Maxwell

I stared after Kaga as she moved down the adjoining tunnel to scout ahead. Something about the woman felt off, but I really couldn’t put my finger on it. I knew plenty of people liked to keep to themselves, however, and thus decided not to press her. For now, she was helping us and that was enough to give her at least some credit.

Shaking my head, I walked over to where the priest was working on Derz. Losing the Tank would make the rest of the dive much harder. When I joined the circle, I breathed out in relief when I saw the goblin’s legs were almost back to normal. I was glad that things like this were game-like in nature. Otherwise, it might have taken months for the goblin to return to even remotely normal status.

Finally, the priest dusted off his hands as he stood up. “There we go! Good as new!”

Derz climbed slowly to his feet before taking a few steps. He cheered as he did a few jumping jacks. “Thanks man! I was scared for a moment there.”

“No problem. I did have to use one of my heavy spells. It has a two hour cooldown, so no more fatal injuries if we can avoid them.”

Razz smacked the renewed goblin on the back. “Glad to have you back. You scared me for a second there with that scream. I honestly thought you were in tremendous pain.”

“Fuck me, boss. When I saw my legs, I just panicked.” He slapped his legs. “What do they call it, phantom pain? My head just went into overdrive.”

“Huh. Just make sure you dodge the falling golem next time.”

Derz laughed loudly. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

With that situation handled, we reorganized the group before heading into the next tunnel. I glanced down at my experience bar. With the golems from the tunnels and the boss, it was filling up quickly. Compared to hunting sparse monsters, this was far more efficient. It would be great if the dungeon reset daily like many of the other games that I played before.

Kaga held up her hand before we made it to the next chamber. Curious about what she found, we all looked around worried about traps. She scooped up a rock then tossed ahead of us. It landed on a spot causing the entire floor to collapse leaving behind only a single strip of land for us to cross the new chasm on. Peering over the edge, I saw that it was well over thirty meters deep with jagged rocks at the bottom.

“Nice catch,” Sasha remarked seriously. She waved her people forward. Razz’s group and then us stragglers joined next. The span of the bridge was just under half a meter. It seemed like plenty, but with two black holes on either side of you, it made for a much more tension moment.

When we all reached the other side, more than a few of us took a deep breath to relax. We didn’t get to enjoy the reprieve for long. The next chamber was waiting for us. At least the tunnel had given us time to recover our mana without wasting too much time. I cracked my knuckles as we proceeded to enter the new room.

A golem sat in the center of the room. It was slightly bigger than the last golems, but otherwise appeared the same. The real new addition to the equation was the two floating crystals near the ceiling. From the sensation they were giving off, I felt they were magic casters of some sort.

“Be prepared for magic!” Razz shouted as he moved in first. The golem locked onto him before it began to charge. We were all taken aback by the speed of the golem which vastly outpaced the last version. It managed to cross fifteen or so meters in a matter of seconds. I along with the others raised our casting devices and blasted the golem while Razz and Derz braced for the encounter.

The spells hit the golem hard doing plenty of damage. I thought for a moment that it was going to be just as easy as the previous chambers until there was a glow of green energy. The floating crystals soon revealed their purpose as the damage to the golem was repaired in a heartbeat.

“Take out the crystals!” Sasha and I shouted almost at the same time.

I took my own advice, aiming for the nearest crystal. I sent a spatial tear at the crystal, but the damn thing managed to dodge. The blasted things were quick as well. I trusted Derz and the other tanks to hold while we attempted to trap the crystals. A hunter finally managed to land a blow on the crystal, but it wasn’t fatal. The second crystal sent a flow of energy to the injured one, healing the damage.

“Well this is just a nightmare,” I muttered annoyed.

It took far longer than it should have, but we finally managed to down both crystals at nearly the same time to prevent them from healing each other. Once they were defeated the golem fell quickly as well. I looked around the room. The tanks had suffered quite a few bruises due to our inability to quickly take down the healers.

“Ten-minute rest,” I remarked to Razz and Sasha, both nodding in agreement. I moved over to a clear spot and took a seat. This dungeon just got much harder and it was only the first chamber of the second level. There was no telling how much more difficult it was going to be deeper in. Rowena came over and sat next to me. I handed her a flask of water. “Should we retreat?” While the experience and more importantly mana stones were nice, pushing in further was a risk.

Rowena took the flash, taking a gulp. “If you consider the level difference, we’re actually doing pretty well. Now we know how to deal with the crystals. I think we should keep going.”

