NOVEL WEB Chapter 13 – A dysfunctional party
‘Are you sure it’s here?’ Henry asked, he was supposed to be our leader but he just argued with everyone that disagreed with him instead of actually listening to them and either explaining his decision or modifying his order. He never stopped to consider that he might be the one that was in the wrong. At the moment we were looking for the new dungeon that the local guild announced had opened recently but we couldn’t see the portal yet.
‘Yes, I am sure we are in the right place, we just have to keep walking in this direction until we see it’ Anthony, our ranger and scout, said, he was the only one in our ragtag party that I knew from before the party formed so I trusted his skill. Henry grumbled a bit, obviously not trusting Anthony but he stopped complaining and kept on walking for now.
As we walked towards the dungeon I thought back to when we came together as a party. Four days ago the guild had started to advertise a local dungeon that was good for any parties that were just starting out and needed to get some experience. A few of the newer parties decided to take this advice and left to go try out the new dungeon.
I also wanted to try out this dungeon as up to this point we had just been taking easy gathering quests but I felt like we were starting to stall and needed to take on harder quests to get stronger. Unfortunately I hadn’t found a party to join yet and just me and Anthony wouldn’t be able to take it on alone. Luckily a few other people stayed behind that both wanted to try the dungeon and didn’t have a party to do it with.
Once we all figured out that we were in the same situation we talked for a while and five of us decided to form a party and use the dungeon to see if we meshed well together. The first two I have already mentioned, my childhood friend Ant, who was a level 9 ranger, he was an average height human with a sleek build perfect for climbing into tight spots and dodging attacks.
And me, a level 10 earth mage, I was also human but I was much smaller than Ant, in both height and bulk. This was mostly because while Anthony was outside training with a bow and getting fit I was inside learning how to use magic. I didn’t mind the size difference as I never really cared for being the strongest and I had always been fascinated by magic.
The third member was our ‘leader’ Henry was a level 12 paladin and had demanded to be our leader as he was the highest level out of the five of us. Henry was also the biggest out of all of us, especially when he put his armour on. It was much too big for him so it made him look ridiculous but he thought it made him look stronger and I doubt anything anyone says will change his mind.
Next there was Kyra, a small elf level 7 cleric that was quite shy as she was pretty new to adventuring having just finished her job training a month ago and hadn’t found a party to join yet. She had managed to gain two levels through helping the local clinic but that would only get her so far. Either way I was happy to have a healer in our party as she would really help people stay alive longer in fights.
The final member of our team was Lois, she was another paladin, this time level 10, and was also alone, I didn’t know why but it was clear she didn’t want to talk about it so I left that topic alone. She was smaller than Henry but still quite big, even intimidating me quite a bit, and she mostly kept to herself while giving off an aura that said that she really didn’t want to be bothered.
With the party formed and introductions done we left the guild hall and made our way to the dungeon. I felt pretty good about the composition of our party as we had a good frontline that could take damage, a healer that could keep everyone alive and a good backline that could deal a decent amount of damage. The only thing I worried about was our cohesion but I would only find out if we worked well together when actually fighting together.
I had been lost in my thoughts for about 5 minutes when Anthony announced, ‘Ah, I see it over there, we should get to it soon.’
‘Hmph, finally. I can’t wait for the guild to sort out a path here, walking in the wilderness is so boring.’ Henry complained for the thousandth time as we walked up to the portal. ‘It is getting late and I am tired. We can rest here for the night and then go in at first light.’
At this Henry sat down and said ‘You four can set up our camp, doing such menial labour is below a paladin like me.’ We all wanted to ask him to help us set up camp and that it wasn’t really fair for him to expect us to do his dirty work but the last time one of us did that he just went on a rant about how we were being ‘ungrateful that he was taking his time to take care of a bunch of loners that couldn’t even find a party’.
Sometimes I felt like he wanted to get physical but he was at least smart enough to figure out that none of us would stand by if he did that so he just kept to threats and rants. So instead we just rolled our eyes at him when he couldn’t see it and got to work.
The next morning we packed up the camp and entered the dungeon, instead of stopping for a minute to admire the dungeon Henry rushed us forward to the first encounter. We had heard a bit about the dungeon from a party that had already beaten the first floor but they didn’t stay long enough for anyone to ask any questions. All we knew was that this dungeon was filled with slimes and the floor boss was something called a cockatrice.
The first room was just two elemental slimes, one wind and the other water, and five basic slimes. It was pretty easy as Henry taunted the basic slimes while Lois taunted the elemental slimes leaving me and Ant free to kill all the slimes one by one. Henry was in a rush to finish the dungeon so we barely had time to collect all the loot that had dropped before he forced us to move on.
The second room was slightly tougher as there were almost double the slimes, Henry and Lois taunted as many slimes as they could but two basic slimes managed to escape the taunts. Me and Anthony took care of those two before they caused any issues before doing the same as we did in the previous room. One of the slimes got a lucky hit on Henry but it wasn’t too bad so we kept on moving as Kyra healed him.
