The Oasis and the Tomb of Blades

The water of the Oasis was so clear you could see the bottom, so transparent it filled anyone who looked upon it with a sudden, unsought freshness. It was large enough to be called a small lake. Date palm trees ringed the water's edge, their branches heavy with clusters of red fruit that looked for all the world like dates — plump, gleaming, and irresistibly tempting.

Those date palms were sweet, delicious food. Eat them and they restored both HP and mana; the game's item description called them a sweet, delicious fruit an angel might eat. I ordered Luna and Sera to harvest them. The two used their skills and stripped the trees in great bunches.

In the real world, consumables that restore mana are brutally expensive. In most cases, mana recovery happens the slow way — rest, meditation, waiting — and the price of anything that speeds the process along is downright vicious. Plenty of Dungeon Hunters never stop struggling because of it. Research into mana hasn't gotten all that far even in the modern era, and there is a great deal humanity still does not know.

In Solari World, though, the means of restoring mana are many, and most of those items take effect instantly. Without tools like that, progressing through the game would often be a nightmare. These date palms were one such item — and while other mana potions tasted absolutely vile, the fruit was genuinely delicious.

I had drunk a mana potion once. The taste was so horrific it numbed my tongue. The item description had warned me — so foul that hell itself seems to shimmer before your eyes; you wouldn't eat this unless your life depended on it — so I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠had some idea what was coming. The actual flavor still blew past my worst predictions.

So stocking these date palms beat carrying mana potions, hands down. They would come in handy in the real world too. The beauty of my inventory is that I can store unlimited quantities of the same kind of item. I cleaned out every date palm ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠near the Oasis. We pulled in about a thousand bunches, and each bunch had hundreds of fruits hanging from it.

After giving the two who had worked so hard a rest, I headed for the water itself. Water spirits lived here. If I brought my face down to drink, those dreadful things would drag me under.

Conversely, kidnapping anyone who tried to drink was all they could do. Aside from that cheap little ambush, the water spirits were useless. This was a desert, after all.

In a desert where even the air was bone-dry, a water spirit could barely manifest at all. They just sat quietly in the Oasis, waiting for a victim.

I pulled a few vials of Giant Scorpion neurotoxin from my inventory. Water spirits can only live in clean water. Some corrupted spirits can survive in polluted water, but fortunately the ones in this Oasis were not that type.

Farming the scorpion's neurotoxin on the previous route was the easy way to clear this stretch of the Oasis. You couldn't earn combat experience like this, so depending on your goals you might take a different approach — but what mattered to me right now was the dungeon clear reward.

I threw the scorpion neurotoxin into the Oasis. The sensation of defiling the desert's only spring of life was ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠uniquely, exquisitely satisfying. Heh heh. You cowardly kidnapper bastards. This Derick Walker is even more underhanded than you lot, and I don't fall for cheap ambushes like that. I'll just let you wither and die instead.

After dumping about five vials, the Oasis suddenly began to bubble and boil. No matter how vicious the desert sun was, this water was not about to turn into a hot spring. As the poison spread and the contamination set in, the water spirits were reacting.

"Kieeeeek! Kieeeeek! Kieeeeek!"

A grotesque sound like a wailing evil spirit rolled up from the water. It was every bit the death cry of a drowned ghost. Hearing those cowardly kidnapper bastards shriek stirred the sadism nested inside me.

I dumped a few more vials. A shame to cut into the quantity I would offer the mercenary guild, but it was a necessary investment to clear the dungeon.

"Glrrrk! Glrrrk! Glrrrk! Glrrrk!"

The bubbling grew even more violent. Heh heh. That's Giant Scorpion neurotoxin for you. The stuff delivers, every time.

The Oasis's turmoil soon began to subside. If this had been a mountain, a forest, or a lakeside, the water spirits would have burst out and executed the heinous environmental criminal on the spot. But this was a desert, far too hostile for them to operate in, and they died along with the water they had poisoned. Like a captain going down with a sunken ship, they died quietly.

"It's over."

The massacre had cleared the quest. The reward was stingy. It had been such an easy quest that I supposed it couldn't be helped.

"Did we really take out all the water spirits?"

Sera asked it with her mouth hanging open, as if she could not believe they could be killed so simply.

She had encountered water spirits before, she said. Near her hometown there was a waterfall where they lived, and though they were usually gentle, they executed anyone who polluted the water without mercy. That was the typical nature of a spirit.

"It's only possible because these ones have been weakened by the desert. Buhihit! But this isn't the end yet."

Most people assume this zone is the end of the dungeon. The Shelter of Blades, however, does not end here. If it did, the name itself would be strange. We had not seen a single blade.

"There's still somewhere we need to go. And for that, we first have to purify this Oasis."

I pulled out the antidote I had bought in advance — enough to neutralize the neurotoxin I had dumped in. The idea that mixing poison with antidote simply purifies the water was a little ridiculous, but hey, it was a game. I rolled with it.

I poured the antidote into the Oasis. Once the water was clean again this way, the spirits would eventually respawn, but that would be a long time from now.

