Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Nineteen

A Wall of Dead

I might’ve offended Dane with how quickly I left. I had gained a level. Each level I’d gotten so far had required more kills than the previous one. The first time I’d leveled up was immediately after killing a goblin inside the cave. The second time I’d gone down there, I’d killed at least five before my second level. The third… eight? Nine or so? Did the zombies give more experience than the goblins? It was hard to keep track.

How many would’ve had to try to get through my traps for me to gain another level? Twelve? Thirteen?

Regardless, that was a lot of goblins that had decided to push for my traps. They’d seemed like little cowards to me, so I didn’t think they would have even tried much after the first one to approach got diced. What could have pushed so many of them into my traps?

I gulped, fearfully remembering the ice bolts the shaman had fired at me. I did not want those things wandering around freely. The goblins were bad enough. If the – dammit, what were goblin spellcasters called? Booyaghs? – If more of those Booyaghs were pushing the goblins, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle them.

I almost made it out of town before I remembered that I had other things that I needed to do. I treated the grocery store like a speedrun, blasting from the dairy level, quickly battling the urge for cookies and choosing veggies instead, ending with the checkout line final boss in the blink of an eye. I was certain there were fifteen things I’d forgotten, but that was just a few more than the ten things I usually forgot, so I figured Rio would give me a pass.

Swiping up some flowers on the way out to ensure that, I sped down the road toward the O’Reillys, and picked up some oil and a filter for my truck. In about twenty minutes I was finally heading back home, breaking the speed limit the entire way.

I gave a nod to Mrs. Booker, one of my neighbors along the gravel road that led up our mountain. She frowned as my truck cast a trail of dirt and dust behind me but waved anyway. Mrs. Booker had never liked me much.

I hauled ass into my driveway and saw Genji in the fence barking up a storm. Ignoring the groceries, I cut through the house to the back deck to gaze down the slope toward the cave.

Nothing was out of the ordinary. Double-checking to make sure, I circled the entire house and found no evidence of goblins, zombies, demons, or anything else that might’ve come up from the depths.

They hadn’t come to my home.

Relaxing for the first time since the level-up notification, I sank into the living room chair, petting the dog idly as I allowed my aura to refill the trap beneath the house.

This was… good. Right? The traps were clearly doing what they were designed to do. I didn’t need to go down there. For one thing, I’d probably get bloody again, and I couldn’t afford to keep buying new clothes.

On the other hand, though. Coins. This time, there shouldn’t be enemies either. I would also need to recharge the traps anyway, so what was the harm in going down? I could make it a daily trip. For fun, I could bring a chainsaw and start clearing out the area for my theoretical shooting range.

By the time I’d finished unloading the groceries, I’d already confirmed that I’d be going down again. By this point, I was actually getting quick at armoring up. My guns were ready and loaded, mana full, and leather jacket… That was good to go too, if I ignored the gaping hole in the front where a magic icicle had sliced through it.

Generalizing my stats had worked somewhat well for me so far. I dumped one point into Wisdom, one into Dexterity for my accuracy and speed, one into Constitution, and by tradition, my last one went into Charisma.

My stats were actually starting to look a lot better.

Name: Theo Tande

Class: Druid

Attributes:

Strength: 10

Dexterity: 9

Constitution: 8

Wisdom: 10

Intelligence: 8

Charisma: 13

The only attribute I hadn’t contributed anything to yet was Intelligence, and I decided this would be a small test. I attempted to create another Windblade Totem and discovered that I still couldn’t do so, which indicated that intelligence, not wisdom, equated to maximum mana. I’d have to start increasing it as well in the future. Wisdom might make my spells more powerful, but that would be worthless if I didn’t have enough mana to use anything.

Fortunately, I’d already considered the next skill I wanted, and I didn’t hesitate this time. I had a decent array of physical things I could do now, and I didn’t want to be bogged down with too many choices.

It was actually a Magic the Gathering game that made me decide to avoid choosing active skills like Cyclone. Occasionally, against a player who liked to make the absolute best use of their cards each turn, I would find a way to flood their hand with options. Too many options and then they’d spend too much time trying to decide the best option that the time limit would end up forcing a mediocre move out of them instead.

It could backfire spectacularly, of course, but choice paralysis was a thing. I decided that if I was ever caught in a fight again, it would be better to have a few tried and true attack methods and focus on improving them over all else. Gripping Vines proved to be a spectacular skill, and bullets worked just fine so far.

With that in mind, I chose “Nature’s Bounty” from the Passives skill tree. It was one of the ones that had a description, and it was easy enough to understand. It helped me regenerate mana faster. Having experienced mana starvation more than once already, anything that could make it recover more quickly seemed incredibly valuable to me.

The trek down to the cave was starting to feel a bit less daunting. To my surprise, I was barely winded when I reached the bottom of the ravine, making me think that perhaps the attribute points really were improving me somehow.

Then again, it could just be that I’d found the most optimal route after all my trips.

All thoughts of my body’s improvements fled as I approached the cave. The smell hit long before it came into view, and I regretted coming down here at all when it did.

A scene from a nightmare. My totems worked, alright.

Severed arms lay strewn about along with sliced torsos. Blue blood decorated the bushes, and mangled corpses littered the ground around the cave's entrance. The vines that had blocked the entrance had been torn apart, and it looked like a pack of goblins had ventured out, all in a rush, only for the traps to activate and dice them to ribbons.