The next room had a chest in it and Henry immediately went over to it and opened it without letting Ant check it for traps. Luckily the chest wasn’t trapped but it only had a total of 3 bronze coins in change and a healing potion. Henry split the coins evenly while keeping the potion and the extra gold that ‘didn’t split well’ for himself.
With the chest emptied we moved onto the next room. This one had one less slime than the last encounter however the room was smaller so we had to work in close proximity to each other. By this point we had started to get a hang of working together however there were still a few hiccups. One of these being when Henry moved in between Anthony and a slime he was targeting just as Anthony was letting go of the arrow.
Luckily Anthony had enough time to aim the arrow away from Henry so that instead of hitting him square on it just grazed past him. Unfortunately this still annoyed Henry to the point that he stopped everything in the middle of the fight to rant at Anthony. Thankfully most of the slimes had been killed by this point so the rest of us were able to clear up the rest.
But even after the rest of us finished the fight Henry spent another 5 minutes ranting while we all stood around awkwardly before he stormed off. By the time we caught up with him he was already in the middle of the next room trying to fight all 18 slimes by himself. Lois cursed under her breath as she rushed forward and got the attention of as many slimes as she could.
Meanwhile, me and Ant used up all our mana, killing as many slimes as we could as fast as we could and Kyra used everything she had trying to keep Henry alive. Unfortunately in his stupidity Henry took one too many hits and was taken down by a wind slime before we managed to clear the room.
It would take an hour for Henry to be revived by the dungeon so instead of waiting around for him we decided to wait ten minutes to recover our mana before clearing the rest of the floor until we found the floor boss. The next encounter we actually did better without Henry as, even though we were a party member down, the party worked a lot better together and we killed all ten slimes quickly without taking too much damage.
The next room was just another chest that had another healing potion and 4 bronze coins in change. We decided to give Kyra the healing potion so that she could still heal someone in an emergency even if she ran out of mana. We also decided to lie to Henry and say that there were only 3 gold coins worth of gold as he had taken more from the last chest than he gave to each of us.
We looked into the next room and saw that it was the floor boss so we went back to the chest room and waited for Henry to catch up to us. About 40 minutes later Henry finally caught up to us and spent ten minutes shouting at all of us for leaving him behind and letting him die. This annoyed me as it was his fault for storming off without us but I didn’t say anything because I knew that it wasn’t worth the energy.
Honestly once this dungeon was over I was going to take Anthony and leave Henry to find a different party to join, I was sure he was going to get himself properly killed one day and I didn’t want to be around for him to bring down with him. I hoped that Kyra would decide to come with us as she seemed nice and we could use a decent healer.
Speaking of Kyra, she looked like she was going to cry so once Henry had finished his rant I went over to her and told her to not worry about him. He was just being stupid and she shouldn’t take anything he says seriously. The fight against the cockatrice was probably our worst one so far, we spent a while attacking the cockatrice as Henry and Lois swapped with each other once one was close to getting fully transformed to stone with seemingly no lasting effect on the cockatrice.
Luckily Kyra was able to dispel the petrification as long as she got to them before they fully petrified, although this took a lot of mana so she couldn’t do it forever. This carried on until Anthony realised that it was getting healed and located the life slimes that were keeping it alive as well as a null slime. Once they were dealt with the cockatrice quickly fell without anyone dying, we then rested until everyone was fully recovered before we went through the portal into the second floor.
As we walked through the portal we were assaulted by a wave of scorching heat that was so hot we almost had to turn back right then, fortunately everyone’s constitution was high enough to not immediately die of heat stroke. Not to say that it was pleasant, I felt like my skin was going to catch fire. It was so hot that my sweat immediately evaporated before it could cool me down at all.
I was expecting something like this as I noticed the portal into the dungeon had two very different sections to it and the second half had lava in it but I wasn’t too sure who else had noticed that. I might have said something but I didn’t want to have another lecture from Henry calling me stupid, plus it's not like there was anything we could have done to prepare.
‘Fucking hell its hot in here.’ Henry complained, making it obvious that he hadn’t noticed the portal, ‘Let’s get this over with as fast as possible.’ We all mumbled in agreement before starting the long trek through the floor.
I looked around the floor to see that we were surrounded by lava except for a path that was about 10 metres wide. I followed the path with my eyes to see that it wound around the floor so that we would have to double back on ourselves multiple times, this was going to take a while. As I looked around I couldn’t see any monsters anywhere on the floor which was odd so I immediately had my guard up, expecting some sort of trap.
‘I can’t see any monsters; this is going to be easier than I expected.’ Henry said unfortunately not thinking about why a dungeon wouldn’t have any monsters on its floor and quickly walking forwards. This caused me to roll my eyes, luckily we were all behind him so he couldn’t see me.
‘Hey, wait a minute’ I said, I doubt anything I said would work but I had to at least try to get him to see reason, ‘Dungeons don’t just have empty floors, there are probably some traps around here’
‘Are you questioning my judgement,’ Henry shouted at me, ‘We were told that this is a new dungeon, maybe they haven’t put any monsters on this floor yet.’ At this Henry turned around and kept on walking with the rest of the party following him. However he didn’t make it five more steps before three magma people jumped up from the lava that they were waiting from and went to attack Henry.