NOVEL WEB Chapter 31 – Finishing the dungeon
Other than the arrow to my shoulder the fight ended up going pretty well so I just spent ten minutes letting my health regenerate and gathering the loot the kobolds had dropped before moving on. Once my rest ended I restarted my walk along the edge of the floor, after about five minutes I reached the other fog wall without coming across anymore monsters so I started to follow it.
I continued for a few minutes until I could no longer see the southern wall of fog when I saw another group of kobolds cross the horizon to my right. These two things made me realise the horizon was much closer than it usually was so the dungeon must be curving the floor a great deal. This time the squad had one less archer but an extra warrior, so I would have to change my tactic.
Instead of having my hobgoblin and dog split up like last time I had both of them fight the warriors together. This let the archers shoot at us without any distractions but shooting down two arrows at a time was much easier than shooting down three so I didn’t have to worry about them. While I defended us from the arrows my dretch sent return fire that slowly whittled the backline down until they were all dead.
Meanwhile my Hobgoblin and death dog duo easily overwhelmed the warriors and had quickly finished them off making this fight easier than the first encounter. Another strange card dropped amongst the loot so I took it with me before carrying on. Over the next ninety minutes I came across four more squads, all dropping the strange item, before coming across a strange wall.
Two of the squads had been repeats of the ones I had already fought but the other two had an extra mage instead of a warrior or an archer. This made them the most annoying to fight as whittling them down took much longer. The wall was made out of some kind of metal that I didn’t recognise and had a door in the middle of it. The door was made out of the same metal as the wall, had no handle and was surrounded by six rectangular depressions.
The depressions were the exact same size as the cards I had previously found so with nothing else to do I placed them all in each of the indentations. Once the last card was placed the door started to make a loud screeching sound as if it hadn’t been moved in aeons, as it slowly slid into the wall, leaving an opening in the wall. On the other side were the remains of what looked to be a very old city.
The first thing I noticed was that all the buildings were made out of a weird white metal that looked nothing like anything I have ever seen before. I walked over to one and placed my hand on it, the material was as cold and hard as I expected a metal to be. I couldn’t imagine anyone living in a house like this, admittedly there are a lot of races on this planet so maybe one that I wasn’t aware of would be happy being surrounded by cold metal like this.
I suddenly remembered where I was and told my companions to keep watch of our surroundings as I continued my investigation. Since I had examined the outside of this building I decided to check the inside, the entrance was a door made out of glass and had a metal handle going through it somehow. I was worried that I would break the door if I pulled too hard but it wouldn’t budge even when I put my full force into opening it.
In the end it only opened when I had my hobgoblin sentinel open it for me and even then he had to put a lot of effort into it which made me curious about what the glass was made out of and how it was made. I wasn’t going to get any information from just staring at it so I walked through the now opened door and looked around.
I could instantly tell that this place was long abandoned as there were a ton of broken shelves, along with whatever used to be on them, scattered around the floor. One corner even had a ton of moss and slime growing in it which I didn’t go near as it smelt awful and I could tell just by looking at it that nothing valuable was in it. The building looked to be one massive room that felt like a general store but much bigger.
I looked through the remnants of whatever was scattered around but everything had either been taken by now or had rotted to the point that it was beyond inedible. After making sure there was nothing of value here I left and looked around the entrance to the city. There were three ways I could go, these were right where I could see some fallen metal blocking the path, forwards to another building or left that looked to carry on for a while.
I could tell this part of the floor was meant to be a maze so I used the old reliable trick of keeping your left hand on the wall and just following it till you got to the end. As I did this I gave the inside of each building a cursory glance before moving on. From the previous floors I knew to expect at least some chests on this one and since I hadn’t seen any yet there had to be some in the city itself.
I also doubted that they would be unguarded so I was expecting to find some kobolds protecting them. Since they favoured being sneaky and laying down traps for any adventurers that invaded their territory I was also keeping an eye out for any traps. My semi thorough search slowed down my progress through the city considerably, but in the end it was worth it as after searching for almost half an hour I came across the first trap.
It was pretty crude, just a wire going across the ground that would trip anyone that didn’t see it while alerting any nearby kobolds of our presence, but it would have done its job effectively. Luckily I saw it before anyone, especially the clumsy hobgoblin, managed to set it off so we stepped over it and continued on our way now on high alert as there must be kobolds nearby.
I was proven right as we saw a lookout just as they saw us, unfortunately they quickly ran away to alert the other kobolds before I had a chance to stop them. I expected that we only had a minute before the rest found us so I quickly got everyone in position. I used a small alleyway for cover while the dretch ran over to the other side of the street to use a different building as cover.
I wanted them to focus on the hobgoblin so it was in the middle of the street while the death dog was hiding in the shadows next to me ready to strike at the first monster that got too close. We had all gotten into our positions before anyone showed up so the dretch and I had enough time to set up our shots. The first to turn the corner were three kobold warriors, I immediately blasted one of them with two rays of fire although two more missed entirely, hitting a wall.
It was still alive until an arrow embedded into its chest, finishing it off. As this was happening another kobold warrior was hit with the full force of the hobgoblins bastard sword, it managed to barely block with its shield but the force still sent it flying ten metres down the street and onto its backside. Before it could get back up the death dog quickly sprinted out of the shadow before jumping on top of it, crushing its head in one of its powerful jaws.
