just gifted a skill by Osiris?" Skinny said tapping into the air with a confused expression on his face.
{Isis will destroy the dungeon are you ready: Y/N}
"You ready to destroy the dungeon?"
"Hell yeah! I gotta get the sand out of my boots."
The sand seems to get sucked up into the ground and everything goes back to how it looked outside.
"So," I said opening the door and heading outside. "You ready to be a berserker again?"
"Absolutely!" said Skinny as we made our way back to the basement.
{+1 minute and 10 seconds of time}
{Time loop (1 min 16 seconds)}