3.38 – Warhammer

3.38 – Warhammer

Natalie collapsed back into the dirt, releasing her hammer. She let out a long, agonized groan, her entire body aching. Being the punching bag of the team wasn’t glamorous work.

“Fuck me,” she moaned. “I’ve gotta be one giant bruise after that.”

She wasn’t the only one to slump into the ground, exhausted from the fight. Each of them had been drained, pushing themselves to the limit in the first of their climactic battles against a first floor dungeon boss.

Natalie especially had been through the wringer. Being the team’s meat shield was no fun at all—though she vastly preferred it over her teammates taking hits, so each ache adorning her body was satisfying in a strange way, too. Pain she’d taken for each of her team members.Nnêw n0vel chapters are published on n0v/e/(lb)i(n.)co/m

“That wasn’t so bad, I guess,” Liz said.

“Mages shouldn’t be allowed to move so fast,” Jordan declared. “That was completely unfair.”

Natalie agreed wholeheartedly. Fighting the dryad had been like fighting against a fully competent mage, rogue, and fighter all at the same time. Just how nightmarish would a fully physical combatant have been? Though at least then she could have focused her full attention on dodging and trading powerful blows. With spells and lighting-fast staff strikes interspersed, she’d been juggling a dozen different factors in her head, where any tiny slip-up meant a new gigantic bruise.

At the same time, it at least meant each individual strike didn’t shatter bones. Though the kick from earlier really had broken a rib, she was pretty sure—it ached horribly, though Liz’s heals, and a rare usage of a health potion, were slowly patching it up.

For a while, Natalie and her teammates simply sat there and caught their breath. Curiosity and excitement won out, though, before more than a minute or two passed. Natalie grunted as she shoved herself back into a sitting position, wincing at the sharp pain in her side.

Ahead of her, sprouted from where the dryad’s corpse had disintegrated, sat a chest grown from interwoven branches. The dungeon didn’t want them to scour the arena for their rewards, this time: it provided it front and center. How lucky of them.

Truth told, the fight had been difficult, and there’d been several close calls, but that was the standard for the dungeon. All of them had come out, while bruised and bloodied—even the backline—in one piece, and that was all that mattered in a boss fight. Seeing how these encounters were far and away the most common way for Tenet students to disappear, no critical injuries meant they’d performed beautifully. Indeed, looking around, Natalie could tell the team was satisfied with themselves. Doubly true considering their unfortunate circumstances, having had much of their gear robbed.

Natalie pushed herself to her feet, and the rest of the team followed. Sofia, naturally, moved quickest, arriving at the chest first. That woman had a serious obsession with shiny things—she was almost always the one pulling items out.

Something odd happened as Sofia dug out the first item. She grunted and frowned, and where she’d reached in with one hand, she was forced to add a second. Planting her feet, she struggled to heave out whatever object the dungeon had given them.

A gigantic six-foot long warhammer slowly revealed itself, and Natalie had to help Sofia lug out and stabilize the item. The white-haired girl seemed mildly annoyed at that, though had clearly needed the help, which Natalie smirked at. Her attention was pulled toward the weapon, though, teasing Sofia taking a temporary second priority.

“Don’t wanna use it?” Jordan asked. “Has magical prowess and tenacity buffs. It was made for you.”

“Can’t,” Natalie said, a bit reluctantly. “Just too heavy.” She set the enormous thing down with a thump. “Plus, maybe not the best tank weapon.”

“There’s merit in tanking through sheer inavoidability,” Sofia said. It didn’t sound like she was disagreeing, just pointing it out. “Swinging that thing around, even a boss would be forced to deal with you before moving on.”

Natalie chewed her lip. If she were completely honest, that sort of fighting style appealed to her more than the smaller hammer and shield set-up she had right now. She’d more than adapted to it, but the pairing didn’t sing to her either.

“Seems more you, too,” Sofia said, mirroring her thoughts.

Natalie chewed her lip before sighing. “Maybe. But not this one. Just too unwieldy.” It was the frank truth of the matter.

Sofia eyed it, nudging the block of stone with her boot. The white-haired girl hadn’t even been able to pull it out of the chest, and while Sofia was more of a fighter focused on prowess and technique, she wasn’t some weakling, either. Nobody with a physical class was. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

“Just feels like a shame to get a weapon like that and none of us can use it,” Liz chimed in. “If you want to give it a test run, that’s fine?”

Natalie wrinkled her nose. She was tempted, but it simply didn’t feel safe. “Not in the dungeon. Maybe I’ll try it out back at Tenet. Might take some getting used to.”

She rummaged out a monster core, then sucked the item into the orb. She turned the glass ball back and forth, intrigued despite how many times she’d used the convenient feature of the magical core. A tiny copy of the stone warhammer floated inside its depths.

“Maybe a level up will help, too,” Liz said. “There’s good odds some of us will hit that, tonight.”

After so many diligent trips into the dungeon, and taking down a boss, it was within the realm of possibility to be advancing to level two, come midnight. Not guaranteed, though. And Liz was right—the boosts to her stats that came with a level up might make the unwieldy weapon usable. She perked up at that. She’d gotten used to her hammer and shield, but she would admit the idea of swinging around an oversized weapon had instantly appealed to her.

She paused, finally making the connection. Oversized weapons. Well, this would be the second one, if she chose to use that fighting style. She coughed and ignored the inappropriate thought. Though really—her first skill was called [Heavy Weaponry]. Maybe it was fate. Was there even some kind of hidden bonus for it? That might be too hopeful—she hadn’t felt anything when testing the warhammer out.

More items were being lugged out of the chest by Sofia, so Natalie turned her attention that way. Her final decisions on a potential weapon swap could come later.