[ti]closed[/ti][Instance][C/Altair] LEVEL-1: Gnarled Root

Josh stepped out of the way as he heard Altair 's voice echoing from beyond the chute, which had ejected him and his active Pokémon with equal violence. "Whew, that's fun!" the scout exhaled, letting his heartbeat calm down. "I could go back and forth on that thing for a while!"

"I thought we were here to... level up a bunch," Ares huffed, the impatient Charmeleon wandering to the west... wholly unaware of the brambled vines whirling in the corners. As he crossed their paths, they flung themselves toward the fire-type, the Pokémon able to step back just in time to watch them writhe in front of him. Ares' arms and head hung low, hyperventilating.

"You can't just go running off like that!" Josh scolded his partner, Slider baiting the thorned plants one more time so all three could cross to the west -- as could Altair , with good timing.

Were he follow, the duo would be greeted with a root maze to navigate, a treasure chest gleaming from its northwest corner. "Wonder what's inside? Another key, maybe?" he mused, letting his starter Pokémon catch his breath before proceeding. Ares was his only fire Pokémon in a dungeon full of grass-types. He couldn't let him faint!

{Map}

The chest did look suspicious. While it was somewhat out in the open, it did require solving a rudimentary puzzle to access. A maze of exposed roots, and how they all seemed loose, reminded Josh of block-pushing puzzles from a highly popular action-adventure series. Only this one was rigged to be impossible to fail. It was just a matter of trial and error, figuring out which root-blocks could be pushed in which directions. "Simple enough," the young man exhaled, rubbing his hands as he grabbed the bottom of the chest's lid. Creaking it open, he discovered...

Information> You obtained two clumps of [tangent=Consuming one of these will partially unlock the CHARMER subclass!]ROSELI BERRIES[/tangent]! Those who consume them shall receive a fairy's boon! Gone after one use.

...not what he was expecting.

"That's nice to find, but it's not a key," Josh noted aloud with a dejected sigh as he returned to the previous room. "Altair, did you find anything else going east of here?" Were he to have been paying attention, he would have remembered a lever and another treasure chest up there...!

{Map}

Checking his map as Altair suggested they split up duties made Josh raise his eyebrows. "There's another one there, too," he pointed out. "But I can still grab it." Josh withdrew his injured Charmeleon for his Rufflet, Slider, the flying-type baiting the bramble traps so his trainer could cross safely.

Ascending to the upper level, Josh felt his momentum deaden as the next part of the room loaded into place - was this a "screen transition"? It felt a bit odd; he had never run into this in UNOVR's overworld. Shrugging, he walked over to the wide-open treasure chest, keeping an eye on the many moth Pokémon flapping their wings above the root maze. He opened the lid, its hinges creaking to reveal a COMPASS.

Information> You obtained the COMPASS! Now you can see the where treasure chests and the Boss are hidden! This COMPASS has a new feature -- a tone will play when a key is nearby!

Dismissing the message, Josh immediately went into his map subscreen, completely unaware of what Altair was doing. There were still a lot of treasures out there, and no obvious path forward. The path forward had to involve the lever!

If Altair were to throw it, he would see the root maze on the lower level begin to morph, its paths changing...

{Map}

After the maze had finished changing, Josh pulled up his map. Sure enough, the changes had been reflected there. "Altair , pull up your map!" the blonde called out. "There's a new way we can go! Hop back into the root that took us here!"

Were he to follow (or let Josh go ahead on his own), one or both of them would emerge on the lower level from where they found the Compass. They appeared to be at the heart of the dungeon, the largest room in terms of width and height. Those who entered would hear a strange tone. It was their Compass indicating that a Key was present somewhere in the room. "There's two chests in here; let's split up and get them both."

For once, Josh would leave the hard work to Altair ; to get to the chest on the upper level, he would need to dodge some bramble traps similar to the ones in the west wing. Thankfully, these were more in the open, and a lot more predictable. Josh, on the other hand, had to fight through a swarm of Woobat that had made their home in the large area. He quickly swapped Slider out for Saber, the scout taking cover to get out of his electric wolf's DISCHARGE.

Though one managed to get a wave of CONFUSION through and leave the quadruped bewildered, there was enough time between waves of them that Josh could easily run back and push the chest's lid open. Inside was not a key, but something equally useful.