The fight had only just started but only one warrior remained so it had to fight the hobgoblin by itself. It was stronger than most of the kobolds we had fought until now so it was able to fend off the hobgoblins swings reasonably well but it had to be fully focused on defence. As our sneak attack finished eight more kobolds, four archers and four mages, emerged from the windows of three buildings.
They immediately started to shoot arrows and spells at us causing the street we were on to turn into a mini battlefield. The hobgoblin just took any shots on the chin without flinching and the death dog managed to use its nimbleness to dodge most of the shots. Meanwhile the dretch and I used the buildings as cover but if we tried to retaliate at the wrong time we would end up getting hit.
The hobgoblin could take care of itself so the undead canine ran past them and into a building with an archer and a mage in it before quickly racing up the stairs to start attacking them. They could see that the dog was coming for them so they started to run away. This meant that it would take longer to kill them but they also could no longer shoot at us, giving us more room to shoot back without getting hit.
Electric mana slowly surrounded my wand before it had stored as much as I could hold and was shot at one of the mages just as they were about to send out their own attack. The lightning hit the mage and dealt some serious damage before bouncing to two other kobolds that were in the same room. The bolt left it convulsing out in the open so the dretch easily hit it with an arrow, killing it and causing it to fall out of the window.
The street melee had come to a standstill as every time the hobgoblin tried to hit the kobold warrior it managed to see all of the attacks and block them. Most of the ranged kobolds kept on firing but one of the mages stopped for a while, seemingly channelling a big spell. After a few seconds the mage finished and suddenly a lot of the shots were hitting harder and faster, it had clearly buffed the other ranged kobolds.
It was a bit annoying but all it really did was put the battle on a shorter timer before they managed to kill my hobgoblin. Looking at my undead sentinel I could tell its HP was getting low as it was starting to get sluggish. Seeing this I channelled most of my remaining mana into a single spell that caused a blob of green gas to shoot into the room with the two remaining kobolds that I had hit before.
The blob then exploded to encompass the room and drained their remaining life before sending it into the hobgoblin, healing it considerably. By this point the death dog had managed to corner both of the kobolds that had been its previous targets so I now sent it into the room with the mage that was buffing the other kobolds. Unfortunately it seemed to be a higher level so it was tougher for the death dog to corner, he would likely need backup to finish the mage.
The outside melee wasn’t going anywhere so I ordered my dretch to help finish off the warrior. It did this by going into the building it was using as cover and finding a window that gave it a clean shot on the warrior before sending two arrows at it. Because the warrior had to completely focus on the hobgoblin in front of it it wasn’t able to see the shots coming and so ended up with two arrows in its back, causing it to bleed out.
With the hobgoblin free it ran to join the death dog in cornering the annoying mage. I quickly followed as that building still had two archers that needed to be dealt with which would be easier from inside the building. When I arrived, the room was a gruesome sight, one of the archers was laying in a pool of its own dead blood while the other one and the mage were desperately trying to keep the death dog away, who also didn’t look much better.
It had a few arrows sticking out of it as well as a few marks where I assume rocks from the mage had hit it. It was a good thing we had arrived when we did as the undead dog looked close to dying for good and I couldn’t afford to replace it here. I told it to leave the room while we finished the fight and it obeyed me, quickly running out of the room.
The two kobolds didn’t want to let it go but the nimble dog was able to dodge the few shots that they shot at it. I quickly sent out two ghostly wisps at the archer, it managed to dodge one but the other managed to hit, causing it to shiver as some of its energy was ripped from it. Unfortunately such basic spells could only drain energy so it just dissipated into the ether without me being able to use it to heal the dog.
The hobgoblin charged both of them before twisting in a circle using [cleave], it was too fast for the archer and so the bastard sword went through its defences and bisected the kobold archer. The mage managed to dodge with just a graze so it wasn’t outright killed but it had already been severely injured by the undead canine so I quickly finished it off with another couple of wisps while it was trying to stand up, ending the fight.
I was exhausted so I went into one of the buildings that didn’t house any dead kobolds and rested for about ten minutes, using a lot of mana to heal up the hobgoblin and death dog to half health. I would have preferred to bring them both up to full but I didn’t have the mana generation for that and I needed to save some incase I found another fight.
With my rest finished I got up and looked around being mindful of traps. After five minutes, and a couple traps that had to be disarmed, I found what I was looking for, a chest. The chest contained fifty bronze coins, two health and two mana potions. When combined with everything else I had found on my delve I won’t have to worry about money for a long time.
When I left the building I continued by using the same technique I did before but I found this whole encounter ended in a dead end so I turned around and started to retrace my steps. Eventually I came across where the encounter had started by this time I went down the large street that the dretch had hidden in. We then spent another twenty minutes searching the buildings until we came across the next squad of kobolds.
Luckily they were far enough away to not notice us and I was too low on mana to get into a proper fight so we snuck past them. The next building we came across housed the dungeon core so we quickly used it to leave. I would have liked to stay and find more treasure but I had found enough and I didn’t want to risk receiving the dungeon’s punishment by being greedy.
It was already past noon so I decided to stay in one of the guild rooms for the night, selling off my loot that I couldn’t use before leaving in the morning.
