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Chapter 1

Chapter 1: The Saltborn Slog

The digital dawn of 841 broke over the ruins of Isola Sacra, or at least, it tried to. In the discord server known only as The Dungeoneers, the chat log was a frantic stream of digital static before it settled into the familiar rhythm of a guild meeting.

” sap.” typed Mitch, the first sign of life.

“T hat fixed it, okay,” Trey replied, the digital equivalent of a sigh. “Let’s go do a quest.”

“We need a rusted barnacle key for that,” Evan corrected from his end, his character’s avatar—glowing with the faint, protective aura of a Cerim—staring blankly at the server browser.

“We need ore,” Mitch insisted, though his character seemed content to drop loot bags on the digital ground.

“Evan, how many more people are you anticipating showing up tonight?” asked Jacob, his character hovering by the tavern entrance.

“That’s hard to say,” Jacob typed back. “Maybe three you included, could be yeah… I didn’t mean to say that like you, and then maybe two more.”

The group laughed. They were a ragtag crew of holy warriors in a world consumed by the creeping madness of the Pestilence. Rob, the group’s token remote worker, was late, but when he arrived, the tech worked perfectly. “What up?” he typed. “I’m gonna… my name is ChazX and I like to eat babies.”

“The rusted barnacle tree is the goal,” Evan corrected, steering the conversation back to sanity. “There’s the particle key.”

The logistics were finally sorted. The dungeon. The objective. The inevitable failure that would ensue if they didn’t coordinate.

“Do you want to go to the shore side and go to that dungeon underneath the rift?” Jacob asked.

“I’m ready to go wherever the wind takes us,” Evan declared.

“It’s Saltborn Tower,” Jacob confirmed.

Trey, always the optimist—or perhaps the most susceptible to the dungeon’s corruption—clapped his hands. “You guys want to carry me?”

“You ready to be carried?” Evan retorted.

“Go and cook me a little meal,” Trey replied.

The irony was lost on no one. In No Rest for the Wicked, the Cerim were legends, warriors who had fought the pestilence a thousand years ago. Tonight, they were more like a bickering caravan.

---

The plunge into Saltborn Tower felt like a dive into the abyss. Game mechanics here were unforgiving; the darkness didn’t just lack light, but felt like a crushing weight, mimicking the sickness sweeping the kingdom above. Evan pulled out his Illuminate rune, the first gift of his birthright as a member of the holy caste. It cut through the gloom with a pale, sickly yellow beam, a torch in a world drowning in shadow.

“I can’t see anything without the illumination,” Mitch moaned, clinging to Evan’s virtual leg.

“Jump,” Trey commanded.

Evan jumped. A hand reached out from the dark.

“Oop,” Mitch squeaked. “Yoink!”

“Evan, are you still lost somewhere?” Jacob typed.

“Yeah. One edit,” Jacob replied.

“T here you are,” Evan said, regrouping.

“Let’s just run back to the shore and then fast travel there,” Jacob suggested. “That’s smart. That’s why we keep Jacob around.”

“Big brain balls,” Trey chimed.

But the tower had more tricks than just darkness. As they navigated the labyrinth, the physics engine decided to assert its dominance. Evan, stepping near the edge of a crumbling platform, didn’t jump. He fell.

“Mitch, look at my screen,” Evan typed.

“Dude, you got warped into the ether plane,” Mitch responded immediately.

“It claims you are in a missing location,” Trey added.

Evan’s character kept falling, spiraling downward into a digital void that the developers had evidently forgotten to populate. It was a bug of the highest order, a glitch in the divine machinery of the world. He respawned, but the incident left a sour taste in the raid. The Saltborn Tower was alive, and it was angry.

---

They pushed deeper, their collective sanity fraying with every step. The central chamber’s boss fight was a test of endurance. It was a massive beast, a hulking mass of corruption that soaked up their blows like a dry sponge.

“I forgot these guys hurt so much more than everything else we’ve been fighting,” Jacob groaned.

“I’m getting you, Jake,” Evan yelled, swinging his broadsword.

“He can attack from anywhere,” Mitch screamed as the creature turned a new direction.

“Oh, he’s coming for you guys.”

“I’m aggro! I’m dead!”

The fight dissolved into chaos. The boss transitioned into a second phase, transforming into a hopping monstrosity that defied gravity. It bounced across the chamber, knocking players into walls and sending them flying.

“I’m dead too,” Evan typed, watching his health bar vanish in an instant. “He’s just popping around.”

“Roger,” Trey typed, resigned.

Eventually, they won, but the cost was high. Jacob attempted to unleash his healing aura—a channeled skill that, despite its low cost, often resulted in his team being fully healed before they took damage.

“Okay, gather around me down here,” Jacob ordered.

“I don’t know that I’m worth reviving,” Trey confessed.

“Yes, it is.”

They retreated to the Crucible Atrium, the game’s arena system, a brutalist slab of stone where they could test their mettle against waves of enemies.

“Things from home,” Rob typed, referencing his corporate VPN access. “Accessing his things from home.”

“We’re physically present,” Trey joked. “No one has a webcam.”

They navigated the Goo Phase, a section filled with sticky, viscous slime that slowed their movements. The camera glitched, zooming in on the face of the boss behind the wall, blinding them with a close-up of something that looked vaguely organic and wrong.

“Be sure we loot,” Jacob warned.

“We all get our own, I think,” Trey said.

They cleared the Atrium, their gear improving. They found a Fungus Bow, and with it, a sense of invincibility. Jacob used “Echoes”—currency earned from runs—to respec his build, becoming a powerhouse of healing and life steal.

“Gain three random echoes,” the system announced.

“I think if we had all of us making to the end, I think we’d take that guy,” Evan typed with bravado.

But the path to the Black Trench Central Chamber was blocked. Not by enemies, but by geometry.

“I need 26 strength to wield that,” Trey noted, looking at a weapon too heavy for his character.

“Bring me the glow, the glimmer, the shine off their backs, and I will open every door,” the game promised.

“I did it,” Jacob typed. “Unlocks the ancient power to refill health through traces within the Crucible.”

They spent hours in the Sanctuary, refining their builds, feeling like gods. But when they finally tried to enter the final chamber, the game laughed at them.

“It’s a dead end,” Trey typed. “Just a dead end.”

“Where do we go from here, Trey?” Evan asked.

“I think we checked it,” Mitch replied. “We looted it.”

The session ended on a high note of exhaustion and triumph, but also a lingering sense of bug-ridden frustration. They had cleared the tower, but Saltborn Tower had cleared them.

To be continued…