11 Chapter 7: Three Phases

As they got closer, they found a dungeon looked pretty darn big. The building entry looked small from a distance, however as they approached it was apparent that it was the size of a three car garage.

"An army could go down this way," Marieta said, suitably impressed, as she looked down the stairs.

"Why not," asked Aragorn. "They're not paying for land. It's all virtual."

"Seems kind of plain," Dave said as he peered at the walls. "It looks like everything is chrome. Did they run out of budget for texture art?"

"Hold on, its not all metal, "Marieta hesitantly looked close at the wall. "I think I saw the wall swirl. Like it was liquid."

"Yeah, you're right. It's like liquid chrome," Dave said with unease. "They said this was a nano-forge. Like nanites?"

"Okay, that is all kinds of disturbing. There's all kind of horror films about nanites despite the experts saying how safe they are," the girl replied.

"The government never comments either way," Aragorn said. "Looks like this may be a horror dungeon. Anyone have a light?"

Dave looked at him dumbly. "Dude you have pyrokinesis. Are you serious?" Marieta giggled.

"Ah. Right. I just didn't want to pay for the energy," he stuttered defensively.

"Put it up but keep it small. Constant use of your skills is how they grow," Dave suggested. "It also gets cheaper to use. It won't be long before Meditate's passive effects keep your psi pool topped off."

"Meditate?" Aragorn looked at Dave in confusion. Marieta was trying not to look ignorant, but the blank gaze gave her away.

"How have you been getting your points back," Dave asked confused. "How can you even play if you run out after a few fights? I died almost instantly the first time I ran out."

"I have been practicing in the target fields and with the golems," Marieta said with slight embarrassment. "I think they minimize the drain while practicing."

"Grouping. I was playing with five other people and we kept swapping point position," Aragorn replied. "I just thought that was how the game was supposed to be played."

"Well, it's not," confirmed Dave. "Ask the system about the meditate skill."

"Why can't you tell us," asked the girl, slightly insulted.

"It's a critical skill," Dave said with a grimace. "But it has some stupid points. Talk to the system and I'll clarify what it leaves out."

They stood there in silence and the two communed with the system's AI.

"What the heck," exclaimed Aragorn. "We have to sleep with these things? Man, I just logged out and crashed."

"Yep, a known bug," smirked Dave.

"I can't do that," Marieta said worriedly. "Not only will it kill my hair but I'll be in so much pain the next day."

"My parents will think I'm an addict and they won't let me on anymore," Aragorn said sadly.

"You're lucky," Dave snorted. "My dad took my picture with it around the house when I went to the kitchen for a snack. Don't worry about getting a neck ache. It's actually really comfortable. I didn't even get hot."

"You can eat with the headsets?" Aragorn looked at him, momentarily distracted.

"Yeah, the chin and mouthpiece retract," Dave explained. "You also have an external camera."

"That's cool," Aragorn perked up. "Maybe that's why they cost so much. Still, don't know what I'm going to tell my parents."

"Lock the door and keep the external camera on," Marieta said. Apparently, she had nerved herself to the inevitable destruction to her hair. "It's inductively charged so it's not like it's going to run out of power."

"Anyway, it doesn't say so, but one night is enough to boost you over ten points of Meditate. At that point you just leave it on and it gets you back your psi points. Mana too but I don't use that much yet."

"So its just one night?" Marieta asked.

"Well, I plan to use all of my points before I go to bed. Skill practice, if nothing else. If I leave it on overnight I can log in and start right away," Dave explained his plan. "It's not uncomfortable at all."

"We'll see. I think I can sneak it in for one night at least," Aragorn said with a scowl. "But if I never come back on its because my parents banned me."

"Anyway, let's go down to the horrorfest," Dave said with forced cheer. "Hopefully we don't die too horribly."

Aragorn unconsciously shivered as some unremembered sensations played in his hindbrain. Marieta just nodded.

As they descended the stairs they started to twist and spiral. It also got dark enough that Aragorn had to increase the size of his floating flame. After traveled over a thousand feet they heard the sound of metal on metal and grunts of pain.

