Behind the passage was a large open cave area. On one end, it was where Cater had come from. He was standing on a cliff looking down on an endless abyss. The fissure was so deep that Carter couldn't even see its bottom.
On the other end was a vast cavern with the ceiling going higher and higher the farther it was. In the middle of it all was a single rope bridge that was holding on for dear life.
"Not this again." Carter raised a corner of his lips, expressing his disdain for this room.
This place was his nightmare when he first played Darkness and Bloodlust. He hated it not because it was hard or challenging. He hated it because it relied on RNG.
RNG, random generator number. Or more precisely, this refers to any mechanics of the game that relied on pure chance and the player had no say on how it's going to end. They could only pray to the RNG god that the result would swing their way.
Carter looked to the other side of the cliff. There was a group of wolves there. Four wolves in total, all were as big as a bear.
Spiders that were as big as wolves. Wolves that were as big as bears. The Alchemists of Ascador were really obsessed with size. They must have been trying to compensate for something.
The wolves smelled Carter immediately, and they looked at him. They ran at Carter at full force, trampling onto the surface of the rope bridges.
"Heh. These mindless beasts."
Carter rubbed his temple, trying to recall something very trivial.
"What was it again? Da…. Ma… No, that isn't it."
The wolves had run across half of the bridge. The bridge shook and swung violently because of their movement.
These wolves weren't just big, they were vicious. Their official name in the game was Hunting Wolf. They were created by the Alchemists, as their name suggests, to hunt. Later on, however, the Alchemists found out that the Hunting Wolves were much better to use as guard dogs. Making sure no prisoner could escape.
"Dama ca…" Catter mumbles. "Almost, but not quite."
The wolves crossed the bridge, and they would be attacking Carter at any second now.
"Daka ma?" Carter said it, but nothing happened. He was expecting something else.
"Oh, wait. I am supposed to shout it.
Da'ka Ma!"
Carter shouted toward the wolves. They stopped in their tracks and looked at him confusingly.
"Soom… A'ceur!"
The wolves sat down in unison. They lost all of their aggression, the only thing left was four obedient dogs that smiled at their owners. The wolves stuck out their tongues and wagged their tails like crazy.
Carter stomped on the floor. "Soom I'lar!"
The wolves ran at him and then sat down beside Carter. They didn't even dare to look at him, their eyes darted to the surroundings, getting ready to attack whatever Carter would point at.
Different from the Minor Spider and the Mutated Prisoner, these Hunting Wolves did not lose their minds and become bloodlust creatures. The Alchemists trained them carefully and were able to command them by specific lines that only they knew.
Carter wore the Alchemist gloves, so he smelled very familiar. Combined with the command lines, he was able to control these wolves perfectly. A common strategy that the community used to deal with the Hunting Wolf.
This mechanic was discovered by ShadowLad04, a good friend that Carter made throughout the journey of playing Darkness and Bloodlust. He was also a major contributor to the game's online encyclopedia, only writing less than Carter.
"Da'ka Ta!"
Carter shouted again. This time the wolves eased up and walked around freely. They lifted their heads to look at him with great admiration. He squatted down to pet their heads.
"You stupid beasts… Can't even recognize that I am not your master."
The wolf pushed out its tongue on the side, eyes half-open, and enjoyed the pet it was given.
"It's time to go. With you guys, this dungeon will become much easier now.
Soom A'leur!"
Carter gave another command. The wolves now went into defensive mode and would protect him at all costs. They split into two groups, two wolves in the front and two wolves in the back, with Carter in the middle. He then proceeded to the bridge.
The RNG part of this room was the bridge right here. In the game, it would have a 50/50 percent chance to break when a player went on top of it.
There was no way to counteract this coin toss, and the only way to avoid it was to find another way.
Carter stood right at the edge of the cliff and observed the bridge. It looked stable and strong, with no sign of breakages or tears. But he couldn't be sure.
Carter ordered a wolf to walk across the bridge first. It crossed the bridge no problem, then sat down and waited for him on the other side. He ordered the rest of the wolves to follow, and they were also successfully passed.
"Something isn't right." Carter tapped his jaw and observed the wooden poles that held the bridge. It looked normal and was completely intact.
"There must be something that I am missing. Darkness and Bloodlust always has a reason for everything.
Now that I am in its real counterpart, it should be explainable in some way."
The bridge couldn't just break on its own. Carter thought that there must be some kind of hidden mechanism that he couldn't see.
He drew the mace on his waist and slapped it on the poles. The poles stayed still and didn't even bulge. With this stability, it could not break even if there were ten people on the bridge.
Carter then took out a fabric and poured some alcohol on it. He rubbed the soaked fabric onto the poles.
Suddenly, a hidden symbol lit up on the surface of the poles.
"Aha! I knew there was some shitty trap!"
In the game, there was no way to interact with the bridge, so Carter never found out why it always broke. But now, in the real world, he had more freedom to test.
The symbol was a circle with bizarre patterns inside. It almost looked like a complicated circuit board. It burned when touching the alcohol and disappeared again once the alcohol was used up.
"Alchemy seal… It makes sense now."
Alchemy seal, the equivalent of a spell for an Alchemist. The seal was a transmutation circle that could bring forth certain effects depending on the nature of that seal.
Carter sat down and closed his eyes, trying to find that one trivial piece of knowledge about the game that he had encountered long ago. The wolves tilted their heads in unison and observed their current master. He was a little bit weird compared to their former master.
"Seal… Seal… Sulfur. The lore mentioned something about sulfur being the key ingredient for a fire-based Alchemy seal. While salt is the key ingredient for water-based Alchemy seals…
Yes, that might work!"