CH.263 Clearing Dungeon 27_001, part 4

CH.263 Clearing Dungeon 27_001, part 4

Just as I guessed last evening, the next floor was an earth floor. But this isn’t what I was expecting at all. What we faced was a massive underground cavern, filled with falling dripstones, and all. CHeCk for new stories on no/v/el/bin(.)c0m

And the monsters that lived in this cave thingy were rock golems, stone golems, earth golems and so forth. All the golems.

“... Brian... how do we get past this?” Lua asked. “We can’t just fly here.”

“That’s true. But if you can’t fly, you have to walk. And if you can’t safely walk on the ground, make an underground path. Drillroid.” I summoned a monster.

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My idea was this. If the area we can see is too dangerous, we’ll just make our own path. And for that, Drillroid is perfect, so I ordered him to make us a path towards where Laura assumed the floor boss would be.

The tunnel he dug wasn’t that tall, but it was still more than enough. Then, for safety reasons, so we won’t run out of air, I summoned Spirit of the Breeze to circulate the air in our tunnel.

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Once we emerged from the tunnel, we were within the visual distance of the floor boss. Another golem, but this one looked like it was made of metal. A metal golem. More specifically, a mithril golem.

“... Brian? How do you fight a mithril golem?” Alice asked. “Do we just ... attack until it dies?”

“We could, but I want to test something out first. Can you all deal with the other golems? I’ll take care of that mithril golem.”

“Sure.” Alice agreed. “But can I get a mithril weapon made from it?”

“... A mithril swordstaff, huh? I think I can do that.”

“Thanks. I knew I could count on you.” After Alice thanked me, she flew into the air with her Mana Flight, and went to suppress the stone golems that were starting to surround us.

... wasn’t it part of our plan to not fight? Well, whatever. I guess we can fight a bit. As long as Alice doesn’t level up too many times, we should be fine. Avoiding level up sickness is honestly the only reason I’ve kept Alice, Lua and Ria from fighting too much. I can’t get it, because I’m already at the level cap.

Anyway. Back to that mithril golem. And what I want to try with it.

“System Down!” I activated a card.

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When I got it, Laura said that System Down should work on metal golems, so I wanted to test it. And with Health Conscious negating the need to pay that 1000 HP, there was no reason not to try it.

And it worked. The mithril golem before us just ... well, it disappeared. Vanishing from existence. That included everything about it, including all that sweet mithril I could have used.

... well, System Down worked, but it might not be a good idea to use it. Materials are too important to just banish. But at least this confirms that banishing S-rank monsters is possible, so that is a good way to get rid of them in cases where speed is of utmost importance.

“Brian! You promised.” Alice complained, as we walked towards the next floor.

“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was just going to disappear.” I defended myself. “And I did place an order for mithril in Viscount Hills metal shop, so we can just use that.”

“That is a promise, right? You won’t just say no later, right?”

“Yes. That is a promise. I’ll make you the best swordstaff this world has ever seen.” I promised Alice, before I added a timeframe. “Eventually. But before that, I’ll make you a mithril swordstaff.”

“Thanks.” Alice beamed me a smile. “But if that was a lie, you’d better get used to waking up to a Dark Burning Attack every morning.”

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“Probably. But it might also attract monsters to us. If I had to guess, this floor is filled with monsters that attack any light source.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“I do. Light of Intervention.” I activated a card.

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The card lit up the dark room, revealing tons of human sized monsters. Well, maybe ghosts would be a better description. They were specters, to be precise. They hide in the shadows people cast and attack from there. But because my spell lit up the entire room, there were no shadows left for them to hide in. But I have to say, what a genius floor. If you use a more regular light source, like the Shine Ball spell of a torch, you’d cast a shadow the monsters would be able to hide in. So as you can’t see any of the specters, you might assume that it is safe to just go forward.

But we didn’t have any of those problems, thanks to my card, so we could just go through the floor, while using the specters that didn’t really know what to do as target practice. Luckily this is a rogue dungeon, because if this dungeon had a DM who was trying to keep us out, I think he would be pulling his hair out by now.

The boss of the floor on the other hand was a dullahan, with a headless horse and everything. I actually found it an interesting boss, because the soft glow of the flames coming from both the dullahan and horse’s necks gave enough light where we would cast nice shadows, had I not lit up the room with my trap card. So while the dullahan took our attention, the specters would have been able to attack us from our blind spots.

Again, quite the genius strategy. Sadly, it was wasted on us.

“Shinato, King of a Higher Plane!”

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“Shinato, destroy that dullahan.” I commanded my fairy/angel guy.

Shinato got into combat with the dullahan, while the rest of us focused on the specters. But the dullahan, without the help from the specters, really couldn’t hang in there, and eventually went down to a Divine Ring attack from Shinato.

“I guess this is a good place to stop for the day.” I said to everyone, after we had left the darkness room.

“Agreed. How long do you think this dungeon will be?” Lua asked.

“No clue. I think we are between floors 47 and 48 at the moment, and considering that we have been running into S-rank boss monsters, floor 50 might be the last.”

“Brian, do you think the last boss will be SS-rank, like the behemoth was?” Alice asked.

“... probably.” I admitted.

“Will we be able to deal with it?”

“Of course. Why couldn’t we? You’ve done it before, and now we will use my entire arsenal of cards, so of course we will win.”

“I-if you say so...”

“You make it sound so easy...” Lua added.

“Well, it might not be, but I think we can do it.”

“Don’t worry Master. As long as I am by your side, even something like an SS-rank will be easy.” Agunan said, even though I recall him saying he would have to go all out against a behemoth.

“Yeah. We will just deal with it, when it comes to it.” I told everyone. “Right?”

“Yes!” They all responded.

With our enthusiasm for tomorrow set, we set up camp and got ready to rest for the night.