Memoirs of Your Local Small-time Villainess

Scarlett looked down the ancient stone stairway that had been hidden beneath the center of the gathering of old rocks. A streak of excitement passed through her. She had been afraid this little excursion wouldn't lead anywhere or that she would have forgotten how to find this place. But it seemed like she could consider herself lucky this time.

There had been lots of small dungeons spread around in 'Chronicle of Realms'. The area around Freybrook had at least six that she knew of. But of those she had only been relatively certain in how to find two of them. Finding one's way in the game world was very different from navigating in real life. She couldn't just press M to have a map of the area appear with location markers and all. Instead she had to rely on what landmarks she knew from the game to navigate. Thankfully this particular dungeon turned out to be rather simple to find.

In the game's lore, zuvers were an old race that had reigned over most of Tanrelia—the continent that the game took place on—several centuries ago, but they had essentially died out after a devastating cataclysm. Zuverian artifacts were heavily sought after though, and occasionally old Zuverian ruins were still found. In the game those often had some kind of puzzle you had to figure out first before entering, usually by finding relevant passages in books and NPCs' dialogues, but they were a good source of experience and equipment throughout the game. The puzzle for this particular crypt wasn't especially hard—it was relatively low-level, after all—and only required you to find and press a few runes etched into the stones in this Stonehenge-like formation. Nothing that required any special preparation.

Scarlett turned to Kat — the Shielder that she had hired to help clear this dungeon. The woman probably wasn't too far off from Scarlett's age—somewhere in her mid-twenties—and had light blue eyes as well as sun-bleached gold hair that hung in a rough braid above her shoulder. She wore what looked to be a thin sort of gambeson beneath a light set of metal armor and part of her forehead was covered by a red-white headband. Scarlett was actually relatively tall, but Kat was taller than her and it was clear that the woman was in good shape. And although Scarlett wasn't really an authority on the subject the Shielder looked like she had experience with danger. Which made the woman's current shocked expression a little amusing to watch.

"Are you ready?" Scarlett asked, gesturing towards the stairs in front of them.

Kat gawked at her for a moment longer before turning towards the ruin's entrance. She let out a short sigh and shook her head. "Alright. Fine. Just make sure to stay a fair distance behind me at all times. If it's too dangerous we're going back."

The Shielder started to slowly make her way down the stairs. When she reached the door situated between the two metal statues of ancient zuver she turned around and looked at Scarlett. "On second thought, it might be better if you stay here. I've heard there are lots of traps in these places and I'm not sure I can protect you the whole time."

"There is no need to worry. I will be fine," Scarlett said. While she didn't actually have a way of protecting herself just yet she was moderately certain there wouldn't be any problem with this dungeon. She'd cleared it recently in her last playthrough and still remembered its layout. Up till now it had seemed like the game's world translated relatively well to this world. The largest difference she'd noticed was some changes to distances. However if there truly turned out to be major discrepancies in the layout of this dungeon compared to what she knew she would retreat.

Kat appeared unsure whether to trust her word or not but eventually she acquiesced and turned around to try and open the dungeon's door. It shifted with a loud creak to reveal a wide and dark stone hallway. After a moment small sconces with dark green crystals in them slowly lit up revealing more of the corridor. It was lined on both sides by zuver faces carved into the stone and led to a large room that looked like a kind of mausoleum. As Kat cautiously moved through the hallway Scarlett stopped her before the woman could enter the room ahead of them.

"Wait," she said. She pointed towards five sets of stone tombs at the center of the room. "Throw something at those."

Kat gave her an odd look but started looking around for something to throw. She found a loose piece of the stone wall in a part that was crumbling apart and tore it off, gripping it in her hand. Scarlett watched as she then hurled it at the tombs. The stone clinked again the top of one of the tombs before bouncing off and rolling onto the floor. The sound echoed throughout the room before everything went completely silent once more.

Kat looked back at Scarlett. "What was tha—"

A loud shrill rang out. A cold wind passed through the room and Scarlett took several steps back as the lids of the tombs shifted to the side and bony hands reached up to grab the edges. Five skeletons in crumbling clothing and with glowing blue sockets instead of eyes pulled themselves out of the graves, their eyes locking onto the two.

"I believe you have work to carry out," Scarlett said as Kat stared at the skeletons.

"Gods, I didn't think there'd be actual undead," she heard the Shielder mutter as the woman stepped in front of Scarlett and raised her hands. The skeletons had already started moving. Three of them were running towards Scarlett and Kat as the other two moved their bones around about and blue circles formed in the air. Kat took another step forward as she moved her hands. A trunk-sized boulder formed in front of her left hand and shot out at two of the skeletons, landing right on their legs and crushing them as it spread a dark mud on the ground. In front of her other hand five daggers made of fire appeared and immediately darted off towards the other skeletons. The two at the back got hit in the head which interrupted their magic while the two whose legs were crushed lay on the floor and were caught on fire when two of the fire daggers struck the mud around them. The last skeleton took a dagger in the chest but continued onward and had almost reached Kat when a whip of fire snapped out from the woman and knocked the skeleton back several meters. Its rib piece was almost charred to a crisp from the attack.

