My second life as a dungeon

The path ended up winding around quite a bit but after a short walk we arrived at the first encounter, a small room with seven slimes of various sizes in it. I climbed the back of the hobgoblin so that I was out of reach while I looked around, the three in the back were moving around more than the rest so I assumed they were a higher level.

Seeing this a plan quickly formed in my head and I ordered my undead dog to go around the closer slimes to attack the stronger ones in the back as he would have an easier time catching them. I then told the hobgoblin to charge the smaller ones and just squish them with the side of its sword so that they had no avenue of escape. The slimes were easy targets so neither I nor my dretch got involved in the fight.

With my orders set the room quickly became a flurry of action as the slimes were ripped apart and just 30 seconds later the fight had already ended and we moved on, it took longer to pick up all the loot than the battle had. The next room was slightly bigger and had three more slimes, especially of the larger varieties that looked different, but they were still weaker than even my dretch so I just had my hobgoblin and death dog deal with them again.

The fight was still incredibly short but there were too many slimes so the bigger ones managed to live long enough to cast a few spells. This didn’t really change the outcome though as they were too weak to even scratch the hulking hobgoblin’s HP pool, who had stopped all the attacks from hitting me with its body. With the fight finished we continued our march once again, this time coming to an almost empty room that only had a single wooden chest in it.

I told the dretch to open it and when nothing happened I hopped off of the hobgoblin and looked to see what it contained; it was only a health potion and a few coins that would barely be enough for supplies to the nearest village. Unfortunately only I could use the potion as it wouldn’t heal undead but I still pocketed it, as well as the money, it may not be much but any loot would be helpful.

With everything in the chest looted we moved on to the next room. This time the room was about the same size as the first encounter but it had nine slimes instead of seven. Luckily since the room was so small I was able to just tell my hobgoblin to block the door while the death dog ran around and killed everything. I was aware that they would sustain a little damage but I would be able to use my mana to replenish any energy that they lost so I wasn’t too worried.

The fight started as soon as my dog ran into the room and started tearing apart the slimes, taking down two slimes in a single instant, one with each head, before moving on to the next target. A few of them tried to get past my hobgoblin to attack me but they all failed, easily blocked by the hulking monster's huge body. I wanted to warm up a little so I also got involved by sending a few of my weaker attacks at the slimes.

Thanks to my help it only took a minute to beat all the slimes and we were soon travelling deeper into the dungeon once again. We moved on to the next room to find the hardest encounter yet. The room was massive and I counted a total of eighteen slimes dotted around the place. In the end the extra numbers didn’t matter much as I just told my undead dog and hobgoblin to rush in while the dretch and I took care of any slimes they missed.

This ended up working decently well with only a few close calls that my dretch had to deal with, they may be weak but I still didn’t want to take any unnecessary damage. It was a pretty long fight though, lasting five minutes, and my two zombies used a few abilities but they still had enough mana to not need me to refill them. After spending another five minutes picking up the loot we moved on to the fifth encounter.

The fifth encounter was similar to the second as it was both in the same size of room and had the same amount of slimes. The only difference was that it had two less strong slimes making it even easier. We quickly dealt with them before moving on to the boss after looting the second wooden chest, this time containing both a mana and a health potion as well as a few coins.

I now had more than enough money to get supplies to the next village but I still wanted more so I continued on. Plus if I died now then I would keep my loot, not that I wanted to die of course, so there was no downside of me going further into the dungeon. I had overheard some people talking about the first floor boss so I knew that the weird chimaera thing I was looking at was called a cockatrice.

They had also mentioned the slimes so, even though I couldn’t see them, I knew that the cockatrice had three slimes backing it up. For the level that the first floor was designed to be challenged at, cockatrices were quite fast but at my level even my lumbering hobgoblin could outrun it. Also since undead didn’t circulate blood they were very resistant to being turned to stone through biting, although if it was a full adult with [Petrifying Gaze] then my undead would still be turned to stone just as easily as if they were still alive.

In the end though it turned out to be a pretty simple fight as the hobgoblin and death dog duo harried it while I found and dealt with the two life slimes and my dretch located the null slime before quickly disposing of it. With its backup dead the cockatrice only took a few more minutes before being beaten, faster than the fourth encounter took me. I knew that my group countered the cockatrice pretty heavily though so I was under no illusions that it was a weak boss.

With the first floor done we moved on to the second floor immediately as undead don’t need to rest and I had hardly done anything yet. As I walked through the portal to the second floor I was immediately greeted by scorching heat that felt like it would fry me alive. The floor itself was a platform of stone that was surrounded by lava and formed a tight pathway that looked way too small to be safe.

Unfortunately I had no choice but to move forward so I removed my cape and mask, they were only making the heat more unbearable and I didn’t need to hide my identity while no one was around, before moving on. As I started walking I tried looking at the rest of the floor to see if I could figure out what I would be fighting. Sadly all I could see was one group of red slimes and another group of some type of creature, both of which were too far away to get any decent intel on.

My inspection of the floor was suddenly interrupted when three fire elementals made out of magma and fire jumped out of the lava and surrounded us. They were slightly shorter than I was, had eyes made out of fire, a mouth that spewed lava whenever it opened, flesh made out of solid obsidian with lines of lava flowing through it and spouts of fire would randomly spew out of them.

