An hour and a half of killing basic reanimated armor, waiting for them to activate again, and repeating the ‘kill’ produced a treasure trove of experience and gold.

  The animated armor ‘died’ only to rise some five to ten minutes later. While they fought as if they were a fresh enemy, any damage to the physical armor remained. Weapons looted from the armor remained missing after they rose again. After the hour and a half passed there was little of the armor left to hit. The battle still granted full experience all the same.

  With the level delta between themselves and the enemies of Fort Duran diminished, the trio continued on into the next bailey. A hulking set of armor assembled itself off the worn dirt of the Fort Duran bailey.

  The armor stood a good one and a half times the height of a regular human, with clear spaces between bits of plate armor large enough to fit a gloved hand through.

  “Two shields? Who would ever fight like that?” Zilara asked.

  Lightning struck the twin shields, sputtering out with no effect. For the back of each shield was insulated. The lightning would not stun the creature and would not penetrate the shields. Calaf brought his new halberd to bear. The mighty blow of the axe-head upon a long pole struck the shield, but did not stagger the living armor.

  It’s something of a boss mob, Calaf realized. The halberd knight from the ramparts tested an aspiring Paladin’s ability to block and make plans under fire. This shield knight tested offensive capabilities.

  Full parties would have no problem with this. Just as archer Scouts or ranged Batlemages would have trivialized the archers in the last encounter. But for a lone Squire or group of Paladins, however, an offensive damage check would be quite the hurdle.

  Spells and strikes both bounced off an impenetrable guard. The knight parried Calaf’s next spear thrust and followed up with a wind-up shield bash of its own. Calaf’s kite shield was dwarfed by the wall of metal flying at him. He blocked this first bash but was sent off balance. Now wide open, Calaf took the full force of the second shield as it followed up with another bash.

  Blunt damage took a chunk off Calaf’s health. Even a lucky stun from Zilara’s lightning did little as the knight held twin shields up, maintaining its defense until the stun status diminished.

  A basic heal recovered some damage. Calaf struggled to his feet.

  “At least no adds have come in,” he said through gritted teeth.

  Jelena passed by him. This was normally unheard of. Usually, he was in the front, maintaining a perfect defensive guard. She prepped her specialized flintlock on ‘loan’ from the Battletower.

  “Going to overpack this shot,” she said. “That shield looks pretty thick.”

  The living armor maintained its defensive position. Jelena aimed, holding the weapon with both hands.

  A great crash echoed off the fort’s brick walls. The two shields flew aside, cratered metal blown inward where the two shields interlocked. The living armor staggered.

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  Jelena dived aside as Zilara capitalized on this opening with a fistful of lightning. Now stunned, Calaf leaped forward and brought the halberd down hard on the animated plate mail’s head until it was dead.

  Calaf took the rightmost shield from the slain armor; they had custom handholds for each arm. He equipped the shield in place of his kite shield and judged its weight. The gunshot damage blemish in the upper-right-hand corner remained.

  “It’s significantly harder to wield the spear in one hand and this thing in the other,” he said.

  By the time they’d sorted out their loot, the Reanimated Shield Wall Knight’s constituent armor pieces stirred. It reassembled itself again with just the one shield this time.

  One shield proved insufficient to block Zilara’s lightning. They quickly finished off the armor and doubled up on experience.

  By the time the group entered a set of wide double doors, Zilara was halfway to level 49.

  Ornate armor sets had not lined the halls of Fort Duran the last time Calaf was here. Now they lined the walls of the great mead hall and the interior hallways beyond. They came to life as the party approached.

  Armor puppets would prove useful in a dungeon that saw dozens of parties each day in the peak season. The same enemy could battle with any number of parties. It was an ingenious system, even if it was a somewhat questionable definition of ‘dungeon.’

  Single-shield knight armor and halberd knights formed the bulk of the enemies in this area. They were joined by knights wielding a massive hammer—a fine test of a Paladin’s defensive abilities.

  No matter the foes, the trio knew where to go at this point. They’d been stalked through this very tower by none other than Baldr just over a year ago. They leveled up every few floors and lost count of the gold they’d gathered. One last extra-strong hammer knight came swinging at them with mighty blows that took out columns around the room before they were able to take it down.

  “Power leveling is quite the workout,” Zilara said, herself having just dinged 50. She giggled. “Heh, should be coming up on access to that teleport spell. Maybe two more levels.”

  Before they could worry about that, however, Calaf and Zilara both collected what they came here for:

  Calaf still had five levels of increasing length to go before the change, but he was on the cusp of ranking up to Paladin at long last.

  The trio looked out over the trees of Autumn’s Redoubt. It was only mid-afternoon, and the late-spring sun cast the forest in even more radiant red and gold hues.

  Jelena rested her head on Calaf’s shoulder. The floor creaked beneath them.

