CHAPTER 328: ROM-COM TAKE 1 (PINING FIR YEW)

The Level 26 with a clown car soul wasn’t the last of our Dimensional cadre to arrive. A Level 21 Gold moved between the other groups, using the spell Gate to open long-range portals to their entry locations around the Forest’s perimeter. The Forest was a mass of wilds as large as the Empire itself, and the border Dungeons were wide, but shallow.

Krimsim sat near the center of the region dominated by a Divine Dungeon. The Mystical Dungeon began about one hundred and fifty miles to our southwest. Another three hundred miles away from there was the Dimensional Dungeon, three hundred more got you to the Physical Dungeon, with the Spiritual Dungeon being the farthest from where we stood. That meant the Delvers arrayed outside the city might need to travel as far as a thousand miles to get into position.

Fortunately, the Level 21 dimensionalist was saving them the effort. Once finished, he arrived and introduced himself to me as Captain Smollett, claimed his position as our ranking member, and spent a minute channeling a portal to our point of ingress. The portal peeled the world back like a rolling door, revealing a small Littan fortification a few hundred miles away that was serving as the region’s border security. We passed through without issue, then meandered through the freshly built fort, drawing some curious stares from the Coppers and mundane soldiers manning the place. Captain Smollett gave an order here and there, and soon enough, we were moving to the edge of the Forest at a brisk, hundred-mile-per-hour stride.

Dimensional Magic may have been the best school for movement buffs, so even the lowest-level Silver among our group could keep up with a fair pace.

The outer edge of the Forest was clear-cut, keeping it from encroaching on Littan territories, meaning that the moment we hit the treeline, we were fully in the Forest. There was no gradual transition, just a wall of neatly trimmed back trees that took us directly into dense, old growth.

Otherwise, the first part of the Forest was somewhat ordinary. The canopy quickly swallowed most of the direct sunlight, reducing the day’s beating heat and replacing it with an ever-denser miasma of humidity. Bushes, weeds, smaller trees, grass, and fungus crowded the forest floor, but even without superhuman capabilities, it was still fairly traversable. Clown Car was in the lead, and his casual stride was at odds with the violence his passage caused. Tearing vines and snapping branches sounded as his body cut a path through anything that might have waylaid us.

A mile or so in is where shit got strange.

The movement of distant foliage no longer tracked with the speed of our travel. Distant trees passed by quicker than the closer ones, playing hell with our perspective. The phenomenon grew more pronounced until we came upon a tree that would no longer move. There was nothing special about this tree in particular; it just happened to occupy the position where the effect of the Dimensional Dungeon was strong enough to cause all local foliage to remain locked in place while we walked. Meanwhile, the foliage farther off moved by more rapidly with distance, until a single step would cause the trees a half mile yonder to rush past like they were caught in a mighty blender. It was a complete inversion of how one might normally perceive their spatial relationship to objects based on distance.

You have entered the Jaws of Parallax

Dimensional Dungeon

Recommended skills: Dimensional Magic 20

Everyone came to a stop, and both Clown Car and Captain Smollett turned to me.

“Beyond this point, the phenomenon we see in the distance grows–” The captain stopped and searched for a word. “It grows ‘closer.’” He looked unhappy with his chosen adverb but carried on. “If you do not have a method of dealing with it, it will eventually close in on you until your feet–being the farthest part of your body from your eyes–begin to do much as those trees in the distance are doing.”

I looked off to where he was pointing and leaned back, watching the distant trees travel violently across an impossible distance from the minor movement.

“Since the rest of your body does not participate, this is an unhappy event,” the captain finished.

“But all the other parts of you do eventually participate, Captain,” said the solo-brow Specialist Rufio. “One piece at a time.” He chuckled darkly while the captain rubbed at his temple.

“Spooky,” I said. I hadn’t yet had the occasion to check out the Forest’s Dimensional Dungeon. I’d had no reason to, since my skill level was too far above its recommendation to give me much benefit. “So how do you deal with it?”

“The best option is to teleport,” said Captain Smollett. “Instant movement does not trigger the effect. However, the area fights against you, so teleports cost more mana than normal and do not take you as far. It is also difficult to control where you will end up, and if you accidentally teleport above and begin to fall…” He grimaced. “You will quickly lose your feet, as I have said. Good practice for control and accuracy, but a painful exercise.”

