Chương 94: Penicillium - Chapter Three

Chapter Three Cavendish handed one of the Molotovs to George, then he fished in his pockets for a moment before pulling out what looked a lot like a Zippo lighter. He flicked the wheel with his thumb, sending a few anaemic sparks into the air.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Is that wise?" Phillipe asked. Cavendish glanced back, then he gestured with a slosh of the bottle into the room.

"This one's filled with spider-sheep. You know how long it takes to work through them."

"The silk's valuable," Phillipe pointed out.

"Yeah," Grace said.

"But it's not valuable to us." I nodded along as I finally caught on. The fire wouldn't just kill the animals in the room. It would destroy the harvestable materials as well. That wasn't a big concern to Cavendish's team. They were heading deeper into the dungeon, so all that mattered to them was getting through. It would probably piss off whichever team was responsible for gathering things in this room though. But... well, in a sense, I understood. They weren't here.

They weren't working to clear the space themselves. The contents of a room belonged, more or less, to the person who cleared it. So the team that wanted the silk from here was just out of luck today. At the same time, if they were always relying on others to clear the room for them, then... yeah, I could see the reasoning that Cavendish used to justify this. Plus, in a way, the other teams weren't friends. They were competition.

A team that failed a contract might have to pay back a small fee, or at least pay back their advance. That means that ruining the dungeon for enough teams might mean culling the competition entirely. Phillipe was part of another team, but today he was acting on his own. How often did that kind of thing happen?

"Ready?" Cavendish asked George. The trap-finder nodded.

"Ready."

"Back up," Grace said.

"It'll get hot." We did as she said, all of us except for the two by the entrance stepping further into the tunnel. Cavendish lit the fuse on his bottle--which I suppose didn't count as a molotov since it had a proper fuse and cap instead of a gasoline-soaked rag--then George used that flame to light his own. They tossed the bottles in, then hightailed it back. I had a split second to wonder (in hindsight, that was rather stupid) why they were in such a hurry to get away when the bottles burst.

One smacked into the ground below the hanging cocoons, another kept sailing deeper into the room before it cracked against the room's far wall. There wasn't an explosion so much as a loud 'whump' and a blast of warm air that shoved its way into the tunnel and made my ears pop. The room was filled with fire, the heat of it enough to singe even where we stood. I shielded my face, but by the time my hand rose, the flames were already dying out.

"What was that?" I asked.

"Kerosene and phosphorus," George said with a grin.

"Good stuff. Bit pricey for the first floor though." The room was soon filled with a brackish smoke whose smell reminded me of indoor parking lots.

"Let's move," Cavendish said.

"Stay close, aim for the exit. Should be just on the right." I scrambled to keep up as the group moved into the room. It was about as wide as the previous dungeon room, though not nearly as deep. The exit was to the right, a small opening in the cave wall leading into a narrow, short-looking tunnel.

A loud bleat to my left made me jump, but Nathan stepped up and bashed down with his shield, knocking a large eight-legged sheep to the ground just long enough for him to plant the tip of his sword into its neck without ever stopping or slowing down. The next room, which was the last one on the first floor, and unlike the previous rooms it wasn't all natural. That wasn't to say that it was the opposite, exactly.

The room was a great big space with ancient flagstones on the ground and pillars pressed up against the walls. There were signs of civilization here. Archways and nooks had broken statues within them. Statues of spiders, surprisingly. They looked rather menacing in the faded light provided by our few torches and the glow of what I recognized as [Blur Glow Lichen] in the walls. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Boss room," Cavendish said.

"It's there." He gestured to the far end of the room where a pile of rubble sat, inconspicuous and unbothered.

"Door's closed," Grace said.

"Dammit." Cavendish muttered.

"What does that mean?" Tyro asked.

"It means that we have to eliminate the boss to unlock the gate," William said.

"See, that gate right there. It's locked via magical methods. The magic breaks apart when the boss is killed, though more often than not the dungeon will leave the gate opened."

"Just bad luck," Grace said.

"Alright, enough," Cavendish said.

"Quick and by the numbers. Phillipe, Nathan, at the front, stop its charge. Grace and I will come in from the sides. Tyro, stay close to me. William, aim for the eyes."

"Will do, sir," William said. No one told me what to do, so I settled on doing nothing. It was fine by me, really. I didn't want to use up any of my resources so soon and if I wasn't in the way, I wasn't as likely to get hurt. I stepped back and stayed close to William who took a moment to reload his crossbow, which seemed surprisingly complicated to do with its repeating mechanism and all.

The group formed up facing the pile of rubble, then Grace picked up a stone and chucked it to the corner with a quick underhand. The rock smacked something on the other side, and it sounded like it hit something meaty.

"Oh, hey, do you think I hit the boss?" Grace asked. There was a lout bleating which sounded surprisingly high-pitched. It cut off any potential for someone to reply. The rubble shifted as a creature climbed over the pile. It was maybe as tall as my waist, which really only meant it was the size of a larger dog, with a fat, scruffy body and a strange head with a pair of curved horns above it and long whiskers sticking out of its snout.

It looked like someone had tried to mix a rat and a goat together and had come out with the strangest combination. The ram-rat bleated, then charged. William fired, and its bleat turned into a pained howl as a bolt appeared jutting out of its lower face. Then Nathan met its charge shield-first with a loud thump, and I was pretty sure I saw a magical spark running along his shield. A skill? It would make sense for him to have something of the sort.

"Rats," William said as he turned. I tugged my attention away from the boss fight and winced as I saw little shadows scurrying out from the alcoves along the walls. Spider-rats. Angry ones that were running straight for us.

"Let's do this quick," Cavendish said as he lunged in towards the ram-rat only for it to hop to the side and try to charge him back. I pulled my knife out and got my back towards William. The crossbowman was firing repeatedly into the swarm. Fortunately, there didn't seem to be as many of them here as there were in some of the previous rooms, just a dozen or so. Unfortunately, William's crossbow didn't have a dozen bolts.

"Out," he said after leaving half a dozen corpses on the ground. He set the bow down and pulled out a long knife from a sheath next to his leg.

"We are going to have to do the rest the hard way, Ginger."

"Uh-huh," I said. Two of the remaining spider-rats scuttled towards us, one for each. William met his mid-leapt, catching it with the tip of his blade. I tried to do the same, but I had no experience and no skills to help me. The rat rammed into my upper body with only a long cut along its side to show for my efforts. I shoved it back, but it had a lot more limbs than I did and kept a firm grip on me as it tried to bring its head down towards my face, mandibles spread.

Then Sir Nibbles, who was likely annoyed by the tumble, sprang up and latched onto the spider-rat's neck, wrenching it with a hard snap and a twist of his upper body.

"Thanks," I muttered as I got back onto my feet. I left him to his impromptu snack as I dusted myself off. By the looks of things, the boss was dealt with already. I... was starting to worry a little. This fight was harder than it should have been, at least, if I expected to be able to fight my way to the very end of the dungeon. Then again, this wasn't a fight on my own terms.