  “Well, glad you two got what you were looking for,” she said. “We haven’t seen hide nor hair of the next set of gospels.”

  “About that,” Zilara said, looking at the wooden floorboards of the tower roof. “Might be falling upon a lead to that sooner rather than later.”

  The floor scarcely had time to react before the floor beneath them collapsed.

  The tallest tower in Fort Duran contained eighteen floors, counting the roof. Landing with a thud, squashing whatever happened to exist on the floor underneath, then continuing down as the weight of everything above brought each floor down in turn.

  Calaf bear-hugged Jelena and fell onto his back. She was protected at the cost of passing on the full force of their free-fall onto the team tank. Damage, status effects, and level up notifications blared all at once. Calaf lost count of how many floors, but when they finally came to a stop.

  “Where.” Calaf hacked up dust. “Did we land?”

  “You two okay?” Zilara’s chipper drawl came from far above. “The floor collapsed. I just barely jumped to the edge in time.”

  “We’re alive,” Jelena said. “You missed out. I think Calaf—eh, never mind. Can you get down here?”

  A stream of light pierced the waves of dust that had been kicked up in the collapse. An uninterrupted shaft ran through the fort's tallest tower. Church dungeoneers were going to have to do something drastic to keep the dungeon going steady, and it was so close to pilgrimage season!

  Calaf thought about that as he recombobulated himself. Two of the four dungeons were in a questionable state. Those beacons could conceivably keep the path to the Battletower free for a time. But the arbiters would need to deep-clean the tower itself to avoid disaster. At least the tower still had a looping stairwell offering passage upwards, if Zilara’s rapid descent down was any indication.

  “Where are we?” he asked at last.

  “Basement,” Jelena said. “Look at your status, dear.”

  Calaf did so. He looked at Jelena, then back at the opaque sheen of the Interface.

  “Sixty-one!?”

  The fall had crushed the individual hammer and halberd knights, awarding XP for each ‘kill’. There’d been a small squadron of spearmen on the ground floor, just barely bumping him up from level sixty to sixty-one.

  “We would have had to kill them again on the way down,” Jelena said. “This was just a shortcut.”

  Calaf laughed. “The fall damage. I would have died had I not leveled up.”

  Numerous status effects had come and gone with each level.

  Rock fell from above. Zilara had made it down from the tower and was negotiating a path down into the fort’s basement.

  Jelena offered her hand. “C’mon. Let’s see what we have here.”

  “Aw, man, I wish I’d leveled up.” Zilara pouted as the trio wandered through the fort basements.

  They’d landed in a tomb – an ancient form of the church crypts that now sat in the center of each city. Dozens of caskets lined carved-in divots in the cold stone. The reanimated armor would have been enchanted from the standard equipment of these dead warriors would have been issued out of the castle smithy.

  “We still haven’t seen any sign of our missing gospel,” Jelena said, disappointed.

  Zilara looked up at her. “Really? We’re following the signs.”

  “What signs?” Calaf asked.

  “You can’t see the glowing print on the floor?” Zilara tilted her head. “I’ve been doing it this whole time. There was an arrow pointing straight through the floor and everything”

  This revelation was left unexplored as the group approached a great shrine. A statue of Roland – older and more prototypical than the kind found in church statuary groves – loomed in the dark. His helmet was off, and his gleaming, immaculate short sword glowed in response to the party’s illumination spells.

  “This is…” Jelena began.

  Calaf nodded.

  There was no casket or tomb for Paladin Roland. This shrine served as the closest thing to a grave. A relic from the earliest days of the church age. While his fallen outlander confederates had plain carve-outs in the catacombs, this shrine was backed by the sturdy and standout signature grey of demonbone. Even the construction material was a victorious haul from the Demon Lord’s Fall. With only a few more levels, Calaf would have been able to rank up at this very shrine.

  “That brick over there.” Zilara pointed. “It’s glowing.”

  “No, it’s not.” Calaf squinted skeptically.

  “Well, it is for me,” Zilara said. “Maybe I passed a luck check. Or maybe I have special eyes?”

  The twin-brand in her silvery irises gleamed in the light of her illumination orb.

  The holy child selected this false wall and selected [Use]. She looted out a hidden parcel:

  The trio looked to each other. That was… oddly testy, as far as item descriptions went. Gustavo must have come back here at a later date and tinkered with the description.

  The crypt was quiet. Those who built this dungeon would never reanimate a Paladin to serve as an obstacle for the church dungeon.

  “This has been quite the dungeon crawl,” Zilara said. “Kind of wish I’d gone down with the collapsing floors. Would have dinged level 52 for sure.”

  “We won’t be disturbed.” Calaf activated a second illumination spell. “Shall we?”

  The trio leaned in. The Branded used the testament like an item, while Jelena read along manually.