Luckily I was able to react fast enough to command my companions before they could attack, the first command was for my hobgoblin to charge the closest elemental while my skeletal archer and I dealt with the others before they could get to us. They looked like they would burn anything they touched so my canine companion was ordered to sit back and let us deal with them.

My quick reaction let my hobgoblin attack first as it charged the closest elemental and smashed its sword into the creature's belly, sending it recoiling a few metres back heavily damaged, even without using a skill. Unfortunately, as I feared, the short contact had heated up the hobgoblins bastard sword quite heavily, the blade wasn’t hot enough to get damaged but we would have to keep the fights as short as possible.

Before my other companions got a chance to do anything the elemental that was just sent flying let out an unsettling laugh before firing two small flaming spheres at my giant guard as he was the biggest target. Both landed on its chest and the metal noticeably got hotter, other than that the actual damage felt by the lumbering zombie was pretty low. Seeing that the elemental was almost dead my dretch shot an arrow that landed in its neck that finished it off, causing it to shatter into thousands of tiny pieces.

Since my undead dog couldn’t fight these elementals without taking a lot of damage I told it to carry me around so I could focus on attacking without worrying about any return fire. However, before I could send any of those attacks the other two elementals charged at us while chucking four more flames in total. Because they were running as they did this their aim wasn’t great causing only one sphere to hit the back of my hobgoblin while the others harmlessly landed in the lava.

Now it was my turn to return the favour, there was one on each side of the group so my hobgoblin guard blocked the path of one of them, letting me focus all my energy on the other monster. I gathered my arcane energy into the end of my wand before sending out two tendrils that slowly uncoiled into undead hands before they embraced the elemental and drained all of its energy, causing it to shatter.

Finally my hobgoblin charged the final elemental before hitting it with an upward swing while using its cleave skill for even more damage. This caused the elemental to split in half before shattering into two piles, ending the fight. I had only used up a bit of my mana and I doubted that a single encounter could finish off my hobgoblin so we quickly continued on after picking up the loot.

It seemed like the obsidian that the elementals were made out of was magical in some way as even after they dissipated back into mana some remained as well as the usual cores. As my dog could move faster than me and I wanted to get out of this heat immediately I stayed atop my impromptu steed. This had the added benefit of letting us react faster to any encounters moving forward, which I would have to rely on since I didn’t have a skill that would let me sense where they were.

The next time I had the opportunity I planned on rectifying that as I didn’t want to be surprised while out in the wild and without the promise of being resurrected by a dungeon. We travelled for a while before anything else happened, we even managed to get to the second bend without any more encounters. Still, we would have to fight something eventually as when we were halfway around the second bend another group of three elementals jumped at us.

Fortunately we were expecting it this time so the fight was much smoother than the last one and we quickly got moving again. The next group to attack us were three elementals and three red slimes, which I assumed were fire slimes. The elementals jumped out of the lava like before but the slimes clung to the edge of the stone platform and slowly writhed up the sides and at us.

The fight started pretty poorly as I was surprised by a flaming sphere to the chest that was extremely painful but other than that the encounter was only slightly more difficult than the previous two. My hobgoblin dealt with all three of the slimes by sending a cleave through all of them and then finishing them all off with a single swing each. Unfortunately a few if the elementals got past the hobgoblin and the dretch skeleton took some damage.

Once the fight was over I noticed that the slimes hadn’t heated the hobgoblins sword at all so going forward I would have my undead mount attack any more we came across. The next encounter we were prepared for as there were just six slimes bouncing around waiting for us to rush over to them. I realised that this was a pretty obvious trap and so I sent one of my larger spells at them from as far away as I could.

It didn’t kill any but it did weaken them and force three angry elementals to jump out of the lava. They were pretty far away so by the time any of them got within range to attack us all the slimes were dead so after that point it was a repeat of the second fight. The next bend had an unguarded chest that contained basically everything I got from both chests last floor.

I doubted I’d need this many health potions by myself but I would be able to sell them once I got out so it was still useful to take them with me. The next encounter went back to only elementals and there was only one more than the first two encounters so the fight was over pretty fast. The following fight had four elementals pop out behind us as three slimes appeared in front of us.

Since I knew that the slimes could be attacked without retaliation my steed and I dealt with them from close range while my hobgoblin blocked the elementals path letting my dretch shoot at them indiscriminately while the hobgoblin focused on not getting hit. The last fight before the boss was slightly different again as at first only two elementals and a single slime appeared before us and we were dealing with them as usual.

That was until we had killed the slime and one of the elementals the remaining elemental let out a mini explosion that expelled all of its obsidian, turning into a being of pure fire and running away extremely fast. I assumed this was meant to split any parties that didn’t work well together but I had practically full control of my companions so that didn’t work on us. I was proven right as four slimes and three elementals appeared before us soon after we started moving forward.

Since I was expecting this the hulking hobgoblin was already blocking the path and kept any monster from getting past it as the rest of us whittled them down one by one. Five minutes later they were all dead and we were moving on. I could see that our next fight was with the boss but before we got there we had another chest to loot.

This one had more coins in it but it had the best thing I had found yet. A dark red cape that had an enchantment on it to resist heat, I immediately put it on and felt so much better, unfortunately the end of the floor was in sight but any comfort was good in my book. By this point my undead had taken quite a bit of damage and were starting to run out of mana so I refilled their pools before taking a deep breath and charging at the boss.