1

After gulping water from their wineskins, the Inmates passed through to the kobold room and stared at the next portal.

“What are we going to find now?” Damon asked quietly, then he stepped through. The first thing that struck him was the smell, an overpowering scent of dried and rotted wood. Then he saw the mobs and understood. He was in the “mini-Dryad” room they had observed the day before, near the top of the tower. Eighteen strange-looking creatures were spread out before him. His Creature Description details came up.

BELCH HUGGIN (Level 2)

HP: 25

MP: 19

STRENGTH: 7

CONSTITUTION: 2

DEXTERITY: 3

INTELLIGENCE: 1

WISDOM: 2

XP: 12

DESCRIPTION: Failed tree pollination experiment.

As the other members passed through the portal, the belch huggins took no interest in their new visitors. The belchers were short creatures, about four feet high. Looking like tree trunks that had sprouted legs instead of roots, their wooden bodies staggered drunkenly around in circles.

As the Inmates watched, the belchers sporadically bumped into each other and, in other instances, hugged each other with their short wooden arms. Two vertical lines of yellow eyes ran down the length of their bodies. Their eyelids fluttered slowly and lazily. A wide mouth adorned with square green teeth sat below their rows of eyes.

Zack strolled up to Damon. “Whatever these guys are drinking, I want some,” he quipped.

Damon chuckled, then noticed where the overpowering smell was coming from.

Every four or five seconds, the mobs belched large bubbles of gas that floated up from their hollowed trucks. The bubbles would pop a few seconds later, emitting a spray of tiny droplets. Damon watched in amusement as a rainbow formed in the mist from the discharge. “Isn’t gas supposed to be invisible?” he asked, pointing at the white bubbles.

“Tell that to the game designer,” Emma joked.

They readied their weapons and walked toward the belchers. The creatures didn’t notice them approaching.

“Maybe they really are drunk,” Damon wondered. As he moved in closer, the sour wood smell became even stronger, making him want to retch. “Do we even have to kill these poor things?” he asked. Harper answered by pointing to the exit portal, which hadn’t been enabled. “Hmm, okay,” he said, and swung his flail onto one of the mobs. As the spiked metal balls struck the belcher, the creature vanished immediately in an explosion of gassy bubbles.

The bubbles popped in Damon’s face. He turned away, lifting his arm to shield himself from the smell. “Oh, man. That is putrid!”

The others laughed and started swinging their weapons at the belchers, who accommodatingly popped into nothingness.

Harper rushed in front of the team, holding up her arms. “No, stop. I want Janna taking these mobs out.”

The Inmates shrugged.

“Come on, Janna,” Harper encouraged.

Janna approached the belchers reluctantly, pinching her nose. She equipped her flamberge sword and held the weapon as far in front of her as possible. Janna merely touched the belchers, and they performed their disappearing act. While the nurse walked around the room, eliminating the belchers, Harper turned to Damon. “I think they added this room for levity, to ease some of the stress,” she commented.

“Well, it’s about fucking time,” Damon muttered.

Janna knocked off thirteen belchers and gained 156 experience points, which bumped her from level 27 to 34. She dispersed her 28 attribute points as 9, 9, and 10 into intelligence, wisdom, and constitution. Damon, Zack, Angie, Ethan, and Jordan each tallied one belcher. Ethan was the only one to level up from the measly 12 XP. He dropped his 4 points into endurance. Although their creature descriptions displayed mana points, the belchers didn’t exhibit any type of magic or natural buff during the encounter, and there were no Epiphany clouds.

2

Damon entered the eleventh room, saw the dirt floor, and, for a moment, thought he was in the basement again. Then he saw the room’s guardrail in front of him. The last thing he noticed about the room was that it was brightly lit. Then a powerful force snatched him by the feet. He saw the ceiling flash by instantly as he was dragged into the corner, with his back skidding across the floor.

He collided with a soft mass and looked up. A tangled network of moving vegetation and green appendages wrapped around his arms and legs, trapping him. With hundreds of green limbs clinging to the walls, floor, and ceiling, the being leaned over him. Damon’s Creature Description details appeared in his vision.

PHYSIS (Level 25)

HP: 291

MP: 213

STRENGTH: 26

CONSTITUTION: 29

DEXTERITY: 48

INTELLIGENCE: 21

WISDOM: 14

XP: 69

DESCRIPTION: The primeval goddess of nature.

The coiling mass of flora curled inward, and he saw the Physis’ savage eye regard him mercilessly. Bereft of any animal tissue, the large eyeball was composed of light green shoots that circled a dark forest-green pupil.

Realizing his sword and shield had flown out of his hands during his capture, Damon went with the next best option. “Flail!” The weapon materialized in his hand.

The creature’s appendages immediately snatched it away.

