The first thing Rick noticed about the Vault of Eternal Suffering was that it lived up to its name immediately. The second thing he noticed was that he couldn't see anything because the darkness was so thick it felt like being buried alive in black cotton.
"Fortuna?" Rick called out, his voice sounding muffled and wrong in the oppressive gloom. "Please tell me you can see something."
"Oh yeah, I've got divine vision. The entrance hall is actually pretty boring. Just a long corridor with some spikes on the walls, a few pressure plates that probably trigger death traps, and what looks like a statue of the God of Trials flipping off anyone who enters."
"That last part can't be real."
"Go forward twenty steps and see for yourself."
Rick took twenty careful steps, hands outstretched like he was playing the world's worst game of blind man's bluff. His fingers touched cold stone, and as if responding to his touch, torches along the walls burst into flame with green fire that provided just enough light to see by. Sure enough, there was a statue of a robed figure with both middle fingers raised in what was clearly meant to be a divine gesture of contempt.
"This god has issues," Rick muttered.
"He's very passionate about trials," Fortuna said, already walking down the corridor like she was on a casual stroll. "He believes suffering builds character. Also, he's kind of a dick."
They made it about fifty feet before the first trap activated. Rick stepped on a stone that was slightly more recessed than the others, heard a click that made his soul try to leave his body, and then approximately three hundred arrows shot out from the walls in every direction. Death number twenty-five was quick but extremely painful.
He respawned right where he'd been standing, now with the knowledge that the floor was a minefield of murder tiles and a new card floating in his vision.
[DEATH CARD GENERATED: ARROW STORM]
[RARITY: UNCOMMON]
[EFFECT: Summons a volley of spectral arrows that rain down on enemies. Warning: Please aim away from yourself this time.]
"Did my card system just sass me?" Rick said, staring at the description.
"Your system has gained sentience through exposure to your repeated failures," Ace said. "I'm as surprised as you are."
"Fantastic. Even my magical abilities think I'm an idiot."
Fortuna, who had casually dodged all the arrows through what looked like divine cheating, waved at him from the other side of the trap corridor. "Come on! We've got like twenty more floors to go!"
"Twenty floors? This vault has twenty floors?"
"Actually more like fifty, but I'm trying to keep your morale up!"
"That's the opposite of helping!"
...
...
The next hour was a masterclass in creative death. Rick got crushed by falling ceilings, dissolved by acid pits, frozen by magical ice traps, set on fire by surprise flamethrowers, electrocuted by lightning runes, and once got hit by what could only be described as a magical pie to the face that turned out to be filled with poison.
"Who puts a poisoned pie trap in a dungeon?" Rick screamed after respawning from death number thirty-two.
"Someone with a sense of humor," Fortuna said, barely suppressing her laughter. "Did you see your face? You were so confused!"
"I hate this place. I hate you. I hate that statue." Rick pointed at another middle-finger statue they'd passed. "I especially hate that the God of Trials has apparently installed a dozen statues of himself giving everyone the bird!"
"At least you're getting lots of cards!"
She wasn't wrong. Rick's collection had grown to forty-seven cards, and he was learning to combine them in increasingly creative ways. The Arrow Storm card worked great with his Banana Peel card to create a combo he'd named "Slip and Die." The poison pie death had given him a toxic cloud card that synergized well with his acid splash.
They finally reached the first floor's boss room after Rick had died another eight times to various creative traps. The room was massive, circular, with a domed ceiling covered in more of those glowing green runes. In the center was a creature that made Rick immediately want to turn around and leave.
It was a Chimera, but not the traditional kind. This one looked like someone had taken a lion, a goat, a snake, and a dragon, thrown them in a blender, and then gave the result anger management issues and a gym membership. It was easily twenty feet tall, covered in scales and fur, with multiple heads that all looked independently furious.
"Oh fuck me," Rick said eloquently.
"That's Floor One's guardian!" Fortuna said cheerfully. "Pretty standard Chimera."
"Three heads, each with different breath weapons, tail that's also a snake, claws that can cut through steel. Should be fun!"
