I wake up early feeling a burning sensation. When I focus on it my inventory opens and the Book of Poth is glowing. I quickly look around and then step behind a tree. I pull the book from my inventory and open it. The page already has some writing.

Poth: Greetings, I can sense a source of power one mile to your North. This should greatly help you in your journey if you can make it there. If you get there then write me and I can try to guide you further.

George: Thanks, we should be able to do that. I will get Nora and go.

I step back to Nora and gentle touch her shoulder and in party chat say.

George: Nora, Poth contacted me and says there is a place of power about a mile to the North of here that could help us with our quest. I am going to check it out. Do you want to join me?

Nora: Yes.

Nora opens her eyes and quickly puts her bedroll in her inventory and we both enter stealth leaving the camp avoiding the guards around the camp. Vera the small green moon is just setting on the horizon and dawn should arrive in another hour. We make our way North through thick forest cover. After about thirty minutes we arrive at the waypoint I added to my map a mile North of the camp and pulled the book from my inventory and write.

George: We are here.

Poth: Ok follow my directions quickly. Go 500 feet north. Ok now turn right and go 200 feet. Now turn left and go 50 feet. Almost, go 30 feet north. It should be 10 feet to your right.

Nora and I both stare at the area. I take a tentative step and then another and see a faint ripple in the air. Another step and see an oval ripple six feet high and three feet wide is in front of me. I reach out to touch it and get a prompt.

You have found the entrance to the Dungeon of Lord Toroth. This dungeon will not respawn once cleared. This dungeon will be scaled for a full party of eight and will have a level ten percent higher than the party’s average level. Time dilation of this dungeon is 1000 to 1.

Do you wish to enter this dungeon? Yes or No.

I hurry and write Poth that we found the Dungeon before the minute is up and he wishes us good luck. I turn to Nora and share the notification and she looks disappointed.

Nora: If we go in there and succeed in clearing the Dungeon I am sure we will get a great reward, but the amount of XP I will clear will level me so much that it will destroy my build.

George: I see and I can go in because I am channeling my XP into the Deck of Fate.

Nora: Exactly, you have an XP sink and I don’t.

George: Well can we both channel XP to the Deck?

Nora: I don’t….

She trailed off, so I pulled the Deck out of my inventory and thought about adding Nora to the XP channel. I receive an interesting notification.

Add Nora to the Deck of Fate XP channel. Cost 5 faith points.

Confirm? Yes or No.

Well that will still leave us with more than the 40 faith points we need, so I select Yes. Nora’s eyes jerk when she gets a notification.

George: So, can you channel XP to the Deck?

Nora: Yes, I can.

George: Great, before we go in Dungeon’s are considered Places of Power?

Nora: They can be. A Place of Power is an area of high mana density. Dungeons commonly form in such locations, but they can also spawn unique monsters or resources.

George: I see, well let’s go.

Nora: This will be dangerous, there are only two of us and it is rated for eight people.

George: I know, but Poth thinks this will help us a lot and we have people still hunting both of us for different reasons.

Nora: Very well I am ready.

I turn to accept the prompt when someone clears their throat and Nora I both turn without swords draw to see Frank and Justin standing by a small tree to our left.

“Sorry to startle you, but it looked very suspicious when you both ran out of the camp.” Frank said holding up his unarmed hand in front of himself.

“You must have impressive skills to follow us while we were stealth.” Nora responded for us both.

“Actually, that is Justin he has some hand spells for tracking. So, it looks like you somehow knew a one-shot dungeon was here. That is a neat trick, mind sharing how you did that?”

“Sorry that is related to a quest we have.”

“Of course, of course. Well it looked like just the two of you were going in, but isn’t that rather dangerous, since the dungeon is a scaling dungeon for eight?”

“Probably, but we have handled harder situations.”

“Well, Justin and I were wondering if we could join you. I am actually specialized in dungeon clearing and Justin and I joined up in the north and he is very versatile as well as being a good healer.”

George: What do you think?

Nora: It would be helpful and he is correct about the difficulty. Also, one shot dungeons will offer each party member a unique item when we defeat the boss, so we don’t lose anything by having them join.

“Very well, even split on the loot and if we come across something unique we will do round robin on it. We will roll before entering to see who is first in the rotation.”