A blue light rippled through his body, and Damon knew a teammate had cast Defense Buff on him.

The Physis leaned forward and a large beak pushed forth from its body. The black beak opened and tilted down. A green tongue covered with porcupine needles wiggled over Damon as green saliva dripped onto his body. His body was completely immobilized now as the beast enveloped him. He saw vines slither across the ceiling, then felt the same vines crawling over his head. Where is Harper? he wondered.

Damon bit into the vines that were covering his face. He heard stomping and saw, in his peripheral vision, Zack running toward the beast.

Zack jumped and swung his axe across, slicing through the mesh of vines, appendages, weeds, and roots. With lightning speed, the Physis snatched Zack’s axe away. Green shoots coiled around his right arm. Zack dropped his shield to free his arm. Equipping his gladius sword in his left hand, he canted his wrist and sliced through the entanglement on his right arm. He called for his skelchion next, and it emerged in his right hand as he expected. “Got two blades for ya, you asparagus spawn from hell,” he growled. As more appendages thrust toward him, Zack planted his feet and started chopping.

Angie arrived from the portal and started swinging her nagamarrow sword. More green limbs reached for her, but she slipped behind Zack’s immense body, evading the Physis’ grasp. “Don’t move, Zack,” she said to the warrior as he continued to swing his swords.

“I hear ya,” he said. “I’m barely keeping even with this thing.” He grunted as appendages replaced the ones he chopped away.

“I know. Keep going.”

From the sides and between Zack’s legs, Angie swung at the monster’s tented limbs that held Damon. With her left hand, she pulled the vines from his face. She could hear him take a deep breath, but she stayed focused on the Physis.

As she worked to free Damon, Zack was becoming more entangled. “Gonna need some help here soon,” he muttered.

Angie peered up and saw his left arm was wrapped thickly in foliage. The shoots were wrapping the rest of his body, too. She could feel Damon moving and looked down. He was pulling his arms free. She attacked the appendages that were still clinging to him. Damon finally broke free of the monster and ran back to the portal to retrieve his sword.

Angie worked on Zack next, separating the vines that clung to his left arm. Overhead, the Acid Fly swooped in and collided with the Physis, disintegrating sections of its body mass.

With green appendages still coiled on his body, Zack escaped the monster’s clutches and ran to get Damon’s flail. Clutching the weapon, he sprinted back into the fray and bashed the monster’s beak. The spiked balls punched three holes, spewing shards of the keratin across the room.

The Physis squealed. More appendages shot toward Zack.

Angie sliced through those, then buried her sword in the monster’s eye.

The creature squealed louder this time.

Armed with her crescent knife, Janna joined the fray and started swinging her arm in diagonal arcs. The two-sided blade was extremely effective, slicing away large chunks of the monster.

Meanwhile, Zack kept swinging with the flail, completely shattering the creature’s beak. The monster’s needled tongue sagged idly within a fleshy mouth that opened and closed reflexively.

With the four Inmates concentrating their attacks, the Physis was a hopeless mess of severed appendages. Yet the creature wouldn’t die. More appendages grew back in place of the severed ones.

Walking up behind everyone, Damon equipped his bone-axe. “Move to the sides!” he screamed. He swung the axe downward. The blade sheared through the Physis’ body, splitting it in two. The two halves slumped unresponsively to the dirt floor.

3

Finally, it’s dead, Damon thought. He turned to the other three. Janna and Zack were grinning, but their expressions changed quickly.

“Oh,” Janna muttered.

Damon turned around. Vines and roots shot out from the severed halves, but they were not directed at the Inmates. It’s stitching itself back together, he thought, astonished.

“How the hell do we kill this thing?” Zack muttered as the beast linked itself back together.

Damon told them to start chopping, then walked back to the middle of the room, looking for clues. Emma remained near the portal, weaving the magic spells that had aided them. At the other corner of the semicircular chamber, Harper, Ethan, and Jordan were fighting another Physis. “It just keeps reshaping itself,” Damon said to Emma. “Can you think of anything?”

“Yup, I saw that,” she replied. “I’ve tried everything.”

“Did you try Song of Distraction?”

Emma nodded. “Yup… to no avail,” she muttered.

“Well, keep trying stuff,” Damon grumbled, then ran back to his corner.

“Make way!” he shouted as he raised his axe. The three Inmates cleared the area. Damon saw a Poison Sphere spell fly past him toward the Physis. He brought the blade down, slicing through the monster’s body.

Once again, the two halves started reconnecting.

“What are we going—” Damon yelled.

Suddenly, the two halves stopped moving.

He looked at Zack, stunned. Then it hit him.

The music.

He glanced over at Emma, who also appeared stunned. Her jaw had dropped, but now it turned into a huge grin. Damon returned his gaze to the monster. It still wasn’t moving.

