Chương 117: Penicillium - Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Six After the tension of that little talk I had with Phillipe, going back to normal dungeoneering was easy. We packed everything up, leaving only a few signs of our passing. Not for ecological reasons, as I understood it, but because leaving traces was sloppy, and Phillipe didn't like being sloppy.

"Hall's cleared, at least until close to that other room," Tyro said as we met up with him. He was keeping his voice low, so I assumed that there wasn't a door into that room.

"I can't see anything in it, but it feels like there should be something."

"Good instinct, trust it, even if it doesn't amount to anything," Phillipe said. He glanced around the darkened tunnel, and I shifted my backpack up higher as I did the same. The walls were all carved bricks, each as long as my forearm and half as tall, placed with a lick of cracking mortar between them. A few pipes ran along the ceiling, occasionally with a bend that fell towards an unlit lamp. It felt like this place might have been an abandoned facility of some sort, maybe some pre-world-wars one back on earth.

Well, if it wasn't for the huge rock golems and the goblins. Tyro had checked the corridor on his own, marking out what he suspected were traps with lines of chalk on the ground and a few circles on the walls.

"There's a loose set of bricks there," he said, pointing above.

"It looks like they could tip over, but I can't figure out how." Phillipe looked up, then nodded.

"I recognize that one. See that crack in the mortar there, along the bricks below, and it follows all the way to this one on the ground? If you step on it, it presses in a little lever and the bricks tumble down."

"Ah, okay," Tyro said.

"I couldn't figure it out."

"Most of the time, knowing that there's a trap at all is enough," Phillipe said.

"Some traps are better ignored than disarmed. In fact, I think most might be, but I'm not an expert with them, just someone who doesn't like being caught."

"You've been caught in a trap before?" I asked.

"Seven times," he said with a rueful chuckle.

"Two of these weren't so bad. One wasn't my fault. The other four were... experiences that I won't soon forget." That sounded rough.

"Any in this dungeon?" I asked. He chuckled.

"One. Second floor, of all places. Wasn't paying attention because... ah, well, I was younger and there was a delver on our team, a young lady who was... anyway, I stepped right into a pitfall. A metal spike went through the sole of my boot and into my foot. Had to break the spike and hobble all the way out of the dungeon to get someone to pull it out with some pliers. It put an end to my flirting that day."

"I'll take note of that," Tyro said.

"I've seen you trying to flirt, boy, a spike through your foot would be an improvement." I slapped a hand over my mouth to keep in the chortles. At least Tyro seemed to take it in good humour. We arrived close to the room Tyro had mentioned. It was a smallish room with rounded walls lined with workbenches that would come up to my shoulders at the moment. A tall stool had fallen off to one side, and the ring of workbenches was broken up where two doors were set into the walls.

The ceiling looked like it had crumbled a little, revealing packed dirt under a dome of bricks. The archstone was still in place at the centre, and the rubble had just been left on the ground to collect dust like the rest. It seemed clear to me. Phillipe brought a hand around and stopped Tyro and I, then he pointed to the pile of stones.

"Golem," he said.

"Are you sure?" Tyro asked.

"Look at the hole in the ceiling. There's more stone there than accounts for that. It's a stone golem keeping itself hidden."

"Oh," Tyro said. I looked up and back down, trying to gauge the amount of stone involved and... yeah, he might have been onto something, maybe. I'd trust his instincts and experience, of course, he'd been right about most things so far.

"This will be a little tricky, the room's too small for easy manoeuvring," Phillipe said.

"Ginger, stay out here. Tyro, take its right side, I'll go left. Focus on the knees if you can, but don't let yourself be grabbed no matter what, if you think you're about to be cornered, shout." This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Got it," Tyro said. I was left to watch over their bags as they prepared for the fight. Phillipe was right, of course. As soon as they approached the middle of the room the stones on the ground started to shift and move in a way that stones very much shouldn't. Neither wasted any time while their opponent assembled itself, and before the golem had even risen to its full height one of its arms was cracked and Phillipe had landed a quick but hard blow right above its knee that broke off a chunk of rock.

I tried hitting the golem with blight, but again, that didn't do anything, so I held back. The skill's new subskill that allowed it to spread and be infectious was fantastic... except when I was fighting with allies, like right this moment, so I was relegated to standing back and twiddling my thumbs. At least I didn't have to wait for too long. The fight was long, but only because the boys were taking their time, measuring their blows, and striking with more force than speed.

It made sense, the golem was slow and ponderous, so hurrying up would only mean giving themselves more opportunities to make a mistake that some forethought would avoid. Finally, one of its arms fell off, which opened its side for a few blows to the knee that ended with the monster toppling to the ground with a shudder that I felt in the soles of my feet. Then the boys stepped up and executed the creature with hard hammer blows to its undefended back and head.

"Alright, it should be safe now," Phillipe said with a wipe of his brow.

"Thanks," I said as I walked in and kicked aside a lump of rock that had scattered across the floor. They'd really made a mess of things, but I supposed that was only fair.

"Are we going to be fighting a lot more of these?" I asked with a gesture in the direction of the golem's remains.

"Not a lot more, but maybe a couple. It depends on how well our luck holds out," Phillipe said.

"The next room we're heading to usually has a number of goblins. After that it's the boss room for this floor. We can expect a few golems there."

"A few?" I asked.

"The room's large enough to negate some of their numerical advantage," Phillipe said.

"But I won't pretend that it'll be easy. We might also have to fight a much stronger goblin shaman. It's either-or, and you don't know until you arrive."

"I didn't know dungeons could switch things up like that," Tyro said.

"It's the exception rather than the rule, but that's boss rooms for you." Phillipe shrugged.

"Let's hope it's the shaman. It's more of a challenge in some ways, but at least your arms won't be sore for a week afterwards from all the hammering."

"That's because you're getting old," Tyro said. Phillipe sniffed.

"I can still make you eat your words, boy, old or no." He patted his biceps.

"I've earned these." I rolled my eyes and gestured to the two doors.

"Which way?" Forward, apparently. Phillipe pushed through into a short tunnel not too dissimilar to the last. He pointed out a trap right away, a block on the ground with a thin wire running along the edge of it that would have been hard to spot if he hadn't pointed to it. Phillipe was a lot better at spotting traps than Tyro, but he was noticeably not faster.

He still took his time, checking everything, sniffing the air, and moving with a slow, low walk that reminded me of a crab walk which I imagined would let him explode backwards if he needed to. When we reached the door, he gave us instructions in a low voice.

"Ideally, I'd let Ginger here ply her trade and fill the room with her mushroom gas, but this is a forest room, and I'm not sure if they would spread well. It's also a rather large space."

"It's not gas," I said.

"Which... does make your point more valid, actually. How big is the room?"

"Twice the size of the one we camped in, approximately," he said. I nodded. If it was that large, with trees all over or whatever, then... yeah, maybe I couldn't fill it with spores.

"Maybe just some near the entrance? If you'll be fighting goblins, then it'll make a space where they can't reach you to fight without dying. We can move forwards while bursting more ahead of us." Just like a creeping barrage, but with less chemical warfare and shelling, and more biological warfare and fungi!