The battle itself was a real sight for Scarlett. She had never seen any of its like outside of movies and games. She'd never even been in a fight for her entire life. But despite that she felt almost completely calm as she observed the events — an ongoing trend ever since she'd overtaken part of Scarlett's personality traits. The woman seemed to only get heated up over the strangest things.

Scarlett watched as Kat used a couple more spells to finish the skeletons off, before then proceeding to search the room for any other threats. Scarlett had recognized most of the spells that Kat had used in the fight. The large boulder, for example, had been the terramancy spell [Boulder Shot], which also left a temporary substance on the ground that was flammable. It synergized well with pyromancy spells such as [Scorching Daggers] which was the second spell the woman had used. And the whip had been [Scorching Whip]. All of them were low-level spells that Scarlett had used a lot with her first character which had been a mage. And like most fire-related spells in the game they were especially useful aganst many undead monsters.

Seemingly satisfied with her check, Kat walked to the center of the large mauseloum to inspect the tombs themselves. "These weren't as bad as I feared," she said, turning to look at Scarlett. "But how did you know there'd be undead here?"

Scarlett walked closer, stepping around the scorched bones of one of the skeletons. "How I knew is irrelevant. It simply matters that I did."

Kat raised an eyebrow at her. "...Alright. If you say so," she said and spun around. She pointed towards the other end of the room where three hallways went off in different directions. "Which way are we going next then? Oh all-knowing one."

Scarlett scrunched up her nose. The woman sure got casual with her real quick, and she couldn't help but get a little angry at that. And that made her even angrier. It took quite a bit of effort to press the feelings down and not let it affect her.

"The one in the middle," she said. She might have failed in keeping all of the annoyance out of her voice.

Kat glanced at her, then nodded her head and took the lead towards the middle hallway. In the game the other two paths eventually led to dead ends. They might have some things of worth in them, but the two of them could always return to those later. For now the middle one was their priority.

Scarlett wordlessly followed Kat as they moved deeper into the Zuverian ruin. She didn't spot any noticeable difference to the dungeon in the game and so, with her guidance, they managed to avoid all the minor traps that were present in low-level ruins like this one. Kat also didn't have any problems dealing with the undead that popped up so they moved forward at a decent pace. They didn't stop for long in any of the rooms that they passed by. Scarlett knew there probably were some things worth money in them but she wanted to reach the end and clear the dungeon before she started collecting any of the loot. Her main goal here wasn't money, after all.

After about an hour of ruin-trekking they finally reached the last room of the dungeon. It was a large crypt with an altar that stood on a raised platform in the middle of the crypt. On top of the platform next to the altar stood a tall skeleton with a vibrant gold crown atop its skull and adorned with a white robe that somehow hadn't been affected by the passage of time as the rest of the dungeon had. The skeleton's glowing eyesockets turned to glare at them the moment they got close and it began casting a spell.

Scarlett hurried to move back as a hail of ice crystals slammed into Kat. Scarlett could have sworn she saw the crystals shatter into pieces the moment before they struck the Shielder's armor.

Kat met the hailstorm with her own assortment of fire daggers, ten of them forming in front of both her hands before shooting off towards the undead. Its robe was burned from the attack and it created some holes, but it didn't seem to get heavily damaged.

"This one is a bit more durable. Looks like I'll actually have to try," Kat grumbled. Then a large ball of fire appeared above her hand before the skeleton could even fire another spell. A second later the fireball slammed into the skeleton's chest and knocked it off the platform. Kat performed some more movements and spikes grew up from the ground where the skeleton landed and tore through its robes and bones. The skeleton let out a hollow scream as it tried to climb off the spikes but its cries were soon drowned out when another ball of fire, this one much larger than the last, flew across the room. A small explosion rocked the crypt as the earth spikes were destroyed along with the skeleton. A burning smell filled the air as the smoke slowly dissipated into nothing to reveal that the body of the skeleton had been almost completely disintegrated.

"There we go," Kat said and wiped her hands off. "Honestly I didn't think a Zuverian ruin would be this easy to clear. After everything I'd heard I was sort of expecting more."

Scarlett walked past the woman and towards the platform at the center of the room. "It varies significantly from ruin to ruin. This one would be described as being on the easier side of the scale. If it had been one of the more deadly ones neither of us might have made it past the first room."

"You sure seem to be an expert on this."

"I suppose you could say that, yes." Scarlett paused in front of the platform. It almost reached her chest. She took a few steps to the side and placed her foot on a square piece of stone on the ground that might have been debris fallen from the roof. Using it as a starting point she carefully climbed on top of the platform, ignoring the indignant feeling she got from displaying such an undignified pose.

"Maybe you should wait to see if there are any more traps before you check that out," Kat said as she pulled herself up on the platform without any issues.

Scarlett frowned at the sight. "There aren't any," she said. This whole dungeon had been exactly as she remembered it.

Scarlett then took a step closer to the altar and looked at the items that lay on it. This was what she was here for.