“We’ve got a betting pool going, Your Majesty,” said Rufio, rubbing his hands together and raising his remaining brow.

“Oh?” I said. “What for?”

“They say you teleported a whole city.”

“They do say that, yes.”

Rufio narrowed his eyes slightly, apparently disappointed that I didn’t feel like elaborating on his point. “We figure the distance from here to the edge of the Dungeon layer is nine miles,” he said, “but everybody with a portal or teleport knows that it feels like trying to go nine hundred.” Rufio gestured around at the other Littans. “We took bets on how many teleports we thought it’d take you to get all of us through here.”

“I see. What’s the current record?”

“Captain Smollett here did it in twenty-eight jumps.” Rufio’s whiskers twitched. “He’s heavily invested in his portals.”

“I only had one other person with me,” said Smollett. “There are fourteen of us here now. You are comparing grain to guano.”

Rufio shrugged like he didn’t think Smollett’s point mattered much while his eyes darted from place to place as though expecting something to reach out from the woods and snatch him. I considered the captain and looked the other ten Littans over while musing on how Specialist Rufio was probably the most rat-like Littan I’d ever met. ŕÃɴοΒЁṢ

“All bets are in?” I asked.

“Unless Your Highness would like to place one,” Rufio said, smiling his elongated incisors at Ishi. The princess looked at him like a frog that had asked her to wipe its ass.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I’d been silently mapping out a teleport location while we spoke, and now that the scene was properly set, I mana-shaped Dreadful Shortcut to encompass everyone in our small clearing. I moved us outside of the Dungeon at the speed of thought.

The teleport was so smooth, it took a couple of the Littans a second to realize we’d moved at all. Another swore, a few laughed, and Rufio’s whiskers were doing a whole workout routine in response. Captain Smollett let out a heavy sigh and pulled a ruby chip from his inventory.

“I thought it would take you at least a few,” he grumbled, then turned and tossed the chip to Clown Car, who was facing away from us, scanning our surroundings. He caught the chip without looking, and then kept catching as almost every other Littan present tossed him another.

“Really?” I said. “Only one of you had faith in my legendary powers?” I turned to look at Madel, who was one of only two Littans not coughing up some cash to Clown Car.

She shrugged. “I do not gamble.”

“It is not what you think,” said Clown Car. I was regretting not getting his name. “Rules were that the winner was ‘whoever guessed the closest number without going over the real number.’ Everyone else was picking higher numbers, so I picked one.” He tapped his temple. “Tactics.”

As it turned out, no one really believed in me; Clown Car had simply found victory with a Price is Right strategy.

I approved.

“Uh, hold on, are we out of the Dungeon?” another Littan asked, a bit slow on the uptake. That man was then mercilessly roasted by his comrades for his lack of situational awareness. This went on for the next few minutes and would continue for the remainder of this mission and possibly the man’s entire military career.

“All right, everybody,” said Smollett, bringing the mood back to earth, “stow it and get ready to set up our nests. Catelina, range out with Ambros to find a few good blind sights. I believe it is safe to assume that we are the first ones through our Dungeon, so I want us lounging in a fully constructed outpost before any other attunement stumbles through their own. We already knew dimensionalists were superior; now we get to prove it.” He clapped his hands together a few times. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

While the Littans hustled to follow Smollett’s orders, Ishi and I cleared out a small area and constructed a gazebo to relax in, wielding our vast magicks, superhuman attributes, and limitless inventory space to get it done in under a minute. We spent the time having tea, munching on some neat and tidy snacks, and playing my latest version of Mana: the Assembling, which was entirely my own original game and not at all based on any popular Earth products.

Ishi was a big fan.

“In response, I will Skewer your biggest spider for six damage,” she said.

“Then I’ll use my floating point to cast We’re Here to Pump You Up,” I countered, dropping a colorful token onto one of my arachnid cards. “That raises the strength of my Gargantula Tarantula to nine.”

“I disagree,” said Ishi, brow knit as she peeked over the five cards she held, studying my playing field.

“Reality cares not for your concurrence.”

She waved at her own side of the board. “With a strength of nine, your spider is stronger than either of my drakes. Imagine how large a spider would have to be in order to be stronger than a drake.”

“It doesn’t have to be that big. It could just be small, but mighty.”

