I slowly pulled myself to a sitting position. My status bars were full, and I only had one debuff, which was poorly rested. It explained the pain in my back and knees as I got up. Standing next to me, looking at me with a stern face, was Blink as a little girl.

I smiled over at her, “So I guess you had to change to get the potions to me?”

Blink nodded, “yuppers! That poison spear almost killed you, Daddy! It was a fun hunt but you are going to have to be safer.” She said as she with her hands on her hips.

“Yeah, this is going to be problematic having you in this form while we try to finish the dungeon. I have gotten used to you scouting for us.” I told her as I was looking around the cavern.

Blink just smiled and walked up and hugged my leg. “I can still scout! My stealth is the same and so I should be fine.”

I shook my head, she might be right, but she was far too weak now. “The problem, sweetie is that you are far too weak now. If you get caught you don’t have a way to fight back, and your health is so much lower.”

Blink giggled a little, “Daddy that’s why I wont get caught! The only time these monsters could ever see me was when I was attacking and had to come out of stealth. As it is now they aren’t going to see me at all!” She told me while jumping up and down.

“Okay let’s see what we got from the goblin knight and then from the chest. Then we can figure out what we are going to do.” I told her as we headed over to the dead goblin.

The shield he had been using was made from bronze and when I looked at it appeared that it had adjustable straps. He had been using it as a kite shield which I knew there was no way I would be able to. However, I might be able to strap it to my left and use it as an odd buckler.

The armor was a bust; there was nothing he had on that would be helpful for me or for Blink. In her current form, she was better off not having armor as it would make it harder for her to hide. That being said, perhaps once I got to Lannah’s town, I could get something made for her.

The spear was the real thing of beauty. For the goblin, it was a lance that he could use while mounted for me; it was the right size for a javelin. It was eight feet long and about two pounds. When I pulled open the status screen, I was taken for a ride.

Spear of Delightful Death

This spear represents the life work of the goblin mage Zol’bet

He died shortly after making the spear as he dropped it on his foot. The poison cloud slowly killed him as he was laughing about what happened.

Trusting damage 5 +3 poison

Poison mist: This spear has a poison mist hanging around it’s tip all who enter the mist are poisoned. Each time the spear touches you after being poisoned by the mist a new level of the debuff is added up to 10.

Confusion: 1

Poison damage: 5 for 30 seconds per level. Each additional level stacks damage and time.

The spear would do much better as a spear and not a javelin, as each touch would cause it to do more damage. However, I had my spear skill locked, so I wasn’t thinking I would use it much as a spear. When I looted the goblin knight, I got an earring.

Earring of magical resistance.

This ear ring will help to resist magic from others than the wearer.

Magical resistance +4

Well, I was far from being the type of guy that would wear an earring however, I was starting to understand what the dungeon was trying to do. It was giving me the options to take what was needed to beat what was coming next. So I pierced my own ear.

Once I was done poking my own ear with a ring that was in no way designed to make a hole, it was time to see what the chest had. I had been wanting to look in the chest the whole time that I was in the room. There was honestly nothing that I would have rather done than rip open the chest and climb in to see what was there. However, it was that very feeling that worried me.

The closer I got to the chest, the more I wanted to rush forward. I knew that there had been traps on these things before and that I was likely to encounter another one. Yet as I moved toward the chest, my desire to open it grew, and my thoughts of caution started to fade. Then I felt a slight pain from my left ear, and a warmth went over me. The desire to yank open the chest diminished significantly.

I walked up the dais very carefully, looking for traps on the floor. So far, there hadn’t been any, but that didn’t mean that there wouldn’t be one. Then I looked along the latch to see if there was anything I could see. I once again wished that I had gotten a skill in detecting traps, but I would have to do it once correctly before I got the skill.

I found nothing on the latch and so opened up the box once again using my sword. As the lid opened, I heard a click, and then green mist started to pour out of the chest. Blink and I ran back around ten feet and waited. The fog rose for around thirty seconds and then slowly descended on the platform and steps.

We waited around another 10 minutes before the glowing green faded entirely from the steps, and then we approached. The thing about many of these traps was that they were only effective if you weren’t careful. By me giving myself a couple feet of distance by using my sword, I was able to avoid many of the traps that would have taken me in the face.