“Holy hymnbook,” Janna muttered, and the other three broke out in spontaneous laughter.

“Slice and dice, Inmates!” Damon bellowed.

While Zack and Angie chopped the monster, Damon grabbed Janna. “We’re needed at the other end of the room,” he said. They hurried to help Harper’s group. “Keep that spell going,” Damon said to Emma as he passed her.

“You got it.”

The Physis in that corner was still moving and had Harper wrapped in its mesh of vines, weeds, and roots. They cut her loose first, then Damon chopped that mob in half as well. After being severed, the Physis made no attempt to stitch itself back together again.

Within minutes, the Inmates chopped the entire bodies of both monsters into square-foot chunks. Strangely, the creatures weren’t dead yet. Their Creature Description details remained active. Harper glanced at the exit portal in the middle of the room and saw that it hadn’t been activated yet.

Damon asked Harper to try Fire Scorch. The spell burned through much of the foliage, but Creature Description stayed up and the exit portal remained solid.

With the Song of Distraction spell continuing, Damon rounded up the Inmates in the center of the room, overlooking the guardrail. They saw that the chamber was just under the first bridge now, about ninety feet from the courtyard floor. “So how do we kill it?” he asked.

“We need to find a hidden switch in this room,” Harper replied. “If we can’t find one here, then we’ll have to search the previous rooms.” The Inmates groaned. “Emma and Jordan, you search for a switch,” Harper ordered. “Check the walls, the ceiling, the floor, even the guardrail, anything that looks out of the ordinary.”

The two Grimalkin members left to perform the task.

“The rest of us have the fun job of taking these creatures apart inch by inch. Use your shorter blades. Damon and Angie, you’re with me. Ethan, Zack, and Janna, you can go do the other Physis.”

The two groups walked to opposite ends of the room. Harper used her crescent knife and discovered what Janna had earlier; swinging the dual blades like a pendulum was incredibly effective. Without a short weapon, Damon used his sword but was much slower. After several minutes, they heard Janna shouting from the other side, saying she’d found what they were looking for.

4

Harper, Damon, and Angie walked to the other side of the room and saw Janna grinning. An Epiphany cloud hovered just behind her. She extended her arm with the palm facing up. A large green gem was in her hand. “This was in the center of what looked like a heart,” she said, “except it was still vegetation. As soon as I touched this, the creature died.”

“What is it?” Harper asked.

Janna smiled and placed the gem in Harper’s hand. A message displayed in her field of vision.

Congratulations, Harper! You have found an Epiphany Gem that will give you the ability to view your enemies’ hit points and mana points. This ability has a range of 100 meters. This gem can be used by all classes, and we hear it’s quite the hit!

“Oh my god, I have been waiting for this!” Harper exclaimed. She placed the gem into her items inventory and turned to face the other Inmates. “This is going to be a game-changer. We’ll be able to track how close we are to defeating a mob, and we’ll be able to see if our spells are working!”

They passed the gem around and the Inmates received their new ability. Janna led them to the Physis in the other corner of the chamber and quickly found that monster’s heart, revealing it to the members. It was shaped like a regular heart but was composed of interwoven green vines. She sliced through the heart. A bluish-green gem was pocketed inside. Janna grabbed it, another Epiphany cloud rose, and she received a new message.

Congratulations, Janna! You have found an Epiphany Gem that will give you the ability to view your allies’ hit points and mana points. This ability has a range of 100 meters. This gem can be used by all classes, and we hear it’s quite the hit!

Janna handed it to Harper, who squealed with excitement. “OMG, this feels like Christmas. We can see each other’s HP automatically now.” Harper could barely contain herself. “And we’re not done yet.” She walked into the Epiphany cloud, letting the little stars swirl up her body.

Congratulations, Harper! You have found an Epiphany that contains the spell: Earth Tangle. Call forth your flora friends from the earth! This spell will slow down and harm your enemies. Ranked progressive and available to Hunters and Mages, so tell all your friends. Earth Tangle will cost 1.5 MP per second, and has a cooldown rate of 15 seconds and a range of 100 meters. Your enemies will be awe-stuck by the tangle of your dangle!

Emma, Jordan, and Angie claimed the new spell and tried it along with Harper. A column of green brambles and brown roots burst from the ground and fluctuated in the air, seeming to search for a target. Without mobs in the rooms, the Inmates couldn’t see how effective the spell was. Damon asked why the Song of Distraction spell didn’t work from the outset.

Emma shrugged. “I guess you had to sever the Physis before the spell was able to work. Keep it from reforming.”

Janna killed both Physises which granted her an additional 138 XP. That brought her up to level 39, and she dropped her 20 attribute points as 6, 7, and 7 into intelligence, wisdom, and constitution. Before they left the room, Harper placed the gems in her items inventory, then marked the room as number 11.