At least two waves of the creatures had been mutilated on their way out. I even saw one of the Booyaghs dead, but more clearly kept coming. So many. If there had been this many in the woods the first day, I wouldn’t have stood a chance.

What had pushed them to keep coming, even after seeing the ones at the front die to my traps?

My totems were all inert at this point, their energy long spent. As I examined the grisly scene, I realized that at least some goblins had managed to escape the cave and the area unscathed. I could see their small footprints in their kin’s blood, scrambling off in all directions.

My healing aura had begun to recharge the traps when I arrived at the cave’s mouth. I was happy to see that they could be recharged and reused, but on the other hand, they hadn’t been enough to prevent more monsters from leaving the cave.

Goblins were out again. They’d also clearly decided not to stick around, as I hadn’t been ambushed yet, and my traps remained idle even after I repowered them. Who knew what they might get up to, or how many had managed to flee after my totems all ran out of mana? Who might get hurt because I’d decided to be done with all this?

On the other hand…

Coins littered the forest floor. I lost count of them as I picked them up, and they weren’t alone either. There were at least three more Identifiers, whose function was becoming increasingly obvious, and a pair of armguards that offered two armor.

I suddenly realized that I’d completely forgotten to test the Identifier I’d found on the breastplate I’d left down here. Maybe that was for the best, though, since it didn’t seem I could’ve used that anyway. I had a plethora of items to choose from now.

There was a magic pair of pants with unknown properties, similar to the breastplate. A strange Wizard’s Orb provided no armor but was enchanted and needed identification as well. I was unlikely to use it because it was called a Wizard’s Orb. I doubted it would be much use to a Druid.

Most interestingly of all was a sinister morning star. Metal spikes adorned a ball on the end of a beautifully carved wooden shaft. It seemed to glow a soft yellow.

My trusty machete had been with me since the start, but it would be nice to have a weapon that was actually meant for this sort of thing. More than once, I’d considered bringing the shovel again, just for the extra reach it provided. This might be the best of both worlds. Slightly longer than the machete, the weapon felt like a good fit for my hands, and it also seemed like the most valuable item that had dropped. I might be biased there since it was the only thing that was glowing.

Mace

Unique

One-Handed

Enchantments Unknown

A Strength of at least 8 is recommended to use this item.

I held up one of the Identifiers to the Morning Star and looked through the glass. The glowing blue magnifying glass heated up in my hand. I yelped and backed up a step as the Identifier disintegrated into shards of dust that fluttered away in motes of light.

I thought I’d done something terribly wrong for a moment, but when I looked back at the mace, I was satisfied to see my guess had been correct.

Whirling Morning Star of Twilight

Unique

One-Handed

+1 to Fey Light (Cleric Skill)

+5 to Strength

+5 to Intelligence

Increased Resistance to Wind Attacks

Attacks with this weapon are faster than normal

A Strength of at least 8 is recommended to use this item

Holy shit. It increased my stats just by wearing it!? It was too bad it was intended for a Cleric, but I wasn’t complaining. I had a magic fucking mace that made me stronger and hopefully gave me more mana! Attacks with this weapon are faster than normal? I wondered what that meant. Either way, it seemed like a great weapon to have. I wondered if it would give me access to the Cleric ability, but I didn’t think it would.

The Identifiers clearly dropped with some regularity and their purpose was to reveal the magic properties of items. Why though? It wasn’t like anything was stopping me from wearing an unidentified item. If I wore something unidentified, would I have to guess the enchantments? Or would it just not work unless identified?

For now, I didn’t much care. I held up another identifier to the pants.

Good Looking Trousers

Magic

Light

Armor: 1

+1 to Charisma

I snickered. Okay, so they weren’t all winners. Then again, the pants did look good. They looked like something a designer would make. I would feel weird walking around in them, but if I ever knew I’d get into a fight again, I’d certainly put them on for the armor alone.

I decided not to identify the wizard's orb, but I did identify the breastplate. It took a few minutes to find the thing up the slope. I decided I’d need to bring a clothespin down here if I ever needed to come back to clog my nose, but eventually, I found it next to a clump of vines that I’d used to bury the goblin that had dropped it.

Durable Breast Plate

Magic

Heavy

Armor: 3

+2 to Constitution

+1 to Strength

A strength of at least 14 is recommended to wear this armor.

I furrowed my brow. My strength was 10, but I could wear it if I dumped all four points into it at the next level. At that point, perhaps I would no longer find the armor to be such a burden as I had when I’d tried it on a few days ago.

Considering how many things had hit me in the chest so far, I was pretty sure I would unless I lucked out and got some sort of armor that was a bit less costly. My leather jacket just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. Not for this sort of grizzly work.

Dropping the breastplate and the wizard’s orb in a small pile near the cave for now, I turned to the field of dead and readied my Gripping Vines spell. It would be getting a workout.

The last bit of loot that dropped was potions. Three small health potions and one mana potion lay on the ground, their thin red and blue vials glinting in the afternoon sun. I pocketed them all greedily, wishing I had a safer way to carry them than the backpack I’d brought. I resolved to get a belt that could hold many of them, but having more potions was a weight off my shoulders. Now I could heal if something–!

I heard the snap of a twig. Then more, along with goblin voices. I’d leveled up… probably an hour ago at this point. Maybe more. Were the survivors returning?

I took cover behind a large oak, just in time to watch at least eight goblins come into view, trudging slowly down the other side of the ravine.

Three of the little creatures were struggling to hold something heavy over their heads. I realized what it was when they reached the clearing.

A person.