The boar rider charged right at me. He dropped his spear like he was a knight. Then the walls, which I had designed to be narrow enough that I had to turn sideways, grabbed the stupid guy. The boar’s head was just wide enough to fit between the walls, but the body wasn’t. So when the boar wedged itself into the hall, the goblin took a sudden flight forward.

He didn’t have room to tumble much, but he bounced off the walls like a pinball. As he came flying the last few feet toward me, my standard activated and caught him in the air. His sudden stop turned the front of my shield white, and I couldn’t see out of it any longer. A couple of moments passed, and my view of the hall was returned to me. The armored goblin’s neck was at an odd angle, and he wasn’t moving.

The rest of the view wasn’t great for me. More of the gremlins had now started to rush through. The problem that I had was the bore was blocking my line of sight, so I didn’t have the range that I wanted. So I grabbed my gear and pulled down the hall through the next door. I had given that one up too quickly, but perhaps it was for the better.

I managed to get to my next choke point ahead of the gremlins. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Between the totem that kept blowing out smoke and the stuck boar, the gremlins weren’t fast at coming at me. It was about ten minutes later that they did come.

I couldn’t see the first choke point or my totem, so I wasn’t sure if it was still shooting. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t. However, I wasn’t expecting to see the gremlins coming down the corridor on the walls. I knew that they were good climbers; I just didn’t know that the walls would give them enough ledges that they could run.

I started to shoot at that point. I had twenty feet between me and the first gremlins, and they were making their way to me at a dead run. I had been planning on only having to take the lead one. However, having three going the same speed meant that I was going to have more problems than I wanted.

My first arrow missed the one on the right wall. It bounced off the wall and caught the second one on the left. My next arrow took the one I was aiming for. Then I shifted to the ground and fired off an arrow. Then another.

I soon noticed my aim didn’t matter much. The hall was clogged with gremlins. I had set my standard, so I wasn’t overly worried about them getting through right now. The power that each gremlin had was low enough that they couldn’t break the stone air quickly.

The other reason I wasn’t too worried was they were slowing down. Each one I killed made it, so they had to jump over it. The ground was no longer a path they could take because they were climbing over each other. Which left me with just the walls. The pile of bodies kept growing in the middle until they had to slow down to push the mound over to keep coming at me.

Then they just stopped. I heard a crunching sound and the gremlins yelling. My stomach turned a little as I was reminded that they would eat any form of meat. Since they couldn’t see me I guessed I lost their attention as they ate.

I sighed. I needed an area-effect weapon. The totem was a mess to use and didn’t move well. It would be nice to have something like an arrow storm or even a flame jet spell. However, I didn’t have any of that.

I saw some movement in the pile, so I checked my dungeon interface. The estimated 500 gremlins had dropped down to just over 200. The goblins were still right around three hundred. However, because we weren’t adding more to the top floor it was now empty.

I grinned. The way the dungeon worked meant I couldn’t create new monsters on a floor someone was on. Typically it was just a matter of resetting at the 24-hour mark. However, because these were dark ones, the dungeon could send targets from the whole place to attack.

The top floor like always was a natural floor. So from it, I sent all of the skeletons to attack their backs. Then I pulled up the 5th floor. Its points had regenerated as well. So I had it use all of its points to generate a pair of orc shamans. Then I had them sent up to me. I might not have area-effect spells, but they did.

Just a few moments later, the top gremlin was pulled from the pile, and a pair of beady eyes popped over. Then the rush started again. It was like the whole pile was ripped back as the gremlins behind were screeching and yelling.

I started to shoot again. I hadn’t shot this much ever. It was just shooting, not even aiming at this point. Yeah, some of them were hitting the dead, but most were finding a monster. But unlike last time, the pile was let build up too much.

I caught a glimpse of a goblin shaman through the press of the horde. He was what was driving the gremlins almost mindless. I kept firing as I felt blisters forming on my hand. It was odd that it would happen in a world of magic, but as I felt the pain I got the Blister debuff. I fired a Minor healing off, and my hand felt better, and the debuff went away.