I went quickly; now that the trap had been sprung, I wasn’t near as worried. I reached my hands down into the white light and pulled out a baldric with 5 throwing knives. The knives fit nicely over my shoulder and, like everything from the dungeon, adjusted to fit me. The blades themselves were black and double-edged in the shape of a long spike. These knives were more like a large sharp nails than what I had always seen in movies.

When the light from the chest faded, I looked back down to find two more potions, one blue and the other red. Lastly, in the bottom were three gemstones of some sort; they were each about the size of my thumbnail, yellow and clearish.

“Okay, Blink, let’s go see what else this dungeon has to throw at us,” I said as I dropped the shield and gems into my bag. I would have to work with the shield some before wearing it, as right now, it was just in the way.

I felt strangely protective of Blink right now. It could just be the human factor of how we tend to protect children. I didn’t think of myself as her dad when she was out stalking prey but rather as her owner like I would any pet. When she was that way, the emotions that she would send always had an edge of wildness. When she started to send words as a lizard, they were all broken, and I could think of her as just an intelligent pet.

Now, as a little girl who was calling me daddy, I was feeling like I was a dad. At least as the protective older brother. I had to take my licks in the foster system and as an orphan. There were times that I stepped in to protect the little ones; it was just something that I did. Now my killer pet was a little girl. I hadn’t thought much of it when we were in the safe room, but right now, she could be hurt.

Blink was the one who changed the fights most of the time, not me. While I could fight, and there were things that she couldn’t beat because of just having claws, she was still our leading killer. Now she was, at best, a very soft scout. My nerves were ratcheted way up at this point. I was worried she would get hurt or worse.

I knew that I was bleeding off my feelings because she reached up and grabbed my hand. She tugged on me, and when I looked down, she smiled up at me. “It will be okay, Daddy! While I was waiting for you to build your traps, I went scouting, and we just have the one room left. There is only one guy in there, so you should be able to take him no problem!”

I sighed and felt some tension fall out. “Okay, what did the one guy look like I asked?”

“Oh! He was one of those guys that dancing around like you do. No armor just a stick with some things hanging off the end. He is really thin and sickly.” Blink said while nodding her head up and down. Then she let go of my hand and started to skip forward.

“Blink! Stop! We don’t know if there are traps!” I yelled as I ran forward, trying to catch her hand.

Blink, for her part, laughed and spun around. “Daddy, I found the traps and disarmed them while you were building your trap. It was fun; I just needed to bite the line the right way, and it wouldn’t trigger anything. The only trap we need to watch out for is that one over there it shoots darts!”

Then she turned back to the tunnel and darted away. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I just followed as fast as I could, making sure that I didn’t go near the darts. She went down the tunnel jumping and playing until she came to a dead stop. She turned to face me and put one finger on her lips.

“Ssh it’s right around that curve!” She said in a loud kid voice.

“Okay I will try to sneak up and see what is going on and then see how to attack.”

I moved to try to keep close to the wall. Blink surprisingly stayed back and let me move forward. As I came around the curve, I saw a small room open in front of me. Standing in the middle was a goblin shaman. He had a staff in his right hand, and he was standing in the middle of a circle of skulls.

I thought that I had moved around and was looking at him while staying undetected by him. I was wrong. I learned the error of my ways when he pointed his staff at me, and one of the skulls flew at me. It was as fast as a stone being thrown, perhaps a bit fast. I was just able to get my head back around before the skull slammed on the stone wall and shattered, sending bits of bone all over the place. The speed might be slow, but the force that was there was shocking.

Mages of all strips tended to be squishy, so I hoped this one was no different. I dropped my bag and drew my sword. I only had fifteen feet to cover before I would be at the goblin. The other goblin shamans that I had fought were one-trick ponies. I was banking on this one being the same, which meant I would have to deal with him throwing skulls at me.

I pulled my sword and ran around the corner. I knew deep down that there was likely some sort of trick, but I wasn’t sure what that trick would be. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why this guy would be the last challenge. Yes, magic could be hard to deal with, but this guy was just throwing skulls; they weren’t even magical skulls.

As I ran into the room, I found out why he was the last one. The big boss, if you would. The skulls weren’t his magic, and if I had stopped to think things through, I would have realized. Those skulls were normal. How he threw the skulls was his magic.