My second life as a dungeon

The second floor boss was more of a group than a single entity, it contained three elementals, all bigger than anything I have previously fought but one in particular was bigger than the other two that I assumed had to be the leader, and eight slimes that were energetically bouncing around. It looked like it was going to be a tough fight but all I could do was fight as I had up to this point so I just kept on charging at them.

The fight started by the hobgoblin charging through all of the weaker monsters before getting to the elemental leader and bringing its huge sword down. The leader managed to block the attack with its arm but it still took a lot of damage and would have to focus on the hobgoblin for the rest of the fight. Next I got off my dog while channelling as much mana as I could handle into the wand until the whole thing was glowing a ghastly grey energy and had a bunch of wispy tendrils radiating off of it.

Once I had gathered enough energy it shot out of my wand and surrounded the slimes before sending their energy into my hobgoblin, healing all the damage it had taken today while also severely damaging all the slimes. None of the slimes died but they were brought low enough that any single attack would finish them off and they were slowed until they could shake the spell off.

My undead archer followed my spell up by shooting twice in quick succession, each one aiming at a different slime. They were still too slow to dodge the arrows so both of their cores were struck and shattered. It wasn’t a one sided fight however as some of the slimes managed to get back into the fight enough to send a barrage of flaming spheres our way. One of them missed but the other three managed to hit one of the undead each, dealing some damage but nothing serious.

My undead canine then charged into the slimes and started ripping them apart with every weapon it had at its disposal. Both of the slimes that hadn’t shaken off my spell got their cores shattered, one to the dog’s sharp claws and the other to one of its unnaturally strong jaws. The boss was having a difficult time dealing with my hobgoblin so its two fellow elementals rushed to surround their attacker and started to strike it, creating several swipe marks down its back.

The undead hobgoblin just shrugged these off and kept on attacking as it had just been healed and it had a huge health pool that let it tank hits for ages. The remaining slimes tried to surround my undead dog in an effort to slow its attacks down but their plan didn’t work as the undead beast was too fast for them. Instead the dog ran past them without getting hit at all.

The hobgoblin and the floor boss were in a heated battle and were trading blow for blow, neither of them bothering to defend themselves. This was starting to drain the hobgoblin quite a bit but the floor boss was already starting to slow down, I expected the boss would soon lose the bout. My dretch archer sent two more arrows at the slimes that were harrying my dog and as they weren’t paying attention both arrows found their mark, skewering both cores.

During this I had been channelling another spell which I had initially wanted to use to finish off the slimes but there were only two left and if I left the other melee alone they might manage to destroy my hobgoblin, which I couldn’t allow. The spell I was channelling this time turned my wand into a sickly green colour before sending out a beam of energy that struck the boss for a few seconds.

Even after the spell ended the green energy still coursed through the monster and destabilised the leader’s body to the point that it shattered into a million tiny shards of obsidian. I had been just in time too as I could tell that my hobgoblin was close to being destroyed. The slimes were fully focused on my dog and kept trying to hit it with their corrosive bodies but the undead dog was still too nimble and both attacks completely missed it.

This was the last thing either of them did as the undead dog quickly pounced on one and then the other, popping both of them with its overwhelming weight. Seeing its previous target dead my hobgoblin moved its attention to one of the other elementals and brought its sword down onto it with its full force, [cleaving] it in two and destroying another elemental. The last elemental tried to swing at the huge zombie but now that my undead bodyguard wasn’t surrounded the blow was easily stopped with its sword.

My undead archer and I sent off a couple shots each and quickly finished off the elemental while the hobgoblin kept it in place, ending the fight. I felt like if I stayed on this floor much longer I would get heat stroke so I quickly gathered all the loot before stepping through the portal and into blissful cool air. I had started to feel tired about halfway through the second floor but there was no way I could have rested in that heat so I had to press on anyway.

This meant that I was now completely exhausted so I found the nearest wall and sat down with my back resting on it. Channelling my mana into my companions to heal them didn’t use up my stamina as much as proper spells did so while I was resting I got everyone to come up to me so that I could heal them while resting. Over the next ten minutes I slowly regained my energy as I watched everyone’s burn marks recede into nothingness.

