Eli cleared the last bit of distance with just under an hour to spare, and while he was relieved to make it there in time, he was more relieved to see that the dungeon had proper markings and a door and everything. Well maybe not a door, he thought, more of a large flat round stone at ground level on the side of a rocky outcropping just as he started to get near a rocky plateau. Ahead, further north of the trees of the jungle it was all grass and rocks in waves across the landscape. The wind was brutal, he could feel small parts of it from the tops of the trees where he was checking out the surroundings.
He climbed down and studied the stone. It had several runes on it that he hadn't seen before but it just looked like a normal circular piece of flat stone. There was a podium shaped rock off to the side of it and he walked over to it to check it out and his eyes widened at the possibilities of how he could use this. The stone podium has an open book carved into it that looks like a ledger or a log book with 20 lines on each side. These blank lists had titles at the top of each side that read, "Fastest clear time" and "Most clears in 24 hours". He smiled at the brilliance of it, anyone could spend money on items to get one fast clear but doing over and over took real strength, skill, and endurance. This was going to be fun, assuming I survived, he thought while chuckling to himself. When it was time to get to work, he placed his hand on the stone and a system window came up.
"This is the entrance to the Cacophonous Caverns Dungeon"
"This dungeon is level 10 to 20, for a team of 3 to 6"
"Warning, you cannot exit the dungeon after entering unless it is completed or you have an escape item."
"Any experience will be held until the end of the floor"
"Any loot will be given at the completion of the dungeon"
"Would you like to enter?"
"Yes/No"
Eli reached out with his mental hand, closed his eyes, and selected yes. When he opened his eyes he was in a circular cave chamber about 30 feet across and 15 feet high almost like half a sphere but far less uniform. There was water dripping from small stone points in the ceiling, not natural stone points but points that were similar in size, shape and spacing. There was another podium-like rock in the middle of the room, and after checking it, it had the same information as the one outside near the entrance. One tunnel left the area and next to it was a perfectly smooth and flat carved portion of the stone wall with writing on it. Eli began to read with some hesitation, wondering what from this information would be left out, it would be too easy if it just told you what to do.
"Welcome to my Dungeon of sound and echoes"
"There are 3 floors and 3 bosses"
"Each floor has a safe room like this one where you can recover"
"Entering a safe room resets that floor entirely"
"Good luck friends"
That information was written by a person, or at least by something approximating one, like the system that cracks jokes. He, or it, seemed proud of being the owner or keeper of this dungeon and genuinely wanted me to have a good time, and I would hate to disappoint, he thought as he took his first step out of the safe room. The tunnel he entered was circular and straight, completely dark and covered with stone spikes all the way around. After only a few steps his boots finally couldn't handle it and fell apart, while the stone spikes were not sharp they were not far enough apart to fit his foot so no matter how he stepped he couldn't get decent footing. If it wasn't for his increased balance from his weapon skill he felt like he would have to crawl through this tunnel, but he wasn't going to let this slow him down. He moved as swiftly as he could while having to step precariously through the tunnel.
After only 10 feet he could no longer see anything and focused on his light node and squeezed just a little light magic through his body and he began to glow. This allowed Eli to see but it did not make him feel better because he was now the easiest thing to see and an easy target in this place. Another 10 feet and he heard a clicking sound like a trill that kind of reminded him of a dolphin but sharper noises and at a quick, steady pace. He stopped and tried to listen since he couldn't tell where the sound had come from, but it had stopped and now it was silent. It was very silent, like the walls were absorbing sound instead of reflecting it like most cave walls would. A sudden memory came to him of a podcast he used to listen to and would sometimes watch the recording. They always have foam or plastic on the walls in odd spiked shapes to deaden sound so that they could have a recording without an echo from their walls.
It turns out this place was designed to deaden sound, which meant that his body would be the only thing reflecting it and those sounds could be echolocation from whatever was in here. He stepped slowly another 10 feet and the clicking sound came again much louder, but all he could see was the tunnel still. He stopped and tried to think of a plan, but everything he came up with would have to change mid fight depending on what he was actually facing. "No plan survives the first shot," Eli whispered to himself, which he quickly froze and his blood ran cold as he realized that he just gave himself away by making noise. The eerie quiet of this tunnel and not being able to see was driving him insane as he expected to be ambushed at any time, but nothing happened. He decided that he was walking into an ambush or the monsters were cautious and just wanted to wait to know more like he did. After another 10 steps he had his answer.