Justin and Frank look at each other grinning. “That is very fair, I wish every adventuring group was this reasonable.”

I sent both invites and they joined our party. I started turn again to the dungeon entrance when there was another voice from above us. In the large tree to our right the bard Tom was sitting on a branch about ten feet above our head.

“As long as you are taking invites, I would like to offer my services. I am skilled in countering mages and am an excellent scout. Also, during battle, I can offer a number of useful buffs.”

“Maybe before I accept, I should check it there is anyone else around first?” Which causes Tom to laugh and jump down from the tree landing lightly on his feet.

“There is just me here, I made sure no one else followed.”

I looked at Nora and she nodded, so I sent another invite to Tom making us a party of five. I am level fourteen and Nora is elven. Justin is level thirteen, Frank level fifteen, and Tom is level sixteen. This should mean the dungeon level will be fifteen making it harder for use, but hopefully easier with our new party. We roll using out status interface a set of dice with Justin having the highest roll, so he will start the loot rotation.

I turn and accept the prompt for the dungeon and suddenly the oval cracks open revealing a swirling blue portal. I step into the portal followed by the rest of the party and the portal slams shut behind us.

We have stepped into a small square room about twenty feet on a side with a fifteen-foot-high ceiling. The lighting is from four crystals embedded in the walls, which gave off a golden glow. The walls, ceiling, and floor are unfinished stone. Inspect didn’t show me anything more about the room or the archway placed in the wall opposite us. It stood eight feet tall and covered in blue glowing runs along its edge. I started to advance toward the archway when Nora grabbed my arm.

Nora: Wait, I am not familiar with the runes, but this type of setup indicates this is a safe room. Some safe rooms will lose their protection when the archway is crossed, so we should make sure we are ready before we casually do that.

George: I will make sure to not cross the archway and just look.

Nora releases my arm and I walk up to the archway feeling slightly dizzy when looking at the runes. Frank joins me in looking them over without touching anything. I focus on the corridor that the archway leads into, which is illumined with the same crystals. The corridor stretches for fifty feet before turning to the south before turning to the right.

Unfortunately, this gives us no idea of what we may be getting into. After discussing it between ourselves there is no choice, but to go through the portal. Before doing so Justin interrupts us.

Justin: Everyone look at the entrance.

We all turn and there is no entrance anymore. I turn to look at the suddenly white faces around me.

George: Sorry, but I am new to this, what happened to the entrance?

They all look at each other and Nora answered.

Nora: This is a closed dungeon, which means our spawn point has changed to the dungeon and we cannot leave until we defeat the boss.

George: How is that different than before?

Nora: Very few dungeons do this, but those that do are very hard and if we die in here the dungeon level will be the same and if we die enough there is no way we will succeed before final death. The System creates these dungeons to handle problems that it cannot handle itself. When we entered it configured the dungeon to match a problem with our level, but typically the problem is harder than the level would suggest.

George: Well then, we will just have to win.

We draw our weapons and enter stealth. Then Frank and I step through the archway, while Nora watches the runes. They continue to glow, so we have a permanent safe room. We cautiously walk down the hall pausing at the turn in the corridor. Tom peeks around the corner and thirty feet around the turn the corridor stops in archway into another room. We walk along the wall and after quickly peeking into the room we see four creatures. Each was a little over six feet tall, covered in short golden fur where they are not encased in a full suite of leather and bronze armor. Each has a sword and dagger sheathed on a belt around their waist. They are seated at a small oak table playing a game of cards. I could see four spears leaning against the wall behind them. They were drinking from ceramic jugs while they joked, dealing cards for some complex game.

I signal the group to move back up the corridor indicating I want to try something in case they are harder than they appear. We retreated up the corridor where I can use Earth Shaping on the corridor floor, walls, and ceiling creating a line bisecting them all. I repeated the Shaping three more times. While shaping the stone I let Nora know my plans, which turned her worried frown into a grin. Nora then knelt touching the line in the stone closest to the door, pouring her mana into a ward. By the time she completed the first ward I completed the second and third. Then I sat meditating while she completed the final ward. Hopefully this would give us the added time we would need to whittle down their numbers.

