Entering the dungeon didn’t immediately seem to change anything. They were still in a dark wood, lit by sunlight that didn’t really seem to reach the ground.

At least, it didn’t change much for Serenity. He could barely see the mist that appeared; it was still easy to see the trees and his party members. It was a bit wetter than it had been before, but that was all.

“I hate this mist. Anything could jump out of it.” Katya looked around; Serenity wasn’t sure what she was searching for.

“Haven’t you been here before? First level’s all wisps, they don’t jump at all.” Hale had a smile on his face as he teased Kayta.

“Yeah yeah yeah. I still hate it.” After a moment staring at the woods, Katya turned to Hale. “So which way is it? I know there’s a fast way and a slow way out of here, but I only did this place once, and I wasn’t leading.”

Stojan Tasi’s voice came from behind Katya and she jumped. “Three of the trees in the immediate circle will have symbols carved into the trunk. Each of them is the beginning of a route. We want the one that looks like a spiral. It will take us the long way on this level, but it leads to a shortcut to the catacomb. I think you’ll find it isn’t on your map.”

Hale stared at the City Lord then dug into his pack to pull out some paper. After examining it, he shook his head. “It sure isn’t. I’ve never heard of a shortcut for this dungeon.”

The City Lord shrugged. “I looked up the dungeon after you left, one of the past City Lords loved finding the little secrets like this and he kept good records. There isn’t much call for the shortcut so it gets forgotten. People only come here to learn basic dungeoneering, to see the dungeon, or to run it for the levels. Most people from offplanet don’t come before Tier 2, so it’s not in high demand. It’s rarely ever full. There are closer, higher-Tier routes to the Catacombs if that’s what you want.”

Serenity tuned out the discussion as he looked for a spiral marking on the trees. He didn’t care why they’d picked this dungeon and not another; they were here now and second-guessing wouldn’t help. If the mark was carved into the tree, there was a good chance he could see it - there!

No, that was a circle, not a spiral. Which meant the spiral was probably not close to it. Serenity turned a third of the way around and started checking trees. An X told him he’d made a good guess but turned the wrong way.

The others seemed to be slowly walking up to trees and taking a good look at them. Was the mist really that hard to see through?

Serenity turned towards the direction he guessed the spiral would be in, and - there it was, plain as day. Plainer, really, since he could only tell when it was day by the warmth of the sun, and Tzintkra’s Sun wasn’t all that warm, even in daytime. “It’s this way.”

Katya grumbled something about “more Sight abilities than anyone needs” as she followed Serenity. From each spiral-carved tree, he could see another. The trees lead more or less straight for the first three trees, then started to curve in a widening spiral, like the marking.

The woods weren’t exactly comfortable, but they weren’t unpleasant, either. The biggest problem Serenity had with them was the mist; not only did it mean that he had to call people back when they wandered away, it got into everything and left him feeling damp in places he didn’t want to be damp.

He was also pretty sure that what he was smelling was wet feathers. Serenity found himself periodically stopping to shake his wings to try to get the water out. It helped, but only a little.

The wisps turned out to be small balls of light, made of Death energy. They caused fear simply by being in the area and attacked by leading people away from the group with a mind-based attack, then draining life by flying through their body.

Serenity couldn’t even see them, and when they passed through him, he actually gained a little Death energy from his aura’s continual Eat Death. Serenity knew his Mind resistance was high enough that he was unlikely to have issues - that was probably why the Fear aura had no effect - but it didn’t really matter, because you had to see them for their ‘attractive nuisance’ Mind attack to work.

Everyone else thought it was unfair that they didn’t bother him; Serenity wished he could see them so he could do something about them. They were fairly easy to deal with; magic was required, but that was easy enough to come by. He just couldn’t hit them since he wasn’t sure where they were.

Using Vital Sight would probably have worked, but that made his eyes glow with blue-white fire, and that was apparently the same way the wisps looked. He didn’t need to get accidentally hit, and it wasn’t like they needed his help, so he satisfied himself with acting as a guide and occasionally retrieving someone (usually Raz) caught by the wisps.

About three hours in, Serenity realized he was being an idiot. He didn’t have to be able to target the wisps; all he had to do was extend his aura and ramp up Eat Death and it would weaken the wisps, possibly kill them. Things went faster after that, as it became harder for the wisps to draw people away from the group and they didn’t have to slow down to fight them.

The spiral route took about six hours to walk; Stojan Tasi said that was unusually fast for it, but slower than the other routes. Having to camp on the first level was to be avoided if at all possible, since the wisps wouldn’t stop attacking.