With everyone healed and my stamina mostly full I stood up and slowly looked around me. I was in a small dark circular room with a ceiling made entirely of a purple gem that reflected any light that was shone on it. Thanks to this even the tiniest flame that I could make would light up the whole room, the effect made it feel like I was inside of a geode.

As I was looking around I saw a small opening that led into a corridor that was barely big enough for my huge guard to fit through. We had only been walking through it for less than a minute when it opened into a huge room. There was no source of light so I moved the floating fire that I had been using to see into the room while making it emit more light.

The room was full of spikes coming down from the ceiling as well as up from the ground, with a few meeting in the middle to form into columns, this gave plenty of places for things to hide so I was very wary of my surroundings. I could already see some brown and green slimes as well as three oozes but there could be more monsters hiding anywhere.

I was a bit surprised to see oozes this early as dungeons usually kept the same three monsters they start with for a while, only evolving them after creating their fifth floor. I knew that oozes were an evolved slime that had given up some of its magical offence and agility to drastically boost its physical defence, this meant that they were better as close up fighters as they used their acidic body to melt anything that attacked it.

These traits made them slightly more difficult to deal with than slimes as they absolutely required a magic user to deal with them but if you had a mage then they weren’t too scary. Knowing this I told my undead companions to deal with the slimes while I focused on the oozes. My undead canine used its high agility to start the encounter by charging one of the green slimes and crushing its core with a single swipe of a paw.

My hobgoblin guard followed this by charging at two slimes, one green and one brown, and [cleaving] them both, the green slime was instantly popped causing a stalagmite to be covered in its slime but the brown one had managed to resist the blow enough to barely hold onto its form. I was still charging my first spell when the three Oozes entered the melee, one attacking the dog and the other two attacking the hobgoblin, their bodies rapidly morphing into acidic spears that tried to pierce their targets.

The one attacking my dog was too slow and was easily dodged, however the hobgoblin only managed to parry one with its huge sword, getting pierced by the other one. The damage wasn’t a lot but it would still have to be healed at some point and the hobgoblin could still die if it got hit enough. I looked around the battlefield as I finished casting my spell, I felt like my dog could handle one Ooze by itself for now and my hobgoblin was starting to get surrounded so I decided to help it.

A couple ghostly tendrils exited my wand and struck the closest Ooze, causing the Ooze to jiggle a little bit and show signs of damage but not dying. Seeing this I decided to go for a bigger spell but that would have to wait until more enemies were in the blast radius so I told my hobgoblin to focus on defending itself, only attacking if it saw an opportunity. By this point the three brown slime had finished casting their spells and sent three pebble bullets hurtling at their targets.

The one already next to the hobgoblin sent its pebble at him but the other two sent their pebbles at me and my archer as we looked the slowest. All of the pebbles hit their targets as I was not paying attention and my hobgoblin wasn’t close enough to block the strike, the damage wasn’t too bad but I could already feel a bruise forming and I really don’t like pain.

Since the green slimes were the easiest to deal with, each only taking one hit to kill, my dretch archer sent a few arrows hurtling at one of the two we could see, unfortunately it managed to dodge the first one but the second arrow hit the core and instantly shattered it. As this happened another green slime came around from behind one of the stalactites and joined the other remaining green slime in attacking my hobgoblin, luckily they were both attacking from the same direction so the attacks were easily blocked.

They had both now moved into the blast radius so I told my companions to focus on the other slimes. Hearing this my two headed beast charged at one of the brown slimes, which I assumed to be earth slimes, it swiped at it with one of its claws. The strike hit its mark but the earth slime didn’t die, it did, however, remove a bit of the slime’s body giving it a chance to bite the core without going through its goo.

The bite crushed the core turning the slime into a puddle of goo on the floor. At this point my hobgoblin was struggling to deflect all the attacks aimed at it even while just focusing on defence. The undead monster had enough hp to not be at risk of dying in this battle but all the acid aimed at it was starting to corrode its armour and sword.