“And you have all those lesser arachnids to rally behind its leadership.” Ishi thumbed her cards. “A world where such a spider lives cannot be tolerated.”

“Ohhh, no,” I said, sitting up straighter as I realized where she was taking things. “No, no, you’ve got two drakes on your side!”

“Yes, but a drake that is meeker than an arachnid does not deserve to live.” She discarded a few resource tokens and laid a card down on the table with grave finality. “In response to your pumping, I play Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies.”

“Is that card, like, half your fucking deck, Ishi?”

She gave me a smug smile in response as she discarded her drakes, then gestured for me to clear the spiders off my board like so much trash. I begrudgingly threw all six of my creatures away.

“Given your lack of response to my aggression, I assume the spell resolves,” said Ishi, plucking another card from her hand. I groaned in misery. “As such, I will now cast DragonForce to return all Draconic creatures that perished this turn back into play.” She put her drakes back onto the board. “Is it my turn yet?”

“Every turn feels like it’s your turn,” I said as I tossed one resource back into the central pot. “In the post-combat primary phase, I’ll burn one mana to drop another Avondale Arachnid.” I laid down the measly one-strength creature, then sat back and gestured for Ishi to draw a card. She did so with a menacing glee that I found oddly arousing.

Our game was occasionally interrupted by shrieks, hoots, or yowls as one kind of mana monster or another tested the Littans encroaching into their domain. There was little for any of us to fear this far in, whereas the more dangerous creatures dwelled closer to the Forest’s center. Out here, you’d run into something like a pack of Grade 1 Howlers, and the worst thing you’d have to deal with is the literal shit they threw at you. The soldiers were mostly chasing things away from the outpost that was being assembled until the weaves within it were powered on and the place could repel the weaker creatures without them.

About two hours had gone by when we got an update.

“Earworm: Okay, everybody, we have full penetration of all teams to the second perimeter, and outposts are either built or well on their way. Colonel’s orders are to let the Silvers finish setting things up themselves while everyone else heads to their assigned crafting Dungeon. That means it’s time to saddle up and ride deeper to perimeter three! Earworm out!”

Ishi took a deep breath, giving her cards a final look. “Pity,” she said, laying down her hand. “I thought I’d finally get to use Atomic Breath.”

“Those drakes were gonna kill me in two turns,” I said. “Atomic Breath would have been complete overkill.” I scooped up the cards and started sending things to their assigned inventory slots.

Ishi pulled our wide, comfy chairs into her own inventory with Telekinesis, but we were leaving the gazebo itself behind. She walked over and inserted herself between me and the table where I’d been sorting out some cards, somewhat like a cat who’d decided to lie in your lap despite it already being occupied by a laptop.

She looped her arms around my neck and pulled herself up to whisper into my ear.

“Sometimes I just want to use the big spell,” she said, then leaned back to look me in the eyes. “And there’s no such thing as overkill when you’re involved, Esquire Undying.”

“Oh, you can’t give me that nickname,” I said. “Now you’ve cursed me.”

“No, I haven’t,” she said. “We’re in a forest, we’re practically swimming in wood.” She reached behind her to knock her knuckles against the table. “That satisfies your superstition, doesn’t it?”

Ishi raised an eyebrow as she watched my expression grow ever more thoughtful. “Where did I lose you?” she asked after about twenty seconds.

“Sorry, I’m trying to think of something using ‘swimming in wood,’ but it’s just not coming to me.”

“Well, that’s likely a good thing,” she said. “Your wood would neither be swimming nor coming tonight if you insisted on making such crass jokes all the time.”

I wrapped my arms around the gorgeous woman. “I am but putty in your hands when you talk to me like that, you know?”

“I do,” she said, smiling. “Although I was aiming for something a little firmer than putty.” Her face slid in for a kiss.

“Something closer to a hardwood?” I asked.

Ishi allowed the anticipation of a kiss to hang there while her amused eyes judged me for my carnal sin of humor, then she unwound herself from my arms and sauntered out of the gazebo. I took a moment to cool off, then followed after her. Sadly, we’d be parting ways for this next section.

While Ishi would be pursuing the Woodworking Dungeon, which I imagined was about as on-theme as a Dungeon could get in here, I was more interested in scoping out the Smithing Dungeon. What did the Forest have to teach about Smithing?

That sounded more fascinating to me.