Taking the “secret” shortcut didn’t get the five of them out of facing a boss. Serenity knew they’d reached it when the trees thinned out into a clearing with a single large tree at the center. He couldn’t see the wisps that surrounded it, but Raz described them circling the tree, then spiraling in towards it. When all of the wisps reached the tree, it animated and came after the group.

Serenity was glad to have something to fight. His aura was able to weaken it, but not fast enough to prevent the battle.

It wasn’t much of a battle. Serenity energized his naginata with his Plasma affinity - what better to use against dead wood than fire, after all? - and cut off each tree limb as it swung at him, while the others concentrated on attacking the trunk. The wisp-engorged tree was slow and clumsy; Serenity wasn’t sure how much it would have hurt if it had hit, but it never did.

It didn’t have a core. None of the wisps had one, either.

Once it fell, the group headed past it and found a hill with an open door that led to a room containing the pedestal with the level crystal and a set of stairs leading downwards.

[Wailing Woods Level 1 Complete]

[500 XP Awarded]

It was a pitiful amount of XP, but it was enough to get Serenity to Level 25 and unlock his Physical Storage Evoker skill. He spent the next few hours thinking about what spells he wanted to store, then trying it out.

When he tried storing three spells, he found out that they interfered with each other too much and would fall apart in a matter of hours; that might have worked, but in less than an hour all three were well under half their original strength, and given the time it took to cast them, that simply wasn’t worthwhile.

He’d have to limit himself to two spells, which he could keep usable for hours on end. One spell was probably storable indefinitely, but he’d rather have two and have to recast them daily, at least while he was in the dungeon. He’d probably go down to one once he was out. It was clear that the ability wasn’t really intended to store more than one spell at a time.

Spells with some level of similarity seemed to interfere less, leaving them more relatively powerful and increasing the amount of time he could store them.

Serenity settled on two related spells that seemed the most useful that he couldn’t currently cast fast enough to be useful in combat, both involving a selective use of his Time affinity: he would change the relative speed of Time for people or objects he selected; one spell would make it go faster and the other slower. He’d have to select the people when he evoked the spell, so he’d need to know where they were; the best way would be to be able to see them. Including himself would be simple, at least.

He was pretty sure there had to be a way to use liminal void to create an interesting shield spell, but he was going to have to work on it more. He couldn’t seem to get it to work. Once he did get it to work, he thought it might be a good spell to infuse.

The stairs went deeper than seemed reasonable to get to the Catacombs; Serenity would have sworn they’d gone down eight or ten floors before they reached the Catacombs. Perhaps dungeon levels were more than one floor thick? Serenity hadn’t really thought about it, but there was the ground underfoot which had to be deep enough for tree roots, and who knew how thick the “ceiling” was.

Maybe eight or ten floors wasn’t really all that far down.

The catacombs below the Wailing Woods Dungeon were a simple linear set of four rooms, each filled with four to seven skeletons and zombies. Serenity couldn’t see any way a Tier 1 group would have trouble with them, unlike the top floor (which would only have needed the knowledge to prepare appropriately).

The boss was a single zombie giant rat.

A swarm of zombie giant rats might have been threatening, but a single rat was anticlimactic. It charged at them and impaled itself on Serenity’s naginata. It tried to lunge its way up the weapon as the others attacked it, but died before it got close enough to be threatening.

[Wailing Woods Catacomb Level 1 Complete]

[500 XP Awarded]

Past the pedestal were three doors - the Necropolis, the Shining Caverns (Stojan Tasi mentioned it actually let out at the Dungeon entrance), and the way deeper into the Catacombs.

Clearing the Catacomb level had only taken a couple hours, which left plenty of time in the day to reach the Necropolis City Lord’s residence, so they decided to continue.

Serenity sketched the rune on the door with a pair of monster cores while the others prepared for the trek through the Necropolis. When the rune was complete, all Serenity had to do was put his cloak on. It was little more than a colored strip of fabric to avoid concealing his wings, and Serenity wasn’t sure which side had the symbol of the Shining Caverns.

Naturally, he put it on backwards.

Once that was fixed, he opened the door, triggering the portal to the Necropolis. The others went through, then Serenity settled his Incarnate over himself. The more he did that, the more comfortable it felt.

He’d probably need the comfort soon; from what Stojan Tasi said, the area around this portal was a bit rough for the Necropolis. It was possible they’d have a confrontation soon after stepping through. This was why Serenity was to be the last one through; it was traditional for the guards to go first, after all.