I studied her for a moment, but she seemed serious. “Well, you’re the more stable of the two of us,” I said finally. Ten minutes later, we got up and joined the others to head to the next chamber. We should be close to a kilometer underground by this point. I knew there were connections to the Abyss in the area, so I couldn’t help wondering if we might encounter another entrance while diving the dungeon.

Kaga revealed a few more traps in the tunnel. A spike pit, falling ceiling, and even the classic rolling boulder. Each was dealt with easily enough thanks to Kaga’s assistance. Her ability to find the traps was impressive. There was no telling how many injuries or even deaths that had been avoided with her aid.

The chambers ahead were similar to the first. Fortunately, while the number of golems went up, the number of healing crystals stayed the same. With that being the case, we were able to hone our destroying of the crystals to a fine art. By the fourth chamber, we had the crystals dealt with in just under twenty seconds after the battle started.

When the second boss was in sight, I was glad that I had listened to Rowena. If not, we might have missed out on the juicy experience. Not to mention, the nearly fifty mana stones that I had gained just from this section alone. With my total nearing seventy for the entire dungeon so far, I couldn’t help but drool as I thought about the improvements to the village that laid ahead. We might even break into town level sooner than anticipated.

I peered around the corner into the boss’s room. The boss was a giant floating crystal similar to the healing crystals from the previous rooms. It wasn’t quite as large as the first boss, but it was close. There was also no coherent shape. It was just a mass of crystals. Under it was a pack of golems. I counted at least a dozen, but the shape of the room made it hard to see everything from the entrance.

Razz peered into the room next to me. “If this is what I expect, then this is going to be a nightmare.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised. The golems didn’t get much stronger.” Other than the annoying healing, the golems were about the same as before just with their focus more on speed than strength.

“Nothing to it. We’ll just have to try it out and see what we are dealing with. We can always try again another day,” Sasha added in our ear, causing us both to jump.

Since everyone agreed, we moved into the room with held breaths. This was either going to be a win or a catastrophe. I hoped for the former. Since it would be impossible for us to take on all the golems at the same time, we rushed to a corner of the room that let us hold a defensive position.

The golems rushed at us with abandon. I sent a spatial tear into their ranks. The golem hit was blasted back as with a massive gash in its chest. I expected the boss to heal the golem instantly, but it sat there without doing anything. Since we had nothing to go on, we focused on cutting down the golems’ numbers.

We were closing into a minute into the battle with over half of the golems in piles on the ground. At the minute mark, the giant crystal glowed bright enough to hurt the eyes. When the light faded, the golems that were defeated and all the damage that we had dealt over the last minute vanished as if it never happened. The ones that had been turned into piles of rubble stood up and started bashing against the shield wall.

Razz gestured at the crystal with his sword. “Mages focus on the crystal! We can’t afford to waste any more mana on the golems until we deal with that thing!”

I took that as my que to begin flinging Spatial tears at the crystal. I really needed a new attack spell. Void Discourse didn’t work on the golems. They needed to be flesh and blood for it to be effective. It wasn’t like I could teleport… Wait! I pushed my way to the front then timed as best I could. I reached forward and tapped one of the golems on the leg focusing on teleporting the golem above the crystal.

With a flash of light, the golem vanished reappearing over the crystal boss. It fell nearly ten meters and crashed into the crystal with a heavy blow. The golem survived the impact, but it was still a ton or two of weight crashing onto the boss from over ten meters. Cracks formed in the boss’s surface.

“Do that again!” Sasha shouted with excitement.

Moving closer to another golem, I reached out and teleported it. The golem was touching the one behind it, causing both of them to be teleported above the boss. There was another thunderous crash as they fell onto the boss. There was a flash of light, but it looked like the healing wave was only able to heal the golems. I shared a look with the others. It took another six minutes and roughly fifteen teleports, but we finally took down the boss by throwing the golems at it.

With the sound of shattering glass, the boss scattered into thousands of pieces. The golems followed suit, collapsing to the ground into piles of rubble. We stared at the piles of stone and crystal before everyone collapsed to the ground exhausted. I wasn’t nearly out, I was completely out of mana. I reached into my inventory and used one of my precious mana potions to take the edge off.

“Nice thinking. Teleporting just became a lot scarier in my mind,” Razz remarked slapping me on the back.

I thought about teleporting a monster a few hundred meters in the air. I doubted many things would survive that sort of fall. I turned to face Razz. “Let me know when you want to go skydiving.”