Chapter 43: The Dungeon Giveth and The Dungeon Taketh Away

“I don’t know what I did to the fish, exactly,” Jo admitted. Though she still held the sword, her cool demeanor cracked enough for her to look disturbed. “When I stabbed, it felt like a part of me that wasn’t my sword was stabbing it too. Is that my mana?”

“Could be. Or an effect of the sword,” Zach said. “We don’t know what it does yet.”

Thomas picked up the Water mana crystal reward. It felt heavy and lush in his hand. Then he took a moment to glance over the fish. It was an ugly beastie, but… “I’m not a doctor,” he said, and pointed. “But that looks like poison damage to me.”

The other two gathered around and both saw it. The point where Jo had stabbed the sword was blackened and rotten-looking, with green tracings extending out to some of the surrounding scales.

“Cool,” Zach said. “I know me and Thomas make it look easy, but it’s pretty rare to be able to use a new mana type that you just got without an active skill. Maybe you should absorb more poison mana. You’re hella compatible.”

“Actually…” Jo looked at the Water crystal Thomas held. “Mind if I grab that one? I’ve been using a lot of my Water mana to run my Still Waters skill.”

Part of Thomas ached at actually giving up this prime A-grade mana, and he forcefully had to remind himself that it wasn’t actually his crystal, he had no personal use for Water mana, and she had been the one who killed the fish.

He hoped no one saw his hesitation as he handed it over, but then he had to face another gut-wrenching decision. He hated being fair and logical, damn it! “You may as well keep the Blood Thirst sword too,” he added with a sigh. “I still have my bear claw glove. Man,” he added, “I miss my Ace Hardware maul.”

Zach laughed. “You can do better than that, dude. After we sell all this stuff we’ve gathered here, I’m pretty sure you can buy a real fancy maul.”

“You think?”

“Uh, yeah,” he said straight-faced. “Upgrade to Lowe’s.”

Jo absorbed the Water crystal, and her arms up to her elbows turned a cool blue before fading back to normal flesh. That had been level 3 mana, so Thomas kept an eye on her in case she got mana overload too, but she didn’t seem to have the same problem as Zach. Then again, he was his mana, had overloaded on fire, then had added a higher-level crystal on top.

Still, why borrow trouble?

“Add an Earth crystal,” he advised her. “May as well go level 3, to balance out the Water. Then, yeah, another Poison if you feel like you can handle it.” He glanced at Zach. “You good on mana?”

“Yeah, though for not much longer.” But then Zach’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know how much help I’m going to be in this next part of the dungeon, bros. Those fish have a natural barrier against fire. I can distract them, but the quarterstaff might be my weapon going forward, and I don’t think they care that much about being bonked.”

“Me too—Oh, damn it, my mace!” Thomas couldn’t believe he’d forgotten. Stepping to the giant fish corpse, he tried to figure out where its stomach was, then used a bear claw to cut a slice.

Liquid gushed out, and he hurriedly stepped away. It smelled very…fishy.

His guess was right, and the mace wasn’t hard to find, but the fish’s stomach acid must have been something else. He didn’t see any sign that the internal organs had reacted to the poison on the spikes at all. In fact, the mace looked extremely shiny, as if the finish had been stripped off, the spikes included.

Thomas returned to the others in a bad mood. “I think the poison got worn off.”

“Are you sure?” Jo asked.

“I’m not going to poke myself and find out,” Thomas said, “but…yeah, I’m pretty sure. Do you think you could renew the poison on the spikes?” He held out the mace.

She looked regretful. “I would, but I barely know what I’m doing. I could poison you.”

Thomas pulled the mace back. He could heal himself from injuries, but he had no idea about poison and wasn’t about to become his own guinea pig in the middle of the dungeon to find out.

“Tough luck,” Zach said. “That thing was useful.”

“More than useful,” Thomas grumbled. “I was using it as a ranged weapon. Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to, but the poison made it work. Now I have to get up close to fight anything, and I don’t think this is going to cut it.” He extended the claws, which, while admittedly awesome looking, were pretty small compared to the whale-sized carp.

No one said anything for a moment. They just kind of all looked at each other with the same pensive expressions on their faces. Thomas could sense the mood, and he decided to just come out and say it.

“I think we should have a vote on whether we want to move forward or go back to the entrance.”

“Go back?” Jo asked, incredulous.

“Maybe,” Thomas said. “Fact is, Jo, you have a pretty cool trick with your poison, but if we keep going forward through the flats, you’re going to be the main fighter.” He held up a hand as Jo started to protest. “We can hit more dungeon monsters on the way back. I’m sure there are some mosquitoes we missed that must be buzzing around, and some tadpoles. Look at all this stuff we got. These are level 3 crystals and you got an upgrade to your mana. Even if we had stopped just at the mosquitoes, we’d be coming out winners.”

“Yeah, no,” Jo said. “This might be the only chance I get at this dungeon. I can’t leave my daughter with my mother every night. This has been the best diving I’ve seen since the Grizzly Bear dungeon I did with you, and I want to learn how to use this poison thing. Let’s keep going.”

Zach let out a breath and nodded at Thomas. “Thanks for that, bro, sincerely. I’ve got to get out of the toxic mindset that you either complete the dungeon or you’re a failure. If we went back now, we would have some good drops. But Jo’s right too. This is a choice opportunity and it’s a direct counter to my fire. I want to see if I can push myself, especially against that boss.”

“If these fish are hard-countering you,” Thomas said, “then a snapping turtle boss definitely will.”

“It may not be poison-proof, though,” Jo said. “This dungeon’s given us what we need.”

Thomas thought for a moment, but really he wasn’t that opposed to continuing, and he especially didn’t want to leave loot behind. He just really, really wanted to be alive to enjoy the loot. “Okay,” he said. “If you two are good to go, then I am too.”

Jo smiled at him. “If it gets too hard, sure, I’m willing to go back, but I really want to see what I can do with this mana.” She glanced at Zach. “The fish still have eyes, you know. Maybe aim for those. It’s not like they can blink. And if that doesn’t work, can you smoke them out through the gills?”

He looked a little surprised, then nodded. “That’ll be fun to try.”

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And I’ll just break out my pom-poms and shirt skirt to cheer you two on, Thomas thought, but he didn’t say anything. This was a good opportunity for his teammates to sharpen their skills. It wasn’t their fault he hadn’t found his own combat thing yet.

****

As they traveled across the mud flats, more carp launched out of the water to charge at them. Fortunately the first one they encountered also happened to be the biggest so that made it a little easier to fight.

Zach worked on his precision targeting using his fire whip. Jo focused on consciously injecting poison mana with her sword. Zach dropped the hint that poison mana was sort of both the essence and idea of poison, which might have been why the fish had been affected by her poison mana and not by Thomas’s specifically poisoned mace.

For the most part, Thomas hung back and looked pretty. Jo and Zach worked as a good team, and neither was even hurt, which made his participation moot.

Unfortunately, their sheer competence meant he hadn’t struck down any of the monsters within the next five encounters, which meant the loot drops were down to baseline normal.

Even in this dungeon, baseline normal could suck.

“No crystals?” Jo asked, walking around the body of the recently slain fish again as if she couldn’t believe it. “They were dropping like crazy earlier, and now we’ve only gotten two Earths out of the last five fish. What the heck!”

“And that Water mana,” Thomas reminded her. “That was A-Grade.”

“Yeah, but I was hoping for more Poison, or maybe a weapon for you, since I’ve taken yours again,” she said.