"Your definition of fun is broken and you need therapy!"
The Chimera roared with all three heads simultaneously, creating a sound that made Rick's bones vibrate. Then it charged, and Rick learned that dying to a multi-headed monster was an experience he could have lived without.
Death thirty-three was the lion head biting him in half. Death thirty-four was fire breath from the dragon head. Death thirty-five was poison from the goat head, which was somehow the worst of the three because he had time to feel it working. Deaths thirty-six through forty were a combination of tail strikes, claw swipes, and one particularly embarrassing incident where he tripped over his own feet and fell into the Chimera's mouth.
"Stop dying in stupid ways!" Fortuna shouted while casually punching the Chimera in the dragon head. "You're supposed to be learning!"
"I'm learning that this place is bullshit!" Rick threw a five-card combo that actually managed to burn off some of the Chimera's scales. "Why aren't you just killing it?"
"Because you need the experience! How else are you going to get stronger?"
"By not dying forty times to the same boss!"
But despite his complaining, Rick was getting better. Each death taught him the Chimera's patterns. The lion head always attacked first. The dragon head breathed fire in a cone. The goat head's poison had a wind-up time.
The tail struck low and fast. By death forty-five, he was actually dodging attacks instead of just being a punching bag.
Death forty-six gave him a breakthrough. He respawned with a card called "Hydra's Curse" that caused any damage he dealt to multiply across multiple targets. Combined with his growing arsenal of elemental cards, he could finally hurt the damn thing.
"Okay you mutant reject!" Rick channeled mana into six cards at once, his hands glowing with power. "I've died forty-six times to your ugly ass!"
"That's forty-six times I've studied your moves! Forty-six times I've gotten angrier! And you know what happens when I get angry?"
The Chimera roared in response, which Rick chose to interpret as curiosity.
"I get creative!" He threw the combo. Banana Peel to trip it, Arrow Storm to pepper it with projectiles, Acid Splash to weaken its scales, Flame Card to set it on fire, Poison Cloud to choke it, and finally Hydra's Curse to multiply all the damage across its multiple heads.
The effect was spectacular. The Chimera stumbled, slipped, got perforated by arrows, started melting and burning simultaneously, choked on toxic fumes, and then the damage multiplied. All three heads screamed in agony.
Fortuna saw her opening and delivered a punch to the lion head that sent a shockwave through the entire room. The Chimera collapsed with a final dying roar, its body dissolving into particles of light.
Rick stood there breathing hard, his mana depleted, his body exhausted despite being technically fully healed. "Did we win?"
"We won! Great job! Only took you forty-seven deaths!"
"Shut up. I'm getting good at this."
"You died forty-seven times to Floor One's boss."
"And now I won't die to it again. That's called progress, Ace."
A treasure chest materialized in the center of the room. Fortuna skipped over to it and threw it open, revealing a pile of gold, some rare materials, and a glowing crystal.
"No fragment?" Rick asked, disappointed.
"Fragments are only on specific floors. This is just Floor One. We've got forty-nine more to go!"
Rick stared at her. Then at the exit door that had appeared in the wall. Then back at her.
"Forty-nine more floors."
"Yep!"
"With bosses."
"Probably!"
"That will kill me repeatedly."
"Almost certainly!"
Rick sat down on the floor and put his head in his hands. His death counter currently read sixty-one. By the time they reached Fragment Seven, it would probably be in the hundreds.
"I want to go home," he said quietly.
"No you don't! You want to get stronger, find that Wishing Card, and prove that dying to a banana peel doesn't define you!" Fortuna grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.
"Besides, think of all the cards you're collecting! You're building the most comprehensive death-based card collection in history!"
"That's the worst achievement ever."
"It's an achievement nonetheless! Now come on, Floor Two awaits!"
Rick let himself be dragged toward the exit, already dreading whatever fresh hell awaited them on the next floor. Somewhere in the vault's depths, he could hear that laughter again, echoing through endless corridors. The God of Trials was definitely enjoying this.