After putting in a generous amount, I drank the water myself to confirm it had been neutralized. What I had put in was neurotoxin, so it was not going to kill me either way — and I had used so much antidote that everything had been purged.

"Preparations are done. Get ready, all of you."

Luna and Sera, who had been watching me, were already prepared. Sera gazed at the Oasis with a pounding look in her eyes.

"Are we going into the Oasis?"

Sharp as she was, she had guessed exactly right.

"That's right. At the bottom of this Oasis is a portal leading to the dungeon's final zone. And there lies the Shelter of Blades… no. The Tomb of Blades. Follow me."

I dove in with a splash. My body was heavy, but with all this fat it was surprisingly hard to sink. I flailed my arms and legs as hard as I could to reach the portal at the bottom. I looked utterly ridiculous.

The pearl-colored portal we had seen when we first entered the dungeon waited on the Oasis floor. I went in. The moment I crossed the threshold, it was as if gravity itself had shifted — my body rolled sideways. The entrance was a descent from above, but the exit came out sideways like an ordinary door.

Gravity twisted ninety degrees in an instant. I could not overcome the inertia loaded on my body and went down in a heap. Luna and Sera, with their excellent reflexes, landed cleanly on their feet. My stats themselves were decent enough, but all this flab got in the way.

And so we entered a new zone. What greeted us was a massive pyramid. A terrifying stone tomb so vast you had to crane your neck to the sky to take it all in — it suggested that whoever was buried there had been someone of exceedingly high station. This lonely grave standing in the middle of a barren desert was the last mountain we had to conquer.

Sera could not close her mouth at the magnificent structure filling her entire field of view. Her hometown was probably a forest, a place with no connection to architecture this grand. Luna, who would have seen plenty of similarly monumental buildings on the Island of the Moon Tribe, kept her composure.

"Oh my god! What is that? A building that huge in this desolate desert! I can't believe it!"

"Buhihit! That's a structure called a pyramid. A king's enormous tomb."

"A tomb? You're saying that huge building is a tomb?"

Even looking at it myself, I had to admit it was a hell of a lot of money to piss away on a grave.

"Inside are the remains of the rulers who once governed this land, and the knights who guard them. The knights who were buried alive with their dead sovereigns take their eternal rest in that massive tomb. Or perhaps it isn't rest. Their flesh is cursed, after all — they guard their dead ruler's corpse for eternity."

The dungeon's name, Shelter of Blades, came from this. Knights forced into eternal slumber for their lord. A ruler's tomb, watched over by those knights' vengeful spirits and their mummies. This was the dungeon's hidden zone. And it was also where the dual blades I wanted lay sleeping.

"This place is on a different level from everything so far. Even exploiting the enemy's weaknesses won't make it easy. Stay sharp."

"Yes!"

Luna and Sera cried out in a single voice, as if their hearts were perfectly aligned. And so we moved toward the pyramid.

The pyramid was riddled with countless winding paths. Cunning traps designed to grant wicked grave robbers their own eternal rest, knight-mummies that moved for no purpose but to eliminate intruders, and curses of every kind filled every corner of the place.

This kind of maze dungeon is a thoroughly irritating element in an RPG. Because you can never be sure where the traps are, you have no choice but to advance by eating them with your own body. Conversely, that also means that if you know the walkthrough, you can push forward with ease.

Of the pyramid's fifteen entrances, I chose the path closest to the center. It also had the most traps. Of course, to someone who already knew them, they were about as threatening as a nephew's toys — cute little bits of mischief.

We tore through the traps at a dead run. Every trap has a solution. They exist to drive out unauthorized outsiders, after all. Most of the pyramid's traps were lethal things that took lives, but if you knew the method, they were easy to avoid.

"You have to move only on the designated tiles here. Otherwise arrows fire from both sides. I'll take the lead."

We crossed the arrow trap, and I spoke again without slowing down.

"Keep your hand on this side of the wall as you go. Otherwise a giant iron sphere drops from the ceiling and rolls."

Past the iron-sphere trap, another instruction:

"We have to fit the stone tablets we've collected into this. Get the order wrong and the floor falls away."

We slotted the tablets, cleared that one too, and just like that we were through the entire trap zone.

"No more traps beyond this point. This is the zone the cursed mummy warriors guard. They're slow and weak, but they have tenacious vitality. Their weakness is the fire attribute. There are so many of them, though, that even exploiting that weakness won't make it easy. Keep your heads on straight."

"Yes!"

We finally entered the zone the mummies guarded. Shoving open a massive door of stone, we found a wide path completely unlike the narrow passages until now. What guarded that path were mummies holding rusted swords.

The rotting-flesh monsters, bandaged here and there, turned their gazes toward us. They were the king's servants, and they had watched this pyramid for so long that even a mummy's preservatives could no longer keep their bodies intact.

I sent them a nice, toasty present. A mummy's weakness is fire — heat, flame, pyrotechnics. Arrows of scorching flame surged toward the clustered mummy warriors.

Fssshhh! Sparks of flame leapt, and the mummy warriors flailed. Combat had begun.