"SKREEEEEEEIIIIIII"
A noise so loud, high pitched, and multifarious rang out hitting Eli like a physical force. It sounded like a million hamsters dying into a megaphone and his ears were bleeding and he lost his hearing completely. He could see the end of the tunnel where it opened up into a room but he wasn't there yet and he needed to get out of this tunnel where he couldn't maneuver well enough to fight effectively.
Eli jumped from where he was to just inside the room and lit his body up expending almost 5% of his light magic every second. Before he landed he could see the room and he stiffened and tensed for a fight, the room was easily 150 feet across and 100 feet high with sharp edges and corners. The walls were all smooth stone and in the far wall was another tunnel and about 20 feet from that tunnel was a massive eyeless rat that stood 15 feet tall and had a tail twice as long as it was tall. When he looked from that massive rat to where he was going to land he saw them, a sea of rats, hundreds of them, so many he couldn't see the floor.
Eli landed and used smash on the ground around himself with his mace, 20 rats died instantly and turned to a fleshy mush covering him and the stone ground. The rats around him went into a frenzy eating and drinking every drop and chunk of flesh and blood on the ground and he kept smashing using the lowest mana version since he had so many to smash. The rats all died in one hit, instantly turning to a puddle of goo, which was then eaten. Some of the rats that were eating and not getting smashed were getting larger and it didn't take a genius to see where this was going so he started smashing the biggest ones. This didn't go as planned because after his third bigger rat all the small ones started rushing him as fast as they could forcing him to smash the bigger area using his nodes magic.
This was going to drain him to nothing quick and he was starting to get bit and the ones who got a chunk of him grew very quickly compared to the other ones. He focused his mind as much as he could and decided it was best to just keep killing because there was a finite number of them. Just as he got his rhythm and was starting to make a little progress, a rat came flying through the air and smashed into his chest knocking him down. The little rats piled onto him taking as many bites as they could and growing all the bigger and stronger, he was going to be out of light soon even if he had toned down his light after he landed. He pushed a large chuck of his earth magic out of his node and shoved it into his surroundings while imagining a mental hand coming down to smash the area around him.
Probably a hundred rats died around him, all the rats within 10 feet of Eli were smashed to pulp and blood. He got up and ran towards the tunnel, as he got close he got hit in the back with another projectile rat hitting him exactly when both feet were off the ground and launching him into the wall at the edge of the tunnel. Eli was now spinning in mid air and his momentum would see his skin ripped to shreds as his body contacted the spikes in the tunnel, while they were not particularly sharp, he was not moving slowly. He hit the opposite wall to the tunnel entrance edge he had been knocked into with his back first and he hissed in pain as he felt the spikes scratching his skin. The impact almost knocked the wind out of him but he was holding on as he rolled along the wall first then the floor, his flesh ripped up from bites and stone spikes. When he stopped moving he was laying in a pool of blood that was getting bigger and the rats were coming to drink it and get bigger.
Despite how terrible this was going and the amount of pain he was in, he did notice a couple things from this fight so far; one thing was that his resistance was the only reason he was alive since he could feel how the rats were struggling to bite into him even though he could feel the large amount of magic in their teeth; the second thing was that he also felt how his skin and muscle resisted the spikes from going in too deep. He knew he was strong and should be dead but this place was supposed to be done by 3 people up to level 20. He needed to come up with a plan and try this again, but his mangled muscles were not working well and he could feel the rats getting closer. He used his mace to clear some spikes and started crawling back to the safe room, hopefully the rats would be distracted by all the blood he left behind long enough for him to get there. He didn't have such luck as they started biting his legs again, the pain was awful but the greater damage was feeling their claws and teeth inside your muscles ripping and tearing. They couldn't damage his bones but they did succeed in tearing some off of his feet as he kept crawling.
Eli needed more time and was struggling to find it as they were now biting into his back, he was getting worried even though he was only feet away from the safe zone area. He started dumping magic from his earth node into using smash around himself as his crawling progress slowed. Two dozen rats died every few seconds as he just kept it going until his node was empty and his body was at about half magic as his actual body was pretty much in half as well, having been eaten. Finally he needed to try his untested skill, and he wasn't going far so it shouldn't be too hard, he pictured himself just inside the safe room and blinked his eyes. When he opened his eyes, Eli was just inside the safe room and he passed out laying on his back, looking like a pile of bloody flesh instead of a person.