Moments later the stairs ended and they entered a large chamber. It was so large an entire parking garage could fit in it. About fifty feet in were three players attacking a husk. Two player corpses were on the ground and almost as soon as they registered the fight another was thrown back, broken and bleeding from the massive sword.

"Hey I know that guy," Aragorn said, squinting to force the system to identify the players. "He kept kill stealing our buffalos when I went out on the group quests."

"Should we help," Marieta asked worriedly. "I think they're going to die. They almost haven't done any damage to that husk."

"I wouldn't want to kill steal from another player," Aragorn said righteously. Dave looked at him sideways but didn't say anything. "If they ask for help, I would, of course, be willing to help out."

At that instant another player was killed, leaving only one person to fight the husk. Aragorn cupped his mouth and called out, "Need any help bud?"

A gagging cough exploded out of the player as he desperately staggered to his feet and made a break towards the stairs. Aragorn cupped his ear towards him. "Can't hear anything. I think he's good."

Just as the player got within twenty feet of them the husk caught up to him and swung at him from behind. The man was ejected into the air and landed at their feet.

"See? I think he's fine." The player pushed himself onto his side and extended his arm to shakily flip Aragorn the bird. Then he collapsed.

"Your so bad," Marieta said shaking her head. She put her arms out and tendrils of psionic energy leaped from her to entangle and wrap the husk. "Okay, he's Slowed and Bound. The Bind won't last long."

Aragorn and Dave began to pepper the husk with fire and psi blasts. As Dave expected they didn't really do much damage. He needed to find another ranged skill to enhance his psi-blast.

It broke the Bind when it was down to 90% health and slowly stalked towards them. Dave stopped his bombardment and using his movement skill, leaped towards it, again combining his Psi Blast, Find Weakness and Kinetic Strike. The creature was lifted into the air and blasted back almost twenty feet.

"Holy <beep>," shouted Aragorn. "What the <beep> was that?"

"How'd you do that," an equally bewildered Marieta asked.

"Combined three skills," Dave told them telepathically as he propelled himself over to the husk. It wasn't dead, it was instead struggling up. "Four if you include the basic Hand to Hand leap kick. It's super effective."

Closing in on it, he began to look for damaged parts and pepper it with punches and kicks. Concentrating he tried to force his blows faster and faster.

"You have learned a new skill under Bio Feedback, Lightning Reflexes Level 0."

"Got another one," Dave muttered with satisfaction as he danced around the husk. More tendrils of psionic energy wrapped around it to slow and bind it once more. Dave took the opportunity to lay into it with another combo.

Its chest almost looked like it imploded under Dave's blow. All motive force left it as it fell to its knees and then its face.

"Damn, it didn't even hit you," Aragorn looked at him with surprise. "I need to figure out how to do that."

"Well, you already have Psi Blast, since everyone has that. Try combining that with Pyrokinesis," Dave offered.

"I need another offensive too," Marieta said as she nibbled her lip in thought.

"Well your already combining two crowd control skills. That's darn effective. But I know you want a damage skill to combine. Can you turn that TK energy into spikes?"

"I'll try on the next one."

"By the way, I don't think encounters scale. This was as tough as the others I fought despite being three of us."

"But the other was so tough," Aragorn said despondently.

"Sorry," Dave said with a shrug. "You were just fighting it wrong."

"So, you just stack skills?"

"As many as you can afford, which won't be that many until you get your meditation up. I can work three or four and it takes about 40-50%, then I just dodge and physically hit it until I get my points back."

"If meditate can allow getting psionic points back during a fight I'll have to risk wearing the helmet," Aragorn said, determination shining in his eyes.

"My hero," Marieta said sarcastically, however eagerness shown in her eyes too.

"Oh look," Dave pointed excitedly. "Empire tech modules." He pointed to the stack of shining squares of various sizes sitting against the wall.

"You can make stuff with them," Aragorn asked skeptically. He couldn't make head or tails of the various cubes. Marieta ran over and tried to put them together but had no luck either.

"You need a skill globe," Dave offered. "It's basically a skill book with a non-book graphic. Let me show you what you can do with them."

Holding out his hands theatrically he activated his TK and Telemechanics. As before the cubes rose up and spun in the air as they gradually clicked together. Then as his Telemechanics gathered information on the technology around him he lost his smile.