After another couple of minutes, I heard the orc shaman behind me. I smiled and dropped the barrier for just a moment as they stepped in. One of the gremlins also ran in, but I kicked him back out.

Then I moved behind the first orc shaman as he started to cast. His spell took much longer than me shooting, but when he sent a fireball down the hall, he cleared over half of it. Then he stepped back, and the other one stepped in.

The gremlins were on a dead run now. They were bounding over the charred remains of their kin as they tried to obey the goblin behind them. They made it twenty feet to my dome before the orc finished his spell. When he did off of his staff came a crackle of blue-green lightning that bounced down the hallway.

On one ever tells you how bad a battle smells. When things die, they tend to let everything go. Add in that the gremlins had been eating each other until the goblin showed up, and the place was pretty ripe. The fireball didn’t help the matter much. The lighting forced the muscles of those it hit to do odd things. So not only was it burning from the magical electricity, but it was also the smell of now loose bowls.

I half gagged and thought about pulling back when the first one stepped forward again. The spell he cast ripped down the mostly clear hallway and bellowed through the choke point. He had launched a sizeable flaming tongue that cleared most of the mess from the ground.

I checked the interface quickly. These spells were far more powerful than I thought they should be on a level 5 target. As I pulled up what happened I saw that level 5 was a boss level. These two were bosses and were adjusted up since we were being attacked by dark ones.

The gremlins had stopped running through the choke point. A goblin holding a staff twice its height stepped around and looked down at me. He shook his staff and then pointed. A green fog started to move forward.

The fire orc started to chant and cast a jet of flame that reached out and hit the fog. Only for it to stop. The jet just winked out as the fog came toward us. The two shamans didn’t say anything to me, but I felt like the dungeon was telling me that it was a null fog and it would suck out the mana from the standard.

I grimaced. “I don’t like that at all. You two fall back to the next choke point and rest. I want you to be ready to clear the halls again.”

They both nodded and headed down the next hall. I deactivated the standard and started to shoot down the aisle again. I wasn’t sure if I was going to hit anything, but I kind of knew where the door was. If the guy was still down there, then I was going to hit him.

The fog kept coming toward me. Then I saw shadows moving in the fog. Goblins were running at me. They were clearly some of the lower-level ones, but they were moving fast nonetheless.

I fired at them as they came through the fog. The first one caught an arrow in the neck. The second one I missed as it tripped over the first. The third took that arrow in the head, but it glanced off. I downed the second one before he could get back up, and the third started to climb over the other two. I took him out with a pair of arrows. Then the pile got knocked over, and the next one had a shield.

I grabbed my standard with my bow hand and a box of arrows with the next and went running back. The goblins were naturally faster than me, but the lead one was just walking with a shield in place. My arrows had scared them enough not to just charge.

When I got back to the two orc shamans, they were ready. I planted my standard and looked down the hall. The one with the shield was the first around the bend. I started to shoot an arrow over him slightly, so the ones behind started trying to get shields moved up. These goblins seemed much brighter than the ones I had fought before.

They had moved about two-thirds of the way down the hall when I said. “Flame tongue.”

The orc stepped up and let rip with the flame. It traveled down and bellowed around the shields. It was the spell that I wanted for my totem. Something that could go around all the armor and curve around corners. It was almost like water how. It flowed down and pooled at the bend.

When the tongue of fire cut out, all of the shield goblins were down on the ground with their wooden shields burning. Then that same goblin with the green fog stepped around. As he did, I snapped an arrow down range. I wished that I had a more powerful bow at that moment because my arrow reached him but had dropped from the center of mass to a leg. The goblin went down but wasn’t dead.

I drew a second and fired, but a magical shield caught the arrow right at the door. A second goblin was standing there with his staff touching the doorway. I fired another five arrows before I lowered my bow. When I did, he dropped his staff.

I tried to snap a shot up, but he was faster than me. Then he cackled, pointed, turned around, and mooned me.

* * *