Chapter 234 - Day DCLXXXVI, Part VI

The stairs started to curve to the side, and spirally descend. I quickly found out that this part of the dungeon is made of several floors with an open staircase connecting them all. There were several rooms all around, without any doors, clearly visible in the red light of the crystals. They looked like a combination of study and laboratory, but what's more important, in every single one of them was an orc mage.

Several fireballs flew my way, and I had to shadow walk inside one of the rooms, to quickly kill the spellcaster. I repeated this several times to clear the whole floor. Fortunately, the staircase didn't get destroyed by the explosions, but the steps were all now blackened, and probably very hot.

I looked down, to see if the explosions alarmed more of them, and almost got hit straight to the head by one. I stepped back, to avoid it at the last second, and the magic exploded on the ceiling right above me forcing me to crouch.

- Fuck - escaped my mouth.

My friends were rushing down, yelling at me, but I ignored them, and instead, shadow walked downstairs to the next level. I landed a bit too far from the closest enemy. They all were gathered close to the stairs, clearly waiting for me. The distance was too close for such devastating magic, but one of them extended a hand and conjured a spray of flames that shoot from his palm.

I shadow walked again, to cut him down, and repeated it to clear the floor entirely.

- Peter?! Is everything ok for fuck sake?! - yelled Will.

- No! Stay there!

- What?! What the hell is happening?!

I ignored him, and just proceeded with clearing each floor. It was an annoying process and took at least a quarter of an hour, or maybe even two. I had to go through at least thirty of those floors, while my friend kept yelling at me from the top.

- It's cleared! - I shouted from the very bottom as soon as the last spellcaster turned into smoke.

They rushed downstairs, and I went even deeper below, to end in a short tunnel, completely dark. I summoned fire in my hand and then saw a simple, black door with strange symbols carved in them. I went closer to take a better look.

My linguist class was not active, so I couldn't read it, but they seemed kinda familiar. After a few seconds of thinking, I realized that I probably have seen them in a comic book, or maybe some kind of tv show. Those were just the regular runic letters, just a bit more decorative and fancy.

- Don't even think about it - I heard from behind.

I looked over my shoulder, and there was Will.

- I'm just checking the door. I thought that there is something written, but it seems like just random runes.

- Just come here, ok?

I sighed and went to him.

- Ok mom.

He let out a short chuckle and patted me on the shoulder when I got close enough.

- You scared the shit out of us, you know? Couldn't you tell us what was going on? - he started nagging, as we went up the stairs.

- It's hard to talk with flying fireballs all around you.

Then we joined the rest of our group.

- It's done? - asked Nil.

- Yep. Nothing more down there except the boss - I replied.

- Then let's go back. We should hurry to pick the crystals before this whole thing will respawn. We've been here for several hours already. Besides, I'm hungry and tired.

I saw a couple of nods from other people. It looked like everybody agreed with what he said, so we headed back. It took a while, but we finally got to our carts and could eat and drink.

Others insisted to take a bit longer break, but I just made my shadows grab few carts, and went back to the cave. Will and Nil followed me, but the rest decided to stay outside for longer.

- You have no patience, Peter. I'm hungry as hell, and because of you, I got only three bites.

- We can eat when we are done, Will. It's a long way there and back.

- We should have taken the carts with us - said, Sanders.

- We shouldn't - I disagreed. - We had no idea what's inside, and carts could block our way out. What would you guys do then, if we had to run away? Now when we know the terrain, we can focus on clearing the whole thing more efficiently.

- It's not a problem to jump through few carts - he argued.

- Maybe for you, but Martin wouldn't be able to do that, he is too big. Besides we would be leaving a big chunk of our supplies then - explained Will.

- Less talking, more walking - I said to them and started moving faster.

Clearing the cave took us several hours. At some point, we were joined by others, and by night everything was already safe and sound in our possession, and we could finally return from orc camp to ours.

The mission ended up as a success, but I had my doubts if we will be able to repeat it through the whole month. For Alice, such an endeavor would be for sure a challenge. Martin also wasn't looking like a good ad I would wish he would after all day of fighting and walking. I could only hope that we would be able to somehow pull it off without taking too big risks.

I didn't want any of my friends to end up injured.

We ate diner, ad talked a bit, before finally going to sleep. Lying down on the ground, I couldn't stop thinking about that door, leading to the boss. There was a chance that if Will wouldn't come back then, I would open them.

It was an annoying and exciting thought. I didn't want to doa anything stupid, but I also wanted to go there and beat that thing up. Kill it. Kill it hundred times. I started to wonder if I'm going insane. 

The long day came to an end with 9 695 550 points remaining on my account, forty-two class points, and 1812 orc crystals on our carts.