1.27 Class in Session

Chapter 27

“So we wait for the other teams to clear their towers, then progress after?” Vasquez asked.

Barry shook his head, “that’s a possible way, but it makes things unnecessarily harder for us.”

“Well, yeah, but that’s just unavoidable if it works the way you described.” Francis said.

“Yes, but no, you gotta think more critically if you’re gonna be Paragon Squad,” Barry replied sagely.

“Uh, what?” the rage warrior balked.

Huwett shook her head, while Norton and I exchanged glances with a chuckle. Barry had been trying to get Francis to understand the plan for the last few minutes. It wasn’t horribly complicated, but it appeared that the warrior needed to start investing some stat points into intelligence—though doing so never actually made you any smarter, so it wouldn’t actually help.

The problem at hand, which Francis failed to wrap his head around, was that it was apparent that the Dungeon Quest’s progression, and the difficulty of the tower’s defenses, were linked. Which made things more difficult, literally.

Barry was told this next floor was supposed to be about a football field in length, and instead, as I said before, it was actually far closer to a quarter mile. We could only guess, but it would also be fair to think that the traps in the room were more deadly as well.

Barry, Huwett and I quickly began making calls with our amulets in attempt to gather some more information, each of us calling different squad captains.

“Hello?”

“Captain Markus Hall, this is Adam Pierce,” I say through the connection.

There was a pause on the other side before I hear a response. “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

“Explain your squad’s progress and the encounters you’ve had at each floor. It looks like the Quest Update has made some changes and might be increasing the difficulty of the towers.”

“Understood, the first floor was goblins…”

As it turned out, Barry’s instincts were correct. After getting information from each squad and comparing notes between them all, it turned out that completing one tower made changes to all the others. It took us some time, and we had to dig into even the exact details in mob monster numbers, but it was confirmed that even completing a single floor in one tower also increased the difficulty in the other towers as well.

For example, we had been the last team to enter the first floor of a tower, leading me to slaughter nearly two hundred goblins in the immensely large room. Meanwhile, the very first team had only encountered twenty goblins inside a much smaller room.

While we took down a level eleven Ogre Berserker, others took down a basic level six ogre, or a level nine Ogre Hurler.

Our third floor is a vast twelve hundred foot gauntlet, while the first team got a hundred foot hallway. Others got a moderately difficult football field stretch of trapped stone.

Any progress made things harder for everyone else. Cleared floors gave small increases, while it looked like clearing a full tower created larger jumps. There was some hope though, as it appeared that as long as a team had already started a room, it’s difficulty wouldn’t increase while they were in it. Only un-entered rooms were affected.

Which we learned as we waited for the other teams to finish their current rooms and had time to settle in to strategize.

The strategizing portion is when we learned a few things. The first: Francis wasn’t great with difficult strategizing and puzzle solving. Which was why Barry had been spending so much time trying to get him to understand the plan, time that might have been wasted, in my personal opinion.

The second thing we learned; the communication amulets were able to do group calls. Only up to six people at a time, but it was much better than playing a game of dungeon telephone through the amulets. The third thing was; communication amulets couldn’t be used to call people outside a dungeon while you were in one.

This was information that became well known across the world in the coming weeks, as use of the amulets spread. You could call someone anywhere in the world while you were both outside a dungeon, or call anyone within the same dungeon as you. But making calls across dungeons, or from Earth to a dungeon, just didn’t work, even if you tried calling collect.

With each squad captain, Barry and myself inside the group call, we were able to figure out a plan after a couple hours.

It was almost without saying that we decided our team, as the strongest, would clear their tower last. The others would clear their towers in chosen turns, based on team strength, which was a toss up, given they are purposefully built to be as equal as possible, but an order had to be decided nonetheless.

Also, we had to figure out the floor clearing schedule. There were only seven floors in each tower, based on what we knew. The goblin first floor, the ogre second floor, then the third floor trap room. After that came a dark-room with a fight against some stealthy rat-kin mobs as the fourth floor encounter. The fifth floor was reported as a fight against a large serpent beast in a rocky terrain like that of the wastes outside. The sixth floor was a golem fight. With the final floor being against the elven cult summoners which were trying to open their portal.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It would seem simple to say everyone clears their current floor and waits for the other teams to be ready and all enter their next floors at the same time, then repeat until everything is conquered. But that also meant the final floors for everyone would keep getting harder, and harder. Some teams might not be strong enough to clear their final floor after everyone else’s progress increased their difficulty.

So another option was to have everyone wait while each team cleared their tower one at a time. But that still left a problem of some teams having drastically higher challenges, and meant the later squads would be facing multiple floors at a much higher difficulty, rather than some at a moderate difficulty if things were alternated.

“There is no answer that lets every quad have an easy fight, a moderate fight, and a hard fight. It won’t be equalled unless we stagger-step the squads and everyone enters the final floor at the same time,” Xander Greene, one of the squad captains, said.

“Which means squads that had closer towers and got in first end up with easier fights at the start regardless with no reciprocated difficulty change.” Kirk Eglin, another captain, stated quickly.

“We all looked at the same time, that was a fair competition. And none of us knew how these towers worked, so it’s not our fault,” Greene shot back.

“I didn’t say it was your fault, I just meant in the interest of fairness—”

Barry coughed into his amulet, getting everyone to quiet down. “Paragon Squad can go last. We will wait here on the third floor until everyone has cleared their towers, then proceed up.”

“That’s insane, you’ll have to go through each of the next floors at the highest possible difficulty.” Xander argued.

“True, but as the Guild Head and the main Hunter Squad, it’s our job to take on that risk. The towers need to be cleared anyway, so having us attempt it gives us our best shot at success. This also minimizes the difficulty spike for the rest of you,” Barry’s tone was strong, yet comforting as he spoke.

“Understood.”

“We will still be sending squads toward your tower as we are freed up. Hopefully we can get in there and provide back u—.”

“No,” I interrupted. Barry shot me a confused look, but let me continue. “If any squad enters the tower after us, it’s possible they will be entering a reset floor that is even more difficult than what we’ve already faced. If what we suspect is correct, at some point you might be up against an encounter that is simply impossible to beat.”