"Oh <beep> me!"

"This entire base in the nano forge," Dave began, next to him the modules continued to assemble, forming another winged beast. Dave decided to go with a gryphon this time since he was still feeling bitter about the horse. "It's a defensive base, a fort, a factory and if a... um... something doesn't translate. If a commander class Imperial of some kind takes direct control it can become an unstoppable mobile engine of destruction."

"So why is it sitting here with just husks?" Aragorn asked flatly.

"I don't know..."

"Oh my god, you can make flying mounts in this game?" Marieta squealed wildly. "Do you know how many months I had to grind to get..."

"So can you force it to self-destruct?" Aragorn interrupted the out of control girl as she peered into the mouth and ears of the gryphon and played with its wings. "Since that is the goal of this dungeon quest."

"Not from here," acknowledged Dave, absently watching in bemusement as the girl repeatedly stroked the gryphon's hair. "That level of commands can only be given in the command chamber. There's supposed to be an additional limitation so that every Tom, Dick, and Player with Telemechanics can't just take over an Imperial Base at will but the self-destruct code parameters are missing those."

"Very convenient plot device," Aragorn said.

"More like a plot hole," Dave muttered to himself. "Let's head down. I can access top-level commands like maps, sensors, and locks. There's about twenty more husks patrolling this forge."

"Twenty?" Marieta said nervously, looking up from the gryphon.

"It shouldn't be a problem. We should at most see two at once. Since I can see them on the map we can wait until the other groups separate," Dave said nonchalantly.

"Do you think they have skill globes here?" the girl asked eagerly.

"Probably in another stash of tech modules or at the control chamber," Dave guessed.

"Let's go then," Aragorn said shortly. "I'm going to try to combine Psi-Blast and Pyrokinesis on the next mob."

"I'll try the spike things," Marieta said distractedly, glancing over at the mount.

"Okay, I'll keep the next one busy and corralled while you test stuff out."

"You okay with that?" Aragorn asked hesitantly.

"No problem, Before I got Meditation up I whittled them down the slow way for almost a half hour. It's fun doing kung fu too.

The next husk was at the far end of the massive room, just before a corridor. As he said Dave charged in, only doing a two-hit combo to get its attention and kept its attention on him. The few glancing blows he let hit him just skilled up his Fortify.

"You have learned a new skill under the talent Telepathy, Force Focus Level 0"

"Just got a taunt skill," Dave whooped.

"Welcome to the world of tanking," Aragorn sarcastically congratulated. "Okay, let's try this!"

Dramatically pointing at the husk, a glowing blue ball of flame burst forth and cannoned into the husk. Dave actually had his Clairvoyance trigger to enable him to dodge.

"Hey watch out," he called out as he watched the husk gets knocked back ten feet and catch fire. "Oh, a DOT!"

"Okay, get ready Nat," Marieta called out. As the husk stumbled to its feet tentacles of energy shot out, encircled the creature and then, forming spiked points, stabbed inward. The spikes went all the way through and anchored themselves into the ground. The impaled husk jerked and struggles to free itself but for thirty seconds only succeeded in tearing the wounds open more.

"Nice," Dave complemented from the said. Since it was trapped there was no need for him to do anything.

"I need to figure a third skill to add in," Aragorn said as he estimated his damage versus the girls. As crowd control her damage should have been less, however, it was more. "I hope they change their mind on DPS meters."

"Not going to happen," Dave replied. "Did you hear the three levels of the tutorial?"

"Yeah, stage one is shock and denial, stage two is Anger and Bargaining and finally stage three is Depression and Testing."

Marieta laughed as he twisted the seven stages of grief into losing the game interface. "You forgot the last stage, Acceptance."

"That's because... there IS no Acceptance," Aragorn shouted as he let loose on the husk with another blue fireball. This one had sparks and lightning coursing through it. When it reached the creature it flew back, landing in a pile while burning and twitching from electrical arcs.

"Nice," Dave complemented. "Electrokinesis?"

"Electrokinesis," Aragorn nodded, huffing in exhaustion. "I need to rest."

"Me too," chimed in Marieta.

Dave groaned. "You guys have got to get Meditation up."