The others are all grinning when they realize what we have done. Now we just need some bait. We all prepared ourselves to engage them, while I sneak back up to the room. I started out with a barrage of maximized double damage fire bullets that all struck one of the guards killing him. The other three reacted much more quickly than I expected grabbing their spears, while mana shields sprang up around them. I hate competent opponents.

Everyone was already waiting down the corridor. I ran the twenty feet to our wards, which were spaces one foot apart. I turned actively Inspecting the creatures which ran down the corridor toward us.

Thesian Common Guard, Level 15, HP 750

That is a lot of hit points. I dump another barrage of max double damage fire bullet into the leading guard right before he slams into the first ward shattering it. The guard’s mana shield collapses under the stream of fire bullets. Nora curses in party chat at how tough the guards are. I hit the injured guard with another round of fire bullets sending him reeling, but still alive. This is going to be close. The next guard swings his sword into the next ward destroying it. I hit the first guard again just when he gets another mana shield up, but it manages to kill him anyway, while the next guard strikes the next ward, which cracks, but does not break. I put almost twice the mana in the third ward. I switch to fire darts which do slightly less damage but consume a lot less mana. The guard’s mana shield drops when several darts hit his body. I hit him again when his next blow destroys the third ward. The injured guard pauses to raise a mana shield when the last guard attacks the last ward, destroying it with one blow.

I cast a final round of fire bullets at the injured guard destroying his mana shield and killing him, which seriously depletes my mana bring on a fierce mana headache that I ignore. Frank’s spear sword blocks the guards first blow, but he staggers under the strength of it. I try to flank his attacker, but the guard uses a skill and for a moment there seems to be two guards attacking us. We are both caught off balance. Frank’s opponent hits him with a kick knocking him down, while my opponent crosses sword and then slams my back into the wall before vanishing.

I quickly try to get to my feet. The guard swings at Frank, while starting to glow red from another skill. I could see Frank’s eyes get big. He tried to get his spear up in time. I gritted my teeth, blowing the last of my mana to Shadow Step and smash into the guard’s side when he lunged at Frank. We both land on the floor, but the guard’s strength easily out weights my own. He grapples with me pushing my own sword toward my neck. Suddenly the guards body shudders, once, twice and he collapses on top of my before I scramble out from under him. I am breathing heavily while staring at Tom’s bloody sword and the two deep gashes on the guards back.

George: Thanks.

Tom: Your welcome, but that was stupid.

George: Ah… What was stupid?

Tom: Your Shadow Stepping into him.

George: But he would have hit Frank.

Tom: Most likely he would have and it would have hurt, but then while he was fully engaged with Frank you could of Shadow Stepped behind him and stabbed him in the back getting a flanking and back stabbing bonus. At that point he would have had to turn to defend himself while both of you attacked him. I bet you just saw someone in danger and just rushed in to help them. Don’t get me wrong I really appreciate the sentiment, but you must be smarter or we will get killed. If we are killed we will respawn, but we will be in a worse position to finish this dungeon.

George: Ok, I will try to focus on the overall battle next time. So, lets gather up the drops and go back to the safe room to talk over how we proceed.

Tom: That sounds good.

We quickly strip the bodies of equipment and money. There is also a small pile of money on the table where the guards were playing cards. We are careful not to approach the stout oak door in the room that must lead further into the dungeon. I even pick up the table and ask Frank to get two chairs, which causes Frank to look at me in surprise. We take the furniture back to the safe room and unload the equipment on top of it. The equipment is all uncommon with some good stats. Nora, Justin, Tom, and I switch our clothes for the best armor, swords, daggers, and spears from the guards we killed. When looking at my equipped gear I like what I see.

Uncommon Thesian Guard Leather Pants, Durability 40/50, Defense 40, +1 Strength

Uncommon Thesian Guard Leather Shirt, Durability 40/50, Defense 40, +1 Strength

Uncommon Thesian Guard Leather Gloves, Durability 40/50, Defense 16, +1 Strength

Uncommon Thesian Guard Leather Helmet, Durability 40/50, Defense 24, +1 Strength

Uncommon Thesian Guard Leather Boots, Durability 40/50, Defense 16, +1 Strength

Complete Thesian Guard Set 5/5, +5 Strength

This explains the guard’s strength and part of the reason why they are so tough.