Information> You obtained four Bombs!

This place really was inspired by a certain top-down dungeon crawling series, wasn't it? What was next, poking at walls with Ares' claws, one tile at a time?

{Map}

Josh pumped his fist as he saw the message pop up. While he had not seen a locked door in a while, they knew they wouldn't be stopped by one now. By the time Altair had returned, the Woobat swarm had been handled, though at the cost of a substantial amount of the Manectric's health. That CONFUSION really hit where it hurt.

"It's no sweat, Altair ," Josh reassured the Sky Trainer. "These are always designed so that it's impossible to softlock, even if you use your keys in the most inefficient way possible." With the swarm cleared, he noticed there was a room to the north, but no obvious way there. That is, until a cracked wall caught his eye. He let out a guffaw. "You really can't get any more Zelda than this, can you? What do you think's at the top of this place, a bow and arrow?" he joked, wondering if his friend was old enough to get the reference. The series had drastically changed in the past seven years, after all!

Pulling out one of his four explosives and setting it near the cracked wall, Josh and his Manectric fled a safe distance. "Saber, THUNDER WAVE!" Josh ordered. With a jolt of electricity igniting the explosive powder within, the ballistic weapon detonated with a deafening bang, the weak section of the wall crumbling. A "puzzle solved" jingle even played after the camera panned toward the newly-excavated entrance.

Once the smoke had cleared, Josh scouted the room ahead. It looked like a large maze on the level below, and if the foliage on the walls said anything, they were gonna have to book it; some kind of plant-based trap was within its labyrinthine corridors. "Once we memorize the path, we gotta book it... on foot," he sighed, the "mounting" icon on his HUD still greyed out.

{Map}

Embarrassingly, Josh failed to bring a single Support Pokémon with him. He had made his fair share of beginner mistakes, and coming into even a low-level dungeon without one ranked pretty high on the list. "I... don't have one with me..." he sheepishly admitted, withdrawing his team other than Slider the Rufflet. The brazen flying-type fluttered around Josh in a similar fashion to Altair 's Pidove. "Raiden's in good health, and he knows Flame Charge. We should be fine. I'm a bit faster than you, so I'll get the door open if you don't mind handing me your key?"

Provided Altair agreed, Josh would lead the charge. Once they had both passed the south end of the chamber, a bramble vine would grow from behind them at a visible rate, spearing them if they hesitated too long. Thankfully, the path through was linear, every dead-end clearly visible. It was simply a matter of reacting in time.

Once they reached the end, the scout would open the door, only for a screen transition to take them through the now-open entrance. Before them was a large, open space in the root system, decorated with reds and greens alongside the oranges and browns typical of a large tree. "What in the--"

Before he could finish his sentence, both the south and west passages were sealed tightly shut with growth, and a pair of synchronized, feline voices taunted the explorers:

"Mrrrrrow! You cannot pass!"

The two agile Floragato caught Altair in a pincer attack, one armed with a boomerang that looked razor sharp despite it clearly being hewn from grass!

{Map}

The vicious AIR SLASH from Kyouya ravaged one of the Floragato. "Nice shot, Altair !" Josh cheered. The two would reposition themselves, tossing their razorgrass boomerang back and forth between one another in an effort to slide and dice Kyouya. Even Josh's Zebstrika joined in, ramming and trampling the grass-type with FLAME CHARGE after FLAME CHARGE. No matter how much damage they dealt, the grass-type didn't seem to slow down at all.

Shaking his head after another toss of the whirling weapon left Raiden's front legs thumping, Josh recalled the swift horse for his own Rufflet, Slider. "We gotta attack them both!" he urgently suggested to his partner, shifting his attention to the second grass cat. Flapping his tiny wings rapidly, Slider whipped up an AIR SLASH of his own.

Provided he could get Kyouya's help, the duo would take the mini-bosses down. From each one's disappearance would spawn a Ribombee ready to use POLLEN PUFF on one of the heroes' Pokémon. Furthermore, a red, spinning portal appeared in the center of the room right as both its doors opened. Stepping up to its precipice, Josh saw its destination. "Ooh, take a look at this! This is a shortcut back to the entrance!"

{Map}