Luckily I had finished casting my spell causing a green cloud to envelope the hobgoblin and all the monsters surrounding it, the cloud then pulled the energy out of the monsters before sending it into the hobgoblin and healing it to full again. This managed to finish off the previously damaged earth slime and ooze as well as the two undamaged green slimes, leaving just one heavily damaged ooze left fighting the hobgoblin.

The last earth slime tried to retaliate by sending another pebble my way but I was prepared for it this time so I managed to roll forwards and out of the pebble's way. My dretch archer then shot an arrow at the earth slime but the arrow went slightly wide on purpose so that when it dodged out of the way it landed right next to the two headed dog who didn’t waste any time ripping it apart.

The previously surrounded hobgoblin brought its full attention onto the lone ooze in front of it and swung its sword down in an overhead arc at the ooze. It was too slow to move out of the way so it was hit with the full brunt of the attack and since it was already heavily damaged the ooze, even though the attack was heavily resisted, was sliced into two, each half slowly melting into puddles.

This left only one ooze which was easily dispatched by a single attack from each of us. This time the slimes dropped the same stuff as they did on the first floor except the cores were slightly bigger. One of the oozes on the other hand dropped a vial of acid that would sell for a lot of money, if this kept up then I wouldn’t need to worry about money for months.

We spent the next hour slowly going from room to room dealing with each encounter, even coming across two chests. Neither of them had any enchanted items in them but they still contained quite a good haul, including a gem imbued with mana that was necessary for the creation of magic focuses. Any crafter would be willing to pay quite a bit for one even as low grade as this one so it was another great find.

At the end of the hour we came across the first safe zone in this dungeon, it was a massive ‘geode’ with three wooden, rustic looking buildings crammed into it. I couldn’t tell from the outside what each building was so I went into the first one to find it was a bookstore. I was about to leave since I wasn’t interested when the clerk, a short kobold that had gems growing out of its scales, told me that I might find a book that could advance one of my skills so I had a look around.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any books that were relevant for me so I moved on to the next building, this time I was much happier to see its contents as it was a general store. As I was looking around I couldn’t see any price tags so I asked the clerk, another kobold similar to the first, about it. They explained that the dungeon had no use for money so instead it used mana as currency.

Hearing this I grabbed two weeks of rations, a new backpack, my current one was starting to fall apart, a stack of paper and some ink to learn some new spell. I had mixed feelings about needing to use my mana to buy things as I was already using a lot just keeping my undead alive but it did mean that I could get things I usually wouldn’t be able to.

In the end I had to spend a hundred mana points to buy everything, it would only take me fifty minutes to refill but that was fifty minutes that I couldn’t spend refilling my companions' mana pools. With that done I moved on to the final building, this one was an inn so I wouldn’t have to camp on the cold hard ground.

Usually I would leave the undead monsters outside as I always received complaints about them being creepy but since the kobolds wouldn’t care and I was the only other person here I brought them in with me. I am not particularly talkative so I just bought a room for the night plus breakfast for another 50 mana before heading up to my room and quickly falling asleep in the comfy bed.

I woke up the next morning more rested than I usually was, since I spend most of my time on the road my usual bed is the cold hard ground so being able to sleep in a proper bed was nice. After doing my morning stretches I quickly had breakfast before continuing my delve. I quickly ran into my first group of monsters of the day, it was the same as two encounters I had already fought yesterday, two oozes, six regular slimes and three earth slime.

They were weaker than the monsters in the first encounter and we were fully rested so I easily dispatched them. The next room held another iron chest that had some coins and a book on different types of plants that would boost my [Minor Vegetation identification] once I finished reading it, this made me very excited as these sorts of books tended to be quite rare. I didn’t want to waste time reading it right now so I quickly pocketed it and carried on.

I instantly realised the next room was the boss room just due to how big it was, being at least 75 metres from end to end, not to mention the huge stalactites, stalagmites and columns that were scattered around the whole room. That said the biggest indication that this was the boss room was the huge ooze sat in the middle of the room that must have been the biggest ooze I have ever seen.