The Morality System

Using the bear traps as practice targets for my bone spikes, I activated all the traps down the long tunnel. Once activated and closed, the traps were easy to walk around.

As we were walking, the earth shook and quaked for a moment. Once it had settled, we continued on. We came out into a wide-open mining area. There was a mine cart full of crystals.

There was even someone still mining. He was muttering to himself and with his back turned to us as he continued to pick away at a wall of crystals with his pickaxe.

There were dead miners all around him with puncture wounds in their chests. He had clearly killed them for some unknown reason.

"I'm not crazy!" He said. "Your mom is crazy! She's so crazy, she drinks tea on a Tuesday! Who does that?"

Instead of doing the dumb thing and calling out to this clearly insane man who doesn't believe in drinking tea on Tuesdays, I summoned three bone spikes and shot them at his back.

They stuck into him pretty deep but he seemed unfazed. He turned around and I could see crystals growing all over his face and the front of his body. He had a bunch of those yellow speed crystals and purple amplification crystals growing on him.

One moment he was across the room and the next, he was standing right in front of me. He pulled his pickaxe back and Abby and I dove out of the way. He brought the pickaxe down and when it hit the ground, a purple beam shot out of it in front of him, blasting a chunk out of a wall.

[You have discovered the Mini-Boss "Corrupted Miner Carl"]

His health bar shot across the bottom of my vision. I got up and began shooting spikes at him in threes. His health bar was slowly getting chipped away, but it wasn't fast enough.

He shot across the room again activating the speed crystals on his body and slammed the pickaxe down in front of me. A purple beam came out and slammed into me, sending me flying across the room into a wall. The front of my bone armor cracked and broke and then reformed.

'How am I not critting on this guy? How is he not evil?'

[He isn't evil. He's crazy. There's a difference]

'Great.'

Carl was pulling back his pickaxe to attack me again when a bubble went over his head. It shrunk to the size of his head, and he began to struggle to breathe.

I saw his health bar dropping but it was still quite slow, so I walked up to Carl who was just suffocating, and continuously fired spikes into his face over and over until he died.

That was the annoying thing about mini-bosses and bosses. You couldn't one-shot them. You had to whittle down their health to nothing.

"Thanks, Abby," I said.

"You're welcome," she said.

[You have leveled up! You are level 4!]

[You have gained the ability Giant Spike!]

[Giant Spike: It's a giant spike obviously, but it's also armor piercing]

[You have also gained the ability Bone Arsenal!]

[Bone Arsenal: Allows you to make high-quality versions of any known melee weapon. You can reshape the weapon in your hand for quick switching between weapon types]

We looked around the area before moving on. Despite being crazy, Carl had mined the crap out of this area and there were a lot of valuable crystals to be had. I stuffed my packs with crystals and Abigail continued to load up her now giant bubble full of crystals.

Carl wouldn't have a core inside him, even if I had the stomach to cut him open. Which currently, I didn't. Henry said that only monsters, beasts, and other such creatures had cores. Humans did not. Even if they were in dungeons.

Once we were satisfied, we made our way down a mined tunnel this time that opened up into a massive cavern full of crystals all over the walls. There was a giant mound of crystals in the center of the room that was rising up and down. It appeared to be breathing.

Once we got a certain distance into the room, the crystal mound woke up and revealed itself to be a giant wolf infested with crystal growths all over its body. It howled loudly and its HP bar filled the lower part of my vision.

[You have awakened the Boss, "Crystal Canine"]

"Ok, here we go, I guess," I said.

I summoned a giant spike above one of the canine's front feet and slammed it down through its foot into the ground. I did the same to its other front foot, and then I did its back feet.

It struggled to move but its feet were immobilized. That didn't prevent it from trying to bite me. It was a massive creature and it took up a large portion of the cavern so it was able to get close to biting me at first.

Bubbles got stuck in its open mouth and it couldn't pop them. It shook its head to get the bubbles out, but by the time it had done that, I had already run to the other side of the room, behind it. Abigail ran with me.

Now it had no way to get to us. So I shot giant spikes through its back legs and along the side of its body. Then I ripped them out one by one. Not because I was trying to be cruel. Just because I could only control one giant spike at a time.

This opened huge holes in its body and it quickly bled out. It slowly lowered its body to the floor and died. No dramatic falling over onto us or anything. It physically couldn't do that.

[You have defeated the boss! Congratulations! Appropriate experience will be rewarded]

'That's it? No treasure chest or rewards?'

[Look around the room for appropriate looting opportunities]

'Right.'

"Abby, you check over there, and I'll check over here. There's probably loot around somewhere," I said.

"Ok," she said.

[You have leveled up! You are now level 5!]

[You have gained the ability Break Bones!]

[Break Bones: The ability to fracture individual bones in a target's body]

[You have gained the ability Bone Platform!]

[Bone Platform: Create a column of bone beneath your feet that you can grow taller and shorter and move around horizontally]

Nice! These were some awesome abilities. I always wanted to be able to go places without having to move my legs. Also breaking bones, while limited, would be very useful.

"I found it!" Abigail said.

I rushed over to her to see what she found.